The sound composition Tracing Dystopian Dialogues is a collaboration between the artist Ines Lechleitner and the curator Tuçe Erel. It is based on interviews conducted this June in Istanbul around the notion of dystopia and utopia. During the interviews Lechleitner, who does not speak Turkish, created a visual code for each voice. Based on these recordings in Turkish, Lechleitner and Erel compose a sound work following the voice’s intonation, melody and its physical agency as well as its content. The final piece reflects the subject matter, not as a collection of stories, but as fragmented flow of meaning and situations that cannot be patched together other than by their musical qualities and the composition itself.

In the conversations, the respondents talk about their personal background, their relationship to Istanbul and their neighbourhood. Then they explain their relationship to dystopia and utopia and how they experience these concepts in everyday life and within the rapid change of urban space.

The piece plays with the negation of narration as an expression of self-censorship, a daily experience for many of the people interviewed.

 

Ines Lechleitner (AT) works in an interdisciplinary manner combining sound, film, performance, photography and scent. One focus is dialogical exchange with scientists and other artists. www.ineslechleitner.com

Tuçe Erel (TR) is curator and member of the >top art collective in Berlin. Her curatorial focus is on archiving procedures, ecology, the Anthropocene and theories in the context of ›Posthuman‹ and ›Post Digital‹. tuceerel.wordpress.com