The „Nocturne in Z Minor“ sound pieces explore the relationship between text, language, and sound. In 2003, the poet and translator Christian Hawkey participated in the global protests against the impending war on Iraq— the largest protests in history. During this time, Hawkey wrote his brilliant book Ventrakl (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011), where he puts Georg Trakl's tragic life squarely into the poetic equation by creatively translating Trakl's poems into English and remixing Trakl's poetry. Hawkey creates something new that holds the entangled worlds of the two poets, testifying to the enormous change that came over lyric poetry in the twenty-first century.
„Nocturne in Z Minor“ continues this process and intervenes with strategies of sound art in poetry. The sonic patterns of Trakl's and Hawkey's lyrics gradually transform into sound pieces. Texts are processed and translated into sound, which creates a space adjacent to language, where a new mode of feeling might be discovered.
The pieces feature the vocal artist Audrey Chen. Her voice interrupts the normative modes of voicing poetry and radically reimagines the way texts can be “read” out loud. She explores the phonetics of the language and transfers them from meaning to a sonic experience. Words slip back into syllables and sounds, creating a new ecology of mood, ambiance, tone, emotionality, and resonance.