{"id":224,"date":"2022-11-07T19:51:15","date_gmt":"2022-11-07T19:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/?p=224"},"modified":"2026-06-04T19:14:41","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T19:14:41","slug":"i-keep-thinking-my-way-to-ness-emplacements-on-the-anglian-coast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/i-keep-thinking-my-way-to-ness-emplacements-on-the-anglian-coast\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI Keep Thinking My Way to Ness\u201d: Emplacement(s) on the Anglian Coast"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Milo Harries<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

This article explores senses of emplacement in two works delivered through headphones, Ilya Kaminsky and Axel Kacouti\u00e9\u2019s I See a Silence<\/font> and Zo\u00eb Svendsen and Carolyn Downing\u2019s Ness<\/font>. The article begins from a feeling provoked by the headphones themselves: a sense that Ness<\/font> took place \u201cout there,\u201d caught in the wind, whilst I See a Silence<\/font> was secluded from the site, within the headphones, \u201cin here.\u201d Understanding the works as rehearsals, the article articulates the dispositions these positions prepare, offering each as a chance to practise an ethical response-ability: in Svendsen\u2019s work, an attitude of interruptibility, and in Kaminsky\u2019s, an estranged intimacy that recognizes the other in their withdrawal.

Keywords: <\/strong>headphones, listening, ethics, place, response-ability<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ilya Kaminsky\u2019s I See a Silence<\/em> and Zo\u00eb Svendsen\u2019s Ness<\/em> start from common ground. Both are site-specific sonic works, delivered via headphones to solitary listeners exploring landscapes on Britain\u2019s eastern coast; both had their beginnings in the same strange shingle spit, Orford Ness\u2014now a nature reserve but once used for classified research, contributing to the development of the British atomic bomb. These rhymes of form and origin centre in both works a concern for secrecy, violence, reclamation and decay\u2014as well as guiding the choice of the sites within which their listeners were eventually emplaced: I See Silence<\/em> ghosts Orford Ness itself, whilst Ness<\/em> takes place on Shoeburyness, at Gunners Park\u2014another nature reserve studded with the relics of another military past. Despite these similarities, however, their listeners\u2019 experiences diverge, keyed by a difference in the pieces\u2019 technical frames: where I See a Silence<\/em> uses closed headphones (Numark HF125s), Ness <\/em>uses Sennheiser HD599s, with open backs. As a result, walking their sites in 2021, I was struck by the feeling that I See a Silence<\/em> set itself apart from the landscape, \u201cin here,\u201d whilst Ness <\/em>took place \u201cout there,\u201d beyond the headphones, as though its voices were \u201ccaught in the wind\u201d (Svendsen, Personal interview).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article thus began from contrasting sensations of where I was<\/em> when these works were taking place. The article\u2019s task is to attend to this difference, articulating how these pieces emplace their listeners and asking what is at stake in that work. Carl Lavery argues that simplicity in the work of art can be \u201ca device for revealing where one is,\u201d proposing an \u201caesthetics of disclosure\u201d that would allow for a clearer perception of our entanglements (\u201cParticipation\u201d 305). Relatedly\u2014but distinctly\u2014this article will argue that Ness<\/em> and I See A Silence<\/em> not only sharpen their listeners\u2019 perceptions of their entanglements but influence their orientations within them. Bearing in mind Sara Ahmed\u2019s observation that \u201c[t]he approach is not simply about the arrival of an object: it is also how we turn toward that object\u201d (2), I will argue that the works\u2019 central interest is not only in what is perceived but in how those perceptions are anticipated and faced. I will propose that, in these works, emplacement describes not only a position but a disposition<\/em>, rehearsing not only novel perceptions but also different orientations towards things perceived.[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I will offer, consequently, is the suggestion that Ness <\/em>and I See a Silence <\/em>hold space for forms of ethical rehearsal, finding within their altered modes of emplacement \u201cthe potential of practice to be practising, <\/em>to involve trying out life, exploration and experiment\u201d (Crouch 17). In each case, what is being rehearsed is a mode of response, structured by headphone-delivered sound that acts as one of \u201cour infrastructures of being, the habitats and materials through which we act and are\u201d (Hagood 4). I will argue that each work mediates its listener\u2019s entanglement within the site by cultivating a specific \u201csonic sensibility,\u201d a mode of engagement that takes listening as \u201ca susceptibility towards the world and the things [sic]\u201d (Voegelin 178). Where headphone-delivered sound has often been understood as \u201ca method of not attending to interactional possibilities,\u201d therefore (Bull, Sounding <\/em>26), I will argue that in these works, it emerges as an opportunity for novel forms of ethical interaction. In doing so, each piece offers its own form of dis-closure<\/em>: not a revelation made to the subject, but an opening of the subject towards the other and the unknown.[2]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The article is founded on the conviction that \u201ctheatrical imagining offers us a way to practice, or to rehearse, other ways of imagining that outside the theatre might have some consequences for the ways we live now\u201d (Read, Dark Theatre<\/em> 154). My claim will be that these works, through the influence they exert on the practising of place, can allow for the rehearsal of an ethical disposition. At stake in this claim is a proposition for the \u201cresponse-ability\u201d that Hans-Thies Lehmann identifies as one of theatre\u2019s fundamental properties (185). I will propose a connection between this theatrical capability and an ecological need, arguing that theatre\u2019s \u201cresponse-ability\u201d might be a means of cultivating the \u201cresponse-ability\u201d Donna Haraway names as one of our era\u2019s most vital and pressing concerns (2, 98). The potential for which this article argues, therefore, is that these works expand and enhance their listeners\u2019 capacities of response, rehearsing alternative grammars of experience and proposing new objects of attention. The article\u2019s conviction is that Ness <\/em>and I See a Silence <\/em>offer opportunities to practise \u201cthick copresence\u201d in ethical modes, \u201ctraining the mind and imagination to go visiting\u201d with strange beings in unexpected worlds\u201d (Haraway 4, 130).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cListen. Listen Now. Listen to Ness\u201d<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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