Listening to the Echoes of the South Atlantic Listening to the Echoes of the South Atlantic | Page 16

Visitors enter a space filled with the sound of deep, resonant  voices that
form a pre-lingual polyphonic composition contemplating experience in
the contemporary state of the world.   The texture of the voices is akin to
a humming, a meditation, a moan, or a chant. Sitting on one of a series of
benches, the voices’ vibrations are felt directly through the body - it is as
though they are physically communicating with you, drawing you into their
sonic and psychic sphere, evoking something primal, visceral, bodily and
universal.
Camille Norment
Prime (2016)
Kochi-Muziris Biennial, 2016-17
Photo: Camille Norment Studio
This kind of vocalization has been replicated in various cultures around the
world from the practice of ‘moaning’ from African American church, to
Tibetan monk throat singing, to OM mantra mediation, and beyond.  The
sound could at once gesture to catharsis, a painful groan, a comforting
meditation, or a kind of exalting orgasm.   While drawing the body into the
physical experience of the sound, Prime creates a constellation of cultural
references that speak to a connectedness of sound, voice and the body’s
5
experience.
Throughout her practice, Norment extends beyond the parameters of pure sonic
experience by translating sound into all-encompassing site-specific works. The
importance of site-specificity in her work was powerfully exemplified in how she
transformed the bright, open-ended space of the Nordic pavilion into a large-
scale installation that spoke about the poetics of space for her participation in the
Venice Biennale in 2015. Both Rapture (created for the Venice Biennale) and Prime
were situated in an intriguing space in between, where open architecture provided
immediate access to the outside. Prime was perfectly located so that the audience
would experience the abstract reflections of light and shadow on the nearby water,
providing a beautiful visual accompaniment to the spiritual moans and rhythms of
the soundscape. Although the installation was originally shaped for that particular
space and the cultural setting of Southern India, the opportunity to listen, feel, and
experience Prime within a 17th century space where the traces of Scandinavian
colonialism lie hidden in the floorboards (the specifics of which I will return to later)
allows the work to resonate in completely new and unexpected ways.