TONSPUR 65: Jacob Kirkegaard (DNK): Ears of the other

Opening: Sun, Feb 22, 17:00
Venue: TONSPUR_passage
Admission free

As Artist-in-Residence of quartier21/MQ, Jacob Kirkegaard will expand his sound composition "Ears of the other" (2010)  to a multi-channel version for the TONSPUR_passage.

In Ethiopia, Kirkegaard asked fourteen people to describe their favorite everyday sound and worked with each of them to record that sound. From these field recordings, he made fourteen untitled sound pieces, each lasting exactly one minute.

Ethiopia is perhaps the most uniquely different place Kirkegaard has ever traveled. In order to grasp this new environment he decided to listen with the ears of the Ethiopians. To hear what they hear. On his visit Kirkegaard didn’t want to only record the sounds that he found interesting, but to record sounds that had significance to the people living there, and described their character.

He therefore decided to ask the Ethiopians he met to describe their favorite sounds, the sounds they connected to the place where they grew up or where they live now. At first people weren’t really sure what he meant. He realized that they – like most people anywhere in the world – weren’t really used to really consciously listening to the sounds around them. But when he used a visual metaphor, such as, “Describe the tree in the garden of your grandparents. Are there any sounds that you remember like that?”, the visual metaphor made people respond with their audio memories such as “Yes, I love the sound of coffee grinding, that sound has followed me throughout my life”, or “The sound of the morning just before sunrise, on the way to prayer.”

Kirkegaard then invited the people to record the sound with him, or he would record it without them but according to their description.

As a way to focus on the essence of these sounds, Kirkegaard limited the duration of each of the fourteen pieces to one minute. Like a sonic postcard from Ethiopia experienced by the bypassers of TONSPUR_passage.

“Ears of the other” is an attempt to understand what other people hear by borrowing another person’s ears to experience the world from their perspective.

Image: © Jacob Kirkegaard

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