Sound installation
5 September — 30 November 2025
Daily 08:00 to 22:00
Pavilion underground station ‘Universität / Markt’
Am Hofgarten (opposite Kreuzkirche), 53113 Bonn
Opening: Friday, 5 September 2025 at 16:00
Nika Schmitt
stille laute — Sound installation (2025)
Bonn City Sound Artist 2025 Nika Schmitt will be creating the sound installation stille laute at the start of the Bonn Beethoven Festival in autumn. The Beethoven Foundation Bonn will present this work for three months in the pavilion-like entrance area of the University / Market underground station opposite the Kreuzkirche as the conclusion of its 15-year project soundforum — bonn hoeren.
In her new sound installation, Nika Schmitt explores everyday noises and sounds that raise expectations without fulfilling them. Two towers to the left and right of the staircase in the pavilion are equipped with rotating loudspeakers that orientate themselves in space, move and pause. These loudspeakers register both their surroundings and their own mechanical movement acoustically and transmit them directly.
The constant presence of people ascending and descending the stairs continuously changes the sound space at the entrance to the underground station. Footsteps, voices, short pauses — all these elements are picked up, reflected and made audible again via the rotating loudspeakers. No words or announcements can be listened from the loudspeakers. And yet they are audible: a low humming, an electronic whirring — the sound of readiness that announces something that is not coming.
The loudspeakers listen and let us listen in. The sound installation, like the loudspeakers themselves, invites us to pause for a moment to listen to the subtle difference between noise and message. In this way, stille laute accompanies the everyday crossing of the room with a fragile, fleeting soundtrack, as a fine acoustic layer between function and attention.
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