the ear is the eye of the soul

by SOUNDWALK COLLECTIVE

Can you find peace at the Venice Biennale? The late Swiss-Cameroonian curator Koyo Kouoh believed so. She titled this year’s Biennale “In Minor Keys” — an invitation, she wrote, to listen beneath the “anxious cacophony of the present chaos” for quieter tones, lower frequencies, whispers, hums, and harmonies.

In a monastery garden down an alley near Venice’s railway station, I listened to the buzz of a bumblebee. Through open headphones provided at the entrance, the hum of the bee joined an evolving sound composition, mapped across the garden, by artists including Patti Smith, Devonté Hynes, FKA Twigs, Jim Jarmusch, and the Benedictine Nuns of the Abbey of St. Hildegard Eibingen.

This is “The Ear Is the Eye of the Soul,” an exhibition at the Biennale’s Holy See Pavilion, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ben Vickers, and created with Stephan Crasneanscki and Simone Merli of Soundwalk…