Sound installation on the August-Macke-Platz
19 June — 21 September 2025
Daily, 10:00 bis 22:00
For technical reasons, only one of the two inflatable objects is currently in operation!
Hochstadenring 22, 53119 Bonn
Raul Keller
breathing — Installation / Intervention (2025)
The sound art project ‘soundforum — bonn hoeren 2025’ by the Beethoven Foundation for Art and Culture Bonn is starting its final year with a major urban intervention by Bonn City Sound Artist Raul Keller in Bonn North. The ‘breathing’ installation on Hochstadenring on the forecourt of the Kunsthalle on August-Macke-Platz utilises the two huge circular lights that hang over the square like oversized flowers, a reference to its history as a former wholesale flower market. The installation by Keller consists of two large white inflatable objects in the form of interlocking cones, one of which is reminiscent of an hourglass and the other of a smooth rhombus. Both objects inflate at different times with a hissing sound and then slowly deflate again, changing their shape and the space around them as if in slow motion.
In recent years, Keller has repeatedly worked with inflatable forms and membranes and is interested in air (or other gases) as a substance or means of producing sound, whether directly or conceptually. Breathing as a bodily function enables us to exist and also symbolically marks the presence of life. Raul Keller understands the inflatable forms as a commentary and reference level for the soundscape of the city that prevails in front of the square on the street. The inherent slowness of the forms symbolically creates a very slow infrasound that contrasts with the fast and dense sound fabric of city life, like the sound of life forms that have a different dimension of existence — natural, organic and almost timeless. It also acts as a lens or filter to direct the eye and ear to what is there and what is not.
© Simon Vogel