About this submission

Typing to Tchaikovsky is an impressionistic, auto-ethnographic, evocative audio documentary, conveyed through natural sound recordings of intimate life in a chapter of pandemic solitude. I made these recordings during 14 days of strict quarantine upon my return to an apartment emptied of my intimate other’s personal effects, the second of two pandemic breakups. This piece is characterized by connective and isolating digital communications, the banal and the mystical sounds of everyday life and a rethinking of silence, the distinction between "music" and "sound", and the performance-of-self.


Creator note: My own personal resonance with this month's prompt is uncanny. My name is Olivia Norrmén-Smith. I turned 30 in March. I am based in Montréal but was born in New York City and my parents now live upstate. My father's mental and physical health has been in decline over the last few years. I lived two major breakups over the course of the pandemic, one of five years and the other of one. 

ON
Olivia Norrmen-Smith

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