Sans titre (panneaux d’absorption), 2025
Sound absorption panels
Dimensions variable
Many of the elements that constitute our environment exist without ever drawing attention to themselves. Integrated into the architecture, they perform their function without claiming their presence. Among them, in exhibition spaces, one can find sound-absorbing panels: hidden in walls or ceilings, they regulate acoustics, absorb sound, and silently observe their surroundings without ever being seen or noticed. Present yet discreet, functional yet sensitive, they accompany without imposing themselves. It is from these withdrawn surfaces that Théa Giglio (based in Geneva) composes her installation for Plattform25. Through a subtle gesture, she shifts the viewer’s gaze: what once acted behind the scenes to regulate the auditory dimension of other artworks, here becomes the artwork itself.
Recovered from distinct contexts, these monochrome panels have long served as silent witnesses to artworks dear to the artist – their material still carries the sonic resonances of Chantal Akerman’s Travelling exhibition at the Jeu de Paume in Paris, as well as numerous video pieces shown at MAMCO in Geneva. Bearing this precious memory, the panels have been moved and reinstalled at CAN, where their acoustic function is emphasised as an artistic value.
Starting from a sensitive listening to her surroundings, Giglio brings to light, in her work, objects and situations that exist quietly. Her practice is rooted in an attention to peripheral forms, thereby proposing alternative forms of memory. By granting the status of artwork to these panels, which blended into the architecture of their previous habitats, the artist not only questions the regimes of the visible and the sensible within exhibition spaces, but also pays tribute to the invisible elements they contain – whether sound particles or visually out-of-frame elements – and invites us to pay attention to them.
Following the thought of American composer Pauline Oliveros, active listening – as opposed to passive hearing – can be developed as a specific awareness of our environments, to the point of transforming them; our listening both affects and is affected by the matter that surrounds us. As “deep listeners”(1), Giglio’s pieces absorb and regulate the surrounding sonic particles, but also silences, gazes, and all the subtle elements that compose the atmosphere of an exhibition space. As discreet yet attentive presences, these works influence their environment through their capacity to absorb, and in so doing, open up a space of suspension where listening is reclaimed as a sensitive mode of attention to the invisible poetics that surround us.
Monica Unser
Translated from French
(1)In reference to the practice of “Deep Listening” as defined and encouraged by Oliveros in various writings. See, among others, Sonic Meditations (2022) and Quantum Listening (2024).