Kunstraum Aarau
Aarau, Switzerland
June 6–July 6, 2008
Two channel, eight speaker audio installation
for the stairway to the Kunstraum Aarau.
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.
