Jacob Kirkegaard: A city in Russia
Location A total of 8 listening points at: The cemetery and church, Kirkegade 42B – playground, Ved Fjorden 12 – train station, Østergade 57 – town square, Byens Plads (behind Struer Tracks’ infopoint) – street, Smedegade 21 – Park, Struer Lystanlæg – pedestrian way, Østergade 29
Sound from a city in Russia
Most people in Denmark have heard the saying “It’s a town in Russia”; a metaphor for something entirely foreign or perplexing. But what precisely is this town we are referring to?
A city in Russia is a sound work consisting of audio recordings from eight different locations within a town in Russia. The installation takes the form of “listening posts” positioned around Struer aiming to mimic where the audio recordings were originally captured. The sounds of a train station from a town in Russia will in turn, be heard at the railway station in Struer. The two towns are mirrored and are in a scattered dialogue with one another.
By listening to A city in Russiawe borrow a stranger’s ears and hear fragments of the familiar. We piece together the sounds of a town – and by way of listening – we help to dissolve an alienation of the unknown entity. A town in Russia at once becomes an actual place on a short visit to Struer.
About the artist
Jacob Kirkegaard (1975) is a danish artist and composer. Kirkegaard explores ways to reflect on immediate complex, unnoticed or unapproachable aspects of the human condition or civilisation. His works have treated themes such as radioactivity in Chernobyl and Fukushima, melting ice in the Arctic, border walls in Palestine, and tones – otoacoustic emissions – generated from the actual human ear. Currently Jacob Kirkegaard works on two projects, one on the sound of global waste and waste management. The other on sound environments related to the immediate human post mortem. With his peculiar alchemistic approach and extensive research, complex phenomena and current conditions are portrayed through composition, installation, video and photography. Rather than providing answers, his portrayals create spaces for reflexion.
Jacob Kirkegaard received his MA at the Academy of Media Arts in Köln (DE) in 2006. His sound work is released on record labels such as Important Records (US), Touch (UK), mAtter (JP) and Posh Isolation (DK). Kirkegaard has performed and exhibited his work at museums, festivals and concerts world wide including MoMA, Issue Project Room, The Menil Collection, Rothko Chapel, Museum of Jurassic Technology and Stanford University (US), Transmediale, KW and SCHIRN Kunsthalle (DE), Mori Art Museum, Aichi Triennale and Super Deluxe (JP), The Sydney Biennale (AUS) and at ARoS, The Museum of Contempo- rary Art and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (DK).
Webpage: fonik.dk/
Jacob Kirkegaard: “En By i Rusland / A Town in Russia”, Struer Tracks 2019. Photo: Mikkel Høgh Kaldal
- ‘En by i Rusland’, 2019, Jacob Kirkegaard. Photo: Mikkel Høgh Kalpal