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52Hz

2018

52Hz-Bastashevski-NF-2018.jpg

52Hz is spectrogram of three relational units: The anthropocene (top) featuring a recording of “They’ve answered” by Galina Vishenevskaya, a Russian opera singer who was once married to a sailor. The holocene (middle) 52-hertz frequency whale song, unique to one particular species of whale. And the capitalocene (bottom) the sound of a Hyundai container ship engine at full speed.

 

The three represent a core relationship in the libidinal economy: a desire expressed through poetry in a cultural voice, techno-accelerationism driven by the commodification of said desire, and the change this process imposes on the sonic environment of the planet.

This work was commissioned by Kulturehuset, Stockholm for the New Shape Forum Project.
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