Encuentros
[2024]
60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
Thresholds, German Pavilion (La Certosa), curated by Çağla Ilk, commissioned by IFA.
Ambiguity, belonging, and codes of communication are fundamental to the work of Nicole L’Huillier. For her installation Encuentros (Encounters), she developed a transceiver system that translates the island’s sounds into varying frequencies and mixes artificial and natural sounds into an acoustic space.
This system comprised of rectangular listening membranal apparatuses that respond to the sounds near them, activate a sound system based on the reciprocal relationship of transmitting and receiving.
In this regard, Encuentros is a perpetual and dynamic call-and-response, an improvisational architecture where the act of listening/receiving is foundational. The membranal apparatuses produce and receive vibrations, separate and connect. They inhabit the island and enter into an ongoing conversation with the (natural and artificial) sounds of this environment, which leads to the blurring of borders transforming into a sonic condition of being in-between.
With her work, L’Huillier challenges our understanding of belonging by disrupting the threshold of what once was and what may become – a physical and theoretical place of reconfigurations.
Team:
Assistant: Ina Ritter
Production Steel Structure: Justus Saretz
Thresholds features works by Nicole L’Huillier, Jan St. Werner, Michael Akstaller, Robert Lippok, Yael Bartana, and Ersan Mondtag.
Curator: Çağla Ilk / Assistant Curator, Production Manager: Sandeep Sodhi / Dramaturgy: Ludwig Haugk / Chronicler: Louis Chude-Sokei / Exhibition Production La Certosa: Dmitry Ryabkov / Installation assistance/technical production: Rudyard Schmidt, Mattia Biadene and Alessandra Messali.
Fotos by Andrea Rossetti / Video by Joseph Kadow.