A Nocturnal Assembly
A Nocturnal Assembly is a one night audio-visual installation conceived by artists Neal White and Tina O’Connell for the contemplative space of Kiezkapelle, Berlin, for its first iteration during Soil Assembly in January 2027. It responds to the Soil Assembly as a form of collective action that can make way for the voices of other living species to be heard.
A Nocturnal Assembly is a temporal work, starting around dusk, as sounds and images loop, connecting day and night.
In this project, Soil Assembly starts to explore how it can welcome multi-species voices, in terms of knowledge, attunement, justice and stewardship. The project was developed following the artists own investigations into nocturnal environments that were presented as a keynote at the first Soil Assembly in Kochi Muziris Biennale. It was since developed through extensive dialogue and discussions with other international artists, organisers and activists participating in Soil Assembly, engaged in areas such as deep listening.
A Nocturnal Assembly draws our attention to human pollution flooding into a temporal zone, that is the sanctuary of other life-worlds. In foregrounding other species voices, the project not only highlights the rich nature of nocturnal biodiversity, but draws attention to ‘anthropogenic noise’, including sound and light, that now threaten the sanctuary that is the night time, a nocturnal pause in human activity, providing a breathing space for so many species.
The installation takes form through slow moving images from nocturnal fieldwork made by Neal White and Tina O’Connell shot over the last three years in Amsterdam, UK and India. Meanwhile, a network of international artists with shared interests in deep listening and ecology, some of that are connected to the Soil Assembly, have been approached to provide field recordings for the nocturnal soundscape – the ‘songs of species’ witnessed across the world.