To hear on Sunday 22 and 29 October, 5 and 12 November 2017, 2pm - 9pm:
(2017, Premiere)
by Ben Glas
Ben Glas über 'A Social Harmony':
"To: Ohrenhoch Gallery, Neukoeln, Berlin.
On Soundactivism17
“A Social Harmony” is a noise composition that consists of 15 various responses to a very general survey. The general survey obtusely acts as a prompt for each participant, who have sonically recorded their responses and given me their explicit approval to present their opinions here at Ohrenhoch SoundGallery, under the Soundactivism17 installment.
Each participant tells a distinct story, a unique narrative. The general questions within the survey pertain to political themes; social discourse on inequality, racial and gender tensions that globally inherent. The act of playing all recorded tracks together is an attempt to mimic the sometimes hard to navigate liminal space of information, opinion and personally biased story.
Here is the double edged sword, the friction upon which this piece rests and builds; listeners are presented with a wall or mass of noise. As each listener makes an agency-based choice in their own physical movements, specific tracks begin to become more apparent, creating a sonic bias for the individual listener. This is no mere model of the messiness of contemporary political discourse, but rather a macrocosm thereof.
In an act of activism, I have compiled these tracks as a formal composition to denote the importance of perspectives and the multiplex of various opinions and assumptions we sift through daily. Each individual voice, viewpoint and perspective heard here is inherently an act of defiance to a potentially corrupt system; one that both cultivates and thrives upon a constructed delusional hierarchy. The act of speaking up and out is a daily defiant stance many of these participants take in their alltag. An extension of this activism is to be activated and negotiated by each individual listener in this space; the individual has the agency to navigate subjectively positive and negate potentially negative viewpoints. All of this is activism.
And the fact that you are taking the time to read and consider this writing; this too is an act of activism.
Thank You For Your Understanding,
Ben Glas
"The participants of this project include
"Denny"
Alan Page-Duffy
Anonymous (3)
Cassandra Lankford
Cheyenne Preys
Christine Tannenvald
Ellena Rosenthal
Israel David
Jerry Schlesser
Katie Piatt
Laura Medina
Nadia Preys
Nick Bukea
"
Ben Glas is an interdisciplinary artist and composer based in Portland, OR. With a keen focus on sonic phenomena and vibration, his work engages concepts of relativity, human perception, spacetime and egalitarian modes of experiencing sound.
Glas is a prolific composer with debuts and performances at PICA's TBA Festival, Open Signal's Unity Gain and is an active member of the Pacific Northwest Art community. Through work released on the labels Blankstairs (NY/PDX), Deep White Sound (PDX) and Sounds Et Al (PDX) Glas explores alternative inquiries into hearing, listening and experiencing. Glas is an active member of the International artist collective In Naam Der Kunst (I.N.K).
His work contemporary work can be found at thankyouforyourunderstanding.com
Audio Field Reports nos. 1-60 / Soundaktivismus 1-39: ohrenhoch Interviews seit Januar 2014 mit den einzelnen KünstlerInnen, Konzept und Design von Knut Remond. Limitierte Auflagen Audio-Kassette, je 8 Stück nummeriert. Erhältlich bei 'ohrenhoch, der Geräuschladen' (und zu hören auf Kopfhörer im ohrenhoch-Archiv).