Susan Philipsz, Glass Track
Soundpiece at the Hans Otte. Klanghaus
The sound installation Glass Track (2012) by Scottish artist Susan Philipsz is a prime example of her work with sound, space, and memory. Philipsz is known for her mostly site-specific sound installations, which feature her own untrained voice, everyday objects as instruments, or unusual sounds from classical instruments. She uses sound to redefine spaces and evoke emotional responses.
In works such as Study for Strings (2012), for example, she isolates individual instrumental voices from existing compositions and places them in specific spatial con-texts to explore themes such as loss, absence, and memory. The piece installed here, Glass Track, follows a similar concept, integrating glass as an acoustic and symbolic element. Glass represents transparency and fragility—both frequent themes in Philipsz‘s work. The installation includes sounds that are produced by or with glass, or that have an associative connection to it. With Glass Track, Philipsz continues her exploration of the emotional resonance of sound and space, transforming the Hans Otte.Klanghaus at the Weserburg into a poetic place where, high above the Weser River, the relationships between sound, material, memory, and listeners merge.
About
Susan Philipsz was born in Glasgow in 1965 and lives in Berlin. She studied sculpture at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee and earned a master‘s degree from the University of Ulster in Belfast. In 2010, she became the first sound artist to receive the prestigious Turner Prize for her work Lowlands, a sound installation under three bridges in Glasgow in which she sang the traditional Scottish song Lowlands Away. Philipsz‘s work has been exhibited internationally, including at documenta 13 in Kassel and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She has been teaching at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts since 2019.
Hans Otte. Klanghaus
Between 1989 and 1991, the renowned Bremen composer for new music Hans Otte developed the interactive sound installation Klanghaus for the gabled room on level 4 ½ of the Weserburg. Visitors were offered the possibility of proceeding through eight different acoustic zones, all of which corresponded in some way to “breath, wind, prana, white or oceanic noise” (Hans Otte). The multifaceted qualities of the sound were activated by motion detectors.
After three decades of constant presence, it was no longer possible, because of its outdated technology, to present this sound installation in the form originally conceived by Hans Otte. Thus it became necessary to switch off the work once and for all. However, the name of the space remains as Hans Otte. Klanghaus (“Hans Otte. Sound-House”).
And acoustic art maintains its presence as well. In commemoration of this work by Hans Otte that was so important for the history of the Weserburg, the room will also remain dedicated to sound in the future. Since the beginning of 2024, it has been possible to hear contemporary sound pieces by international artists here.
The sound installations are complemented by two textual works created by the American artist Lawrence Weiner (*1942) and affixed to the lateral walls of the room.