Standing, from left to right: Andrea Mancini, Juliane Seehawer (EI), Caterina Malavolti (EI), Alessandro Cugola (EI)
Seated: Joel Valabrega (MUDAM), Martina Genovesi (EI)
© Alessandro Simonetti, 2023Formed in early 2021, the Brussels-based design collective Every Island investigates space as a means for transitions of roles, stages, and meaning. Together with sound artist Andrea Mancini, the collective was invited to conceive this year’s contribution for the Luxembourg Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. "A Comparative Dialogue Act" is production space, stage, sound library, and immersive sculpture in one. Designed as an ongoing process, the work will be completed by four sound artists, who were invited to interact with the infrastructure and sound library over the course of the biennale. Lea Schleiffenbaum talked with Every Island members Italian artist Alessandro Cugola and German artist Juliane Seehawer about their work in Venice, the creative act of listening, the notion of performativity in space, and the strength of collaboration.
Lea Schleiffenbaum: As a curator with a focus on public art and citizen participation, I work a lot with open processes. I think that’s what drew me to your piece at this year's edition of the Luxembourg Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. To start with, could you describe the infrastructure of the pavilion, how it works, and how you intend it to facilitate collaboration?
Every Island: The infrastructure has two purposes, on the one hand it facilitates recordings and transmissions, on the other hand it creates an immersive setting for the audience. We were interested in creating a space, where sound is reflected in every aspect of the space: The walls are the sound system. The floor is a vibrating surface that captures the lower frequencies. The mobile curtains help isolate the sound but also increase its quality as they’re countering the reverberation. We also built the space as a tool at the artists’ disposal. The idea was to give them a device, which they can use in the way they want. The walls can be moved. The musicians can also play with the way the sound comes out of them. And we shouldn’t forget the team that supports them in implementing their ideas. Let's call them the 'invisible back spine' of the project, that opens doors and possibilities.
As for the audience, we really wanted to create a place that invites you to do a tour inside and to take a moment for yourself, also to listen to the music. Usually, you don't have a lot of time in Venice. So we spent some time thinking how to invite people in. For example by creating just a small entrance so you would have to step in, as to see something. And as soon as you enter you become part of the stage. You also feel the vibration and you can really hear these different sounds depending on where you position yourself. You hear the different voices speaking.
Exhibition views, Luxembourg Pavilion, A Comparative Dialogue Act, Andrea Mancini & Every Island, Biennale Arte 2024, © Delfino Sisto Legnani - Dsl Studio, 2024
LS: That also struck me when I was there. You brought the place of production and perception together in one space. There is the immersive aspect through the sound and the vibration, but at the same time, there is also the intellectual layer, you allow the audience to enter by inscribing the concept, the rules but also the time schedule of the project into the floor panels of the pavilion. It’s a push and pull: While the sound draws one in, the written text puts one at a critical distance by allowing one to reflect on what is going on in the space one just entered.
EI: That's true. Next to the sound walls, the floor functions as a sound infrastructure. It’s transmitting vibration on the low frequencies of sounds being played in the pavilion - an information that is not recognized by the human ears and must thus be felt. In a way the inscriptions on the floor turn the pavilion into a machine. It’s a giant excel sheet, which is at the same time an instruction manual for the use of the pavilion, as well as a colophone, and a calendar on how the sounds are planned to be intermixing during the course of the biennale.
Exhibition view, Luxembourg Pavilion, A Comparative Dialogue Act, Andrea Mancini &
Every Island , Biennale Arte 2024, © Delfino Sisto Legnani - Dsl Studio, 2024LS: Perhaps you could elaborate on the idea of collaboration. It's part of the work since multiple artists are working in, with the same space and following the same rules. Do you take it a step further? Will there be a collaborative product at the end?
EI: Yes! We will release a vinyl on the day of the finissage. It is not so much about having a product in the end. From the beginning we were really interested in the process of this piece and the vinyl is a way of documenting this process. It will be a collection of all the pieces and the soundscapes that are being created during the Biennale. Andrea Mancini oversees this part of the project. He is a sound artist and the other part of this collaboration. He is recording the performances happening in the pavilion and turning them into a vinyl. There won't be too much post-production, it's about fine-tuning.
LS: Was there a division of roles?
EI: We developed the concept for the pavilion together. Having said that, we do come from different fields, Andrea is a sound artist, we are designers and architects, so we did divide up in our respective roles, when it came to the operational part of the project. In fact, our application text for the pavilion was a contract between the artist hiring the architects to build him a house, where he could host other artists. This was the starting point. Many things changed since then. Throughout the process our roles shifted. It was quite fluid.
LS: Over the course of the biennale, you invited four different artists to work with sound and performance for residencies in Venice, during which they are free to intervene within the set-up that you provided. Can you give me a brief description of who they are and why you selected them?
EI: This was one of the aspects, where the division of roles was quite clear. It was Andrea and Joel, the curator for performance at Mudam, who made the selection. We gave some general parameters: we wanted to work with emerging artists and have different genres. I think this was important to us, since we are ourselves still emerging and it felt more consistent with the spirit of the project rather than inviting big names. Out of budgetary reasons, we limited the selection to four names. Ideally we would have invited a hundred. In the end it was also about finding four different positions that would be ready to work on an open library of sounds and leave their work at free disposal to the other residents. This is where the topic of authorship comes into place.
Performance view Selin Davasse, Biting, 2024, invited by Andrea Mancini & Every Island for the
Luxembourg Pavilion, A Comparative Dialogue Act, Biennale Arte 2024
© Riccardo Banfi, 2024 LS: Did you give residents clear instructions on how often they should perform during their stay, or certain things they would have to do, or provide by the end of it?
EI: On the contrary, Joel advised them not to try to do too much public performances since these can be very stressful. To us the residency is really also there for the musicians to produce work. And to test new things and see how they worked in the space. And when there is no performance happening, the audience can still hear the sounds from the library or those, which were produced during the residencies. We curated a system of sequences. We have these four sound walls, which are in a dialogue with one another. They are not necessarily fine-tuned, but they sort of create a clash, an interference or a conversation between the works of the different artists. There are the loops, which consist of the repetition of the performances that happened in the pavilion. At the very end, there is the vinyl release, which covers these dialogues.
LS: Your collective consists of architects and urban planners. I guess what you do deal with in this project, is the question of how the space music provides offers opportunities, built environments don't?
EI: Over the last few years, we've been experimenting with performance and the notion of performativity in space. In a way, music as well as sound, are tools to enhance performativity and appropriation inside a space. Working with sound felt strangely new but also at the same time very familiar. The collaborations make us learn things that we didn’t know before. We approach things from the angle we’ve been trained to look at them. We have more of an architectural way of thinking about space but somebody working with performance looks at space in a different way. The same goes for sound.
LS: One could describe “A Comparative Dialogue Act” as a site of shared authorship: The concept interests me a lot, also in terms of the role of listening as the second side of language. We often only refer to the speaker when we talk about dialogue. But for an actual exchange the other side, the role of the listener, is needed to. Is this something that you think about?
EI: What we really liked about this title in relation to the actual project is the idea of dialogue as a conversation between several people, while in reality only one is physically present. It's about interpreting what's left, and that's a very delicate mission or task, to take someone else's work and make it your own. There has to be a lot of trust in that dialogue. You have to trust the process of someone taking your work. and making it their own. There's also a vulnerability that comes from the moment you expose yourself through your work and you give it away as a tool. That kind of mutual understanding and listening resonates with what you're saying. It could be argued that there is more listening than speaking in the “Comparative Dialogue Act”, and that listening has to come before speaking, because it's a thoughtful response to what has been left for you.
By Lea Schleiffenbaum