“Mind the doors, please.” If you step into the elevator at the gallery Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm, Sweden, those familiar words serve as the beginning of your short trip. They are also the opening of a sound work by Scanner, aka Robin Rimbaud, that is currently installed in the elevator, and that will continue to be through December 2 of this year. “Elevator overloaded,” the work continues. “Fourth floor. Second floor.” This isn’t a linear journey by any means.
The work, titled “Hiss Concrète,” brings together the sounds of that specific elevator with similarly sourced audio elements from Rimbaud’s extensive travels. He writes in a brief descriptive note: “The work is installed in the museum elevator, drawing attention to a very specific non place. It uses all the sounds of the elevator itself, doors, motor and ambience, combined with recordings I have made all over the globe of other elevators, bells, buzzers, gates, voice announcements for different floors, in a variety of languages from English, German, Spanish, French, Japanese and Chinese.” It’s part of More Than Sound, an exhibit at Bonniers Konsthall that features work from Tarek Atoui, Hans Berg, Nathalie Djurberg, Malin BÃ¥ng, AyÅŸe Erkmen, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Susan Hiller, Matti Kallioinen, Haroon Mirza, and Susan Philipsz, in addition to Scanner/Rimbaud.
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/scanner. More on Scanner at scannerdot.com. More on the Bonniers Konsthall exhibit at bonnierskonsthall.se.