In Practice: Coco Klockner

Coco Klockner’s practice moves between text, sound, sculpture, and architectural intervention, immersing viewers in site-responsive environments that probe the ways systems of representation are constructed. The forms that emerge in her work mirror and intersect the dynamics embedded in the structural concerns of transness, examining the terms through which its status is constituted.

For In Practice, Klockner stages an environment where a resonant body of frequencies, in tone and texture, is altered to explore considerations of gender as “noted moments of interface.” Triggered by visitor motion, the audio component of this work replays an undisclosed conversation between lovers through two subwoofers modified with custom steel faces. Through these rumbling boxes, the dialogue sounds muffled and notably private, as if ringing through floorboards or a closed door. The audio and its reduced resolution become a medium for a range of material manipulations, seeming to spasm and break. It then transitions into a MIDI-transposed rendering of the conversation, transforming each syllable into a deadpan kick drum sample, before moving into a sliced iteration that melts into a deep, descending tone, shaking the steel and earthen stages upon which the speakers sit.

In Practice: Coco Klockner is curated by Jovanna Venegas, Curator and Chris Aque, Exhibition and Program Manager.