Returning a sound

Who decides what is worth preserving and what should be destroyed? Returning a Sound, a 2004 video by artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, asks this urgent question. Their short film, at first glance offbeat, is part of a larger project called "Landmark", which aims, among other things, to raise awareness of the civil disobedience campaign by residents of Vieques, Puerto Rico, who demanded the cessation of US military tests on their territory.

In Returning a Sound, a young activist, Homar, travels across the landscapes of Vieques on a moped with a trumpet on his exhaust pipe. His noisy trip summons up the bombings’ sound memory and resounds like a call for unity and rebellion. 

Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Casadilla’s video Returning a Sound is in the Pinault Collection. It was shown during the 2009 exhibition "Un certain état du monde ?" (“A Certain State of the World?”) at the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow.