Nicole L’Huillier (Chile/Germany)
“Vientos colectivos” (2025)
La Orejona interacts with phenomena such as sound waves in the air, caresses from the wind, tremors from the ground, and oscillations induced by touch from both human and non-human entities. In contrast to regular modern microphones that are made to target individual signals, La Orejona operates with the purpose of weaving independent signals into a collective and inseparable noise, a thick mass of convoluted muddy sound.
La Orejona is a microphone of noise, a rubbery listening apparatus that centers on the poetics of unintelligibility. It is not intended to be a precise measurement device, on the contrary, it is a device for confusing signals, fuzzing, mixing up, and obscuring. By doing so, La Orejona aims to explore the world through a vibrational logic in order to fuzz the rigid paradigms and lines that delineate our imaginations. This is an invitation to pay attention to other codes so we can rearticulate our relational ways and the narratives that define us; so we can tune into our vibrational realities.
La Orejona, enabled a mobile and outdoor recording studio for socio-natural arrangements and collective improvisation sessions through different processions and collective sessions that invite for vibrations and interaction with the audience, resonances from the spaces it transits in, sounds from the place, the wind of the place, voices, wind instruments, synthesizers, touch from trees and plants, the waves from the water, and other entities and vibrational forces around her.
This piece was composed using as a source the recording from a collective improvisation procession with La Orejona (XS) – who served as a mobile recording membranal studio. This session took place indoors and outdoors on a rainy and windy night in November 2023 at Morphine Raum in Berlin as part of the Radical Sounds Latin America Festival. Infinitas gracias a todxs por resonar con nosotras y activar en conjunto una ruidosa comunidad en movimiento.
Nicole L’Huillier
is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher from Santiago, Chile. Her practice centers on exploring sounds and vibrations as construction materials to delve into questions of agency, identity, collectivity, and the activation of a vibrational imagination. Her work materializes through installations, sonic/vibrational sculptures, custom-made (listening and/or sounding) apparatuses, performances, experimental compositions, membranal poems, and writing. She holds a Ph.D. in Media Arts & Sciences from MIT (2022). Her work has been shown at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2024), Kunsthalle Bern (2024), Ming Contemporary Art Museum (McaM), Shanghai (2023), ifa-Gallery Stuttgart (2023), Bienal de Artes Mediales Santiago (2023, 2021, 2019, 2017), Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (2022), Transmediale, Berlin (2022), Ars Electronica, Linz (2022, 2019, 2018), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC), Santiago de Chile (2022), 6th Ural Industrial Biennale, Ekaterinburg (2021), and 16th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2018), among others.