Artefact Sound: Aura Satz — Preemptive Listening (film)
Over twenty composers – including Sarah Davachi, Moor Mother, and Christina Kubisch – create an imaginary siren for our times in this award-winning film by Aura Satz.
“At its most basic, beyond any learned sound signal, the siren is firstly a call to attention, secondly a call to action, and lastly, it faces the future.” - Aura Satz
PROGRAMME
19:45: doors
20:00: Aura Satz — Preemptive Listening (film, 89 min)
21:30: Conversation: Aura Satz & Stoffel Debuysere
22:30: end
• Aura Satz — Preemptive Listening
(film)
In an age of intersecting political, man-made and ecological disasters, Preemptive Listening is an ode to the sirens that are and those that could be. Over twenty composers created a new siren sound especially for this award-winning film, reflecting the spirit of our times - think a.o. Sarah Davachi, Moor Mother, Christina Kubisch, Laurie Spiegel, David Toop, Mazen Kerbaj, Kode9, FUJ||||||||||TA and Raven Chacon. With these sirens as a soundtrack, artist Aura Satz asks the question: does an alarm have to be alarming?
Preemptive Listening is a work of non-fiction cinema which re-imagines sirens in order to forge a new understanding of present and long term emergency. The siren serves as a worldwide cipher of potential trauma, an emblem warning of climate catastrophe, a mouthpiece for sonic governance and crisis management. Many sirens are relics from WW2 and the Cold War, repurposed to communicate the threats of extreme weather, a collective commemorative pause, or resurrected to test disaster preparedness.
How can we counter alarm fatigue, both as a lived reality and as a metaphor for our current state? Can we envision sounds not only scored to immediacy, but signals set to a longer temporal frame, sounding the alarm for the distant future, the cries on the cusp of ecological catastrophe? Can we imagine sirens beyond the human? The soundtrack features the endlessly escalating sounds of planetary data; animal howls and the grief of extinction; soaring banshee-like warnings; defiant trumpets; intricate harp permutations; the sounds of the earth’s core. The film posits the siren’s loud glissando wail as a conditioned and learned signal, one that can potentially be rewired.
2024
Directed, written and edited by Aura Satz
Producers: LONO Studio - Luke W Moody, Aura Satz
Associate Producers: Tendai John Mutambu, Mika Taanila and Jussi Eerola (Testifilmi)
Music: Laurie Spiegel | Evelyn Glennie | Maja S. K. Ratkje | Anton Lukoszevieze | BJ Nilsen | Ilpo Väisänen | Rhodri Davies | Mazen Kerbaj | FUJ||||||||||TA | Sarah Davachi | David Toop | Christina Kubisch | Moor Mother | Raven Chacon | Elaine Mitchener | Camille Norment | Horomona Horo | Debit | Kode9
Spoken by: Khalid Abdalla | Daphne Carr | Asantewaa Boykin and Niki Jones | Erin Matariki Carr | Arturo Escobar
Dialogue & subtitles: English
• Stoffel Debuysere
(in conversation with Aura Satz)
Stoffel Debuysere is a Brussels-based researcher and curator active in the fields of cinema and audio/visual arts. he is currently working on a research project at KASK School of Arts, entitled Echoes of Dissent, which aims to examine the relationship between cinema and politics from a sonic perspective.