Free speech, free markets, even free improvisation. An era of possibility. On the other side of the same coin: act!, fight!, and carpe diem! And jog. On the third side: feelings of apathy. And “c’est la vie” as a way of explaining more or less anything. While the first one produces articulatory and interpretative errors, and the second is an imperative to make the first one seem factual, the third one enables the first two to show themselves as an unreachable ideal while creating a situation of unreachability.

These elements of the neoliberal condition are further complicated when observed through social sonorities. Where sounding is understood as an exhibition of activity, vitality, even power, Dragičević proposes that we analyse sonic phenomena in econo-political terms. This would make an ability to sound a form of capital (and, in some occasions, currency). In the liberal era, sounding is, by definition, available to anyone with a working voice apparatus. This, however, is not the case when it comes to: audibility. The ability to be listened to.

Through a series of poetry-sound compositions and essays, Dragičević turns to audibility as an intersectional class structure with a particular focus on the lack of auditory capital, forming the concept of auditory poverty. And where there is poverty, there is discontent. And where there is discontent, there is potential for emancipation.


“When you increase the number of female executive members, if their speaking time isn’t restricted to a certain extent, they have difficulty finishing, which is annoying.”

(Yoshiro Mori, former prime minister of Japan, Japanese Olympic Committee, 2021)

“Male listeners were more likely to view a female speaker who interrupted as ruder, less friendly and less intelligent than if the interrupter were male, although both male and female speakers were performing identical scripts … Hilton said.”

Stanford researcher examines how people perceive interruptions in conversation (https://news.stanford.edu/2018/05/02/exploring-interruption-conversation/)

Senator Rand Paul shushing CNBC’s Kelly Evans and telling the professionally composed Evans to “calm down.” https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/rand-paul-shushes-cnbc-host–extends-bad-day-392744515916

ELEMENTS:

__IF I DO SAY SO MYSELF: a series of poetry compositions which, through being read, become musical compositions.

___GO. (2023)

___STOP. (2021); commissioned by Zavod Sploh

Dragičević – Irena Tomažin, Forum nove glasbe

__AUDITORY ECONOMY TONE SYSTEM (AETS): This tone system was created by the explicit demand of the composition GO., as it turned out that without it, the piece, in terms of it being a poem, could not be written in a way that would enable consistency and allow the performer to understand it. The system is to be handled as any other language system. 

__AUDITORY POVERTY AND ITS DISCONTENTS: AN ESSAY.: Errant Bodies Press, 2024. >>>

_PRESENTATIONS
20 September 2023: Open Studios at Akademie der Künste, Berlin; partial presentation
2 September 2023: STOP., performed by Ute Wasserman (premiere in German), Time to Listen Festival, Akademie der Künste, Berlin
31 March 2022: STOP., performed by Irena Tomažin, Sound (Dis)obedience Festival, Ljubljana
20 November 2021: STOP. (world premiere), performed by Irena Tomažin
March–April 2024: group exhibition The Breath of a House is the Sound of Voices Within (Akademie der Künste, Berlin) >>>


Podpora // Supported by: Werner Düttmann Fellowship 2023 (Akademie der Kunste, Berlin)