Mis Orejas

[2021]

Contact mics/hydrophones made of casted silicon, color audio cables, neon pigments.

A tangled cluster of ears that engage with the tactile and intimate dimensions of listening. These are soft, touchy, rubbery listening apparatuses made from a mold of my ears. As tentacles, they extend far away from my body, and by doing so, become a body of their own, we become multiple.

As I listen to what they listened to, I reflect on the politics of listening, consent, presence, and vibrational intimacy.

These were done for a transatlantic exhibition that I could not attend due to current immigration status problems and COVID 19. Sending a cluster of my ears was my way of being present and sharing with the other artists and participants. This way I was there listening to them, not emitting any sound, but giving them my full attention through these extended ears. These ears only listen in tactile and close proximity so they are careful and not intrusive. The sound they hear was recorded on-site, hours and hours of touch, whispers, secrets, caresses, as well as loneliness and silence. 

I purposefully did not access the sounds in real-time. Instead of a real-time streaming of sounds, a recording was sent to me after the exhibition. This decision was taken to avoid making a real-time hyperconnected surveilling machine and to give time for things to set, for memories to be created, as well as space for absence and distance. So I encountered these sounds with a delay, as an echo of a moment in the past that keeps resonating in our material and affective memory. I might do something with them, they could eventually become a song, or not. A collection of places I couldn’t visit and encounters I couldn’t have.