The publication documents a project developed by artist Brandon LaBelle which attempts to instigate conversations between
sound and
architecture through a set of audio recordings of the artist's apartment in Berlin.
“Sound moves between inside and outside. It disturbs what may appear static while also providing moments of deep connection. It flows through the environment as temporal material lending dramatically to the experiences we have of being in particular buildings.”
Audio recordings produced by Brandon LaBelle in his Berlin flat were sent to architects, designers and artists around the world whose task was to make a physical model of the apartment using the sounds as their only source of information. In this way, a process of translation and interpretation developed, incorporating an understanding, however factual or fantastical, of the auditory into rendering a spatial form. Room Tone reports the project's various contributions, and includes an essay by architectural critic Robin Wilson, an interview with the artist by Elena Biserna, and a lecture on shared space by Brandon LaBelle.
Participants: Carlos Campos (Buenos Aires), Lise Laurberg (Copenhagen), Yeoryia Manolopoulou (London),
Jonathan Mosley + Sophie Warren (Bristol), Anna-Kristina Netzel (Berlin), Valeria Merlini (Berlin), Margit Leisner (Curitiba), Daniela Oroquieta (Santiago de Chile), Anke Wünschmann + Achim Wollscheid (Frankfurt), Reinhard Brügmann (Berlin), Lewis & Taggart (Bergen), Roberto Arad & Rafael Lino (Curitiba), Martina Schaaf (Potsdam).
Brandon LaBelle is a
musician, artist, writer, theorist, curator, educator and editor based in Berlin.
His work, based on performance,
sound installation, recording and use of found sounds, focuses on questions of agency, community, pirate culture, and poetics, which results in a range of collaborative and para-institutional initiatives, including: The Listening Biennial and Academy (2021-), Communities in Movement (2019-), The Living School (2014-16), Oficina de Autonomia (2017),
The Imaginary Republic (2014-19),
Dirty Ear Forum (2013-), Surface Tension (2003-2008), and
Surface Tension (1998-2002). LaBelle reflects fluently on his artistic practice, drawing attention to the social dimensions of listening and manner in which sounds, in multiple variations, play upon public spaces, and drawing connections across media and incorporate video, as well as architectural and sculptural vocabularies into an expanded field that embraces rhetorical and spatial challenges.
In 1995 he founded
Errant Bodies Press, an independent publishing house supporting work in sound art and studies, performance and poetics, artistic research and contemporary political thought.
