Ve.Sch

Sound installation and performance

We know through the narrative of the Odyssey, the effects of the Sirens song. It is said that the voice of the Sirens made Odysseus plug his mens ears with wax and tied Odysseus himself to the mast. What was this sound/voice and what kind of body produced it? Science and technology have imagined and formed a body for the so called siren. First in the form of an instrument able to measure sound and then, later on, in the form of an electric device designed to signal danger or alarm. This is now the sirens’ signal as we know it. We recognize it not only as a signal of warning, alert and danger, but also as a signal of an emergency of general concern and perhaps even protection.

Sirens on the beat is about this gap. With the help of acoustic and electronic devices, we expose our bodies to ideas of sonic and ideological dissonace1.

1 . The idea of dissonance is contained in the experiments on atonality within XXth century music , represented notably by A.Schönberg. On another set of keys, the potential subversion or dissonance contained in the Sirens’ myth is addressed in Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightment from1944.

installation view ,Sirens on the beat‘

Nathalie Wuerth
lives and works in Stockholm
This project was funded with the help of Iaspis

«www.nathaliewuerth.com
«Archiv 2012

performance view ,Sirens on the beat‘