Readings of Noise
Video / performance / graffiti
2:24 min
2019

Noise
A distorting form of interference within a communicating system
A sound with no clear pitch
A disturbing and unwanted sound
Any other sound than the monitored one (background noise)

Readings of Noise is a work, that investigates a variety of concepts of noise. Its core is a performance, in which I’m spraying the word NOISE in yellow (a typical color for subtitles) on a surface in public space. I thought of this as a describing subtitle for the urban soundscape of the place as well as the sound of the spray can itself and the wind related noise in the later video. NOISE points towards the audible. Furthermore it relates to the distorting qualities of graffiti as a visual practice: graffiti as a distortion of public space, as urban visual noise. The performance happened on Christian-Broda-Platz, a square, located at the end of a big shopping street, at the heavily trafficked border between the inner and outer districts of Vienna, close to a central train and metro station. A zone of constant transit. Hardly anyone really stays there for a long time, but people from a lot of different social classes/groups cross it over the day, hardly interacting with each other. Thus, I hoped to also articulate noise as a structural element of a certain urban and social system. In order to reinforce this idea of social noise, an actual subtitle in the video completes the graffiti to a full sentence, that relates to this concept.

Camera: Daniel Siffert