H A U S  D E R  M A H R E

Sound installation © 2010

In Norse mythology, “mares” or “albs” are small black goblins that, at nighttime, slip into houses through keyholes and sit down on the sleepers tearing their hair and inducing nightmares. In English the word “mare” both stands for this evil nightly spirit as well as for a female horse

With the new work House of Mare, the Danish sound and media artist Jacob Kirkegaard presents a foray into one of the most common and most fascinating phenomena of unintentionally produced human sounds: the noises we make while we sleep. The artist invited 16 guests to individually spend one of 16 subsequent nights in the suite of KW's Hotel Marienbad. During their sleep, he captured the sounds they made – movements, snoring, murmurs or sleeptalking – adding them to the sounds made by the previous guests. The result is a multi-layered composition that invites its listeners to experience an acoustic dream-memory of the hotel room

Hotel Marienbad 008 / KW Institute for Contemporary Art

KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Auguststr. 69
D-10117 Berlin