Entferntes Wasser

Sound installation at the Kurfürstlichen Gärtnerhaus Bonn
31 August — 24 September 2023

Opening: 30 August 2023 at 19:00

Tuesday to Friday, 15:00 to 18:00
Saturday + Sunday, 12:00 to 18:00

Kurfürstlichen Gärtnerhaus Bonn
Beethovenplatz 1, 53115 Bonn

At the end of “echoes – soundforum bonn 2023” by the Beethoven Foundation Bonn, the Bonn Cirty Sound Artists Roswitha von den Driesch and Jens-Uwe Dyffort will present a three-part sound installation at the Beethovenfest in the Kurfürstliches Gärtnerhaus, which revolves around the theme of plants in the context of the increasing worldwide water shortage.

In the run-up to the project, von den Driesch and Dyffort were able to exchange ideas with scientists from the Nees Institute for Plant Diversity in Bonn. Together with biologists, geologists and climate researchers from the international collaborative research project CRC1211 “Earth – Evolution at the dry limit”, they undertook a joint research excursion in 2022 to the Atacama Desert in Chile, which is characterised by its extreme aridity. Already in mid-June 2023, they both realised the sound installation “Maltreated Rocks” for the SACO Art Biennial in Antofagasta, the capital of the Atacama region in Chile.

Their new sound installation „Entferntes Wasser“ (which translates roughly as „Distant / Removed Water“) in the Kurfürstliches Gärtnerhaus incorporates sound recordings and experiences made during their stay in the desert, as well as exchanges with researchers from the Nees Institute at the University of Bonn. The specific circumstances of the exhibition site and its immediate surroundings form an essential starting point: the history of the baroque gardener’s house, its urban character, the architecture and the plants in the surrounding park, the former nursery grove.

The exhibition opens up different perspectives of seeing and hearing, connects the inside of the building visually and acoustically with the outside space and in the process also exposes what was previously hidden.