Pro-Helvetia Residency
As I began my residency at AiR studio, Rote Fabrik, the first task I set myself was to get a sense of the room I would inhabit for the next 3 months. To be able to work in a space I find it necessary to first cultivate connection with it; to create a sense of it in myself.
AiR Studio, Rote Fabrik - Zurich
AiR Studio, Rote Fabrik - Zurich
The space was a rectangular white volume 14m(L) x 8m(W) x 4m(H) with washes of spring light flooding in through large bay windows that occupied the entire length of the back wall. The furniture included some chairs, stacks of wooden benches and tables on which were draped beddings. My residency guide had gone down with covid and hadn’t been around to store the laundry. There was something inspiring and stimulating about the space.
Resonance
As I shifted furniture to create space, creaking sounds echoed around the room. The acoustics of the mostly empty space were such that simply touching a bench at certain places in the room could make the creaking of metal and wood reverberate across the space, filling the quiet room with sound. This acoustic hyper-liveness of the space resonated with questions in the project on relations and connections of people, time and place; how things that happen at one place can have repercussions elsewhere, how things could be physically manifest at multiple places at the same time. This physical contemplation on resonance became a starting point from which the process at Rote Fabrik unfolded.
As I shifted furniture to create space, creaking sounds echoed around the room. The acoustics of the mostly empty space were such that simply touching a bench at certain places in the room could make the creaking of metal and wood reverberate across the space, filling the quiet room with sound. This acoustic hyper-liveness of the space resonated with questions in the project on relations and connections of people, time and place; how things that happen at one place can have repercussions elsewhere, how things could be physically manifest at multiple places at the same time. This physical contemplation on resonance became a starting point from which the process at Rote Fabrik unfolded.