connect the dots

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The municipality building in Den Haag is a place where all the incoming immigrants have to go deal with bureaucratic obligations, no matter where in the Netherlands they wish to reside. It is the central headquarters of the network of social, legal, and residential matters. In this sense, the site is deeply political, although unintentionally, coincidentally. Its location and especially its architecture are quite reflective of this fact. The absolute whiteness and sterility of the interior, the vast openness, the vertical spaciousness, the large number of entrances and exits, the layers of railings, stairs, and floors… And its sonic nature is equally as blank. Often the only sounds present are human voices, spoken words. However, it is quite a specific social context. It is never an enjoyable occasion to go to the municipality to deal with things, which is very much reflected in the character of the voices. The voices are serious and low in intensity, as nobody wants others to hear their personal details and issues. There is rarely a lively conversation, never laughter, never a disruption of any form. The space is deeply blank, empty of human emotions and sensuousness. And the contents of the speeches are similarly blank. Technical, practical, factual, and bureaucratic terms are being iterated endlessly.

The material I chose to work with is of similar character to the material already present on the site. I chose people, voices, and emptied-out concepts and words, politicized and problematic terms and phrases, the most common and overused words of contemporary discourses, which have been repeated over and over until the inevitable thorough depletion of meaning. And I use the audience as people who carry these voices, which are not theirs.

The title comes from one of the phrases used as material during this intervention. It refers to the common conspiratory discourse, in the meaning of “think for yourself”. However, it has another meaning in the context of this performance/installation/guided tour. As it is the audience themselves who make the piece happen, roaming freely in the space while carrying foreign voices, they are single sonic dots in the space which are connected or becoming connected. These mobile dots are walking through space, where I have composed an invisible virtual network/map of other small dots, that in relation to the person’s GPS location trigger different words. So the sounds reside in a potential form in a specific static virtual space, until someone walks into their bubble. Den Haag, June 21st, 2023