Preemptive Listening (2024)

A film by Aura Satz

Runtime: 89 Minutes

Discussion with Aura Satz via Zoom

Location: Peterson Hall 108

Synopsis:

Aura Satz’s inventive documentary, the latest iteration of the artist’s ongoing project on sirens, is sonic collage, design history, and thought experiment in equal measure. Filming in locations as varied as the Fukushima nuclear site in Japan and alert-system assembly lines in the US, Satz considers the siren as a cipher for contemporary ideas of emergency and preparedness. A relic of World War II and Cold War infrastructure, today the siren can be read as a warning sign, a crisis management tool, an emblem of climate collapse—and even, in the age of predictive policing, a threat in and of itself. Preemptive Listening features original compositions from over 20 experimental musicians reimagining what form the siren can take, from harp melodies to the rumbling of the Earth’s core. Breaking free from the weight of catastrophes past, Satz’s film conjures alternative ways to respond to the siren’s call as a path toward possible futures.

Bio:

Aura Satz is a London-based visual artist whose work encompasses film, performance and sculpture and emphasizes the complex relationship between humans and machines. Her entry into sound began through a series of projects that revolved around magic, born of an interest in how a ventriloquist’s falsetto voice always seems to emanate right from a puppet’s mouth. Satz’s trajectory orbits around two major topics. One involves the art and science of music, sound technology, vibration, and acoustics. The other involves social and political factors, especially issues of gender and the rediscovery of important contributions women have made to the development of technology, namely as inventors of new systems of notation, encryption, and sound-making.