Bombina Bombina. Pipa Aspera. Discoglossus Galganoi.
If these sound to you like the names of niche electronic artists, well, you’re right — they are three of the dozens of frog species that Joakim Bouaziz has enlisted in his sonic garden of Eden. Alongside monkeys, quetzal birds and bears, Bouaziz samples earthquakes, thunderstorms and meteor showers in his masterwork Second Nature. But we are never overwhelmed by sound. Instead, as in a perfectly developed ecosystem, each natural phenomenon finds its place in space, making good on Emanuele Coccia’s dream of the primordial garden in which we encounter “the spectacle of each of its inhabitants drawing pleasure from each one of the other living beings.”
With Second Nature, Bouaziz musically renders his understanding of the sensual philosophies of Coccia and Philippe Descola that urge us to weave our culture back into nature. After compiling diverse bioacoustic recordings from the past five decades, Bouaziz passed these collections through a meticulous process of classification that privileges the ambiguous — is that a synthesizer or a frog? The result is a composition of totemic aural stimuli that lead us back to our original animist consciousness.
Reethaus is pleased to present this sonic atlas of natural wonders on August 25 as part of our “Spatial Futures” series. During this Open Haus Listening Experience, visitors will have the opportunity to position themselves within a sound space specifically composed in 4D, joining their own bodies to an ecology of earthly delights.
