2017

sound installation, 250cm x 150cm x 300cm

‘between me’ features a narrow room divided by a translucent plastic sheet. The visitor cannot access nor see the second part of the space. There is a carpet floor and noise damming material on the wall opposite to the plastic sheet. Light is installed on both sides of the room in order to suggest the idea of space behind the sheet.
Only if the visitor entering the space expresses him/herself vocally, a sequence of two seconds is recorded from a hidden microphone and is played back by two speakers in two different speeds from the other side of the space. Otherwise, the found circumstances won’t change and the visitor leaves the room unaware of the second part of the work. The main starting point of ‘between me’ was coined during an artistic research trip in Senegal (2016). The walls and barriers in some neighborhoods strongly visualized the polarized society of Dakar. The fact of being physically excluded from a part of land or space was intriguing. Even though one cannot physically reach a space, the human auditory perception is often capable of recreating certain parts of an invisible space through echolocation and imagination.
A space can be understood through associative hearing abilities but every individual human, as a moving instrument, contributes to the total of the sound waves of the space we’re currently in or which is near us. What If we, ourselves, become our own limitation? In the sense that our own voice is limiting our conversation. Between Me embodies a work which is dependent on the visitors presence. The visitor becomes part of the invisible space without entering it physically. Furthermore are the delayed repetitions of certain bits of one’s conversation a limiting factor in terms of continuously expressing oneself vocally. At the end the visitor is left with two choices: either to play with the given circumstances or to quietly leave the room again.