Durham 'sonic art' takes on social issues in audio exhibition

A secluded room in the corner of an open gallery greets visitors with only sound waves on a projected screen. 

The Power Plant Gallery in Durham is currently featuring a broadcast audio exhibit with solely sonic art, "Soundings: Protest, Politics, Dissent." 

Caitlin Margaret Kelly, director of the gallery, said the design was intentional, prompting audience members to not make choices on what they hear, but to simply sit and experience it.

“We make so many choices on what we include and what we exclude from our kind of circles, what if you don’t make the choice?" she said. “What if someone else makes it for you, and you just walk in and experience it?”

The exhibit, which will run until Feb. 18, offers 10 hours of digital audio from over 20 different local, national and international artists.

Kelly organized the exhibit and synthesized the digital sound files with no accompanying visuals to focus on the sound aspect of the artwork.

“I was interested in how artists are using this particular medium to exhibit those ideas of dissent or politics or protest,” Kelly said. “We’re very used to visual artists doing it; I think we are less used to sonic artists or audio artists doing it.”

The sonic artwork has five underlying themes that weave throughout various pieces: protest; environment and climate change; immigration, emigration and diaspora; incarceration and torture; as well as memory and trauma.

Meaghan Kachadoorian attended the exhibit and identified with the sonic artwork's relevance to her work and interests. 

“I think it’s really powerful to have things that make us feel different ways but are all dissent, are all protest and are all countering to this paradigm of supremacy and domination and violence, “ said Kachadoorian. “So, having really different interpretations of peacefulness and of dissent in the same space, and (they) are usually estranged from each other.”

The exhibit comprised multiple rooms, one in which audio was continuously streamed for visitors to listen to the sonic art together. For a closer listen, Kelly also provided the option to enjoy the audio pieces individually with iPads and headphones outside the room.  

Louise Meintjes, a visitor of the exhibit, noticed how the gallery's structure and the experimental factor of the art were meant to provoke the audience. 

“Part of the challenge in an exhibition like this is how do you get people to linger and listen, especially when there are pieces that are an hour long, for instance,” Meintjes said.

Participants were handed out pamphlets describing the gallery's topics and artists' works. 

“In the description, it talks about repeating — You hear it once on the news and then you hear it again in a different context where you’re really deliberately thinking about it,” Kachadoorian said. “And I’m thinking how is it possible that this is our world?”

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