May 12-18, 2005

artpicks

New Sounds on the Cellblock

by Juliet Fletcher

EXHIBITION

Depending on whom you listen to, recent stirrings at Eastern State Penitentiary sound like a case of haunting or rehabitation, as torpid prisoners return to its dank cells. You don't have to listen to those opinions; just listen to the silence. In Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller's latest sound installation, the dungeonesque and long-deserted Cellblock 7 ripples with the building's natural timpani: dripping pipes, squeaky hinges, an idle foot scuffed against a cupboard. The wing may have lain unused and unstable for decades, but as you stand in the space your ears will deceive you.

Julie Courtney, independent curator of Cardiff and Bures Miller's piece, Pandemonium, learned of their ability to create a palpable presence back in 2001, where she experienced Cardiff's CD audio walk-through Whitechapel Library in London. She was led by a "magical" voice along corridors, around corners and in one instance was instructed to look for a man with a red face across the street. "And there he was," Courtney remembers. "And I wondered, did they plant an actor there? But no."

With just the audacity that allowed them to expect a blushing member of the public in Whitechapel, Cardiff and Bures Miller design their aural works to rely on elements they can't possibly predict. After four years of pursuit by Courtney, who became fascinated with bringing them to the penitentiary, the pair agreed to the project. Before they'd ever stood in the cellblock space, they set about engineering a soundscape — instead of their more common walk-through audio tours. The building, with its crumbling skylights and "toxic pigeon poop," strikes Courtney as a "hostile environment for technology." But a complex setup of speakers delivering computer-generated taps and thuds to different corners will survive for a year or two, everyone hopes. As the sounds build into a cacophony, a riot of tapping, Courtney confides, "your heart rate goes up." Maybe you'll hear yourself over the din.

Pandemonium, by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, opening reception Thu., May 12, 5-7 p.m., free; exhibition May 13 to Nov. 30, free with museum admission of $7-$9, Eastern State Penitentiary, 22nd St. and Fairmount Ave., 215-236-5111, www.easternstate.com