Come Hell and High Water (2022)
two times of sound live performace, 00:29:29 / 00:21:00
presented at Mutter, Amsterdam (NL)
To close Come Hell or High Water by Rosario Aninat and Simon Shim-Sutcliffe, Infrasonica invited Nadoe, a South Korean artist based in the Netherlands, to perform a sonic response to the show. Nadoe presented a series of field-recordings they made of the sound generated from infrastructure across the Netherlands, entwining and distorting them with digested sounds to heighten and intensify the effects that a city’s noise has on its inhabitants.
Nadoe’s piece asks how water rushing through pipes, electricity coursing through wires, and wind surging through manmade corridors impacts us as we maneuver through an urban environment. Do these sounds change depending on the locale? How about the qualities they take on? If so, what impact does this ambient sound have on people? How do we feel those differences on the day-to-day? Do they communicate Violence? Discomfort? Ease?
Performed live among the sculptures inside Mutter, Amsterdam, Nadoe saturated the exhibition, blurring and blending the mechanical with the organic to throw off our sensitivity to linear time and space, asking first and foremost whether attentive listening can be an entry point into the story of a city.