"Loud Light" by Marin Abell

Video, printed zines

Video duration 8 min 31 sec

NFS (zines are free to the public)

I’m interested in noise as a tool for disrupting traditional aesthetic hierarchies. My apartment in Denver borders a 15-story tower of million-dollar condominiums bunkered by gravel-coated concrete walls, sound-proof glass, cast-iron fenced-in patios, and a constellation of orbs illuminating the night. The immaculate landscaping is mowed and blown twice-weekly by laborers sans ear-muffs—a kind of manifestation of weakness through diluted occupational safety standards. My window faces the automatic garage door that leads to their subterranean parking and houses the dumpsters. Over the process of two years, I’ve scrambled from slumber—arm outstretched towards the window from my bed—to capture audio with my phone of their sounds produced between the hours of 11 p.m. and 8 a.m. I’ve layered these recordings into seven themed tracks: Leaf Blowers; Parties; Chainsaws and Mulchers; Garbage Trucks Loading by the Mechanical Garage Door; Vehicles Idling and Utility Vehicle Sounds; Carpet Cleaners with Generators; Fertilizer and Sprinkler Systems; and Offloading Moving Trucks. There are socio-economic patterns supporting the production of sound and light—so easily dismissed as small issues when compared to the disasters of war and global climate change. Sound and light are weak because most of those affected are dismissed as weak. Oftentimes the ones doing the dismissing, in addition to being powerful, are the ones making the ruckus. But from the quiver of the eardrum Listening Speaks. To expose the condominium-dwellers to the same inconvenient sounds they produce while I’m trying to rest, I project their sound recordings at 2 a.m. one night from three Bluetooth equipped bullhorns, hidden in triangulation around their property. Camouflaged, the bullhorns are housed inside outdoor objects matching those of the condominiums: an outdoor black-metal post light, a garden hose stand, and an owl decoy. Beforehand, I secretly slipped packages containing earplugs to their sweet security guard as well as to neighbors in my own apartment complex; and afterwards, had a party on our patio where I exhibited the collected audio/video footage, Bluetooth objects, and cooked hotdogs.