The body is a score
Multichannel sound and video installation
October 11 - November 22, 2024
Curated by send + receive festival of sound v.26
Hosted at Poolside Gallery, Video Pool Media Arts Centre
Exhibition Documentation by
Robert Szkolnicki.
“a score is a body…
a lake is a body…
text is a body….
a breath is a body…”
Sometimes I don’t think it’s possible to go a single day without
thinking about somatic death. But lately I’ve been trying to be more
hopeful. I guess I’m just tired of fearing my own body and how it will
fail me one day.
To combat this I’ve taken to thinking about everything as a body –
applying life and subjecthood to everything that breathes and
experiences change on both cellular and metaphorical levels. If
everything is a body, then everything is relational and my own body
doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Rather, it is connected to the universe
around me by a thousand glowing threads which are just temporarily
jutting out of the warp and weft of its fabric. I’m just in a slightly
more solid form for a little while, running until the sound stops.
The sound is how I know I’m alive. It’s how I ground myself in a reality
that is constantly trying to escape my perception. An air conditioner
running in the background, cars passing by on the street, the sound of
skin on skin – these invisible caresses remind me that I’m (real)ly
here.
People always seem to forget that sound is touch. When I
hear your voice, I feel it.
The body is a score is an audio installation that attempts to
metaphorize the false dichotomy of objectivity and subjectivity of the
human body through language and sound.
Balancing algorithmic composition with improvised rhythms, LeBrun
transposes bodies of text from anatomical textbooks, poetry, and
personal writings into scores for flute and guitar. These compositions
are accompanied by the sounds of the interior body, recorded using a
stethoscope microphone, and Solfeggio tones–notes that are said to
resonate with the Earth’s frequency.
Connected by breath, these vastly contrasting bodies are brought
together with the aim of blurring somatic, textual, and metaphorical
boundaries. Together, they speak to the ways in which we construct an
understanding of what a body \can be through language, and how we might
subvert these restrictive representations by transmuting and expanding
upon their forms. What results is the creation of an ever-evolving
auditory body that changes over time depending on the presence and
position of the listener within the installation.
Watch video documentation by Robert Szkolnicki embedded in browser
below.