The sound sculpture in 1993 on Vilhelm Thomsens Plads in Valby is formed as the top of a sphere. A mat, black dome breaking free of the earths grasp or a sinking globe. Slightly dangerous, but at the same time a calm and stable element in contrast to the restless surroundings. Placed in a square in the urban space the sculpture establishes a centre around which the space gathers.
The size of the sculpture means that ones initial encounter with it is physical rather than intellectual. It is first and foremost a body in the space. Its form suggests that it is only its top that we can see, in the same way that we know that the major part of an iceberg lurks below the water. Once an hour voices are heard from the mysterious black mound. The place from which speech emerges is like the volume that we imagine the sculpture to have unseen by us. The sound in the sculpture was composed in two layers with a track of recognisable voices laid on top of a track of manipulated human voices. These were the voices of children and adults, cries and laughter recorded in Plaza Real in Barcelona. So one could recognise the sound as speech, but only catch individual words with difficulty. As with the majority of Eva Kochs works, here too it was possible only to maintain a part of the work – a large part is always ungraspable.
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Foto: Simon Laudrup -
Foto: Anders Sune Berg