Preemptive Listening (Part 1: The Fork in the Road)

The first chapter in Aura Satz’s long term project and upcoming feature film Preemptive Listening, centers on the sound of sirens and emergency signals. The film posits the siren's loud glissando wail as a conditioned and learned signal, one that can potentially be perceptually and musically rewired.

For this segment of the project, Lebanese trumpet improviser Mazen Kerbaj composed a new siren sound using circular breathing, alongside the actor and activist Khalid Abdalla's account of the siren as the emblematic sound of resistance, oppression, and lost futures during the Arab Spring. Shot on 16mm, the film is literally driven by its soundtrack, as the voice becomes a beacon, activating emergency rotating lights.

Aura Satz’s practice spans film, sound, performance and sculpture. Works are made in conversation and use dialogue as both method and subject matter. She has long-standing interest in feminist compositional practices, exploring notation systems through various sound technologies, and in turn testing new forms of listening.

She has performed, exhibited and screened her work at Tate Modern, BFI Southbank, the New York Film Festival, Tate Britain, Hayward Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery, Sydney Biennale, NTT InterCommunication Center, Tokyo, High Line Art NY, the Rotterdam Film Festival, MoMA NY, Sharjah Art Foundation, Kadist San Francisco, Onassis Stegi, Amant NY and Walker Arts Centre. She has presented solo exhibitions at the Wellcome Collection, London; the Hayward Gallery project space, London; John Hansard Gallery, Southampton; Dallas Contemporary, Texas; George Eastman Museum, Rochester; ARTIUM, Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo and upcoming at Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery, Auckland.