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Occulto presents

Glaring Sounds

Marta De Pascalis
and Filippo Vogliazzo





Glaring Sounds reflects on the weaving of collective and individual memory through an investigation on th monumental meaning of bells and its store of significance.

Reverberating monuments produce glaring sounds. Music conveys historical events and community identities in a vibration that becomes a doorway to both individual and collective perception.

In 1950, the US gifted to the city of Berlin the ‘Freiheitsglocke’ (Freedom Bell), created on the model of the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia – an iconic symbol of USA independence – and intended as an anticommunis monument. The bell was installed in the tower of the Rathaus Schöneberg under the pleased gazes of General Clay and Adenauer, while on the same day, in the district of Moabit, a young partisan was put on trial for political activities. The responses of the West Berlin population were contrasting. The bell is entangled wit events and various symbolic meanings that build up to a climax represented by the blow of the clapper: the power of history explodes in a sound and hits an audience that cannot escape from it.

Messages are addressed in the form of reverberation and memories gain physicality in vibrations. Sound moves through metal twenty times faster than it does through the space of a room. When a sound wave reaches th human ear, our brain can recognize it in 0.05 seconds.

And yet, how long does it take to forget it?

History placed the Freiheitsglocke at an interesting crossroads of meanings. The bell reflects dramatic past events through an action in the present, producing a sound that is meant to be a warning for the future. Th object is not limited to its monumental function but also performs as a musical instrument. Even if its historical background is what made it exist in this world, the sound it produces translates it into an hyperobject: it transforms into a compound of symbolic meanings that almost exceeds its historical importance, becoming a performative moment through its resonations.

Sound works as a bridge between what is real and what is not, what has an effect on us while being completely aethereal, just like memories, whose immaterial weight is necessary to the perception of ourselves and others.
With their reverberating installation, the artists would like to reenact a moment of remembrance, in which the sounds spread through the space addressing the audience’s communal and individual perceptions. The rever generated by the sculpture will echo through the room, and like an image from the past will fade away, merely leaving a memory of itself.

Glaring Sounds aims to create a meditative moment for a collective re-attunement.




Glaring Sounds is recipient of MOVIN'UP SPETTACOLO – PERFORMING ARTS 2020
Promoted by MIBACT Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism - General Directorate for Performing Arts and GAI Association for the Circuit of the Young Italian Artists together with TPP Puglia Public Theater.
We thank the archive of the Museums Tempelhof-Schöneberg for the material and collaboration.

Thu 22 - Sun 25 Oct

19.30-21.00 / ACUD GALLERY





Installation view at Basilica di San Sebastiano in Ferla, Sicily, September 2020. Photo Salvo Alibrio


Photo courtesy archive of the Museums Tempelhof-Schöneberg


SCHEDULE 2020


Thu 22


19:00 / ACUD KUNSTHAUS Festival Opening

20:30 / ACUD STUDIO
Selection #1
What Can A Body Do?
21:30 / ACUD STUDIO 
Selection #2
Coming Of Ages

19:30 - 21:00 / ACUD GALLERY
Occulto presents 
Glaring Sounds
Marta De Pascalis & Filippo Vogliazzo
 Installation