(2017) On Sound Activism
Sound Activism is a contradiction in terms. To be able to listen, I have to stop doing things. As long as I am active, I don’t listen. I may think I do, but I don’t. Listening is passive, not active.

Activism in itself is a contradiction as well. When I try to actively change the present into a future, I’m trying to build something new using the material from the old. I’m trying to find a solution from within the parameters of the problem. That won’t work: rethinking the future from the present simply means extending that present, preventing what could be the future from happening. Changing the present and calling it the future does not work either. Future won’t have it. That’s why revolutions devour their children: when future comes, past goes.

Time is relative. But I can only recognize this relativity from outside the system I am in. The same goes for the present: I need to not be in the present to see its relativity. I cannot change the present to make a better future. I cannot change the future either, because I am not in it. If I want a better future, I must stop being in the present.

The only way for change to happen, is to stop doing what I am doing. I have to let go. This is what I do as an artist on a daily basis: leaving the old, finding the new. My work shows what I don’t (or at least didn’t) know. When past goes, future comes.

Written and transformed into sound for the 2017 exhibition at ohrenhoch, Berlin.