8-channel sound installation
Speakers mounted on glass
Zen Monastery, Ibiraçu, Espírito Santo, Brazil
2014
“Molecular monologue” is a multi-channel sound installation by Mats Hjelm and Isabel Löfgren. A woman’s voice recites the opening paragraph of a novel about a poor woman’s migration to the big city. The voice speaks the same words in several languages in a polyphonic composition that begins in the suitcase and expands out from it. The words sometimes overlap each other and sometimes interrupt moments of silence. Some of the languages spoken are unknown to the speaker, and as the voice tries to imitate unfamiliar sounds, it exposes the challenges of those who live in a constant state of translation.