We live in a noisy place. We live in the city. Because here the simultaneity of voices prevails. In Unknown Frequencies, Marque-Lin, performance artist, and Emilio Cordero Checa, sound and light designer, look for the political power of noise, for the comfort within noise. Because the opposite of “music” isn’t silence.
Noise is only ever made by others. “Music” is a hierarchical system, differentiated into “genres”, “styles”, marked by prefixes such as “folk” and “pop”. “Music” is exclusive. “Music” has a boundary. Anything beyond it is “noise”. One can’t decipher noise and yet recognize it. Every crossroads has its sound. That’s how we recognize our home. Noise penetrates our body before we even know what has happened to us. We live within noise. It is a part of us. It is the song of the city. Noise is the resistance of the unheard.
Emilio Cordero Checa studied music and sound design at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito (Ecuador) before turning to lighting design. Marque-Lin studied sociology, dramaturgy and performance art. Now they are collaborating for the first time at Ballhaus Naunynstraße: Unknown Frequencies is a communication of the respective paths of the Eurocentrically formed world of sound and a demonstration of own sound structures, sound barricades and sound capsules. Ultimately, it is important to convert one’s own needs into sound, so that they are transformed into vibrations which are carried on and amplified, until they achieve resonance. Unknown Frequencies is the search for shared frequencies beyond the norm. Because, there where music ends, something new begins.
Marque-Lin
Emilio Cordero Checa
Premiere: 21-22 April 2022.