TONSPUR H: Johannes S. Sistermanns

TONSPUR H
Johannes S. Sistermanns*
schweig N
Curated by Vera Bühlmann
TONSPUR für einen öffentlichen raum 2025

1 Dec 2025—21 Feb 2026
Preview • Sunday 30 Nov • 17:00
Opening words • Vera Bühlmann •
Author and professor of architectural theory
at the Vienna University of Technology

TONSPUR_passage | Micro Museum for Sound
Museumsquartier Wien
Museumsplatz 1 • 1070 Vienna
daily 10:00 to 20:00

*91st TONSPUR-MQ-Artist in residence

schweig N being silen T se tair E

A minute of being silent
however long it might last
being silent is directionless, invisible, it leads far beyond
something previously unknown opens up deeply
One thing silence is always:
an inner space | interior space | memory
impregnable to others, borderless, energetically highly charged
Before we say anything, it has already been silently formulated within us

Maintaining Silence
The observant perception of the immediately touching
becomes directly tangible in our own resonance with it through a heightened self-awareness of inner images and sensations
It is interdependent, a closed experiential complex
High intensity, silent activity, the broadest event space
THIS IS THE SPACE of MAINTAINING SILENCE

The material for this electro-acoustic composition consists of the composer’s own audio recordings of spoken voices, sounds of spaces, sung room tones (the own frequencies of a room), along with fading echoes and unusually triggered, untuned piano strings. Furthermore, the processed sounds of political and public minutes of silence, for example from Hiroshima (in the sound of the Peace Bell) to mark the atomic bombing in 1945, from the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, the Knesset, the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican in Rome, or the 2016 Germany-England football match in Brussels.

The TONSPUR_passage embodies the source of the sound through 8-channels relayed by 8 loudspeakers. The passer-by first listens to the resonant space of silence — a soundtrack, the TONSPUR.

© J.S. Sistermanns
translation Jonathan Quinn