In their sound installations, Roswitha von den Driesch and Jens-Uwe Dyffort expose things that are not immediately accessible. Starting points are often the specific situations or also the character of a place – its ambient sounds, its history and landscape or urban integration. At the same time, they repeatedly deal with the surrounding environmental conditions, their causes and conditions. They understand their installations as an extension of space that opens up new experiences of hearing and seeing. They have developed numerous sound installations for wastelands, parks, lakes, industrial and church buildings, as well as for squares and streets in the city.
Roswitha von den Driesch and Jens-Uwe Dyffort live in Berlin and have been working together since 1994. Von den Driesch studied free art with Inge Mahn at the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee and attended seminars at the Electroacoustic Studio of the TU Berlin. Dyffort studied composition with Franz Martin Olbrisch and Walter Zimmermann at the Universität der Künste Berlin. They have received numerous grants for the realisation of their artistic works, including the 2019 Hill End Artist Fellowship, New South Wales, Australia, the 2018 Global Cultural Exchange Fellowship from the State of Berlin, and the 2012 Villa Aurora (Los Angeles) Residency Fellowship. In 2006, they were awarded the Deutsche Klangkunst-Preis.
Their sound installations have been presented, for example, at the Tage der Industriekultur Frankfurt am Main (2021), in the urban space of Coesfeld / Kunstverein Münsterland (2020), at the Bathurst Regional Gallery NSW / Australia, at the Benyamini CC Centre in Tel Aviv (2018), at the Wittener Kammermusiktage für Neue Musik (2015, 2017), at the KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen (2016), at the Donaueschinger Musiktage (2009), at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg (2008), at singuhr – hoergalerie in parochial (1996, 2001) and at the exhibition Earmarks in MassMOCA, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (1998). In addition to indoor and outdoor exhibitions, their music and radio pieces have been premiered by WDR Studio Akustische Kunst and Hessischer Rundfunk hr2-kultur.