An argument that by amplifying alienation in performance, we can shift
the emphasis from the sonic to the social.
Works in sound studies continue to seek out sound "itself"--but, today,
when the aesthetic can claim no autonomy and the agency of both artist
and audience is socially constituted, why not explore the social
mediation already present within our experience of the sonorous? In this
work, artist, musician, performer, and theorist Mattin sets out an
understanding of alienation as a constitutive part of subjectivity and
as an enabling condition for exploring social dissonance--the
discrepancy between our individual narcissism and our social capacity.
Mattin's theoretical investigation is intertwined with documentation of
a concrete experiment in the form of an instructional score (performed
at documenta 14, 2017, in Athens and Kassel) which explores these
conceptual connotations in practice, as players use members of the
audience as instruments, who then hear themselves and reflect on their
own conception and self-presentation. Social Dissonance claims that,
by amplifying alienation in performance and participation in order to
understand how we are constructed through various forms of mediation, we
can shift the emphasis from the sonic to the social, and in doing so,
discover for ourselves that social dissonance is the territory within
which we already find ourselves, the condition we inhabit.
