[Image: Magnetic Migration Music by Zoe Irvine] Floteson – Sonic Sources, Courses, and Rearrangements with Nikos Arvanitis, Nate Harrison, Ralf Homann, Zoe Irvine, Andreas Kurtsson, Henning Lundkvist, Sony Mao, Tisha Mukarji, Laurence Rassel, The Tape-beatles, Terre Thaemlitz, Ultra-red – Curated by Jens Maier-Rothe :: October 25 – November 8, 2008 :: KHM Gallery, Ystadsvägen 22A, Malmö, Sweden.

This exhibition examines diverse forms in the recycling of sound. Floteson was the Anglo-Norman precursor of the English word flotsam which loosely describes objects found floating or washed ashore. Combining “float” (Old-Fr. floter) and “sound” (Fr. son), the exhibition jumps on the sonic track of permanent reuse and follows the loop of discarding, recycling and transforming of sonic source material. Traveling with the flow it shows some of the key strategies and instigators for a use of diverse sound recycling methods within contemporary art.

Sonic salvage, remix, sound collage or simple copy paste techniques include and reshape bygone, lost or thrown overboard aesthetic experiences and recreate new ones from them. Sampling renders endless permutations, the Chinese Whisper principle fabricates new subjective meanings, sounds, split into their fragments, travel, cross borders and shift their significance and relevance according to listeners and contexts. While moving from one world of thought into the next and from one medium into another their interpretations alter in resonance with their surroundings. They thereby lose or produce critical impulses repeatedly until laws and rules interfere with their flow and turn them into either property or discarded flotsam again. Tracking their courses we can explore the currents and listen to the shores and landfalls in the ocean of sound.

This project is part of a series of practical investigations and theoretical experiments around sound and its place in strategies used within critical art practices in order to ask: What are the specific characteristics of sound, its material behaviour so to say, that make it essential for certain critical art practices? What kind of artistic strategies derive directly from this material behaviour? What are the limits of sound in critical art? During fall 2008 and spring 2009 three exhibitions will focus on three different sonic properties: recycling, resonance and (non)simultaneity. In addition a publication with related texts will be released during 2009.