Jahresgabe

A Show From Those...

Spengemann, Jakob

Jakob Spengemann's Jahresgabe refers to the three-part exhibition series If a Tree Falls in a Forest and No One Is Around, Does It Even Make a Sound?, in which Spengemann presented his sound installation A Show From Those in This Audience of One. The work brought together various sound recordings of crowds of people. As acoustic imprints of a past collective presence, they roamed the exhibition space, where they encountered the audience there. A lone microphone in the spotlight evoked the expectation of a performance, which was only partially realized. The background noise produced by those present and captured by the microphone determined the intensity of the echo of those absent. The work thus focused on the audience itself, whose reactions in the room were connected to the recorded audience noises as if by a Möbius strip.