Moreover the sound sculpture also represents the plurality of today’s modern living environment. Unlike in Herder’s time, when the identity of the people was taught through traditional order and closely tied to nation and religion, nowadays the state and church and thereby nationalities increasingly lose their meaning as general sense creating authorities.
Instead of identities, provided by the bourgeois institutions there are more and more syncretistic identities, assembled from various origins. In singen 49.03° / 8.24° this tendency to hybridism is understandable through the example of the Iranian child singing a French nursery song or the German choir performing folksongs from all over the world without being able to speak the relevant languages. However, the fact that most of the collected audio material is made of love songs shows that the folk songs sung in everyday life are not only an expression of individual feelings, but on a general level an expression of an overall longing that exists regardless of nationalities.
The project singen 49.03° / 8.24°, designed as “work in progress” does not conclude with the sound sculpture on Ettinger-Tor-Platz. As with many artistic works of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s the participatory aspect that is the perception and the use through the viewer is an important part of the work. Thus Kristof Georgen’s sound work will unfold its in depth effect invisibly and over the course of time. As an on site installation the work counterparts the anonymity in a big city right from the beginning, a feeling of life which Georg Simmel described at the beginning of the last century as “being surrounded by all-around closed gates”.10 With the project singen 49.03° / 8.24° on Ettinger-Tor-Platz, a former city entrance, Kristof Georgen has opened many imaginary closed gates that via the acoustic-sensual perception give way to the experience of others.
1 Herder, cited from Hartmut Braun. Volksmusik: Eine Einführung in die musikalische Volkskunde. Revised edition. Kassel, 1999. p.4
2 ibid p.4
3 ibid p.5
4 Interview with the artist, 19th June 2003
5 Regina Bendix. Symbols and Sounds, Senses and Sentiment: Towards an Ethnography of Listening (Notizen zu einer Ethnographie des (Zu)-Hörens). In: Rolf Wilhelm Brednich/Hein Schmitt (ed.): Symbole. Zur Bedeutung der Zeichen in der Kultur. 30th Congress of Cultural Studies in Karlsruhe, 25th -29th September 1995, Münster 1997. pp.11-31, p.47
6 Susanne K. Langer: Philosophie auf neuem Wege: Das Symbol im Denken, im Ritus und in der Kunst. Frankfurt/Main 1965. p.252
7 Regina Bendix, ibid, p.49
8 Leopold Rombach: Kleiner Versuch über das Rauschen. In: Kunstforum, vol. 55. pp.76-80, p.77
9 For further details refer to: Ernst Bloch. Heritage of Our Time. Extended edition, Frankfurt/Main 1962. p.104
10 Georg Simmel: Das Rätsel des Andern. Eine Soziologie der Großstadt als Soziologie der Sinne.
From: Brigitte Digel, Bernd Künzig (Hgg.): Kristof Georgen SOUND, Kat., Text: Nicole Fritz, Bernd Künzig, Johannes Meinhardt, Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, 2009.
First published in: Fritz, Nicole: singen 49.03º/8.24º oder eine Klangskulptur als Auffangorgan von innerem und äußerem Leben, in: Juni # 2, Oktober 2003, ed. by Projektgruppe KunstZeitSchrift c/o Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe.