Preemptive Listening review – artist’s film about sirens is buzzing with sonic ideas

The sound of sirens … Preemptive Listening.
Photograph: True Story (Photograph: True Story)

This film from the London-based artist Aura Satz is an exploration of sirens – as in the warning devices, not the mythical creatures that lure unsuspecting men to their doom. Really it’s an art film, and might have been more at home in a gallery where audiences would be able to engage with its striking images and experimental soundtrack for as long as the mood takes them. As a feature-film experience it becomes an endurance test, a battle to pay attention and concentrate for the whole thing.

It opens with a drone shot of a huge siren in the middle of what looks like a residential neighbourhood, ready to alert residents to heaven knows what threat. Over the top, a shrill, insinuating track from composer Laurie Spiegel buzzes with the nagging whine of an electronic mosquito. There are some interesting ideas here. British-Egyptian actor Khalid Abdalla muses on the role of sirens in the 2011 Arab spring protests, and we learn that in Palestine loudspeakers in mosque minarets sound a siren every year on Nakba day – one second for every year that has passed since Palestinians were displaced from their homeland after the creation of the state of Israel.

Full story at Yahoo News