Exercice d’Isolation (Announcement System Hoparlör)

Exercice d’Isolation (Announcement System Hoparlör), 2012

Petra Elena Köhle & Nicolas Vermot Petit-Quthenin

Sinopale 4, “Wisdom of Shadow: Art in the Era of Corrupted Information”
Curator: Dimitrina Sevova

The project Exercice d’Isolation (Announcement System) by Petra Köhle and Nicolas Vermot Petit-Outhenin is the continuation of their long-term interest in the topic of archives and their art research on how technologies and more specifically the medium of photography relates to the process of archiving and how it in itself imposes certain rules in archiving practices in its mechanisms of selection. How are the spatial relations organized inside and out in the system of archives? How does their general structure relate to the particularity of one object? How are choices, order, the protocols of their connectedness realized not only as technological calls between different components but ideologically determined in their functional regimes?

And how, from these dependencies, does the object emerge in space in order to attract the gaze of the observer to itself and to its social and aesthetic dispositifs? Their practices are exercises in isolation, consisting in research in the public space, considering the local environment and its socio-political conditions in order to find the object petit a. The chosen object is then estranged from its networking operational procedures in order to displace it, i.e., it is in some way locked up in the exhibition space or put on display. This procedure underlines its pure functionality as an object and its design. Their method is characterized by a system of carefully realized deterritorializing procedures into which selfreflexive and self referential practices find their way, as well as a critical reflection of the very institution of art and the construction of the exhibition space. For the artists the ambiguous character of these processes is essential. Even if they show a close-up of the isolated object they maintain a distance to it.

They install two loudspeakers, part of the Announcement System which is part of the social apparatuses of Sinop, in one of the rooms of the old juvenile detention center of Sinop, in order to turn them partly into sculptural objects, which through their isolation become “pure objects.” In this exercise of isolation the artists do not disconnect the object from its general system, but only present it in a close-up.
The sculptural installation has a double presence in the old prison, as it disperses the broadcast system inside the space, and as a pure aesthetic presence. This results in a confrontation between the relations of inside and out, as well as being part of the system while at the same time highlighting the particularity of its objects in order to better understand its ideological functionality, because the concept of its design is part of the formal setting (the apparatuses of display), becoming prop, an emphasized theatricality, scenic character, about the social and technological rituals, in order to focus on one specific object and its system relations, of which some aspects have remained inevitably hidden, revealing their autonomy to the gaze of the viewers, unmasking how “in fact the objects project affects onto us in their forced signification, in their performativity, turning us into a screen.” (Jean Baudrillard)

In this case the artists isolate not only the object, but imprison the sound, the sound of silence, and on the other they disperse it in the exhibition space by attaching their sculpture to the Announcement System of Sinop. This system broadcasts live. There is no practice of recording the messages, and there is thus no archive of what has been broadcast. Nothing is kept of what has been submitted for reading. No document. No protocol. There is only an employee taking care of everything, including the delicate task of selecting the materials submitted, deciding what will be broadcast and what will not. Some messages remain unheard, because the broadcasts of the Announcement System have become part of the acoustic environment of the town, something that passes through the inner sensors of its inhabitants but remains unconscious on the surface. After the isolation of the sound in the exhibition space the attention of the visitors is attracted to the content of the message, which is in itself some sort of amplification. As a social apparatus the Announcement System of Sinop transforms sound rather into a public ritual, as an analog channel covering the public space of the town. The use of the system of transmitters and the localized context of the transmission with its limited protocols is in itself a kind of isolation, and their live streaming fragments some sort of network identity. The system of loudspeaker apparatuses is installed at relatively even distances around the town at the level of the roof of a two-story house, and determines a specific zone of spatio-social relations.

In order to find the object petit a for the exercise of isolation the artists met during their research with local activists and experts for inspiring discussions and would like to express their thankfulness to İsmet Damaroğlu (responsible for the public affairs of the municipality of Sinop and the one who decides what is announced via the loudspeaker system), Direnç Erşahin, a young philosopher from Sinop, passionately dedicated to Diogenes (the philosopher) and his father Murat Erşahin and to Hale Oğuz who told them about her environmental activism.

Text: Dimitrina Sevova

Installation with Loudspeakers, sound, molleton, wooden beam