schweig N
MQ Artist-in-Residence Johannes S. Sistermanns

1.12.25–21.2.26 | TONSPUR_passage
Eintritt frei

Eröffnung: So 30.11., 17h

MQ Artist-in-Residence JOHANNES S. SISTERMANNS presents his 8-channel electroacoustic composition schweig N (12:09 min) in the TONSPUR_passage, which was created during his guest residency at MuseumsQuartier Wien.

schweig N   being silen T   se tair E

A minute of being silent

however long it might last

being silent is directionless, invisible, it leads far beyond

something previously unknown opens up deeply

One thing silence is always:

an inner space | interior space | memory

impregnable to others, borderless, energetically highly charged

Before we say anything, it has already been silently formulated within us

Maintaining Silence

The observant perception of the immediately touching

becomes directly tangible in our own resonance with it through a heightened self-awareness of inner images and sensations

It is interdependent, a closed experiential complex

High intensity, silent activity, the broadest event space

THIS IS THE SPACE of MAINTAINING SILENCE

The material for this electro-acoustic composition consists of the composer's own audio recordings of spoken voices, sounds of spaces, sung room tones (the own frequencies of a room), along with fading echoes and unusually triggered, untuned piano strings. Furthermore, the processed sounds of political and public minutes of silence, for example from Hiroshima (in the sound of the Peace Bell) to mark the atomic bombing in 1945, from the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, the Knesset, the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican in Rome, or the 2016 Germany-England football match in Brussels.
 

The TONSPUR_passage embodies the source of the sound through 8-channels relayed by 8 loudspeakers. The passer-by first listens to the resonant space of silence — a soundtrack, the TONSPUR.
 

Johannes S. Sistermanns, born in Cologne, Germany in 1955, lives and works in Bornheim near Cologne. 91^st TONSPUR-Artist-in-Residence at MQ in Vienna.