Soundwalk Collective ‘Ulysses Syndrome’, Video by Blake Carrington

ULYSSES SYNDROME

2018

MULTICHANNEL SOUND INSTALLATION
Manifesta12 Palermo (IT),
BARDO Museum Tunis (TN),
BEIT Beirut (LB)

A soundscape of the Mediterranean basin, composed by retracing Ulysses’ journey from Troy to Ithaca. A vastness of fragments, songs, harmonies: a choir, an audible entropy. Sailing for over two months across the coasts of the Middle East, Italy, Northern Africa and Southern Europe, equipped with scanners, aerial antennae and recorders, Soundwalk Collective intercepted a technological, augmented hearing, accidental overlaps of noises, music and voices, private conversations and service communications, bouncing back and forth between boats, ships and the coast. They listened to these recordings again in their studio, in order to grasp the sense of each sound, of each trace, of each diaphony: hints of stories, slices of worlds, letting themselves be led to what turned out to be an état des lieux of the Mediterranean basin.

The result is a musical map in continuous rearrangement, a polyphonic installation, the reflection of a sound archive 
In Palermo, this symphonic drift of the Mediterranean basin finds its home a 
the former Oratorio di Santa Maria del Sabato, whose walls echo just as many vicissitudes. The choral dimension of 
the oratory is amplified by the exhibition set up, which welcomes the visitors in 
a dense, suspended dimension, one
 which weakens the sight. A reference to nocturnal sailing, overhearing the sea. Located in Vicolo Meschita (“Alley of the Mosque”), in the ancient Jewish quarter of the city, after the exodus of the Jew s
of the late 15th century, the oratory became the site of a succession of Catholic congregations, up to its closing ten years ago.


On this occasion, with Ulysses Syndrome 
and Manifesta, it returns to life, with the echo of the Odyssey, of all odysseys. Announcing its imminent rebirth as 
a Synagogue, thanks to its recent assignment to the Jewish Community of the city by the Archbishop of Palermo.
 The inaugural date of the exhibition fosters a further resonance. June 16th is the day in which, in 1904, Joyce’s Ulysses took place. The recurrence of the “Bloomsday”, by which the Irish poet – one of the spiritual guides of this project – is celebrated, and whom we celebrate. 
“Listening to Ulysses Syndrome (the signs of Ulysses, or the running together of his routes) I hear this displacement of refrains. I am not fixed within signs but adrift within signals. Like a bat or a dolphin, I hear scanned frequencies otherwise inaudible to my human limitations and these voices and tones captured from the aether seem to
me to be our equivalent of those voices of gods who spoke “words that flew”; music asserts its regional and cultural affiliations and yet at the same time it drifts unmoored in the ocean of sound. One of the sirens 
in Joyce’s Ulysses produces a shell, a seahorn, so that one of her customers can listen. “Her ear too is a shell,” wrote Joyce, “the peeping lobe there… the sea they think they hear. Singing. A roar. The blood it is. Souse in the ear sometimes. Well it’s a sea. Corpuscle islands.” Fluting notes, lamentations, disembodied voices, the hum of contemporary existence. What 
is the figure; which is the ground? From within our corpuscle islands we close our eyes, set out to sea in order to discover exactly this.”
David Toop, from the essay Black-Winged Night in Soundwalk Collective’s Transmissions (Dischi Fantom 01, 2017)

Produced by Fantom, curated by Massimo Torrigiani, and designed by Luca Cipelletti, ‘Ulysses Syndrome’ is supported by the French Embassy in Italy, the Institut Francais, La Francia in Scena, the Fondazione Nuovi Mecenati, with the patronage of ‘Italy, Cultures, and the Mediterranean’, a project by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

Soundwalk-Collective-Installation-Ulysses-Syndrome-Manifesta12-Palermo-2019-B

MULTI-CHANNEL AUDIO INSTALLATION, Photo by Nino Gambino and Rebecca Sulzer

Arranging For Orchestra: Johannes Malfatti
Additional Arrangements: Aurelien Rivière
Musicians Casting: Dhanesh Jayaselan
Recording Engineer: Erik Breuer
Studio Assistants: Heinrich Matis, Rhea Sodemann, Robert Henriques
Recorded At: Analogue Foundation Berlin
www.soundwalkcollective.com 
www.analoguefoundation.com

YEAR
TITLE
PROJECT
2023 - 2024
CORRESPONDENCES with Patti Smith
Exhibition, CNA Bogotà, TPMM Tbilisi, FIM Guadalajara, MAMM Medellin
2023 - 2024
CORRESPONDENCES - Live
Live Performance
2023
ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED - Live
Live Performance
2023
MAISON GAINSBOURG with Charlotte Gainsbourg
Soundtrack, Maison Gainsbourg Paris
2022
ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED by Laura Poitras
Film Score
2022 - 2024
EVIDENCE with Patti Smith
Museum Exhibition, Centre Pompidou Paris, CCB Lisbon
2022
IGUANA TOKYO by Kaan Mujdeci
Film Score
2021
LOVOTIC with Charlotte Gainsbourgfeat. AtomTM, Lyra Pramuk, Paul B. Preciado, Willem Dafoe
Audiovisual Installation, FOROF Rome
2021
MEMORY LOST by Nan Goldin
Film Score
2021
A ROOF FOR SILENCE by Hala Warde
Sound Installation, Venice Architecture Biennale
2020
PERADAM with Patti Smithfeat. Anoushka Shankar, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Tenzin Choegyal
Album LP
2020
WE ARE NOT ALONE with Charlotte Gainsbourg, Hussain Al Jassmi, Nina Kraviz, Willem Dafoe, Wim Wenders, Zhou Dongyu, Jean Nouvel
Sound Installation, Louvre Abu Dhabi
2019
THE TIME OF THE NIGHT with Charlotte Gainsbourg and Patti Smith
Sound Installation, Fondation Carmignac
2019
MUMMER LOVE with Patti Smithfeat. Philip Glass, Mulatu Astatke and the Sufi Group of Sheikh Ibrahim
Album LP
2019
THE PEYOTE DANCE with Patti Smith
feat. Gael García Bernal and the Rarámuri Indians of the Sierra Tarahumara
Album LP
2019
THE WOMEN’S MARCH, 1789 by Nan Goldin
Sound Installation, Palace of Versailles
2019
OSCILLATION
Sound Installation, Philharmonie de Paris
2019
AYAHUASQUEROS
Audiovisual Installation, Times Square 'Midnight Moment', NYC
2019
MIRAGE
Sound Installation, Louvre Abu Dhabi
2019
SIBERIA by Abel Ferrara
Film Score
2018
DEATH MUST DIE
Album LP
2018
ULYSSES SYNDROME
Sound Installation, Manifesta12 Palermo
2018
EΞΟΔΟΣ I Exodos by Sasha Waltz
Score for Dance Choreography
2018
WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND
Audiovisual Installation, Kraftwerk Berlin
2018
KREATUR by Sasha Waltz
Score for Dance Choreography
2017
TRANSMISSIONS
Album LP
2017
RESONANCE
Sound Installation, Palazzo Reale, Milan
2017
BEFORE MUSIC THERE IS BLOOD
Album LP
2017
PRINCES AMONG MEN by Stephan Crasneanscki
Film Score
2016
KHANDROMA
Audiovisual Installation, Rubin Museum, NYC
2016
KILLER ROAD with Jesse Paris Smith and Patti Smith
Album LP
2015
A MEMOIR OF DISINTEGRATION with Nan Goldin, Samuel Rohrer and Tina Frank
Audiovisual Performance, CTM Festival, Berlin
2014
SONS OF THE WIND
Film Score and Album LP
2009
KILL THE EGO by Ro Starr
Film Score
2008
CHANEL MOBILE ART by Zaha Hadid
Sound Installation, Hong Kong, Tokyo, NYC

SOUNDWALK COLLECTIVE

Credits
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