Decamp Volume, 2021
Sound Archive and Exhibition Series held in Stuttgart
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Design by Studio Cabrio
Following Giovanni Boccaccio's prosaic work The Decameron ("Ten Days' Work"), this project aims to explore the social practice of sharing through storytelling. The Decameron is a collection of 100 stories of diverse cultural origins. Set in 1348, the stories are framed by a fictional group of seven women and three men seeking refuge in the adjoining hills around Florence from the plague in Europe, structuring their time in self-imposed isolation through a ritualised form of storytelling. The Decameron celebrates the existential unity of people against death, an unmistakable parallel to our current pandemic, as we rediscover ways to gather, share and be part of a community.
Out of the collective experience of being locked down, we are starting to explore new ways of creating community. How can we come together to express, collect and share the multitude of stories formed through the common narrative of isolation?
THE PROJECT
Decamp Volume invites artists to create a 10-minute audio work that represents their individual experience of social isolation and lockdown. Inspired by the tradition of oral storytelling, the recordings will form an archive of experiences, reflecting upon the global social upheaval caused by the pandemic. This archive will exist in both physical and virtual space.
A total of 50 audio recordings will be collected for the project's first monthly series of events, which will be presented in the form of a public installation in the open-air theatre in Stuttgart's Schlosspark. At each of the five planned events, 10 different artists will be represented by their work. Attendees of the events will be invited to participate and interact with the works. Furthermore, the sound works will form the basis for an online platform and archive.
Listen to the 50 sound pieces and explore the archive here
Isolation during the Corona pandemic has led to a rethinking of shared space: The city park has been rediscovered as a central part of social life during the contact blackout - a refuge against loneliness. As we are not yet able to be indoors and socialise freely, the park's openness provides a form of refuge against loneliness. The park, like our planned events, is freely accessible to everyone. Everyone should have the opportunity to express their experience and this is the intention of Decamp Volume: the levelling of hierarchies through an open dialogue in detachment from institutions and exclusions of all kinds.
Decamp Volume is an association of art and cultural workers from the fields of painting, sound, performance and philosophy, formed in times of crisis. Behind Decamp Volume are Jan Nicola Angermann, Isabelle Pead and Max Perna. As individual artists, we come from different disciplines; as a collective, our concern is to create and shape community in times of crisis and isolation. Decamp Volume is funded by the Cultural Office of the City of Stuttgart.
