What is the Sound of One Flag Burning? (2017)
performance, video, vinyl record

This project combines political demonstration with philosophical reflection on recording technology. In 2016 I created an audio recording of a public flag burning in response to rising neo-national sentiment in the US and in light of the then president-elect’s threat to imprison those responsible for a similar event.

The project suggests a double homage: firstly, to the American artist Dread Scott’s 1988 What is the Proper Way to Display a US Flag?, a work that invited participants to step on an American flag and which prompted President Bush Senior’s support of legislation that subsequently prohibited such acts. Secondly, the project alludes to Iannis Xenakis’s 1958 work Concrete PH, a musique concrète composition that consists entirely of the sound of a single burning ember.

Invoking musique concrète composer Pierre Schaeffer’s notion of acousmatics—which imagines recordings as capable of removing all reference to a sound’s source—the project asks: to what extent can sound reliably evidence acts of transgression?

What is the Sound of One Flag Burning? comprises a single-channel video documenting the original demonstration event along with a double-sided, 50-edition vinyl record. Side A of the record features the flag-burning recording, while Side B consists of two original recordings by the artist Samson Young.