98Weeks, Beirut, 2011
Made during the course of the rePLACE workshop in Beirut, this audio recording is the trace of a sound walk providing aural instructions for following a daily route shared by Maral Der Boghossian, who has visited her father's shop in Bourj Hammoud two to three times a week for over 25 years.
At one point during one of our discussions, Jad mentioned something about the need to build systems and structures so that we can break free from them. At the time i did not agree so much, perhaps out of mere exhaustion (the dialectic), and maybe also there has just always been some part of me that desires to find out how far we can just let things go, or to understand the limits of tolerance.
Phasing works in a similar way, though taking a walk in the city makes a clean set of variables into a dirty game. The phase is an easy, fun experiment; it breaks out of itself predictably but still fascinating to listen to — self-contained by reception. But it seems difficult to consider any form of reality anymore in terms of such structure; what is always lies next to and around itself, everything is multiple. Perhaps it's simply a poor understanding of mathematics, but I never know how to discern exponentiality from noise. Circling now (the dialectic), it's another form of fascination — like listening to sound upon sound. Or maybe it's simply the idea of being attentive to the things that have always been there.
Eight participants followed the audio to reach the Der Boghossian store, and eight failed to reach the destination, but each person's voice is layered onto the route as a phased, audio palimpsest. Each more complex than the last, it is enough noise to bare the gaps in the structure of the game. But it's also just letting things follow their natural course.
rePLACE project main site: www.re-place.info
the rePLACE Beirut project is a collaboration with Fotini LAZARIDOU-HATZIGOGA and Daniel BERNDT.
At one point during one of our discussions, Jad mentioned something about the need to build systems and structures so that we can break free from them. At the time i did not agree so much, perhaps out of mere exhaustion (the dialectic), and maybe also there has just always been some part of me that desires to find out how far we can just let things go, or to understand the limits of tolerance.
Phasing works in a similar way, though taking a walk in the city makes a clean set of variables into a dirty game. The phase is an easy, fun experiment; it breaks out of itself predictably but still fascinating to listen to — self-contained by reception. But it seems difficult to consider any form of reality anymore in terms of such structure; what is always lies next to and around itself, everything is multiple. Perhaps it's simply a poor understanding of mathematics, but I never know how to discern exponentiality from noise. Circling now (the dialectic), it's another form of fascination — like listening to sound upon sound. Or maybe it's simply the idea of being attentive to the things that have always been there.
Eight participants followed the audio to reach the Der Boghossian store, and eight failed to reach the destination, but each person's voice is layered onto the route as a phased, audio palimpsest. Each more complex than the last, it is enough noise to bare the gaps in the structure of the game. But it's also just letting things follow their natural course.
rePLACE project main site: www.re-place.info
the rePLACE Beirut project is a collaboration with Fotini LAZARIDOU-HATZIGOGA and Daniel BERNDT.
