25 Trapped Voices. Of the series Sound-Epigramms

Date2012
Category

Technique: Site-specific Installation — participation piece / Materials: Golden Wall, Objects, Descriptions, Wooden pictures / Dimensions Variable

This project is part of a series of good experiences. It was developed through periodic visits to a madhouse, helping a person to capture heard-voices in containers. Each trap has a description of the tune that the person used to hear. Inside, a material resembles the physicality of that sound of that voice shape. In the space, a very long table shows the trapped voices in antique pharmacy bottles. The visitor experiences the installation as a three-dimensional poetic experience, visiting the sensations of the schizophrenic hallucination.

“The first time I heard them, I was 10. I remember my grandmother spreading the sheets in the garden. I always liked to sit and watch her. The fabrics moved to give off a tender smell; everything in her home was fluffy and soft. The voice that spoke to me was a man’s, dry and thick, then a girl’s, shy and sweet. I thought it was a sudden craziness of mine and ran to tell my grandmother, she looked at me with kind eyes saying: do not fear the dead, the living are more dangerous. But I always feared the voices, each day I heard more, I could classify them, study their character. They accompanied me in my studies and later when I worked. I learned to pretend not to hear them; those without voices do not understand ghosts’ flat notes. But I have always seen the world as a film commentary. My psychiatrist says they do not exist and congratulates me because I have not heard them for a while. The truth is that recently they taught me how to catch them. I prepared 25 labyrinths, as many as the voices I heard, each with a special lure for souls. I must confess that some are simpler; I dedicated them to the friendly voices; from time to time, I leave the lid loose, hoping to hear them back after all loneliness is a strength I have.”