In this performance/work by Dror Feiler, the sentence »No Sound Is Innocent« is not merely stated — it is carved into being.
The act of engraving these words into stone is both inscription and accusation, both creation and exposure. Every strike of the tool against stone, every fracture of the surface, generates a sound that becomes part of the work. The stone resists, vibrates, protests. It refuses silence.
The raw sounds of carving — impact, friction, dust, vibration, failure, force — are captured, processed, and transformed into an expanding sonic field. The audience hears not only the marks on the stone, but the hidden resonances behind them: the microtremors of pressure, the grain of the material, the violence of inscription. The electronics do not ornament the act; they amplify its truth.
In this setting, »No Sound Is Innocent« becomes a lived reality. The sound of the carving is not neutral; it is the record of a struggle between body and material, intention and resistance.
The stone carries its own history — geological, architectural, political. The action carries another history — labour, revolt, memorialisation, destruction. The electronics reveal yet another layer — amplification, distortion, surveillance, transformation.
To carve a sentence is to wound the stone. To carve this sentence is to expose how every sound contains traces of force, context, consequence. Nothing about this act is innocent: not the gesture, not the tool, not the amplification, not the listening.
The performance becomes a ritual of making audible what is usually concealed: that sound is always embedded in power, in matter, in bodies that strain and endure. Even the smallest vibration testifies to a world in motion — a world shaken by violence, by resistance, by memory. What the audience hears is not music in the conventional sense. It is the acoustic truth of the action, the politics of the gesture, and the tremble of the material world itself.
In carving these words, Feiler does not illustrate a concept; he enacts it. The stone becomes a witness.The sound becomes testimony. And the audience is left with the unmistakable reality that »No Sound Is Innocent.«
»No Sound is Innocent« is commissioned by CTM Festival, DAAD and iii. A previous version of this piece was originally shown in 2023, titled: »Is this the time to make art« in the framework of gallery TEGEN2 at Supermarket Art Fair in Stockholm.
Dror Feiler is a 2025/26 Music & Sound fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin-Program. The project has been developed during his residency in Berlin with curatorial support by Dahlia Borsche and Sebastian Dürer.
CTM 2026 Exhibition
24.1. – 22.3.2026 | Free entry
daadgalerie & Kunstraum Kreuzberg