The Mouth of Every Cave Will One Day Close

Presented by Ada X as part of the HTMlles Festival 

The Mouth of Every Cave Will One Day Close
The ffiles (Amanda Harvey, Miranda Jones, Julia Dyck, Sophy Merizzi et Sophie Marisol)
Audio piece
Via HTMlles website

For this new edition of the HTMlles festival, the ffiles collective proposes a sound iteration of the project L’embouchure de chaque grotte se fermera un jour, first presented in the form of a workshop and an installation-performance at the Darling Foundry in September 2020. 

Drawing on the haptic potential of sound and the voice, this work investigates alternative forms of intimacy and connectivity.  In this moment physical proximity is limited, the ffiles aim to create a space that employs sound as a stand-in for touch. Always present within their work is an emphasis on creating and cultivating modes of queerness, community and connection. This work resists the screen, resists the surveillance-state and aims to bring listeners into their bodies for a shared experience.

SCRIPT
THREE VOICES: 20 MINS TOTAL

This is the Hertzian space
The physical space of electromagnetic activity which overlaps visible empirical reality
remaining itself mostly invisible
highly dynamic, unfolding in time

You are here
You are released.
Everyday the earth is turning,
But tonight,
You are the only one it moves for.

This space contains voices in perpetuity
Sounds that continually sound, circulating within physical spheres,
Activated as a recording
Now, a matter of memory

The process of abstraction
What is lost is limitation itself
To read what was never written
To find new ways to embody every story there ever was
The ever expanding gulf separating observer and object

The humidity of breath
Speech, a vapourizer of thought
This space contains voices in perpetuity
Sounds that continually sound, circulating within physical spheres

Who is to say that all of the words you have ever said,
And ever will say,
Do not still hang in the air around you?

Cup your hand to your ear and sway.
Do you hear your own breath?
If you are quiet enough, can you hear the last words you
Said before sleep?

What the listener relates to is not simply the sound, but also the evidence of intention
A transmission would necessarily include the idea of a message transmitted

Open your mouth behind the cloth on your face
Listen to your breath, indulge in your own secret expression.

Know that the world shifts in ways we will never understand.
Trust that time is both a terrible and healing thing.
The mouth of every cave will one day close.

This space
Envisioned as a continuous,
available,
fluctuating area,
inhibited by inter-penetrating and overlapping fields and bodies

Look up, arch your neck
Tilt your head back and expose the soft skin of your throat,
Let your head settle back into your shoulders and sway.

Stratosphere is the name for the space
Between the sky and space,
Is there a name for the space between lovers,
And then again,
What are we?

We stand in between
We stand enveloped
The source of the sound surrounded by its own sound
But how can we move outside ourselves?

Look down, extend your arms in front of you
Offer up the palms of your hands
And sway.
Decorate the space around you with your fingers.

This space provides a place to gather
collectively,
to generate emergent exchange networks

Do you imagine yourself as the root or the bud that blooms?
The fruit of a whole season, or the seed for the next?
How can we even stand to live in a world
where all things sweet are ripened by blood?

Plant your feet to the ground, and sway.
Let yourself be held
Stand but don’t stand still

Now move

Enjoy your body in this space
Discover ways to activate the air around you,
Make it come just as alive as you are,
And sway

This space contains voices in perpetuity
Sounds that continually sound, circulating within physical spheres

Are we not making magic with our bodies?
Some spells are beyond language —
some spells live in movement.

move

to the joy fantastic.

Are you swimming through this sound,
Or are you swallowing it?

• The ffiles