Space for Sound
This installation does not emit sound. It does not record it. It simply makes space for it.
SPACE FOR SOUND Site-specific sound installation Akademie der Künste, Berlin, September 2019 Presented as part of Kontakte, festival of electroacoustic music.
A large sculptural ear, mounted on the facade of the Akademie der Künste, marks a perimeter within which visitors are invited to pause and attend to the acoustic life already present: the sounds of the street, of footsteps, of weather, of other people, of the city going about its day. At 6pm, the bells of two nearby churches can be heard simultaneously, in dissonance, a fleeting, unrepeatable sonic event that no speaker could improve upon.
By granting permission for sounds to occur rather than producing them, the work resists the impulse to add, and instead invites subtraction: of distraction, of expectation, of the habit of not listening. As with other works by the artist, the intention is to bring people into their bodies and into the present moment.
Space for Sound also addresses a quieter question: what is the sonic agency of the gallery or museum that commissions or accepts sound art? What does it mean for an institution dedicated to art to simply listen? Presented at a festival of electroacoustic music, whose audiophile audience might be said to privilege the ear at the expense of the body, the work gently turns the question back on its context. Having been granted a site-specific platform by the Akademie der Künste, the artist chose to give it back, returning the space to itself and its own sounds, rather than filling it with something new.
