The Joy of Cacophony - Sonia Boyce

Sonia Boyce engages with the artist and sound theorist Brandon LaBelle, who guides us through the artist’s poetics, considering sound as a form of radical inclusion, a medium capable of generating interaction, narratives and new understanding. Sound and listening construct processes that challenge human individuality and conventional languages. Sound, by its porous nature, and the cultural and symbolic manifestation of music fostering social connections, exert an influence on everyone’s capacity to participate.

Sonia Boyce’s project for Palazzo della Ragione saw her collaborate with three students from the “Gaetano Donizetti” Higher Institute of Musical Studies in Bergamo, who were invited to perform and improvise popular songs in the heart of Bergamo’s “Città Alta.” The act of singing from balconies is an explicit reference to the lockdowns, during which people sang songs from inside their homes to support each other in what was a time of crisis. These actions inspired the artist, for whom singing itself represents a gesture of altruism and empathy.

The Joy of Cacophony is the second book in a series of short essay collections inspired by the site-specific art projects specially conceived for GAMeC at Palazzo della Ragione, a symbolic, time-honored location within the city of Bergamo that embodies the values of community life and participation. The artist was asked to name an author who interests her—be it a researcher, a philosopher or a scholar—and whose thinking could be said to underpin the project, with a view to finding a path through the complexities of the present day, starting from the work produced but without necessarily lingering on it. 

Lenz Press, 2024
English
Softcover, 96 pages
110 mm x 177mm