Gedenke die Zukunft
A soundinstallation for the Tyrolian town Schwaz, developed during a Stadkünstlerin residency in spring 2026 for the Klangspuren Schwaz festival.
How does sound connect us to our memories and experiences? And might this capacity of sound be essential for the connections we build with the place we live in, our relationship to past memories, present experiences and future hopes of and for this place, its environment and the people that live and pass through it?
With these questions in mind I travelled to Schwaz and over a period of six weeks had the pleasure to interview some residents of the town to hear from them what sounds in their environment are meaningful to them and how they feel and relate to these sounds.
Following these conversations I explored Schwaz and its sounds through a practice of deep listening that also included exploring the history connected to these sounds, in the case of the impressive bell tower for example or the devastation that the mountain river, the Lahnbach, has occasionally brought to the town over centuries. But also the reasons for the presence or absence of sounds, the song of bird species that no longer exist due to the climate emergency, or the constant traffic from the motorway that splits the valley.
Throughout this process it became clear that Schwaz has a particular sound quality. A sound quality that includes the Lahnbach that provides a constant sound bed, the church bells that regularly pierce the air, the birds that sing all day and much of the night, and the stillness that people associate with forest and mountains that border the town. But sound quality that goes beyond the actual sounds, a sound quality that was invariably described to as a sense of peacefulness, of belonging, of home.
Gedenke die Zukunft reflects the idea often found in literary descriptions of hearing, seeing and smelling familiar things that transport us back in time and evoke feelings related to places, people and situations we have experienced there. But hearing also roots us in the present, and can allow us to contemplate the future. This work then proposes listening as a form of ‘Gedenken’, a contemplative remembering that is both past and future oriented.
Gedenke die Zukunft weaves together snippets from conversations with Schwaz residents, field-recordings gathered from in and around the town and music that reflects my experience of the conversations as well as spending six weeks in Schwaz. It exists as a sound installation, a soundwalk, a performance and a Tiroler Tarrock card deck.