The exhibition Sound and Silence focuses on the theme of stillness and silence in the field of contemporary art. The presentation has been realized in view of the 250th birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven and is based on the composer’s progressing deafness as a starting point for discussing the question of the relation between sound and silence, the productive and at the same time destructive force of stillness and the impossibility of complete silence. In a broad panorama of media comprising installations, performances, videos, films, photographs and drawings, the exhibition – which is not meant as a contribution about the history of music – makes the sound of silence perceptible in many different ways: as monotony, repetition and repository; as pause or overlapping and cluster, as booming stillness or ruined sound; in the interplay between meditative immersion, compelled silence and quiet resistance; and, not least, as ambivalent expression of meaning and meaninglessness.

List of artists:
Marina Abramović, Absalon, Nevin Aladağ, Arturo Hernández Alcazar, Dave Allen, Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, William Anastasi, Laurie Anderson, John Baldessari, Benjamin Bergmann, Jane Benson, Joseph Beuys, Tatiana Blass, Manon de Boer, Maya Bringolf, Christoph Büchel, Julia Bünnagel, John Cage, Hanne Darboven, Bogomir Ecker, Robert Filliou, Terry Fox, Al Hansen, Sofia Hultén, Pierre Huyghe, Annika Kahrs, Idris Khan, Christina Kubisch, Bernhard Leitner, Alvin Lucier, Christian Marclay, Teresa Margolles, Kris Martin, Jonathan Monk, Peter Moore, Janis Elias Müller, Carsten Nicolai, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Nam June Paik, Susan Philipsz, Ricarda Roggan, Anri Sala, Erwin Schulhoff, Sigrid Sigurdsson/Gunnar Brandt-Sigurdsson, Juergen Staack, Jens Standke, Timm Ulrichs, Jorinde Voigt, Gillian Wearing, Samson Young, David Zink Yi, Artur Żmijewski