This page contains links to articles, interviews, and videos that can be incorporated into course syllabi or used for individual student research. For detailed event information, visit saic.edu/cate.
Aura Satz: Preemptive Listening
Thursday, April 10, 6:00 p.m.
Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St.
Faculty can reserve tickets for their classes here.
Please note that All CATE events will have real-time captioning (CART). Hearing loops, wheelchair seating, and companion seating are also available at the Gene Siskel Film Center. For other accessibility requests, please visit saic.edu/access or write cate@saic.edu
Winner, New Vision Award, CPH:DOX 2024
Part essay film, part sound experiment, Aura Satz’s electrifying Preemptive Listening is an urgent exploration of the social, political, and sonic dimensions of the siren. Tracing its evolution from shepherd’s bugle to World War II air raid alarm, Satz reflects on the siren’s omnipresence today—from warning systems for environmental and man-made disasters to symbols of aggressive policing and state control. She combines footage shot on location at alarm sites worldwide—including Fukushima, Japan; Bethlehem, Palestine; and a high school in the United States—with original compositions by collaborators like musicians and sound artists Raven Chacon, Moor Mother, and Maja S. K. Ratkje. Throughout, Satz also looks ahead, asking how the siren might be reimagined to better attune us to the interconnected responsibilities of our shared future. Followed by a conversation with the artist.
Presented in partnership with SAIC’s department of Art and Technology / Sound Practices. Additional support provided by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
Featuring original compositions by:
Aura Satz is a Barcelona-born, London-based artist based who works with film, sound, performance, and sculpture. Her works explore a distributed, expanded, and shared notion of voice and are made in conversation, using dialogue as both method and subject matter. Satz has performed, exhibited, and screened her work internationally, including at the Tate Modern; BFI Southbank; Hayward Gallery; Sydney Biennale; NTT InterCommunication Center, Tokyo; High Line Art New York; Rotterdam Film Festival; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Sharjah Art Foundation; KADIST, San Francisco; Onassis Stegi; and Sonic Acts. She has presented solo exhibitions at the Wellcome Collection, the Hayward Gallery project space, John Hansard Gallery, George Eastman Museum, Dallas Contemporary, ARTIUM Museoa, and Kunstnernes Hus, as well as special screening programmes at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, The New York Film Festival, Tate Britain, Whitechapel Gallery, and more. Her films are distributed by LUX.
Artist Page
Preemptive Listening: A Roundtable Discussion About Sirens [Article]
Francesca Laura Cavallo, Paul Dorfman, Judy Edworthy, Lisa Lavia, Gascia Ouzounian, Irene Revell | Sound Studies Vol.10 (2) | p. 313-332 | August 12 2024
Symphony of sirens: An Interview with Aura Satz, David Toop, Elaine Mitchener, Evelyn Glennie and Raven Chacon [Interview]
The Wire | April 2024
Aura Satz In Conversation with Quinn Latimer [Interview]
Quinn Latimer and Aura Satz | Mousse Magazine | April 6, 2024
A Filmic Meditation on Sirens and the World in Which They Resonate [Article]
Andy Battaglia | Art In America | February 23, 2024
From Emergency to Emergence: Aura Satz’s Preemptive Listening [Article]
Sophie Cavoulacos | MoMA Magazine | February 21, 2024
Aura Satz: A Complex Marriage of Human and Machine
Barbara London | Flash Art | May 5, 2022
The Listening Cobweb
Aura Satz, Evelyn Glennie | The Contemporary Journal 3 | June 01, 2021
Art in the Age of Anxiety by
Artists and writers examine the bombardment of information, misinformation, emotion, deception, and secrecy in online and offline life in the post-digital age. Every day we are bombarded by information, misinformation, emotion, deception, and secrecy in our online and offline lives. How does the never-ending flow of data affect our powers of perception and decision making? This richly illustrated and boldly designed collection of essays and artworks investigates visual culture in the post-digital age. The essays, by such leading cultural thinkers as Douglas Coupland and W. J. T. Mitchell, consider topics that range from the future of money to the role of art in a post-COVID-19 world; from mental health in the digital age to online grieving; and from the mediation of visual culture to the thickening of the digital sphere. Accompanying an ambitious exhibition conceived by the Sharjah Art Foundation and volume editor and curator Omar Kholeif, the book is a work of art and a labor of love, emulating the labyrinthine corridors of the exhibition itself. Created by a group of writers, artists, designers, photographers, and publishers, Art in the Age of Anxiety calls upon us to consider what our collective future will be and how humanity will adapt to it.
The Wire: Aura Satz [Artist Page]
Conversations at the Edge Lecture Recordings
Conversation at the Edge video recordings (2016–present.) Available with SAIC login credentials.