The CounterText interview : Brandon LaBelle

Abstract

Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer, and theorist working with sound culture, voice, and questions of agency. He develops and presents artistic projects and performances within a range of international contexts, often working collaboratively and in the public eye. He lives in Berlin and is Professor in Fine Art at the University of Bergen, Norway. Of particular relevance to CounterText and the ongoing discussion of the countertextual is his work on sound as a holder of story – a container of social and shared experience that also has the potential to be a disruptive force in social spheres, both live and virtual. His work with sound engages in a rethinking of what it means to participate, to partake of shared experience, to be part of shared spaces, constantly becoming a community. Works by LaBelle which exemplify this include The Other Citizen: Archive (Club Transmediale, Berlin, 2019), The Floating Citizen (Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, 2018), The Ungovernable (Documenta 14, Athens, 2017), Oficina de Autonomia (Ybakatu, Curitiba, 2017), The Hobo Subject (Gallery Forum, Zagreb, 2016), and ‘The Living School’ (South London Gallery, 2016). He is the author of Sonic Agency: Sound and Emergent Forms of Resistance (Goldsmiths Press, 2018), Lexicon of the Mouth: Poetics and Politics of Voice and the Oral Imaginary (Bloomsbury, 2014), Diary of an Imaginary Egyptian (Errant Bodies Press, 2012), Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life (Bloomsbury, 2010; 2019), and Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (Bloomsbury, 2006; 2015).