crooked linger (2019)

Three works (each 11 min. duration), eight-channel sound installation

basis Frankfurt IEPA duo exhibition 2019

My work crooked linger (2018) consists of three sound installations encompassing a staircase and two rooms connected to it. The work is based on the text ‘Haus des Ohres’ by the highly influential concrete poet, writer, artist and Hörspiel author Franz Mon.
 ‘Haus des Ohres’ was Mon’s proposal for a big sound event in which live performances, readings, theatre and installation all occur simultaneously. My work crooked linger takes the text as a starting point for my own approach.

The two-channel staircase work, Step G, features Franz Mon’s poem gab gold : gegen gong. For the four-channel installation 1–101 A, I composed extracts of Mon’s ‘Haus des Ohres’ text, read by the poet, performer and artist Helen Brecht, together with people and building sounds, following a particular self-made system. The third installation Neka B (two channels) is mainly composed from recordings of social occasions, including Basque game events during my French IEPA residency at Nekatoenea in Hendaye in 2018. Spanish, French and Basque languages mix. Recordings of Franz Mon’s staircase at his home in Frankfurt also included. Each space had a single light bulb with a yellow-gold tint.

The sounds purposefully spill over into neighbouring spaces. Further to that idea of interplay, certain sounds can also be heard in all three pieces. The work considers the way we move through spaces, daily rhythms, how we listen, and the body in relation to architecture. It adopts a playful approach to language structure within architectural structure.

For the staircase work Step G, I had two small speakers—one hanging high up close to the ceiling, one ‘hidden’ below the wooden stairs with its own a chair to listen at—playing a looped reading by Helen Brecht of Mon’s poem gab gold : gegen gong[1], together with other rhythmic sounds.

[1] Franz Mon, Freiflug für Fangfragen: 103 Alphabetgedichte mit 26 Versalcollagen und 1 CD mit Lauttexten seit 1960 (1st edn, Vienna, 2004), 45.

The recording process for the vocals of 1-101 A and Step G was a collaboration with the poet, performer and artist Helen Brecht, whose voice can also be heard. Brecht also suggested the Franz Mon poem gab gold : gegen gong, which has a back and forth rhythm that was perfect for the staircase installation.

1-101A extract

Photography by Katrin Binner

Supported by: