Signals is a work by HYENAZ created for DC Sound Scene Festival’s 2021 theme EMERGE, with support from Goethe-Institut DC. Signals explores the notion of performativity in codes, signs, drag, languages, knowledges and masks that allow ((some)) bodies to emerge as visible.
Signals are methods of translation, channels through which some voices become audible and understood. Bodies emerge into forms which are recognized and codified; modes through which some bodies can be understood and called into subjectivity. An audio work and a video essay, Signals explores the process of emergence especially as it relates to the a/Artist into cultural spaces of power, those who hold or desire to hold the microphone. Using multiple distinct voices and perspectives, both sung and written.
What is the process of emergence, through which some bodies become visible and audible? Who stands at the gate? What is gained and lost in this process?
HYENAZ create all their sound works from original field recordings; the particular context for these recordings were an anarcha-feminist anti-military conference which brought together activists from throughout and beyond eastern Europe and central Asia. Together the members of the conference struggled to bridge knowledges, contexts and experiences. HYENAZ want to especially thank the voices and brave activists who were present there.
Signals is part of HYENAZ Foreign Bodies Series, a slow movement journey and process of creating audio visual works which respond to the control, management, resistance and relational positions of bodies to each other.