julio lugon
elephant meditations – klanginstallation
sound spaces berlin – 25 jahre singuhr
Meinblau Projektraum
28.05.-13.06.2021





Einem Künstler der jungen Generation ist die zweite Ausstellung von »sound spaces berlin« gewidmet. Der aus Peru stammende Künstler Julio Lugon schloss 2019 sein Masterstudium Sound Studies an der UDK in Berlin ab. Seine Installation »elephant meditations« spielt mit der Metapher eines seit langer Zeit verlassenen, aber dennoch selbstständig weiterarbeitenden Forschungslaboratoriums. Die raumgreifende Installation skizziert einen mysteriös anmutenden Ort, der einen merkwürdigen, künstlichen Organismus beherbergt. Aus gelb-orangen Nylonstoffen zusammengefügt, blähen sich die Gliedmaßen dieses Körpers von Ventilatoren angetrieben nach und nach mit Luft auf und fallen schließlich langsam wieder in sich zusammen. Schläuche und schwarze Kabelstränge führen zu einer Art Überwachungsstation, die jedoch verwaist ist. Die Akteure hier sind verschwunden, die Kabel enden an ominösen, im Raum aufgehängten Stahlblechen, deren Form an Steuerungstafeln erinnert. Anstatt mit Schaltern und Bildschirmen aber sind sie mit Lautsprechern ausgerüstet. Durch sie klingen die Geräusche des künstlichen Organismus hier echohaft nach. Alles scheint wie von Geisterhand zu funktionieren. Die Frage, welche Ziele die Apparaturen in diesem dystopisch anmutenden Szenenbild aber verfolgen, bleibt unbeantwortet. Julio Lugon hat die Installation seit ihrer ersten Präsentation 2019 in Bonn — und besonders auch angesichts der aktuellen globalen Krisensituation — kontinuierlich weiterentwickelt. Im Rahmen von »sound spaces berlin« präsentiert er eine neue Version, die auch der Frage nachgeht, inwiefern die Stellung des Menschen in einem Universum komplexer und vielfältiger Wesen, die neben ihm existieren, in Zukunft nicht auch zur Disposition stehen könnte.

singuhr — projekte
Meinblau Projektraum
Christinenstraße 18-19, Auf dem Pfefferberg, Haus 5
10119 Berlin
Öffnungszeiten: Mi — So 14 — 20 Uhr
Eintritt frei

AKTUELLE HINWEISE FÜR DEN AUSSTELLUNGSBESUCH:
Es gelten die aktuellen Abstands- und Hygienevorschriften!
- Der Ausstellungsbesuch ist nur mit einer FFP2-Maske möglich
- Bis einschließlich 03.06.2021 besteht eine Testpflicht (mit den bekannten Ausnahmen lt. Hygieneverordnung)
- Es wird eine Anwesenheitsdokumentation durchgeführt
- Eine Terminbuchung ist ausschließlich vor Ort möglich

Veranstaltet von singuhr e.V.
gefördert durch: Initiative Neue Musik Berlin e.V., Bezirksamt Pankow von Berlin (Amt für Weiterbildung und Kultur, Fachbereich Kunst und Kultur), Musikfonds, die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien. Mit freundlicher Unterstützung von Meinblau e.V.

Berlin 2109

elephant meditations*

The life of objects, being alive or inanimate is something I have put my attention in the latest years, or perhaps since I got use of reason, but now I am finally trying to articulate this idea with some theoretical support. From new ways of perceiving contemporary philosophical knowledge production to new ways of transmitting art that deals with a universal environment that could not be anymore. Who knows.
Many examples in literature of objects being the narrative voice of a novel, first person tales from a door, a kettle; or also animals, a cat as a narrator of the life they perceive.

Can non-human entities hear or listen?, they definitely can produce sound, vocalize some kind of standpoint or perspective from their own finitude of aptitudes and their potentials. But, is it not the same with humans? We also have a limited amount of sounds we can produce and that we can practically listen. Maybe other type of intelligence that are not human can arise from the starting point of expanding a sonic knowledge that is not only human. All entities and their own limitations to vocalize and perceive sound.

Elephants, for instance, are a great reference in terms of a being that uses the auditory system in a very complex way, having intricated inputs and outputs of noise compared to many other perceptual apparatus to orientate in a world of only a few known sound realities. Zoological studies have been searching for a proper way of making real sense of animal cognitive experience, and we know more or less how to relate to all these findings but there would be always a real gap where the unknown resides.

Slime molds, in the other hand, are creatures that were considered as fungus not too long ago. Now being considered as one of the many species catalogued in the protista kingdom. The kingdom of all the “others”, not animal, not plant, not fungus and not bacteria.
By ways of a long close study of an ever mutating culture of slime molds, mainly one called Physarum Polycephalum, I could get close to the ways of how this organism develop its many heads in order to get nutrition and the right temperature and moisture to endure life.

There are many experiments where Physarum is analysed to understand how and if they are really listening to its environment. I am not going to show here some of the findings of these experiences. I ll try to vocalize by ways of a sound art installation, a very specific kind of science fictional narrative, where there are no more elephants in the room, rather a healthy unicelular organism with thousands of nuclei:

A yellow organism filled with air fluctuates non-stop in the center of a long abandoned lab.
Several sonic proves seems to be auscultating the state of this non-human being.
Up in a second floor there is a control room where an operator was supposed to be monitoring the changes in growth of the yellow entity, an operator that is indeed long time gone, leaving a scene where surprisingly there is still a symbiotic and functioning working force between electronic and a sort of organic fabric.

Somehow everything is still kept existing on its own, producing sounds that are perhaps markers showing that this whole bio-feedback system is still testing not only its own autonomy, but more over, a sounding collective working environment where all actors have found their own bandwidth in a whole soundscape of the lab.

This is many years in advance from now, an era where the non-linearity of time takes over, questioning the human position in a universe of complex manifold entities living in parallel.

One can question also the fact of knowing what is organic and what artificial, let alone proving animated sound as a being in itself could be having both characteristics at the same time.


Julio Lugon


…

*a very fictional elephant species went extinct from the face of the earth at the time, therefore making impossible for any of its members to inhabit any space or room whatsoever.

Ref. video:

Nuclear Power Plant Abandoned Inside the Control Room POWER STILL ON :
(Youtube: „Exploring with Rachel“ Published on Oct 21, 2016)
14,226 views (30.08.19)

Video description: This multi BILLION dollar plant now sits abandoned for close to 30 years now. The site is huge containing several levels that has pipes snaking throughout it along with other random workings of inside the plant. In some sort of twisted reality it's almost like an alien mothership that's landed and now sits dormant stalled in time...