…all silent but for the buzzing…, Royal College of Art, London

This new exhibition, featuring graduating RCA Contemporary Art Students, explores the indistinct spaces that reside between chatter and silence. Open 6 until 23 March at the Royal College of Art galleries, it features the likes of John Cage, Alexandrina Hemsley and Lina Lapelytė.

Taking its title from Samuel Becket’s Not I (1872) …all silent but for the buzzing… aims to transport the distant whispering of Becket’s play into the exhibition space. The artists featured explore this theme through a variety of mediums, scales and spectra of sounds through installations, sculptures, collages and performances.

Several different pieces are included from a video collage, which creates a sensory bombardment of repetitive images, to one that immerses the viewer in a contemplative experience of both physical and psychological suppression. The artists have created very different kinds of art with the same theme in mind.

Kirkegaard’s installation Labyrinthitis (2007) aims to display the internal and personal experience of sound. There is an interactive audio guide featuring artists such as Turner Prize winner Laure Prouvost, which features an integration of sound art and performance by Lapelytė, whom Brian Eno recognises as “working right at the edge of what popular music could become.” Viewers can also participate in Haring’s solo show, Face Up (2012), a bar for one guest at a time.

…all silent but for the buzzing … includes a sound + gesture weekend of events, including workshops, talks and performances running from 15 to 16 of March. For more information visit www.buzzing.rca.ac.uk.

Credits
1. Labyrinthitis (Installation view), Jacob Kirkegaard, Medicinsk Museion, Copenhagen, 2007.