the sighing sound of lips unsatisfied | 26.4-25.5
The Sighing Sound of Lips Unsatisfied is a group exhibition that investigates the sound of today’s fashion. The participating artists engage with the rich and complex sounds of wearing, making, and selling garments. They ask: Whose voice is being heard in today’s fashion? Who is being silenced? Is it possible to hear a look? What does sound tell us about the fashion industry, and how do wearers of fashionable garments express that they are feeling fabulous?
The exhibition title comes from early-twentieth-century couturier Lucile, who reminisced in her autobiography:
“It offended my sense of the dramatic that some creation of mine, the expression of a mood, should be spoken of only as ‘number nine’, or whatever it might be. So I gave them all names and personalities of their own. How they made my audience smile as they were called out one by one [on the catwalk].” Lucile, Discretions and Indiscretions (1932).
One of those dresses was named The Sighing Sound of Lips Unsatisfied. “How in the world could a dress express that?” laughed a fashion journalist. Lucile had the journalist guess the names of several dresses. Then a girl walked slowly in, wearing a dress of soft grey chiffon on top of an underdress of shot pink and violet taffeta. The reason why he recognised the dress – it gave him associations to “a young widow or perhaps an old maid, anyway, something unsatisfied” – is perhaps less remarkable than the doors this anecdote opens onto the sonic landscapes of fashion.
Echoing the disappeared oral practice of enunciating fashion names, the human voice plays a central role in the exhibition. Harriet Foyster mines the language of fashion editorials to create poems that feel rhythmically familiar – pleasurable – in the viewer’s mouth, yet signify nothing at all. Ida Falck Øien’s voice takes us on a guided meditation with an «Archangel» through the depths of your inner shopping mall. Clara Mosconi interviewed four women in Skien about items of clothing they inherited but kept only the nonverbal sounds of their wardrobe experience. Drawing inspiration from drag shows, Brandon Gercara lip-syncs Black feminists’ lectures on decoloniality as well as kwir (queer in Reunionese Creole) thought. Siv Støldal centres her installation around the oral account of a refugee to Norway who dreams of running a fashion shop, incorporating voice and sound to her experimental fashion sculptures.
The repetition of the «s» sound in The Sighing Sound of Lips Unsatisfied hints at the movement of fabrics on the wearer’s body, almost to the point of onomatopoeia. Several artists explore the sound effects of fashion and the haptic understanding of garments these effects provide. Therese Næss Diesen revisits locations where she previously recorded Foley for films, and specifically the sounds of garments in motion. She tests how the materiality of the garments can be heard as part of a wider sonic landscape. Sofie Hviid Vinther questions why fashion brands fetishise the sound of sewing machines and industrial making, while rendering fashion workers inaudible. Elisabeth Thorsen takes the sound of shoes as her raw material, playing with the rhythm of walking and the associations it gives, from fear to sexual arousal. Through sounding tools, Vidmina Stasiulyte sharpens our listening abilities and challenges the visual perception of fashion as she includes visually impaired people into the fashion community.
From the artists’ exploration of the relationships between sound, language, image, and matter emerges the concept of “sonic garments”, contributing to the theorisation of fashion in the footsteps of French thinker Roland Barthes and his Fashion System (1967).
Participating artists: Brandon Gercara, Clara Mosconi, Elisabeth Thorsen, Harriet Foyster, Ida Falck Øien, Siv Støldal, Sofie Hviid Vinther, Therese Næss Diesen, Vidmina Stasiulyte.
Curator: Johanna Zanon.
Visual design: Vera Gomes.
Supported by Arts Council Norway.
The exhibition title comes from early-twentieth-century couturier Lucile, who reminisced in her autobiography:
“It offended my sense of the dramatic that some creation of mine, the expression of a mood, should be spoken of only as ‘number nine’, or whatever it might be. So I gave them all names and personalities of their own. How they made my audience smile as they were called out one by one [on the catwalk].” Lucile, Discretions and Indiscretions (1932).
One of those dresses was named The Sighing Sound of Lips Unsatisfied. “How in the world could a dress express that?” laughed a fashion journalist. Lucile had the journalist guess the names of several dresses. Then a girl walked slowly in, wearing a dress of soft grey chiffon on top of an underdress of shot pink and violet taffeta. The reason why he recognised the dress – it gave him associations to “a young widow or perhaps an old maid, anyway, something unsatisfied” – is perhaps less remarkable than the doors this anecdote opens onto the sonic landscapes of fashion.
Echoing the disappeared oral practice of enunciating fashion names, the human voice plays a central role in the exhibition. Harriet Foyster mines the language of fashion editorials to create poems that feel rhythmically familiar – pleasurable – in the viewer’s mouth, yet signify nothing at all. Ida Falck Øien’s voice takes us on a guided meditation with an «Archangel» through the depths of your inner shopping mall. Clara Mosconi interviewed four women in Skien about items of clothing they inherited but kept only the nonverbal sounds of their wardrobe experience. Drawing inspiration from drag shows, Brandon Gercara lip-syncs Black feminists’ lectures on decoloniality as well as kwir (queer in Reunionese Creole) thought. Siv Støldal centres her installation around the oral account of a refugee to Norway who dreams of running a fashion shop, incorporating voice and sound to her experimental fashion sculptures.
The repetition of the «s» sound in The Sighing Sound of Lips Unsatisfied hints at the movement of fabrics on the wearer’s body, almost to the point of onomatopoeia. Several artists explore the sound effects of fashion and the haptic understanding of garments these effects provide. Therese Næss Diesen revisits locations where she previously recorded Foley for films, and specifically the sounds of garments in motion. She tests how the materiality of the garments can be heard as part of a wider sonic landscape. Sofie Hviid Vinther questions why fashion brands fetishise the sound of sewing machines and industrial making, while rendering fashion workers inaudible. Elisabeth Thorsen takes the sound of shoes as her raw material, playing with the rhythm of walking and the associations it gives, from fear to sexual arousal. Through sounding tools, Vidmina Stasiulyte sharpens our listening abilities and challenges the visual perception of fashion as she includes visually impaired people into the fashion community.
From the artists’ exploration of the relationships between sound, language, image, and matter emerges the concept of “sonic garments”, contributing to the theorisation of fashion in the footsteps of French thinker Roland Barthes and his Fashion System (1967).
Participating artists: Brandon Gercara, Clara Mosconi, Elisabeth Thorsen, Harriet Foyster, Ida Falck Øien, Siv Støldal, Sofie Hviid Vinther, Therese Næss Diesen, Vidmina Stasiulyte.
Curator: Johanna Zanon.
Visual design: Vera Gomes.
Supported by Arts Council Norway.
