What is the sound of emigration?

What is the sound of emigration?

What does the absence of home sound like?

Streets full of colorful signs, the smell of freshly roasted meat, aromatic coffee, music, expensive things, sweaty and clean clothes, sweet popcorn. Made for cars, houses, workers and flaneurs. Can they compete with the house? Can they provide shelter, protect in bad weather, allow you to see dreams?

What do alleys covered with blankets sound like, what do dreams sound like under the viaduct bridge or on Augusta Street or under Masp on Avenida Paulista?

Exploring the streets and sounds of different corners of the city opens the door to an avoided, uncomfortable narrative, the realities of emigration, non-integration, escape, isolation and, as a result, the barriers between home and street. The witnesses of this barrier are the inhabitants of the streets, surrounded by the noise of the city. Ironically, this hum is perhaps the only true companion of the homeless, endlessly migrating between streets and noises.

digital sound collage

digital sound collage

digital sound collage

digital sound collage

Ruido cintilante, digital sound collages, 2023-2024

Part of the project was realized after emigrating to Brazil in 2022. It consists of digital sound collages of the places where homeless people sleep and the sounds around them, visualized using personal photographs and sounds from the streets of São Paulo.

In the project Ruído cintilante, I walk the streets of São Paulo with a recorder in an attempt to record and map the sounds of the places where homeless people sleep. The work raises questions of loss of place, recognition/acceptance of the Other, and highlights the problems of anthropogenic noise pollution. The diary of sound reports is illustrated by graphs constructed from audiovisual notes collected on the streets of São Paulo, where personal photographs are used as audio recordings and field audio recordings are transformed into images.

Portrait of Emigration(Hello to Matevich), 2024

The last self-portrait taken on July, 2022 at Moscow Vnukovo airport before flying to São Paulo. The transformation of the portrait occurs by recoding the sound of the photograph back into the image and the resulting image into sound, and then back into the image, and so on through 38 transformations until “hello to Malevich” and complete darkness.

The sound of the image also changes with each subsequent recording and eventually turns into an almost soft white noise, but it does not disappear, as with a photograph. The process is about constant transformation, emigration, the search for liberation, vulnerability, growth, inevitable loss, the temporary absence of a voice in a new land, and the exciting darkness of the unknown, filled with the eternal glow of white noise.

Ruido Rosa, 2023

The project is dedicated to all beings who face the processes and consequences of migration, as well as in touch with nostalgia and the search for a miracle necessary for survival amid indifference and routine.