Exotica instead of love

"Seismographic Sounds - Visions of a New World" is the name of the exhibition at Aarau's Forum Schlossplatz. It lives up to its title from behind the first door: when you open it, you are confronted with an almost two-metre-wide LED wall on which scenes from Africa, surfboard sequences and kissing lips shake hands in rapid succession - and quite loudly. It is a first look behind the scenes of current global music creation.

The idea for "Seismographic Sounds" came about a year and a half ago, at the suggestion of Anna Bürkli, co-curator of the Solothurn Künstlerhaus S11. The exhibition was originally supposed to celebrate its vernissage there, but: "The idea kept growing and soon needed more space than S11 could offer," says Thomas Burkhalter, who developed the show together with Theresa Beyer and Hannes Liechti - in collaboration with their international network Norient.

At the heart of the exhibition, which covers a good 200 square meters, are pointed, shrill and controversial music videos, tracks and sound art from over 50 countries. These are daring works that have been created outside of common social norms, explains Burkhalter. "The result is a mixture of our point of view and that of 250 journalists, bloggers and scientists." Gradually, more and more material from countries as diverse as Bolivia, Israel and Ghana was sent in, sometimes even unsolicited. The quality of the submissions was astonishingly high, says Burkhalter and Beyer adds: "The project confirmed our feeling that there are countless musicians all over the world who express themselves with a great deal of knowledge and urgency in new artistic formats."

In order for "Seismographic Sounds" to be created, it was necessary for the creators to go to their personal limits and combine their roles as project managers, curators, fundraisers and editors. "Up to 100 emails a day were the norm," recalls Beyer. Efforts that bore fruit and amounted to a collage that dug beneath the surface and revealed new trends in music. "For example, we need to get away from the image that African artists absolutely want to break into the Anglo-American market," emphasizes Burkhalter. Nowadays, it is sometimes more lucrative for many musicians to establish themselves at home.

Based on the six themes of Money, Loneliness, Desire, Exotica, War and Belonging, visitors have the opportunity to experience the exhibition as an overall audiovisual composition. According to Beyer, these thematic highlights emerged when viewing the approximately 2000 clips. However, the fact that the motif of romantic love appeared less frequently than those mentioned surprised the two curators themselves.

If you were to take in every snippet of "Seismographic Sounds", it would take around eight hours to see and hear everything. A wealth that allows the visitor to immerse themselves in detail. Videos such as the one by Bad Copy can be watched in several cinema boxes that offer space for a handful of viewers. The Serbs fuse hard rap with images of children plagued by civil war with big guns and hard faces. La Bala" by Los Tigres Del Norte from Mexico is not quite so obviously about gun battles. Their clip begins in a familiar way, but ends in the death of a band. South African Simiso Zwane's "Allblackblackkat" offers something lighter, with mystical images emerging from a swimming pool.

While you can listen to various audio collages and mixtapes such as "Aarau in the 80s" in the lounge, numerous podcasts offer in-depth insights into the everyday lives of musicians outside the mainstream. For example, Israeli sound artist Meira Asher talks about her musical confrontation with the militarization of her country. One listening station next door, the Indonesian hard rock band Burgerkill complains: "It's difficult for artists to make a living here." A statement that crops up again and again in various forms. Even more frequently, however, one is confronted with the attitude that everything is being done to maintain a public presence with one's songs.

The show, which is accompanied by a book of the same name, illustrates how different and yet similar the various music scenes around the world are. Seismographic Sounds" particularly encourages visitors to embark on a journey of discovery in search of new sounds and impressions - both inside and outside the exhibition.