SoundsAbout presents the sound installation ‘Einmal ist Keinmal’ by Ani Samperi.

about the work:
“Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings — always darker, emptier, simpler.” — F.W. Nietzsche.

Cycles. Repetition. Desire. Duality. Emotion fascinates as much as it frightens us. It connects us to ancient mechanisms, animal instincts long forgotten. The Siren’s song, framed as an evil tool, would cause men to fall to their deaths just to be with them. Loss of control creates uncertainty; uncertainty implies threat of castration. Yet just to be near that which arouses feeling, we would risk it all. Here, an acoustic impulse response (the shape of an echo at a specific location) is applied repeatedly to an ancient Swedish call to cows in a mountain landscape, until the semblance of song disappears: each time, details of the original melody dissolve further while the most dominant frequencies are amplified. Each cycle is an eternal return where self-renewal = self-destruction. The feeling of enchantment by a hypnotic melancholic beauty, of a primordial connection to nature, slowly drowns in a sea of sine waves. What is left is an alien soundscape, drained of complexity and coloured with a different emotional palette. Gradually, it takes on a different kind of beauty — darker, emptier, simpler.

about the artist:
The work of Ani Samperi uses sound as raw material for installation, along with resonant materials and repurposed objects. She uses cycles and transformation of sound, within a landscape of light and shadow, to explore themes of death, rebirth, nostalgia, fear, seduction, and the feminine aspect of nature. Emotional content is seen as a tool for sociopolitical transformation that calls back to an era before digital technology, before a left-brain-dominated society where function is praised and the non-rational is demonized and invalidated, and into a more balanced future. A woman’s voice and a dim light invite us into an enclosure of bare tree limbs where we hear from all directions — as if coming from the walls and trees themselves — the sound of natural beauty gradually transforming into a simpler state tinted with silver sine waves.

Opening: Thursday 14/11, 18:00 – 22:00
Gallery hours: Friday 15/11 & Saturday 16/11, 16:00 – 21:00

SoundsAbout is a collaboration between the MA Sound Studies and Sonic Arts students and the gallery Zwitschermachine- Potsdamer Straße 161, 10783 Berlin