Marcus Schmickler, Julian Rohrhuber
Politics of Frequency

Is it possible to perceive changes in society through changes in its music? Musician Marcus Schmickler and media theorist Julian Rohrhuber's composition Politics of Frequency deals with the acoustic rendering of numerical concepts, following the hypothesis that music and economics share a fundamental object: the number. Inspired by Alain Badiou's Le nombre et les nombres (1990), Schmickler's and Rohrhuber's performance as well as the following discussion attempt to question the immediacy of numbers, which allows calculation to govern today's economy, social sciences and everyday life. For their presentation at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, they further debate the interrelations between academic concepts and sound with philosopher and curator Daniel Tyradellis.