Playing it Back. Critical Reflections on Curating Sound
Bhavisha Panchia · Sound studies · 2022
Reflections on Curating Sound Bhavisha PanchiaOver the last twenty years, museums and galleries have slowly opened their hearts, doors, walls and websites to the reverberation of sound works, musical performances and immersive installations.Finding microphones, musical instruments, vinyl records, turntables, amplifiers, musical scores, mixers, cassettes, recorders, headphones, wires, speakers and voices is not the rare occurrence that it once used to be.Exhibition halls are no longer the quiet, austere, sanctified spaces for contemplation either; codes of conduct such as measured silence and regulated movement have in many ways loosened.Winning the 2010 Turner Prize for her sound installation Lowlands, Susan Philipsz flung sound art into the mainstream focus: it was the first time the award went to an artist working with sound. 1 Three years later, Soundings: A Contemporary Score would take place at MOMA in New York, the first large-scale exhibition focused on sound art to take place at an internationally renowned museum. 2 2012 marked the centenary year of the birth of John Cage, which inspired a number of exhibitions and festival showcasing sound art in Western Europe and North America.In the UK and in Germany, for example, expansive exhibitions such as Soundworks (2012) at ICA London that included the work of over 100 artists 3 and Sound Art.Sound as Medium of Art (2013) at Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) in Karlsruhe were held.Across the Atlantic Ocean at MOMA PS1, the Brooklyn band The National performed their single, Sorrow, repeatedly for six hours as part of their Sunday 1 Weibel 2019, 52. 2 MoMA's first major exhibition of sound art presented the work of 16 contemporary artists working with sound from a variety of disciplinary angles from the visual arts, architecture, performance, computer programming and music.3 As an online platform, Soundworks sought to create an interactive space that is internationally accessible.Despite the dead link to the official platform, the works are still available for listening on SoundCloud.