What does our life sound like when we can't hear it?

Silvi Viola
Just Nine People Sleeping
Audio Stereo, 15’ (Loop)
Audio installation
2023

Just Nine People Sleeping is an audio installation in which the audio is diffused in the exhibition space among other artworks.
We are constantly surrounded by sound. Everyday life produces different and unique audible consequences of the frenetic action that characterizes human beings. But what about night life? Our sleep is just as loud as the time we spend awake, just as repetitive and just as ours.

Considering sleeping as a productive gesture and a way in which the unconscious self is active – only in a different way – the artist asked nine fellow students to record themselves sleeping during an entire night.

The piece offers a selection of these sounds that have not been heard yet lived.
The artist listened to them, chose them and as a composer arranged them to reveal what the night of the 2nd of May 2023 sounded like simultaneously to nine different people who, oblivious to their state of active production, are the example of an existence fueled by dreams.