The Marrow
There was a word inside a stone.
I tried to pry it clear,
mallet and chisel, pick and gad,
until the stone was dropping blood,
but still I could not hear
the word the stone had said.
I threw it down beside the road
among a thousand stones
and as I turned away it cried
the word aloud within my ear
and the marrow of my bones
heard, and replied.
Sound installation, 4-channel, BEAUX_LOSANGES AKKUSTIK, Tschiertschen, 2022
The holiday home Aux Losanges in the idyllic mountain village of Tschiertschen in Graubünden, CH, regularly opens its doors and becomes a venue for cultural events. For the group exhibition, I show a sound installation in the living room of the house. In the center of the installation is a radio that sends semantically incomprehensible signals into the room, but which can be located in the realm of newspeak due to their dynamics and rhythm; they are texts about permafrost and the effects of the climate catastrophe in the alpine region. Additional electrodynamic exciters and structure-borne sound transducers are installed which translate acoustic signals into vibrations and cause the floor, the walls and the windows to shake; the disturbances can be heard and felt. The work demonstrates a model setting that attempts to transfer the current, urgent discourse to a physical, perceptible level. (the title of the work is a poem by Ursula K. Le Guin)
Audio Documentation: