The Monument Is Listening

Emilie Ding (CH, 1981, based in Berlin) draws inspiration from the built environment and the structural elements of buildings to create works on paper and sculptures with a minimalist language and great graphic and physical force. Her monumental work How High You Can Count (2017) is made up of luminescent tubes installed on the façade of the Mirabaud bank in Geneva. Six compositions of coloured segments reveal and amplify the grid structure of the façade. Pared down and enigmatic, they are the result of a rigorous protocol that translates the dates of birth and death of the American artist and composer Pauline Oliveros (30.05.1932–24.11.2016) into a code format, i.e. DD/MM/YYYY. A theorist and practitioner of Deep Listening, a principle based on the idea of listening in as many ways as possible to everything that can possibly be heard all of the time, Oliveros has developed a minimal sound language, born of attention devoted to the spatial and acoustic characteristics of places, which she reveals through the medium of sound. How High You Can Count pays tribute to the art of Oliveros, which is open to musical, philosophical and spiritual dimensions.

For KorSonoR, Ding has been invited to imagine a performance in front of the building’s façade, with How High You Can Count as its backdrop, which will enhance the tribute with a sound project in the spirit of the work of Oliveros. She has invited sound artist Alizée Lenox (FR/DE, 1989, based in Berlin), who is strongly influenced by New York’s no wave scene and the minimalist avant-garde. Her compositions make extensive use of repetition, layers of sound and dissonance as a means of creating poetic explorations on the guitar. She develops her own techniques by combining objects (drills, plumbing pipes, paintbrushes) and materials (glass, ceramics, vegetation) with her guitar. Her practice is essentially performative. She regularly collaborates with visual artists.