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Long abstract:

Gold, the auric metal, cause of invasions and extractive practices, has been utilized as a component in audio devices and digital-electronic apparatuses due to its exceptional conductive properties which ensure the efficient flow of electrical current. However, the pursuit of it has come at a devastating cost, resulting in the loss of millions of lives and ecosystem imbalance. (Witzgall/Stakemeier, 2014)

Minerals support electrical bonds through chemical processes (Santos Barbara, 2019), and gold, being neutral, is well understood and implemented in electronic products. Gold’s use for technological purposes seems to be minimal, but it destroys the land and affects the inhabitants of the territories where it can be found. The Bolivian indigenous Aymara Philosopher Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui says "We produce raw material and they give us back processed products" referring to the "wonderful products” sold as black boxes with hidden materials extracted from South America, to be consumed worldwide.

Delving on the repercussions of gold’s mining and elaborating on how sonic material flows through gold and what gold does with sound (Cox, 2017), this performance explores the use of this precious and desired material in the digital and analog sound processes of electronic audio devices and interconnects this use (Ahmed, 2019), with the history of colonization of a exploited territory (Chocó, Colombia) where gold has been extracted since the Spanish conquest, almost 500 years ago.