Technique: piezo speakers, broken mixing desk

Kunstraum Aarau
http://www.kunstraumaarau.ch
Aarau, Switzerland

June 6–July 6, 2008

Stairways are one of my favorite places to work in. For my exhibition in the Kunstraum Aarau I asked to use the narrow winding stairway leading up to the third-story exhibition space.

As in my previous works «Glengarry Block Stairwell» and "Townhouse Stairwell," "Treppenhaus Kunstraum" deals with the notion of a non-space, a transit space, a space nobody normally pays any attention to. I want to bring these spaces to life, but working with sounds that barely register on a conscious level.

The house of the Kunstraum Aarau is well over 100 years old and the wooden staircase is pretty creaky. On the fourth floor above the Kunstraum is a social club for Spanish immigrants, which itself gets pretty loud during opening hours. As there is a freight elevator almost nobody takes the stairway. Using an old broken mixing desk and two ungrounded cables I managed to create some sounds which accentuated the inherent creakiness and twisting acoustics of the old stairway.

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