Listening

Parabolic Acoustic Walls as a Spatial Figure of Action

The Sound Mirrors, or ‘Listening Walls’, are an architectural relic and memorial from the First World War. Only two such parabolic Acoustic Walls have survived worldwide; one of them is located on Mount Patella on the island of Leros (GR).

For me, the historical Parabolic Acoustic Walls embody the spatial, bodily and temporal conditions from which my epistemological practice unfolds. Consciously seeking out the site, exposing oneself to its spatial, historical and material structure, entering into it, lingering within it, as well as the kinaesthetic experience of friction between body (hearing) and site form the experiential space of this practice. Within this thickened condition, historical, spatial, bodily and sensory experiences condense into a situated constellation in which theoretical knowledge, memory, perception and bodily presence become effective simultaneously.

The experiences of this practice sediment into an epistemic substrate. They connect philosophical and theoretical knowledge with embodied experience and form the ground from which my artistic practice develops. The filmic, photographic and performative works emerge from this substrate. They are the expression of a fragmentary, situated and subjective approach to being-in-the-world.

The photographs were taken in 2022 during the first phase of my artistic research in Greece. In this research, I searched for the spatial, bodily and temporal conditions that transform perception, enable the capacity for the faculty of judgement and thereby create the conditions for political action. In retrospect, I recognise in these Acoustic Walls the beginning of the epistemological practice that shaped my subsequent three-year research into transgenerational pain, memory and reconciliation with three Greek protagonists.