Daniela Stubbs-Leví & Lucía Hinojosa Gaxiola: Geography of Sound
Lugar Santuario

Geography of Sound / Lugar Santuario features the work of multidisciplinary artists Daniela Stubbs-Leví and Lucía Hinojosa Gaxiola. Curated by Anna Dusi, the exhibition originates from an intention of mapping sound through an array of tactics, protocols, poems and exercises. 

Geography of Sound / Lugar Santuario spans a series of individual works by the artists including experimental scores, artist books, drawings and objects from past projects, as well as their joint collaboration, Surcomancia. At once an immersive poem and collaborative sound installation, this third iteration of Surcomancia is the centerpiece of the exhibition at 15 Beautreillis.

The dialogue between the artists’ work narrates a performative, sonic and poetic methodology rooted in the practice of listening – listening to the deep archives: the spinning earth, a decaying leaf, black holes, a dying star; an insistence that listens to the impossible as a political and poetic intention, animating invisible traces that are then appropriated, interpreted and reconfigured by the artists.

Surcomancia – from the arts of bibliomancy and geomancy – is a divinatory practice the artists have been developing since 2023, when the artists traveled to San Andrés Roaguía, a small village in Oaxaca, Mexico, to explore a calcified waterfall filled with geological and cultural traces. In San Andrés Roaguía, the artists were surrounded by multiple kinds of surcos: furrows in the terrain that have been eroded by the passing of time. Through conversations, field recordings, walks, jokes and writing, the artists shared stories about their grandmothers -- an ancestral sorority -- and their guidance, remembering their voices through a shared lack. 

In this way, the surco is an absence created by flux: water, air, accumulation, repetition, time, voice. The surco becomes a metaphorical trace of an intervention. The practice consists of listening to the echoes of absence, recombining sonic elements with interior traces and the environment. 

From this experience, Surcomancia became a poem and limited edition publication that took shape as a risographed poemaire-zine. Its second iteration, Surcomancia Radiofónica, was a long-distance radio performance where the furrows of space and time were explored through radio waves. 

For the exhibition at 15 Beautreillis, the artists have created Surcomancia’s third iteration: a new poem and sonic flux mapped by field recordings, sound poetry and conversations during the artists’ encounter in France, adding to this piece the exploration of the furrows of Paris, Villeneuve-sur-Bellot and Charleville. This sound installation invites the spectator to find answers in their deep listening to reimagine, recombine and to hear their own flux.