mary

(...) In her work, AM tunes in with the ephemeral experience and the volatile nature of sound: focusing on the fragments that occupy both the habitual soundscape of daily life in the subconscious that inform a shared and binding mental space. Her works take shape in agglomerations—soundscapes, identities, and websites—which could be understood as codified versions of collective experiences, themselves open to becoming inhabited. In her sound installations, for example, she's able to export this multi-dimensional archive of sound into rituals of listening that form collective mental spaces. In this way, AM's highly intuitive work can be seen to bridge the personal with the communal, and thus reflect on the role of sound and the condition of being together. Her work very much calls for attunement with the moment, especially in her work with sound—either through collecting, composing or djing—as it takes place in a fleeting timespan. The use of sonic fragments in the construction of shared mental spaces brings forward a sensitivity to the relation between sound and physical space, which AM also demonstrates can be a segway to assess the digital realm. Her work correlates tensions of immateriality seen both in sound and digital mediums, both in confrontation with the idea of space. Questions of transferability of the intrinsic qualities of her work with sound and collective being into other mediums seem to gain a new relevance when applied to a digital context. Especially with notions of spatiality and identity, AM invites us to readdress how we can inhabit a place in ways beyond the physical. At a moment where much of the concern is put on building digital spaces and communities (from institutions, most notably) AM's line of work could lead us to think about these prospects in sonic ways: how in the online context, as a place to be inhabited, can we form channels of mutual resonance for everyone involved and affected? Text by Mariana Lobão, 2022
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