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Janet Cardiff
To Touch, 1993

Installation view: Janet Cardiff, Walking thru’, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria, 2004

Photo: Gerald Zugmann

Installation view: An der Oberfläche_On Surface, Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany, 2016

Photo: Dejan Saric

Janet Cardiff

Collection

Mixed Media Installation with binaural audio
Dimensions variable

To Touch consists of a large wooden table in the center of a scantly lit room which visitors can ‘play’ as they would a musical instrument. By stroking the surface with their hands they elicit different sound and narrative scenarios, which issue from hidden loudspeakers on the surrounding walls. The participant thereby becomes the performing artist, awakening a pre-set score to life and creating variations within a set of possible parameters. Each outcome gives rise to different expectations: the mysterious story itself, unlike the one currently generated by the viewer, remains uncertain.

Whispers and fragments of conversations uttered by a male and three female voices are mixed with the familiar sounds of a car screeching, telephone ringing, a knife being sharpened, a gun shot, film music. “The sound is perceived to be coming from all around the listener in a sculptural way,“ Cardiff describes, elaborating, “Immersion in the sound is very important for installations as well as sound being able to define space.” Foregrounding touching, listening and the act of imagining as opposed to looking, To Touch constitutes an impressive Gesamtkunstwerk of the senses, which toys with the notion of totalizing perception. But as the artist says, “The piece does nothing if someone doesn’t come over and touch it.”

*1957 in Ontario, Canada I Living and working in Berlin, Germany

UPCOMING LOANS

Solo Exhibition: Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller
Venue: Museum Tinguely, Basel
June 7, 2023 - September 24, 2023
Curator: Curated by Lehmbruck Museum, traveling to Museum Tinguely

Artist's Website

http://www.cardiffmiller.com

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