In the film world, room tone refers to the recording of a specific silence that can later help with the sound editing of a given sequence, patching up rough spots in the dialog.

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When my friend and I first landed at this sporting event, we too hit a rough spot, on many levels. Our attempt to make a documentary film about the people involved in making pole dancing an Olympic sport was on the skids, and our subjects recalcitrant as they realized none of them was the sole center of our intended film.

 

Eventually, that project went by the wayside, but I never forgot how attending this event for three days straight made us feel. At first, we were aghast with the level of physical adulteration these athletes achieved, blurring gender traits, and limiting suppleness of movement.  Beyond that, it was impossible to ignore the pervasive use of smart phone photography and social media posting.  To see and be seen, was done militantly and adamantly.

 

By the third day, a sense of strangeness had dissolved into normalcy. The physical prowess, one-track mindedness of the athletes and the posing frenzy just become second-nature, much too fast. That too generated enormous discomfort: the ease with which we entered a room and adapted all too quickly to its tone, one of extraordinarily labored physicality.

 

This digital video and audio immersion is an attempt to reprocess this experience with a little more distance and creative digestion. When capturing and posting self-referenced images become the main event, what does that experience say about our culture’s veering visual primacy? How does being in confined quarters, and voluntarily playing audience to exceptional physiques reshape an average person’s scopophilia? What need is being satisfied as one diligently settles for either end of the spectatorship versus self-display dyad?

 

These are some of the questions posed by this installation. The audio problematizes this contemplation by making use of three cycles to alternately remit us to the synthetic aspect of the original event, the distancing silence, and the bland sounds of the domestic, mundane part of life which comprises a heavy chunk of our existence, as it provides respite for the demanding scope of such spectacular  events.

 

I encourage you to take in the installation with whatever sound cycle you entered, then step outside, and return to catch it afresh, with a new sound cycle to see what it does for you.

 

Karen Sztajnberg

 

September 2017