In 2024, Künstlerhaus Bethanien is celebrating its 50-year anniversary. It has always been a place of experimentation and innovation, and artists who work with sound have been among its guests from the very beginning. Its program has always been shaped by public exhibitions, concerts, performances, and discussion-based events. Guests working in the studios as part of the residency program have collaborated with artists from the city in many different fields. It is precisely such experimental and genre-transcending projects that have cemented Künstlerhaus Bethanien’s place as one of the most extraordinary art spaces in Berlin—and beyond.
In light of this aesthetic practice, nothing could be better suited to celebrating this anniversary than the presentation of acoustic events in space that are capable of touching and inspiring in equal measure while simultaneously exploring their immateriality. The exhibition seeks to make two layers of sonic temporality tangible: on the one hand, it showcases sound sculptures and objects made by previous exhibitors and resident artists (highlighting historic approaches), while on the other it presents entirely new or newly adapted sound installations specifically developed for this anniversary project.
Sounds of Bethany will include historic sound works by
Wojciech Bruszewski / PL, Terry Fox / US, Rolf Julius / DE, Joe Jones / US, Christina Kubisch / DE, Rolf Langebartels / DE, Benoît Maubrey / US, Paul Panhuysen / NL, Martin Riches / UK, Qin Yufen / CN
and new sound installations by
Frieder Butzmann & Thomas Kiesel / DE, Evelina Deicmane / LV, Raviv Ganchrow / NL, Via Lewandowsky / DE, Robert Lippok / DE, Claudia Märzendorfer / AT, Nika Schmitt / LU, Ivan Svitlychnyi / UA, Maia Urstad / NO.
In addition, historical image and sound contributions from the archive of the Künstlerhaus and from the following artists will be on display: Ulrich Eller, Nils Krüger, Johan Lorbeer, and Gordon Monahan.
With its presentation of 10 historic and nine contemporary artworks created for both eyes and ears, the exhibition includes a diverse range of aesthetic phenomena in which sound, space, time, technology, and form interact: sound sculptures, sound installations, sound objects, sound compositions, and sound performances. The various works offer different conceptual and influential approaches that pursue object-specific, spatial, and intermedial strategies. In this respect, Sounds of Bethany also functions as a retrospective of the activities of Künstlerhaus Bethanien and its contribution to the development of sound art, but above all it offers an overview of the future of the artistic practice of working with sound.
Curator: Carsten Seiffarth
Artistic Director: Christoph Tannert
Kindly supported by Lotto-Stiftung Berlin and the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion – Department of Culture.