“Susanne Miggitsch, Heating up the Seat is a transcript of hours of bus rides through London. Conversations, soundscapes, and announcements are meticulously written down, with priority given to the loudest noise or the loudest voice(s).
“Ding Ding Ding
Bääm Bääm
two-oh-five to Paddington”
The result is a dense textual fabric, a hybrid between documentation and poetry. In the process, Miggitsch creates a portrait of a sound environment that belongs to a particular place.
“Pfff
Eight to Bow Church
Bääm Bääm Bääm
Pfff Pfff Alice Lane
Ding”
It is not surprising that Susanne Miggitsch actually comes from photography. Her textual recording of what she hears is reminiscent of a photographic process and its attempt to depict what is seen one-to-one. Both, of course, capture only fragments:
“I really tried, but I'm afraid I have to admit that I was not able to capture it all with just a pen in my hand.”
The book is to be understood as a script/score and will be performed by several voices when it is presented.”
Introduced as an audio play ‘for one or more voices’, these timestamped snapshots of sounds can be used to recreate the atmosphere of a London bus ride, carefully documented by the artist with pen and paper. Some sounds appear at regular intervals, while others — snippets of conversation and phone calls — occur only once and are often quite funny and puzzling outside their full context.
Soft cover, 17,5 x 11 cm, 192 pages, ed/400, (Vienna) 2023
ISBN: 978-3-903353-12-1
