PEERY SLOAN
- More Than It Holds (workshop)
What am I hearing?
2023
La Gomera, Canary Islands, Spain
papier-mâché
with help from: Rebecca Styles, Mark Styles, Tina Tos, Jesús Armes Torres
How do you make yourself receptive to what you don't yet understand?
Walking La Gomera with friends, we sometimes caught faint whiz of Silbo Gomero, the island's whistle-based language. But we couldn't be sure. Were we hearing it or wanting to?
I built an oversized papier-mâché ear that exaggerated the organ: unable to filter, only catch. Constant receptivity without discernment. I'm not sure if that's closer to true listening or just noise.
Whistling masks for play and spectacle. Eventually I wore the ear seeking Bohema Pulido Salazar's poetry, translated into Silbo by Jesús Armes Torres.
Words into whistles, whistles into listening.