
Aura Satz, A Pluriverse Siren (still), 2023, film. Image courtesy of the artist.
Photo Credit
Aura Satz, A Pluriverse Siren (still), 2023, film. Image courtesy of the artist.
Photo Credit
A Pluriverse Siren re-imagines the siren in order to forge a new understanding of present and long term emergencies. Part of Aura Satz’s documentary film Preemptive Listening (2017-ongoing), this chapter of the project features the voice of Erin Matariki Carr, lawyer, scholar and activist, Co-Lead for RIVER (Revitalising Indigenous Virtues for Earth’s Regeneration) and Taonga Pūoro performance and music by Horomona Horo.
The siren serves as a worldwide symbol of potential trauma, an emblem warning of climate catastrophe, a mouthpiece for sonic governance and crisis management. The film invokes an alternative reading of the siren by connecting to Te Ao Māori ancestral knowledge, weaving Taonga Pūoro with the sounds of the natural environment at Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari. These traditional Māori instruments can act as a call to arms, a warning, as well as a form of long distance communication, a signal heralding a birth or the dawn of a new day. The film asks: What might a siren for the non-human or more than human sound like? Can we envision new sounds not only scored to immediacy, but signals sounding the alarm for the distant future, the cries on the cusp of ecological catastrophe? Have we internalized the siren’s cry? Through Matariki’s words on kinship and close-ups of Horomona’s Taonga Pūoro practice, the film highlights the importance of listening and reattuning to a pluriverse siren, one that can speak to many interconnected worldviews.
Read more about the exhibition and contributors here.
A Pluriverse Siren re-imagines the siren in order to forge a new understanding of present and long term emergencies. Part of Aura Satz’s documentary film Preemptive Listening (2017-ongoing), this chapter of the project features the voice of Erin Matariki Carr, lawyer, scholar and activist, Co-Lead for RIVER (Revitalising Indigenous Virtues for Earth’s Regeneration) and Taonga Pūoro performance and music by Horomona Horo.
The siren serves as a worldwide symbol of potential trauma, an emblem warning of climate catastrophe, a mouthpiece for sonic governance and crisis management. The film invokes an alternative reading of the siren by connecting to Te Ao Māori ancestral knowledge, weaving Taonga Pūoro with the sounds of the natural environment at Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari. These traditional Māori instruments can act as a call to arms, a warning, as well as a form of long distance communication, a signal heralding a birth or the dawn of a new day. The film asks: What might a siren for the non-human or more than human sound like? Can we envision new sounds not only scored to immediacy, but signals sounding the alarm for the distant future, the cries on the cusp of ecological catastrophe? Have we internalized the siren’s cry? Through Matariki’s words on kinship and close-ups of Horomona’s Taonga Pūoro practice, the film highlights the importance of listening and reattuning to a pluriverse siren, one that can speak to many interconnected worldviews.
Read more about the exhibition and contributors here.