*100 copies limited edition* A handbag purchased in Tokyo in the early 2000s reappears in the present, containing a series of personal items: a T-shirt, a CD, five cassettes, and three mini-DVs. Sifting through the material, Barbara Signer rediscovers all kinds of forgotten memories and hidden traces of the past. While
the video cassettes were recorded in the streets of Tokyo at the turn of the millennium, the audio tapes contain music from Nick Kamen to Vivaldi, as well as the artist’s own voice, recorded directly to tape at the end of the 1980s.

On »Beams Boy,« Signer repurposes and reassembles the rediscovered materials. The first composition creates contrasts and tensions through rapid shifts, breaks, and movements reminiscent of Musique concrète and cut-up techniques. We're in the midst of a vibrant and unstabile soundscape, torn between di`erent materialities and temporalities, encountering harmonies and vocal lines that we instantly recognize alongside sounds and noises that speak to us in other, less direct ways. Signer’s child voice guides us through this dense and chaotic sound world. Structuring and commenting on the material, the voice is a haunting presence, clearly located in another time and space, yet here, addressing us in the present.

While the first piece resembles the chaos and emotional overload of everyday life, with all its sounds, colors, smells, and physical encounters, the second composition leads us into a more dreamlike territory. A sense of calm sets in, the impressions of the day begin to be processed. A strangely soothing soundscape unfolds, where down pitched vocal recordings become groovy bass lines and e`ects-laden violas create a lulling, yet not entirely comforting atmosphere. The strange simultaneity of relaxation, contemplation, and eeriness feels like lying in bed at night, half awake, with traces of thoughts and memories wandering through before you finally drift o`.

By evoking all sorts of states and feelings of becoming and finding oneself – euphoria, curiosity and desire, but also insecurity and lostness –, »Beams Boy« is not only a personal reflection on forgotten memories and vanished traces of the past. It also addresses the collective memory of growing up in the 1990s and early 2000s. The two pieces thus do not speak with a singular voice. Rather, they create spaces for di`erent voices, both human and non-human, to overlap and mix. In the encounter, these di`erent traces sometimes unite to form a duet or a chorus, while at other times they remain singular and fragmented. »Beams Boy« is an unfinished conversation, a story in the making, that invites us to listen, but also to participate with our own memories, feelings and images.