The audio for this piece largely consists of rare found recordings of Sephardic folk tunes and prayers. These folk tunes are particularly low quality and difficult to find writing on. The grainy quality of the recorded prayer and the omnipresent technical difficulties in this playback emphasize the inability to connect to my past without suspicion of recording technology and those who govern access to these materials. The piece also employs various sonic documentations of sanctioned trespassing and recordings of my own body: my fundamental electromagnetic frequency, my heartbeat, my breath, my voice.
These sonic materials highlight both the art of the sanctioned trespass and bittersweet inability to only connect to one’s ancestors through the temporal. Prayer and folk tune– passed from mouth to mind– persist as visual media of jewish ancestors have been largely destroyed through genocides. Prayer, however, transgresses teleology and death. Juxtaposing these infinite texts with teleological sounds such as my heartbeat and frequency, which will halt when I pass, I acknowledge the trespassing, the sanctioning, and the ephemerality of the body carried also in the infinity of prayer. This sense of trespassing – due to my non-binary body and family history – is omnipresent; yet the sonospheres I occupy enable me to connect with and influence my environment as I exist and continue to exist into the future – a creation of generations of sanctioned trespassing through keen, deep, survival-oriented listening. Praying is both naming myself and my past into existence just as it is a simple plea of resonance into the future.
STUDIER is a sonically-oriented artist, composer, and investigator of alternative/queer temporalities, ontological relationships in aural perception, the sonic history of jewish diaspora, and potential energy of interoceptive listening. Their artistic practice operates on intersectional feminist/anticolonial frameworks and incorporates compositions, electroacoustic works, and audiovisual installation; they work with the sounds of the body, found sounds, interactive electronics, guitar, and piano. STUDIER holds a B.A in Sociology and Music, is a two time recipient of the Susan Rose Scholarship in Music, and has been supported by the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology and the Great Lakes Association for Sound Studies.