Output details

Silent exercises 2011

Silent Exercises explores silence without itself being silent. It examines the word ‘silence’ as it is spoken in nearly ninety languages from across all five continents. Some languages do not have a word for silence and instead they might say: ‘the place where there is no sound’.

Silent Exercises takes recordings of the word ‘silence’ being spoken in each of the nearly ninety languages selected as its material. Sonograms of these recordings have been compiled on video. The abstract black and white lines of the sonograms fade into each other forming a visual landscape, in some way describing the non-audible. The word is presented without sound, true to its meaning and turned into a visual pattern. The film can be projected on an architectural structure or onto a white wall.

The sound installation - also part of the project - uses the voice recordings arranged in layers, in rhythmic patterns, either as solos or as a cacophony of voices.

The recordings are diffused through many loudspeakers arranged according to architectural structure of the building in which the work is exhibited. The recordings are diffused from different places in the room or, as in the museum of modern art in Salzburg (2012), from a wall covered with flat white loudspeakers. In some versions the sounds stop from time to time and the public can listen to what we term silence but is, actually, the ambient sound of the site in question.

Silent Exercises can be realized as a combination of sound and visuals or individually and has been exhibited at:

• 2011 Aubette, Strasbourg, France, solo exhibition (sound)

• 2011 Donaueschinger Musiktage, festival of New Music Donaueschingen (sound and video)

• 2011 Gallery Mazzoli, Berlin (video)

• 2012 Stiftskirche Kaiserslautern, Germany, solo exhibition (sound and video)

• 2012 Museum der Moderne, Salzburg (sound and video )