Sounding Tension. Or Loud Tension. Or A Lot of Tension. Lauter in German language means 'a lot of'. This term contains also the word Laut, that means 'Sound', but it means also 'Loud'. Spannung means 'Tension'. What is singing inside the voice? In which way the abstraction, the distortion of the voice or its substitution with a new soundscape is able to generate a communicative element?


For this work, a camera is pointed to my face. I am singing, I am speaking, but my voice cannot be heard. My voice seems muted, my face is acting in a pure mimic, grimace-like. What remains, in fact, is a singing face without voice. It remains a trace of a vocal performance that will never be heard. A soundscape composition turns into the original and non-narrative soundtrack of the video. It includes a collection of field recordings I made between 2011 and 2012 in different cities:

- in Berlin, sounds of my studio's courtyard
- in Venice, sounds of the sea and the ships
- in Taranto, sounds of Banda during the Easter Procession rites (Settimana Santa)
- in Prague, sounds of people chatting in an old pub and sounds of carillions on an historical market
- in New York, sounds of Black Americans dancing and singing on the street of Manhattan, sounds of protestors of Occupy Wall Street, sounds of rain drops on the window in the apartement of my friend David, sounds of very loud air conditioners and the subway.

The sounds from the public space that I went through with my body create a tension with the intimacy of my singing. Composing a new soundtrack, like re-inventing the sound of my singing, is an attempt to challenge the ephemeral quality of the voice, which turns here into an object for the eternity.

Supported by: Harvestworks. Digital Media Arts Center New York, British Council International Development Fund