Performance artist and theoretician Siegmar Zacharias researches collective grieving practices. The psychosensory binaural sound of this performance explores intimacy and alienation as two dynamic forces of grief work and the possibility of being together otherwise—of being touched by sound waves and the presence of those absent.
A personal invitation from the artist and sound work can be found below.
2020, Listening session, audio and invitation letter
The sound work was presented at Ecology of Attention #3: Listening out Loud in the form of a collective listening session via Zoom.
Dear,
I'm happy to meet you soon.
Here is how you can prepare for ANIMAterialities.
Going to the theatre is stepping out of our daily routines into a special shared place and time with others. As we cannot share that physically with each other, I invite you to set that frame for yourself.
Choose a place where you want to sit that is not the place where you normally work. It can be anywhere, even your bed. Change the light if you want. Switch off your phone if you want. What do you need to feel that you are ready to step out and enter our collective space? Who or what do you bring and who or what do you let go?
Let’s listen together with our bodies. Bring something heavy that you can place on your body or hold in your hand. Bring a hot water bottle and a blanket. Listen with headphones. Listen with eyes closed, or listen in the dark. The binaural listening session explores intimacy and alienation as two dynamic forces of grief work and the possibility to be touched by soundwaves and the presence of those absent.
Looking forward,
warm hugs
siegmar
Siegmar Zacharias (RO/DE) is a performance artist, philosopher, and death doula. Her works develop formats that involve immersive performances, durational 24-hour events, and visceral thinking that address issues of generative ethical dynamics of transformation, such as ecologies of artistic and social practice, agency, death positivity, intimacy, and alienation. She works with people and uncontrollable material such as smoke, slime, drool, and the nervous system. Recent works include SLIMEDYNAMICS, Drooling Lecture, Training for political imaginaries—a 24-hour immersive curatorial project, where researchers, artists, and activists were invited to share their work with the audience. Recent events include The Other Thing, Intimacy with Death, Posthuman Solidarities, and ANIMAterialities—The Future of Grief. Since 2020 she has been developing a series of somacoustic listening sessions exploring binaural sound as force and touch, offering collective experiences of listening and exchange as containers in which to practice living with the grievances of our time.
Steve Heather (AU/DE) is a Berlin-based musician (drums, percussion, electronics), composer, and performance and installation artist. Born in Melbourne, Australia, Steve studied percussion/improvisation at Victoria College of the Arts and performance art at Das Arts in Amsterdam.
Steve is interested in the repetitive acoustic territories of daily life that inform individual and community sonic agency. His research revolves around the physicality of sonic boundaries and how it informs compositional methods, materials, and structures along with the listeners’ physical reception. His music is a collision of arresting simplicity and fleeting complexity, full of noise and spatialization, sudden connections and resonances.
Steve Heather's current musical projects/bands traverse genre definitions and settle equally in different territories: avant-garde, free jazz, noise, and drone rock, and include: THE STILL, BOOKLET, ** Y **, and SHELTER.
He is the co-founder and co-organizer of THE SPLITTER ORCHESTRA, a 25-piece improvisational orchestra.