Raising Moths(2018-2019)
Raising Moths is a performance and its script in book form.Ā The book is a selection of comments below the unofficial video of Watering a Flower, a background music cassette commissioned to Haruomi Hosono by Muji in 1984. In almost two years since theĀ youtube upload by the user dennisnorthey, many commenters created a tender and powerful work of collective writing composed of attempts at ekphrasis of the original music and uncanny night-time confessions.Watering a FlowerĀ will be aired from youtube through the sound system of a tech store open at night. A reader will read the comments from the pages ofĀ Raising Moths to the cashier's mic.The book will be published by NERO EditionsEdited by Federico AntoniniEssay by Sergio SaviniTranslation by Giulia CrispianiBook design by Luigi Amato10x15 cm328 pp1000 copiesISBN 9788880560425
From Net Spleen, The Lost Boys of the Internet by Sergio Savini
Considering MUJIās products aesthetics, the choices made by Hosono are clear. MUJI literally means āno-brand productsā and the items resemble the original sound design of its stores. The private goods of the brand, label, and trademark are suddenly denying the impossible noise of the market. This choice gives to consumption a sentimental aspect; we are asked to fill this shortage of meaning with a personal and private mythology of living. MUJIās products stimulate the emotional production of existential expectations by communicatingāand selling the idea that goods can be silent, confidential or even shy. What this record of discomfort wants to tell us about is, for instance, the prevailing necessity, within the logic of molecular capitalism, to find another clinical space of recovery, healing and comfort, far from the mechanisms of the matrix.Recovery means both healing and, in informatics, the capacity to restore information from a backup memory; or the recovery of innocent feedbacks used by a kid to experiment its perceptive debut in the world. According to the same logic, it is possible to read the contemporary efforts of the ASMR community to bring the emotional and perceptive attention back to a world of phenomena, beginning with sounds. There is a clear pedagogical attempt in the ASMR videos. The performers in the videos are acoustically re-educating the users, by favoring a shy perceptive attitude over the offensive one, towards the world and phenomena. In Shy Radicals: The Anti-Systemic Politics of the Introvert Militant by Hamja Ahsan, the national anthem of the state of Aspergistanāthe ideal imaginary territory ruled by the shy radicalsāis the sound of a seashell to oneās ear. So, there seems to be a growing demand for quiet and recovering places, formative, preparatory yet-non-affirmative spaces, where to heal away from capitalistic logics.
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