In the audio-paper Fear of Weakness: Songs to Agitate the Man, Morten Poulsen builds on his project Boys Will Be… (2022), in which he met with young 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 subsequently 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?
