The Institution of Rot: Enacting Decay (A Sonic Un-Archiving) or Good Decompositions
For Attack Decay Sustain Release, I propose a one-week sound installation and live action events/tour/and a talk that activate selected objects, tapes, and “performance remains” from the Institution of Rot Archive—a 30-year body of work concerned with noise, decay, and the aesthetics of destruction. Rather than presenting the archive as a static collection (although there will be plenty of dust), this project treats it as a living, volatile system: material that continues to transform physically and sonically over time.
The installation will use the gallery as a temporary sonic laboratory, where analogue playback devices, contact microphones, electromagnetic pickups and decaying media (tape loops, damaged cassettes, unstable objects) generate unpredictable noise events. Sound is produced not through composition, but through material decomposition—tape shedding, feedback, friction, hum, and mechanical failure etc. These unstable processes embody the ADSR envelope in real time: attack as rupture, decay as material loss, sustain as drone or malfunction, release as ‘disappearance’.
Throughout the week, I will work on site, making the process visible: repairing, modifying, and “un-archiving” objects through performance. Visitors will be invited to listen closely, manipulate elements of the setup, and become co-producers of noise, highlighting listening as an embodied and participatory act.
A live performance/activation on Friday will collapse old and new work through sound collage, re-enactment and analogue techniques from my practice (loops, cut-ups, live tape manipulation). Sonic captions—short recorded responses to images and objects—will offer additional entry points for audiences.
INSTITUTION OF ROT 