Soundwalk Collective: Ulysses Syndrome

Soundwalk Collective‘s installation “Ulysses Syndrome” is hosted during the month of November at the first floor of the Beit Beirut. The neo-Ottoman-style building, formerly a military outpost and home of snipers in the years of the civil war, has known a rebirth as city’s history museum and urban cultural centre. The first floor, though, maintains the traces of the war period and of the passage of the snipers. Here, the artistic collective presents “Ulysses Syndrome”, which reconstructs Ulysses’ journey from Troy to Ithaca through all the sounds recorded by the artists in over two months across the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea. Properly equipped, they intercepted accidental overlaps of noises, music and voices, private conversations and service communications between boats, ships and the coast: the resulting installation is a composition of sound fragments, a musical map of the Mediterranean basin.

“Ulysses Syndrome” is an exhibition produced by Fantom, presented by the Italian Cultural Institute in Beirut as part of the programme “Italy, Cultures, the Mediterranean” of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. The installation premiered in Palermo in June 2018 as part of Manifesta 12 and then presented at the Petit Palais of the Bardo National Museum in Tunis.