To celebrate TEFAF's opening weekend, renowned artist Sarah van Sonsbeeck has been invited for a brunch lecture. Her earliest work can be seen in the Frozen Music exhibition: an angry letter to her upstairs neighbours.
The noise nuisance from her upstairs neighbours took up valuable space in Sarah van Sonsbeeck's student residence. A question arose: is there such a thing as a right to silence? Van Sonsbeeck developed her oeuvre around this question. The question has become a pressing issue, especially now that our streets have become increasingly loud. Everyone is expected to be constantly online and constantly busy. Now that architects and urban planners recognize the health risk of noise pollution, they incorporate sound and silence into their designs. But how do you design sound, and how do you design silence?
Sarah van Sonsbeeck studied architecture at TUDelft and art at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. She was a resident at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. She studies the immaterial side of architecture, such as sound. Her works amplify these elements, and she devises antidotes to their nuisance. For example, her Faraday bags shield your mobile devices from incoming signals to achieve the necessary silence. She installed a Quiet Bank in the stillest place in the Netherlands. And in One Cubic Meter of (Broken) Silence, she tries to capture absolute silence in public space using a glass cube.
Date Sat 11 March, 11.00
Location Bureau Europe
Admission by invitation only