Nika Schmitt + Raul Keller
Sound installations @ der gkg Bonn
19 June — 27 July 2025
Opening: Wednesday, 18 June 2023 at 18:00
Wednesday to Friday, 15:00 to 18:00
Saturday, 14:00 to 17:00
Sunday, 11:00 to 17:00
Gesellschaft für Kunst und Gestaltung (gkg) Bonn
Hochstadenring 22, 53119 Bonn
The final year of the Beethoven Foundation for Art and Culture’s ‘soundforum – bonn hoeren’ project begins on 18 June 2025 with the opening of a double exhibition at the gkg Bonn. Works by the two Bonn City Sound Artists appointed in 2025, Nika Schmitt and Raul Keller, will be presented.
The Luxembourg artist Nika Schmitt presents her kinetic sculpture ‘coin-cidence’ from 2021. The video work ‘Callebasses’, which was created during her residency as part of the ‘sonotopia – sonic explorers’ project by bonn hoeren in Dakar (Senegal), can be experienced in the anteroom.
Estonian artist Raul Keller is realising a new sound installation: ‘humming’. It forms a counterpoint to his outdoor installation ‘breathing’ for the August-Macke-Platz in front of the gkg Bonn, which will be launched on the same day.
Nika Schmitt (LU)
coin-cidence — Kinetic sound sculpture (2021)
“coin-cidence” is a kinetic sound sculpture consisting of two motor-driven drum cymbals that move uncontrolled through the room. They roll continuously to the left or right, sometimes forwards and then backwards again. In doing so, they repeatedly hit the boundaries of the room: crash against the walls, into corners or into each other. A playful sound intervention that makes small bumps, small stones or sand on the floor audible through the subtle sounds and rattling noises of the cymbals.
„coin-cidence” is part of a series called “rolling things”. The first work in this series, the video work “Calebasses”, was created during her residency as part of the artists exchange project “sonotopia — sonic explorers” in Dakar (Senegal) in 2020. Here it was not cymbals, but independently moving calabashes in urban situations. The quiet humming of their motors and the crunching of sand and stones under the rolling calabashes mingled with the street noises in the surrounding area.
Raul Keller (EE)
humming — Sound installation (2025)
‘humming’ is a site-specific sound installation in the gkg gallery that consists of both sound-generating and sound-reflecting objects. On the one hand, helium-filled balloons, each of which floats above a loudspeaker and is played with sounds that relate to their membrane frequencies and the surrounding ambient sound.
On the other hand, small parabolic gold-plated reflectors with small loudspeakers mounted in front of them, which play sounds originally composed on site by Keller back into the space. As visitors walk around, they enter differently orientated sound areas and can experience different zones of subtle sonic activity.
The room itself is darkened. Three screen prints from Raul Keller’s ‘Golden Hour’ series emphasise the atmosphere of twilight by selectively expanding the sound events in the room visually. Keller understands humming as a physical act that creates an individual sphere of sound and acts as a kind of membrane that brings the body into resonance with the external environment. This is why humming is often associated with the creation of an intimate and safe sound space.
© Meike Böschemeyer
© Simon Vogel