“On a cold winter evening, the sound of breath that is exhaled and puffed onto the cold window of a crowded public bus stuck in the traffic jam in Zincirlikuyu right before reaching the Bosphorus Bridge.”
“Dictionary of Sensitive Sounds” is the basis of an evolving dialogue in which Evrim Kavcar and Elif Öner have been treating sound both as a material and as a mood. Hearing, listening, inability to listen or unwillingness to listen, as well as the modes of making sound or inability to do so have been the driving force behind this work. In the dictionary that lies at the core of this common/shared process, the two artists follow the in-between sounds of their daily lives. The aforementioned dictionary embraces sensitive descriptions of sounds. Starting off with their own descriptions, Kavcar and Öner open up the process for participation by inviting the visitors to recall and extract the sounds in their own personal memories and to add them to the dictionary. In opening up the process for the society’s participation, the artists’ aim is to audit a collective auditory memory. Adding a new description of sound to the dictionary requires concentrating on specific gestures, experiences, movements or testimonies that are rooted in our memories and collective consciousness.
Upon PASAJ’s invitation, the artists who proceed from the moods generated by Karaköy’s soundscape, decide to concentrate on one sound in particular in the exhibition space. The juxtaposition of a sound and an image -which resists being reduced to words- turns into a metaphor for our ways of relating.
* This process based exhibition will have a social media component. The artists will share accompanying performative readings and conversations with guest speakers/listeners during the exhibition period on social media. Their guests are specialists from a variety of fields such as speech-language pathology, neuroscience, audiology, voiceover industry, labor health and work safety, urban and structural acoustics, sound engineering and sound design.
“Dear Reader,” “Dear Reader,” is a program that accompanies the dictionary. The program grows with guests who are specialists in listening to those sounds which do not turn into words.
