Michael Snow
Waiting Room

Opening: 27.06.2002, 7–10 pm

In the context of the exhibition project Hearing Aid organised by Galerie Klosterfelde and Ariane Beyn; KW Institute for Contemporary Art is presenting Michael Snow’s Environment Waiting Room from the June 28 until July 26

During the early 1960s, Michael Snow decided to end his successful career as a professional Jazz musician and to concentrate exclusively on his other artistic interests. Soon thereafter, he created his first experimental films in New York. Since the beginning of the 1970s, Michael Snow uses sound installations and recordings.

The work Waiting Room (2001) is an environment that places the visitor of the exhibition in a waiting room situation. A number–which each visitor receives through a ticketing machine upon entering the exhibition–is displayed in different lengths onto a LED-Screen in the exhibition hall. In this way, each visitor is given the time frame of his individual exhibition visit. In the waiting room sounds and conversations, coming from the Café Bravo and the KW courtyard, are heard simultaneously.

The function of the frame is a central aspect in Snow’s investigation towards image and sound. The term of Framing describes the way an image or a sound/noise presents itself to the observer/listener. Already the famous film Wavelength (1967) deals with the camera excerpt as a framework that takes a decisive influence on the perception of the cinematic image. In Waiting Room, the framework emerges as the pre-determined duration of “art viewing” experienced in a live situation. The conversations coming from the café and courtyard open up a further reflection to the waiting listener and his own situation as an exhibition visitor.