TONSPUR in MARIBOR: TransArts/Angewandte PRIVATE DOTS & PUBLIC CLOUDS

TONSPUR in MARIBOR:
TransArts/Angewandte
PRIVATE DOTS & PUBLIC CLOUDS
Part of the 26th IFCA Maribor

5 Nov 2020—29 Apr 2021
daily 10:00—20:00
No opening because of COVID-19
TONSPUR_passage @ Maribor Town Hall
Glvani Trg 14
2000 Maribor, Slovenia

As the current situation demands that we isolate ourselves, stay in our homes and do not share public space, we have to create digital spaces via technological devices and software in order to connect and communicate with others. During this time, these virtual spaces are seen as replacements of public spaces. They are intersections of our private surroundings, allowing the creation of alternative modes of gathering and, more deeply, of possible forms of publicness within the privateness. How could we then record these virtual spaces within our homes?

“Private Dots and Public Clouds” is based on a recording of a silent online meeting using a video conference software. During this meeting, we refrained from talking and we tried to listen to the space, that emerged out of the overlapping sounds of all our individual environments within our laptops speakers. Every participant has recorded this meeting from their own laptop. These recordings, whose sounds and rhythms are modulated and filtered by everyone's respective internet connection, result in differently sounding perspectives of the same shared virtual place. Therein, we tried to portray our personal contexts within the current situation. By remaining silent and allowing the background noises of our flats to come to the foreground, we tried to compose both a situation of collective listening as well as sonic traces of absence, of loneliness and non-communication, as these virtual spaces are usually created specifically to communicate through language. Reflecting on how to perform the situation of forced isolation was the aim of this project.