Force Times Distance – On Labour and it’s Sonic Ecologies

The curatorial framework of sonsbeek20→24, centered around labour and its sonicities, connects a millenary history crossing times and geographies to the present moment, through a multitude of voices, sounds, and ripples. It invites us to listen to the sounds relegated to the ‘edges’ of the ‘main’ motive, to the whispered stories, to those passed through singing and through story-telling, and embodied narratives. An edition that inhabits the absence from the dominant image. An edition that draws particular attention to that which has been written otherwise—in singing, playing, performing, dancing, caring, in polyphonic rhythms and multiple motherless-tongues thanks to which memories, traditions, spiritualities, entire cosmologies crossed oceans and deserts. This edition aims to reveal the complex labour relations and inequalities that show who is (un)seen, who is (in)dispensable, who is seemingly worth our applause, and who is fawningly silent.

With more than 250 contributions and artistic positions in 13 different locations, sonsbeek20→24 expands its original format of an exhibition in Arnhem’s Park Sonsbeek, to a multiplicity of manifestations in and beyond the city of Arnhem. Including airplane hangars, vaults, military schools, radio, museums, a private foundation, two churches, a festival, a guard house, community libraries and centers, barber shops, a.o., this first public edition questions and stretches the notion of public space and public art.