Keywords: deafness, prosthesis, cyborg, body art performance, interactive
World Premiere: CTM Festival, February 2024, Radialsystem, Berlin
What is deafness if not another mode of perception? What is a cyborg if not an exploded mirror of today’s corporeal experience? What is the fear of the other if not a prelude to isolation? What is the instability and interdependence of the human body if not the core of its existence?
Ex Silens is an experience into a radically alternative sensorium through the entanglement of two bodies, two agencies. One is made of diverging limbs and flesh, the other of resonating bones and cables. They sound and vibrate, entering thus in material, sonic and conceptual feedback with one another; they become one, but not for long.
An exacting and sinuous ritual of sensory reorganization, Ex Silens delves into the corporeal knowledge hiding at the edges of experience. It is a dreamlike encounter, yet raw and real. It is a reminiscence, a reverie surging through real-life accounts of modes of perception that are systematically rejected by the imperative of the normal.
Here, cochlear implants, AI hearing algorithms and amplifiers are extracted from their capitalist chain of production and subverted to create prostheses with their own agencies. Radically intimate, the prostheses are organs of sharing: they amplify sounds from the performer’s muscle, heartbeat and blood flow, diffuse vibrations through the bodies of audience and performer and in doing so they resonate sensible forms of being.
Technology is, by its nature, normative, but it doesn’t have to be. In Ex Silens, hearing algorithms, AI and cochlear prostheses are not what they are supposed to be. They are morphed into new means of sensing; they do not try to repair a loss with a gain, but rather magnify a kaleidoscopic sound world that’s always been there.
The interactive music of Ex Silens was composed by Donnarumma in ways that offer a complete experience to the d/Deaf public as well as the non-d/Deaf. Audience members who are d/Deaf, hard of hearing, or hearing can all experience the performance each according to their sensory configurations. There is no “normal” way of listening to it.
Ex Silens is part of the series I Am Your Body (2022-present), a project investigating deafness, sound and (artificial) intelligence through participatory research driven by d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing people.
Reviews
“[Ex Silens] ranks in my top three CTM Festival experiences right next to Thomas Ankersmit fucking with everyone’s ears at HAU1 that one time and Kevin Richard Martin premiering »Sirens« in Berghain a year or two later. »Ex Silens« is distinct from those two because it is not primarily about sound and our own or another mode of perception of it, but how we perceive the perception of the Other. What I’m trying to say with this is that never in my life have I felt such an intense urge to become included in a performance by being touched by a performer, that rarely in my life have I felt such a need to bawl my eyes out after a performance (which I then didn’t do).”
Kristoffer Cornils, Konkrit
“It is not so easy to make the space of Radialsystem one’s own place. Marco Donnarumma, however, succeeded with astonishing ease. Even before sound became audible, everyone’s attention was focussed on the crawling, writhing creature that Donnarumma temporarily makes breathe and resonate in “Ex Silens”. Touching, also frightening, but above all inspiring, for, at the end of the show, one brings home many new questions.”
Thomas Venker, Kaput Magazin
“For Donnarumma sounds could be vibrations that are transmitted through the air and then become voice, music or a soundscape. Or vibrations that can only be felt through the skin. There are also sounds that cannot be heard, but can only be perceived by observing their effects on the environment, like the wind. Donnarumma develops instruments to turn the inaudible into perception.”
Sarah Heppekausen, Kultur.West
Audience feedback
“I’ll remember this performance for the rest of my life wtff.”
make_a_spectacle
“Flesh, heartbeat and low frequencies. That was stunningly intimate.”
Olya Karlovich
Shows
- Forthcoming: internationale tanzmesse nrw
Project presentation. Düsseldorf, Krefeld & Leverkusen, DE, 2024 - Forthcoming UK Premiere: Edinburgh Futures Institute
EFI, Edinburgh, UK, 2024 - World Premiere. CTM Festival
Two shows. Radialsystem, Berlin, DE, 2024 - Public preview. I Am Your Body
PACT Zollverein, Essen, DE, 2023
Format
Evening-length piece for solo performer, distributed AI prostheses and (un)sound.
Duration: 75 minutes
Media: Artificially intelligent sensory prostheses using artificial life algorithms and interactive machine learning, biosensors, interactive LED lighting, computer-processed sound, multi-channel sound diffusion
Credits
Concept, artistic direction, performance, choreography, dramaturgy, interactive AI music and programming: Marco Donnarumma
Prostheses’ concept, morphology, engineering, fabrication and AI programming: Marco Donnarumma
Collaborative research on hardware and AI software: Intelligent Instruments Lab at the Iceland University of the Arts
Stage design: Marco Donnarumma, Anna Cingi
Prostheses’ visual design, 3D modeling and 3D printing: Anna Cingi
Prostheses’ 3D modeling and 3D printing support: Christian Schmidts
Light design: Andrea Familari
Collaborative research group: Wojciech Czernia, Adriane Große, Ann-Catrin Gruber, Martin Holst, Mara Matzke
Artwork’s description texts: Marco Donnarumma
Photography: Manuel Vason
Live photography: Eunice Maurice, Stefanie Kulisch
Production: Kotryna Slapsinskaite
External eye: Margherita Pevere, Jan Rohlf
An artwork and production by Marco Donnarumma. Co-produced by PACT Zollverein and with scientific support by the Intelligent Instruments Lab at the Iceland University of Arts in Reykjavík. Funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia as a Medienkunstfellow.