Ola Hassanain – Spatial Acts: Geographies of Absence and Waithood

Spatial Acts: Geographies of Absence and Waithood by Ola Hassanain

SONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 2022

16 October 2022

Likeminds, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Architecture situates ‘building’ as an ecological ‘emptying’ of territories and an infrastructure for continuous cycles of ‘catastrophe’, such as forced migration. One thing that remains in the wake of catastrophe in this day and age is the continuation of building as a marker for the end of catastrophe. This implies that we should all wait while building finishes, that our problems and the imposed difficulties are never urgent enough, thus constituting 'building' as the suspension of time for some, an imposed waiting as the infrastructure for the built environment.

This talk shows an essayistic video titled ‘The Line That Follows’, which challenges conventional linear perspectives on time – vantage points still used today for the representation of built forms as induction of future realities – by including practices of space-making rooted in other sensibilities. An analogous constellation, composed of manipulated perspective drawings derived from routes taken in Khartoum, abstracted forms, text, sound, and ritualistic practices – all placeholders for propositions of an unemptied space and an aspiration for an architecture that listens.

Sonic Acts Biennial 2022 took place at various locations in Amsterdam, interweaving an exhibition, sound performances and discourse programme, accompanied by artist presentations, workshops, excursions and more. As a part of the Biennial programme, the Leaving Traces symposium opened up a forum in which to become attentive to pollution’s invisible, yet harmful touch. Actively rethinking our relation to the climate and our planetary legacies, an array of artists, researchers, curators, and scholars spoke of the many faces of toxicity – from fossil fuels to plastic, from nuclear energy to chemical pollutants. The gathering staged real stories and events of exposure, thinking about ‘leaving traces’ not just as the material act of spreading toxicity, but as art’s potential to reach out and act as a disruptive force in the world.

Find out more at https://sonicacts.com/archive/biennial2022

Credit:

Curation & production: Sonic Acts

Recording: Engage! TV

Sound mastering: Monty Mouw

Design: Catalogtree

Sound logo: Roc Jiménez de Cisneros

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