private space in a public time
created from a condensed series of vocal sounds, this intimate, spatial sound work questions the public and private aspects of voice. the text Public Space in a Private Time by Vito Acconci was read, recorded and edited to leave a series of stops and starts, a slippery language of faintly recognizable utterances. the corresponding language-based score was composed by erasing letters from the original text and drawing lines to connect the remaining syllables. I was interested in locating the underlying thread of the voice, the cadence and breath that carries meaning outside of recognizable language, what Roland Barthes has referred to as the grain of the voice.
The Space Between
MASS MoCA
audio installation in connector tunnel with 12-panel sound score screen-printed on the wall
2016-2017
The sound of breath between words, punctuated by bursts of consonants, follows visitors as they pass from one building to the next. Wolowiec lets us listen in on a fundamental and active part of spoken language that might otherwise be dismissed as silence.
—Nina Wexelblatt, curator
Redactions are aural in Audra Wolowiec's sound piece that intimately registers the sibilant breaks between words and the material qualities of silence. —Rachel Funari, writer
originally commissioned for Art in General's A/V Elevator Project Space (2010), exhibited in Eraser at Magnan-Metz (2011), MASS MoCA (2016-2017), and featured in BOMB Magazine, Fall Issue 2016.
special thanks to MASS MoCA curator Nina Wexelblatt and Sarah Pike at Freefall Laser for screen printing.