The last few months have seen a break in the regular flow of everyday life. The slowed pace and forced isolation were experienced by people, artists and creators in different ways. Some saw it as an opportunity for inner reflection, while others felt it was an external threatening noise – an act of disruption and interference in the order of the universe. This period that many termed “strange”, demands reflection on the future of art and culture, creativity, cultural centers and museums, audiences, accessibility of artistic materials, the experience of observation and the observer. These are issues that deal with internal space, the external and political, the global, local, economic, social and humane.

This experimental project, the first to utilize the BALCONY network, seeks to evoke curatorial thought and artistic response in a way that bypasses the conventional dialog about COVID-19 and its implications. We asked for an interpretation, code, theme, dictionary, lexicon or glossary on transmission/disruptive communication or, to the contrary, a model of linkages and ways of communication. The works presented here relate to sound – related images, sound and visuals, types of noise and visualization, aspects of distortion and bisection of speech and language, exclusion of language from artistic vocal or linguistic creation in the spirit of Dadaistic manifest of Tristin Tzara (1918), in wake of the contemporary, global “war” that is claiming victims and leading to the collapse of order.

This is an exhibition of critical thought and proposition, which aims to a stand outside of the political and ideological systems that are represented and organized through language – and to break them down in time and space. The question is: what is music and language in the current era? How does the voice look as a contemporary image and what is the role of sound in the personal, public and urban space today?
Curatorial statement written by Drorit Gur-Arie, Summer 2020