// Malkastenpark, verschachtelt

Sound Installation

A box can enclose, infold and protect from unwanted glances or dust. A box may keep intimate things secret and harmful things away. A box can be used to transport, categorize or store other things. On the contrary, boxes symbolize economic and global inequalities, rendered visible when cardboard boxes, originally used for transporting goods, are later found on the streets, covering the ones without any goods and without a home. Furthermore, blackboxed processes in science or blackboxed algorithms of social media platforms are intransparent and often used for manipulation. That makes the box not just a thing to store and transport other things, but also one containing the ambivalent (dis)advantages, ethics and meanings of technology. Placing boxes into nature and nature into boxes puts a basic technology – the container – in correspondence with nature. And while a cardboard box seems to be misplaced between the trees, it is still made out of trees.

"Malkastenpark, verschachtelt" is a sound installation, based on surface sounds, recorded on and around the Malkastenpark Düsseldorf. By taking walks trough the area while dragging metal and cardboard boxes, I performed surface sound walks. The boxes grind over gravel and leaves, slide through meadows, over the water surface of a pond and gently stratch along the branches of trees. The interaction between the boxes and the surfaces of the natural surrounding create sounds, which are recorded by small microphones, placed inside the boxes. The recorded sounds are arranged into a composition and played back via the same boxes, in which they were recorded. The boxes are hanging from the trees, creating a multichannel listening experience.
Realised as part of fire flies 2024.

03.09.24 @Malkastenpark Düsseldorf