Alex Kirt
Shintonarumori
Artist Statement
Shintonarumori is a series of sound-art sculptures featuring repurposed, customized, shoeshine boxes as modern musical instruments. Shintonarumori is, perhaps ironically, partially inspired by the Futurist artist Luigi Russolo’s works entitled Intonarumori. The Shintonarumori series is an artistic metaphor for the legacy of class inequality in Western society. Just as the shiners knelt to shine the shoes of others in exchange for pennies, the working class continues to kneel before the ruling class as the mudsills of society, carrying the burden of an oppressive, centrally controlled, oligarchic economic system in which the chief beneficiaries are a small yet powerful minority of the population; wealthy corporate capitalists. Shintonarumori is a call for unity among the working class. Each of these musical instruments is unique in design and in the sounds they produce. When performed in unity, these instruments are able to achieve a cacophony that was unattainable when performed alone. In order to realize the full potential of the Shintonarumori, they must be united, just as the working class must unite in order to shed the bonds of the corporate capitalist economic system, to equalize the distribution of wealth, and to establish a true democracy in which all citizens are able to enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Agrariantonarumori
Drontonarumori
Theremintonarumori
The Tinker
