Just past midnight, Lenaerts dimmed the lights and began describing the dimensions of the room, counting, number by number, its length, width and depth. Before he finished I was asleep. Throughout the night, I woke up regularly to hear a variety of sounds, from scratching noises to the sounds of empty buildings, all provided by Lenaerts, collected from his travels everywhere from Nansha in China to Sydney Opera House, where he recorded empty concert spaces. The mood was peaceful and comforting, not only because of the sounds, but perhaps because of the intimate, communal nature of the event. It somehow suggested acceptance, openness. It had not been my intention to stay the whole night, but the black-out curtains on the windows were pulled down at 8.45am and I was still there. As I left, I noticed two women had, during the night, pulled their mattresses together and now lay in an embrace.

I sat with various participants outside, on a thin, cobbled street on garden chairs, and drank coffee and ate cartons of porridge. Someone asked me about my dreams, but I didn’t think that was the most significant thing about the work, and couldn’t remember them in any case. Yet I felt strangely refreshed, elated even. Lenaerts’ concern is sound, but his amalgam of sounds, sleep and community created something much more. We know listening as a group is powerful, but are we even more receptive to sound and music when we are asleep?

That afternoon, as I listened to Tomoko Sauvage’s flow, an installation involving blocks of ice dripping from the ceiling into amplified bowls, creating a magnificent counterpoint, I knew my senses were particularly alert to the experience because of MicroSleepDub.

The performance was introduced by Lenaerts himself, and in the first hour he read us some kind of bedtimes stories while playing field recordings. He described a room which I thought at first was the one we were in, but then became a mixture of descriptions of the places where the footage was from. Some of these were very surreal. After that, the lights were dimmed and the night really began. The concert experience happened through a combination of slumber and light sleep, between drowsiness and extremely clear listening.

At one point I was awoken by the silence, because there was a small pause in the soundscape, another time by an airplane that flew close-by over my head and a third time because one of the other guests was snoring. When I was awoken by the silence, it hit me how much I missed the soundscape I had fallen asleep to. I only fell asleep again when I heard the LPs crackling and some Chinese men discussing something or other off in the distance. Time and space were dissolved and I belonged to a world created by Lenaerts’ sounds.

Quies by Peter Lenaerts is not a search for silence in an academic sense. It is not an inquiry into how little can be put onto a digital recording or how thin you can spread things before they vanish altogether. It is in fact an evocation of place, albeit a very quiet, very large place. The quietness is not the kind you achieve by sticking earplugs in and closing things down, it is entirely the opposite: It is an opening up and a surrendering to the huge expansive emptiness of the desert.

As Lenaerts points out in an interview about Quies “Looking for silence was never the goal. For me it is more about the sound of the world around me, and the experiences it evokes. About developing awareness for it. We live in a world that is dominated by the visual. We are barely conscious of our own auditory perception.”

Because of the somewhat noisy nature of the domestic surroundings, I chose to listen to Quies on headphones late at night with the rest of the family in bed and just a single small light on. Lenaerts says he is interested in the CD format as a curiosity, where people are not necessarily expected to listen to the disc in its entirety.

Even so, the longer these tracks go on, the more your sense of hearing becomes calibrated to the sounds and the space encoded therein. Without doubt these things take time, and then a kind of confluence takes place between your own and the artist’s wavelengths.

Suddenly you see the never ending sand stretching out to the horizon, the baked desert air and the searing sun. There is some life out here as every now and then a bird calls from a far off place or an insect buzzes close by. Lanearts chose to either carry the microphones in his hand or wear them on his head (as opposed to simply leaving them out in the field and retrieving them later). Sometimes I think I hear evidence of the artist: Maybe a rustle, maybe a click.

This placing of the artist firmly in the environment adds the human aspect. This is exactly what Peter Lenaerts wanted you to experience and not a random recording from a static microphone in a desert. He makes the different locations which constitute Quies explicit in their characteristic atmospheres, subtle differences in an environment many may think of as uniform.

Wind blows across the expanse of Lake Torrens, a dry salt lake that has only been filled with water once in the last 150 years. In the ghost town of Farina the remains of the houses stand testament to man’s vain hope. In the past a railway connected this place to civilisation, but the rains never came, the crops never grew. In Andamooka cemetery the headstones seem an integral part of the desert with only the brass plaques jarring as they glint amongst the sand and stones. In the far distance a dog barks.

These are the places we are transported to and left in. Spaces that open out and extend. Dryness can be felt as a presence. We can share Lenaerts’ uneasiness on being confronted with the frightening, unnatural quietness. We live in a society where many people feel anxious if there is no radio playing in the background, a society that has gravitated away from silence. The desert is the antithesis of modern consciousness. We fill our minds, our days, our lives with input. The seas of sand remain impassive.

I’ve just listened to Quies again and I’m in danger of becoming a bit obsessed. Also I’m drinking a lot more water than usual.

INTERIORS AND EXTERIORS

In Private Rooms (Surfacenoise Recordings SN06) small, interior resonances are examined from within small cubicles which are themselves within buildings, whereas Quies (Very Quiet Records VQR004) is a document of the vast space at the heart of Australia, austere and boundless. Are both approaches a search for the same grain of truth?

P.L.  The original desire was the same with both. The reality turned out differently, to record space and air.

CW: Why did you want to record space and air?

P.L. There are several reasons, but it’s summed up best by what  I wrote for an application when I first started Quies:

“I want to work on silence. And absence. And nothing. The lack of. Just space. And air. That moment when the last note has rung, the last line has been delivered, the last movement has been executed. Just before the audience breaks out in applause or boos. That moment of anticipation. Of holding your breath. Your senses, exalted and wired. All ears. That moment. Exactly that moment.

What do we hear when there’s nothing to listen to?

What do we listen to when there’s nothing to hear?”

Or to put it differently, I wanted to focus on the flipside, if you will.

CW: ‘That moment when the last note has rung’, how long can that moment be extended? Some of the tracks are quite long.

PL: To compare it to music, when writing a melody you can focus on the actual notes, or you can focus on the space between the notes. The thing is that Quies is a recording project, not a composition project. So the moment cannot be extended by me, I just have to accept what I encounter. In the case of Private Rooms, some of the recordings sounded very quiet to my ears, but less so to microphones.

CW: Is that because we listen differently when playing back what we’ve recorded, as opposed to what we hear at the time through naked ears?

PL: There’s a big difference I think yes. In the first case, we are embedded in reality, soaking it up. In the second case, we are listening to a recording, through headphones, or speakers. Everything is different, the intention most of all.

CW: I think our other senses are also soaking up the environment when we’re in it, but when listening later we solely rely on our ears. Would you agree? I’m thinking of your recommendation to listen through headphones in a quiet place.

PL: From many to just one of the senses? Yes, that’s a good way of putting it. Especially in the case of a recording like Quies, you won’t hear much if you don’t listen with headphones, and even then…

CW: There is a lot once your ears become accustomed. I imagine a very low horizon and a huge sky.

PL: I agree that there is a lot, and I’m happy at least someone has taken the time to create the right circumstances and listen.

SOUNDS AND IMAGES

The process of making Quies was filmed by Ezra Eeman who travelled into the interior of Australia with Peter. These images, together with a spoken word text, are designed to be shown as part of a multimedia presentation of Quies.

Taking its coordinates from Peter’s methods and aesthetics, Ezra Eeman’s film uses detail and texture to physically mirror the fluctuations in tone and ambience that occur in Quies. The film is crystaline, dry and unobtrusive. I first saw it  after I had been well acquainted with the soundworld of Quies for some time.

PL: Did the film help or hinder you? I mean, the images.

CW: It helped I guess. It is made with great understanding of your style. I noticed there were several examinations of textures and objects in the film: Driving through the outback, the salt lake, stones at night, a towel on a bed in a hotel room, an illuminated Santa etc. These made the film whole for me.

PL: That’s good to hear. I’m asking because quite often it’s the other way round. Especially in the performance I made, most people get so taken in  by the sound that when the image arrives they find it intrusive. Some even keep their eyes closed and listen.

CW: Interesting. I think the film is not really a depiction of the soundtrack in this case. It’s about your methods and ideas. A companion piece to the recordings.

PL: I think so too, yes. The Quies performance is like a theatre performance. It’s part text, part sound piece, and then the film. So it’s not a concert-performance, if you know what I mean.

CW: How does the text fit in?

PL: The performance starts with a text about failure. It’s about setting a tone for me, creating an environment in which people feel comfortable and invited, setting a mood if you want. While I talk, the lights fade to black so that we’re plunged in darkness by the end of the text. Then the sound takes over.

CW: Did making Stills + Postcards from the Centre, your first journey into this empty continent (Surfacenoise Recordings SN01), lead to Quies? Did it concentrate your thoughts?

PL: Oh, it very much did yes. With Postcards, there was mostly desire and intuition, and just the craziness of flying and driving into a very remote area in the height of summer all by myself. Quies then was a proper project, with proper funding, and concepts, and thinking and research etc. It was also to some extent a collaboration with the filmmaker Ezra Eeman of course.

Recording all alone is very different from having  someone near, especially when they’re filming you.

CW: Was the film maker there all the time? Luckily he seems to have kept nice and quiet.

PL: Well he was to some extent. I think Quies would have been completely different if I had gone out there all alone. His presence was impossible to ignore, but once that was established, I worked with it, or around it.

CW: It was worth it because it left us with a contextualizing document. I like that.

PL: Oh yes, absolutely, and it made me learn a lot.

CW: In Postcards there is a rather disturbing story on the radio about bullying at work. I found that a bit jarring.

PL: The thing is that I am someone who needs or wants clear concepts and ideas when I plan new work. A discourse, if you like. But then when you plunge yourself into the work, I also need to let go of what I thought. And let the reality sink in, and take over. Postcards, is first of all a documentary for me, and that’s why all the stories are there.

It’s a harsh country, Chris.

CW: Why did you choose that country

PL: It chose me. I met one of its inhabitants in Brussels and followed her out there.

CW: Was it in Australia that you came closest to recording silence and air? To achieving your aim? The closest to non-failure?

PL: Yes it was, in a motel room in Coober Pedy. It’s a dug out, like many houses in Coober Pedy. It gets so hot there, that people live ( partly ) underground. When I woke up there the first morning on my Postcards trip, there was just nothing.

CW: What did your brain do?

PL: Freak out

CW: As a species we cope poorly with low input don’t we?

PL: Our brain is hardwired for sound. It will always try to hear something. That Cage in the anechoic chamber story? I had that in an underground church in Coober Pedy. Very troubling.

CW: So why carry on the search outdoors?

PL: Because the search for quiet is not the end game. It’s about listening for nothing, indoor, outdoor, everywhere.

ARCHITECTURE AND MORALITY

CW: What will you do next?

PL: Micro(scopic) sound and architecture. I’m starting a new project where I want to listen to buildings and cities. Especially new cities. It begins from this question: How do you built a city and a building, and how do you take sound into account?

CW: Are you an artist, a researcher, a documentarist, or don’t these tags matter?

PL: They matter to some extent. But in my very personal opinion, there’s no artist without research or documentation – it all ties in together.

CW: What effect does the sound in cities have on the inhabitants at the moment, and how could it be optimised? Is that a valid question?

PL: It’s a very broad question Chris. I should specifiy that I’m specifically excluding European cities from my project.

My focus for now is on two cities: One new city in China, that is barely 15 years old, and Sydney, which as a metropolis is also fairly new. I want to record of course, but I also want to research how and whether architects and urban planners take sound into account, not just when designing buildings, but cities as well. Especially new cities.

It’s very much about the senses again, because most of us perceive reality by vision mostly, and our ears quite often just supply the soundtrack to what we see. Any sound that doesn’t fit with what we see is ignored or filtered. I’d like to throw that around, recalibrate the senses, if you want.

Listen first, and then look.

You are described as composer, musician, sound designer and sound artist. Did you always have this broad interest in sound?

I did. As a teenager I of course played in rock bands, but ever since the first projects I created with friends while studying, I have always taken on this versatile role of maker, researcher, and musician. Nowadays I mostly describe myself as a composer. For what I do does come down to composing with sound and music. The term sound artist fits too: like a visual artist who makes connections between materials, colours and shapes to evoke a new view on a specific theme, I work with tonalities, rhythm and acoustics. I am as interested in the physical effect of sound as in the psychological effect of music.

Did this interest bring you into contact with performance?

Through film I met contemporary dancers like Salva Sanchis, David Hernandez and Mette Ingvartsen and was immediately fascinated by performance. I found what happened there exciting and relevant. The fleeting and ephemeral character of performance appealed to me. This led to several collaborations in film, dance, and performance installations. I really like to work collectively. But also apart from these collaborations I constantly create music or sound. That is probably the only influence left from university, this notion of research. I am constantly working on things, often without a specific end product in mind, but these experiments always turn out to be the basis for new projects. These more intuitive lines often lead the furthest.

Did QUIES come about in the same way?

Yes, exactly. QUIES came about in a sabbatical year, during which I decided to go to Australia. From day one I was overwhelmed by that continent’s completely different sound world. It is a country filled with auditory extremes. In Sydney you are part of a raging dynamic amidst skyscrapers and all kinds of traffic. At the same time you are just 20 minutes away from the ocean, where you can experience a roughness of nature we no longer know in Europe. I wanted to go deeper into these contrasts so I decided to drive into the desert, towards Broken Hill, about 1500 km west of Sydney. The arid, searing, and endless plain with its exceptional quietness was a different extreme. I had never heard something like that before. It was astonishing: a natural environment where there is no sound whatsoever. When I was offered a residency in Critical Path, a small workspace in Sydney, I decided to go back to the desert, but this time completely on my own and for a longer period of time.

What does this kind of experience do to you?

You are confronted with yourself in these places. Silence is often seen as something soothing, but it is also frightening. It feels unnatural, especially for modern man. We constantly produce sound. In the desert there is no auditory or visual distraction. It is 40 degrees, day in day out. There is no one to talk to. You are hundreds of kilometres away from the nearest village or gas station. There is nothing romantic or idyllic about such an environment. After three days I was suffering from desert madness. You realise that the quietness you hear means that there is really nobody or nothing out there. And for a needy creature like man this confrontation feels dangerous. But it also teaches you a lot about yourself.

Why were you, as a sound artist, intrigued by this kind of silence?

It’s the paradox that intrigued me, because absolute silence does not exist. And even if it would exist, you would not be able to record it. And even if you were able to record it, how would you replay it? I went to places where you couldn’t hear a single sound. It was like being in a vacuum. At the same time something strange happens within this silence. As if there are different layers and you discover a new sound that was always there, but you just never heard before. You also start hearing yourself: the streaming of your blood, the sound of your stomach, a far, low drone or a very high sizzling sound. And then you experience how much silence depends on your own frame of reference. It is by looking for these extreme situations that you learn how to listen.

Your research is more about listening than it is about silence?

Exactly. Looking for silence was never the goal. For me it is more about the sound of the world around me, and the experiences it evokes. About developing awareness for it. We live in a world that is dominated by the visual. We are barely conscious of our own auditory perception. For me it is not about the sound of nature, but about the experience you can have in these circumstances. That is why I always chose to carry the microphone myself, on my head or in my hand, rather than leaving behind small microphones in the landscape. And that is what turns it into performance. You don’t just push your own boundaries, but you also have to behave in a certain way when making these recordings.

Is there a big difference between experiencing silence and recording it?

Absolutely. In that sense, QUIES is mostly an absurd battle between man, technology and nature. There you are in a hot, seemingly infinite environment where you try to capture silence, while the wind constantly produces noise in the microphone. Even the most sophisticated technology cannot filter it out. Our ears are much better equipped. It seems absurd that the medium with which you experience the world also determines it significantly. We are incredibly good at focusing, listening selectively, and making abstractions. I am interested in the forces that guide our senses and our media: the fact that we can shift the frames of perception, but also that we are totally unaware of it. That is what I look for in the performances I work on.

Do you also use silence in your performances to make the functioning of our senses tangible?

On some level, yes. I often work with, what I call, invisible sounds: sounds you don’t hear until they disappear. For Knockout, a performance by Rebecca September, I cut out all the silent parts of an old film noir movie and pieced these together into a warm, analogue noise that was already playing very softly when the audience entered the theatre. They accepted it as part of the space. When this sound disappears halfway through the piece, you experience this as a devastating and dramatic silence. The acoustics of the space change completely, as if your ears are reset. At that moment you feel very intensively how your ears function, because the unconscious selection or framing suddenly becomes conscious. You realise how intelligent, but also how subjective human perception can be.

The way we perceive things determines sound significantly.

Indeed. In The Artificial Nature Project, Mette Ingvartsen’s new performance, I am doing something very similar with synthetic sounds. The sound is dependent on the position of the spectator, because the sound source is set up in different places. You can hear a different sound by simply turning your head. It makes you aware of the fact that as a spectator you are also somehow a musician. And in Welcome to the Jungle, the new performance installation by Andros Zins-Browne, the sound becomes inaudible and the different senses get mixed up. These inaudible frequencies make a labyrinth of mirrored walls tremble like a big speaker. You get visually lost and physically disoriented. In this installation you don’t really hear the sound, but you see it. Even inaudible sounds can really determine our experience, in both a visual and haptic way. In that sense, every separation of the senses is always artificial.

How did you get to work with the recordings for QUIES?

QUIES will have a number of different outcomes. I released the first recordings from the desert as an album, Stills and postcards from the centre. Ezra Eeman made an experimental documentary about my quest in the desert. It starts from the visual vastness of the landscape and then focuses on the absurd impossibility of recording silence. Ezra and me are also investigating how we can use the all the recorded material in different ways, for example in a performative or installation context. This provides us with lots of other possibilities, because we can determine the length and focus of the experience much more than in a film screening, where people can walk in and out. I’m interested in the CD format mainly as a curiosity. I do not expect people to listen to it in its entirety, just like that is not the case with the work of for example Morton Feldman either. I do find it powerful in a utopian way. The sound of these recordings evokes a vastness that triggers your imagination, and appeals to your inner experience. Listening to something that is barely audible can evoke a huge space.

Does this flirting with the limit of silence have a permanent effect on your experience?

Yes, absolutely. I look and listen differently because of this experience. My focus is more directed. I can shut things out more easily. There’s a new threshold that has broadened my experience. I tend to spare my ears now because everything sounds more intensely. It completely broadens your understanding of the impact of sound on our senses. And it’s that I hope to pass on to the audience, the notion that every attempt at capturing reality is biased and that no zero degree is ever final or objective. Every experience of reality is subjective, and dependant on your measuring tools. And of course you also need this exchange with an audience in order to grow and evolve.