Sound Art in Visual Arts. The Symposium

‘Sense of Sound’ symposium brought together six curators specialized in sound art to discuss the status of sound art within the field of visual arts. The speakers include Joost Fonteyne, director of Festival van Vlaanderen Kortrijk and Sounding City, Carlo Fossati, director of sound art gallery E/Static, researcher, curator and author Nicole Gingras, Justin Luke, founder of Audio Visual Arts AVA gallery, curator Bernard Schulz, and Carsten Steiffart, founder of sound art gallery Singuhr.

Gert Aertsen, Time is a Technology, 2014. Z33 Co-production. Sense of Sound, Z33 House for contemporary art, 2 March–25 May 2014. © Kristof Vrancken / Z33.
Gert Aertsen, Time is a Technology, 2014. Z33 Co-production. Sense of Sound, Z33 House for contemporary art, 2 March–25 May 2014. © Kristof Vrancken / Z33.

Interest in sound art is notably increasing, but curators and programmers often find it hard to display sound art in either exhibition concepts or infrastructure. Many choices – both artistically and in relation to the presentation environment – are medium-specific. The professional field often does not possess sufficient knowledge with regard to presenting a medium that is as physical as it seems elusive; hence the need for further discussion and expertise on this subject.

In the framework of exhibition Sense of Sound, Z33 House for contemporary art and Overtoon, a Brussels-based stage and production facility for sound and media art, invited national and international curators to discuss possibilities and challenges of exhibiting sound art through their practices.

Duration of talk 00:37:11, in English. Videography Liese Lattrez.

Duration of talk 00:15:44, in English. Videography Liese Lattrez.

Duration of talk 00:21:07, in English. Videography Liese Lattrez.

 

Duration of talk 00:20:50, in English. Videography Liese Lattrez.

 

Duration of talk 00:30:33, in English. Videography Liese Lattrez.

 

Panel discussion of the symposium with Carsten Seiffarth, artist Aernoudt Jacobs, Joost Fonteyne, Bernd Schulz, Nicole Gingras, Justin Luke and Carlo Fossati. Transcription of the discussion can be read here.

Duration of talk 00:39:43, in English. Videography Liese Lattrez.


Symposium ‘Sense of Sound’ was organised by Overtoon and Z33 House for contemporary art in collaboration with BAM, an institute for visual, sound and media art.

Gepubliceerd op

24.05.2014

Bio

Carsten Seiffarth
curates and produces exhibitions and projects on sound art in an international context. He founded and directed the pioneering sound art gallery Singuhr in Berlin, Germany. Seiffarth currently works as a curator of the urban sound art project Bonn Hören.

Bernd Schulz
has worked as a curator of the Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken in Saarbrücken, Germany, for many years. He has written several monographies on sound artists such as Rolf Julius, Christina Kubisch, Akio Suzuki, and other publications on sound art

Justin Luke
founded Audio Visual Arts AVA in New York, USA, in 2008. The gallery exhibits emerging and established artists and musicians. While AVA presents a range of work, the core interest is in a more adventurous and conceptual approach to sound. AVA also produces artists editions, participates in international exhibitions and art fairs, and hosts the monthly audio series Exterior Sounds.

Nicole Gingras
is a researcher, independent curator and author based in Montreal, Canada. She is particularly interested in image, be it visual, audio or textual. Exhibitions, programs, publications and seminars she has curated and directed deal with notions of time, creative process, movements of thought and traces of memory. She has collaborated with International Festival of Films on Art FIFA since 2003.

Joost Fonteyne
directs Festival van Vlaanderen Kortrijk in Kortrijk, Belgium. He has been programming Sounding City for several years within the Festival van Vlaanderen Kortrijk, and within its predecessor Happy New Ears, an exhibition of sound art both in public space and indoor spaces across the city.

Carlo Fossati
is founder and director of the E/Static sound art gallery in Turin, Italy. He curates shows and projects with both pioneering names in the history of sound art as with younger artists.