In the audio-paper Fear of Weakness: Songs to Agitate the Man, artist Morten Poulsen builds on his project Boys Will Be… (2022), in which he met with young cis-men to have conversations about vulnerability, intimacy and masculine norms. In the end of these meetings, Morten recorded the men giggling, and these recordings were then presented as a sound installation. Listening back to these recordings, and informed by both sound and gender studies, Morten explores the deficiencies of masculinity norms and the fear of being exposed as non-masculine. How might the sound of giggling cultivate a softening of hardened spaces, and encourage a reflection on the way that men relate to each other? How might the sound of giggling men serve as a noise in the patriarchal system?
