In the nineteenth verse of “Public Space in a Private Time” (1990), Vito Acconci contemplates intangibility and pop music as a new model for public art. What is at stake here are the levels of reading sound as both a commodity and a public object, weaving its historical contexts into our common perception of it as an object that “is” space, and that one carries with them across places. The matter of sound has the ability to cross walls; it bleeds into people’s lives as a melody or as a consequence of movement, as an echo of life. Though sound (or music), considered in Western culture as a production or a reproduction of musical or sonic events, only really exists through the act of listening. Recording a space, its sound or its image, automatically conjures the presence of absent objects. The object itself is always present.

The model for a new public art is pop music. Music is time and not space; music has no place, so it doesn't have to keep its place, it fills the air and doesn't take up space. Its mode of existence is to be in the middle of things; you can do other things while you're in the middle of it. You're not in front of it, and you don't go around it, or through it; the music goes through you, and stays inside you. It's a song you can't get out of your head. But there are so many voices, too many songs to keep in your head at once. You walk down the street and hear one song from the soundbox you carry with you, another song blaring out of an audio speaker in front of a store, one more through an open bedroom window, yet another coming off the radio in a car that speeds by another car with still one more, and then another, as the driver changes stations. This mix of musics produces a mix of cultures; of course pop music exploits minority cultures, but at the same time it "discovers" and uncovers them so that they become born again to sneak into and under the dominant culture. The music of the seventies was punk; the music of the eighties was rap. Each of these types is music that says: you can do it, too. You don't need a professional recording studio; anybody can do it, in the garage and in the house. The message of punk was: do what you can do and do it over and over until everybody else is driven crazy. The message of rap is: if something has been done better by somebody else, who had the means to do it, then steal it, and remix it; tape is cheap and airspace is free. The message of punk and rap together is: actions speak louder only because of words, so speak up and talk fast and keep your hands free and your eyes wide open and your ear to the ground and be quick on your feet and rock a body but don't forget to rock a culture, too.

Acconci, Vito. "Public Space in a Private Time." Critical Inquiry 16, no. 4 (1990): 900-18

"I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me." [1]

“... where at first 'blue' had been good enough, he now wallowed in 'azures,' 'ceruleans,' and 'ultramarines.'” [2]

The official video for Orlando , the titular track from Geneva-born experimental pop musician Nelson Beer’s forthcoming EP, premieres today. The full project will be released on OOO Audio in spring. [3]

Manifesting itself as an audio-visual collage of academic and non-academic writings and research materials, inherited familial memories, and encoded information, Orlando revolves around photogrammetry, a process by which three-dimensional information can be extracted from photographs. Orlando takes 'past' moment as starting points through which to generate an image of a greater whole, thereby pondering the potential effects of the indexical present - a direct attentional focus on "the concrete, immediate here-and-now," such as the reaction to a moment of sudden death - and the afterlives of this event. [4]

Between 2:24 and 2:54, we look unto the crouching artist as the frame pulls outwards in a counter-clockwise motion. An impossible network of jagged floating boulders and hexagonal pillars of grass swirl around him, slowly. Orlando suggests that the potential for split seconds to be deciphered according to their future documentary remains is contingent on the acceptance of memory lacunae as evidence. [5] This facet of the work complements, rather than denies another of the artist's interests: that machines, as supplements and symbolic mechanisms, allow us to see and (re) distribute vision. [6]

Orlando indulges the artist's desire to return to forensis, or “forensic architecture,” a concept established by Eyal Weizman and Susan Schuppli, founding directors of the Center for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London, of which the artist is an alumnus. By inverting the direction of the forensic gaze, Weizman and Schuppli explain, a field of action can be designated in which individuals and organizations can detect and confront state violations. [7] This practice denotes the possibility for objects to bear witness to human violations. It asks how we can acknowledge the testimonies of non-human objects, whether in presence or absentia.

http://www.fromheretillnow.com/orlando is an ongoing formalist archival project dedicated to exploring the capacity for consecutive sounds, transcripts, images, films, and texts to affect one another according to their literal and thematic proximites.

Coordinated by Marc Jauss, Olamiju Fajemisin, and Nelson Beer.

More soon.

Orlando was composed, produced and mixed by Nelson Beer
Mastered by Heba Kadry
Drawing by Alice Rabot
OOO Audio © 2021

Written and directed by Nelson Beer & Pablo Padovani
Produced by Mireille Productions
Producer - Léo Burgat
Line Producer - Emile Olagne
Location Manager - Charlotte Schaeffer
Director of Photography - Yoann Suberviolle
Focus Puller - Zoé Mention
Key Grip - Pierre Frink
Wardrobe, Props & Make-up - Alice Rabot
Make-up adviser - Ruby Mazuel
Editing - Gwen Ghelid
Photogrammetry & 3D Modeling - Valentin Gillet
Coloring - Guillaume Schmitter

ORLANDO: AN ARCHIVAL PROJECT