From the Series Transcoding the Museum, 195 World National Anthems Playing Simultaneously, 0:05:35 min audio visualization, dimensions variable, exhibition view, July 12th, 2025, Living Theater, NYC. Photo © Alian Rives' Studio
195 World National Anthems Playing Simultaneously is a video projection and audio visualization that collapses the borders of sound and nationhood into a single, discordant sonic mass. The work layers the official national anthems of all 193 United Nations member states, alongside those of the Vatican and Palestine, reaching a total of 195 voices—each representing a claim to sovereignty, identity, and imagined community.As these anthems play at once, their once distinct melodies dissolve into an indistinguishable, off-key chorus. Any singular patriotic refrain is submerged in collective noise, except for one—the longest anthem—that occasionally cuts through the cacophony, a fragile thread of recognition amid overwhelming simultaneity.This work is an aural monument to contradiction: the desire for unity colliding with the reality of fractured global identities. By forcing these symbols of nationalism into the same acoustic space, the piece confronts the impossibility of true harmony under the structures that anthems celebrate—borders, exclusions, and the myth of homogeneity. The projected visualization mirrors this clash: shifting waves, pulses, or interference patterns translate the sound into a living archive of coexisting, competing voices.195 World National Anthems Playing Simultaneously invites the audience to listen for what emerges from chaos: the dissonance that binds us, the singular that resists erasure, and the possibility of a new anthem formed not by states but by shared noise.