Performa Curator Defne Ayas in conversation with British artist Paul Elliman, whose piece, Sirens Taken For Wonders, brought together viewers of all backgrounds for a siren-watch across New York, observing the sounds of the city, and the varied feelings the wails of fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars can generate: alarm, stress, excitement, relief... Elliman then paired artists, academics, an opera singer, the Chair of the Mayor’s Noise Committee, and other siren experts and amateurs for an explosive panel discussion at the Van Alen Institute, available here in the Archive.

Paul Elliman is a London-based artist and designer who works with typography, the human voice, and the forms of audio signage that mediate the relationship between the two. His work has been shown in London’s Tate Modern, New York’s Cooper Hewitt National Design Musuem, the New Museum, Milan’s Galleria Massimo de Carlo, and the Kunsthalle Basel, among others. Elliman has taught in the Yale School of Art since 1997, and is a thesis supervisor for Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem, Netherlands (21 minutes).