Villa Lontana presents Hidden Noise: Sonitus Occulti, an exhibition by Cory Arcangel and Hampus Lindwall that brings together a constellation of archival documents, scores, artworks, and sonic materials by the artists, alongside contributions from Ellen Arkbro, Nils Henrik Asheim, Pierre Bismuth, Kara-Lis Coverdale, Tom Crawford, Marcel Duchamp, Flavor Flav, Haley Fohr aka Circuit des Yeux, Joy-Leilani Garbutt, Amina Hocine, Stine Janvin, Roc Jiménez de Cisneros (EVOL), Hanne Lippard, Haroon Mirza, Phill Niblock, Charlemagne Palestine, Seth Price, and Akira Sileas.
The exhibition traces the four previous iterations of Hidden Noise, the Fluxus-inspired organ concert series initiated in Paris in 2018 by Cory Arcangel and Hampus Lindwall with the aim of developing a new repertoire for the pipe organ. The title is borrowed from Marcel Duchamp’s À bruit secret (With Hidden Noise), the 1916 readymade produced in collaboration with his friend, collector and art critic Walter Arensberg. Duchamp asked Arensberg to place a secret object inside a ball of twine, later sealed between two metal plates, creating a work that, when shaken, produces a hidden noise whose source remains unknown to this day.
At Villa Lontana, Hidden Noise: Sonitus Occulti translates this evolving concert series into an exhibition form, becoming the fifth iteration of the project. Archival materials, ephemera, annotations, artworks, and video are brought together as active scores operating as systems of transmission. The exhibition foregrounds Arcangel and Lindwall’s shared interest in the pipe organ as a historical technology capable of producing contemporary forms of abstraction, automation, error, devotion, and noise.
In Rome – a city shaped by ritual practices, inscriptions, hidden chambers, and layered systems of transmission – Hidden Noise: Sonitus Occulti approaches sound less as an event than as a latent condition: something stored within objects, architectures, codes, and bodies before becoming audible.
Producer: Lorena Stamo
Curatorial Assistants: Alice Albanese, Lu Haustein
Graphic Design: Boy Vereecken
Display: Supervoid
With the support of Circolo Scandinavo, Isabella Ritter and Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery. Special thanks to the artists, Rute Ventura, Michele Ferrari, Jasper Niblock, Katherine Liberovskaya, Mathieu Copeland, Victoria Salomoni Studio, Fischio Soundsystem.
