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Susan Philipsz: Living in Berlin, the history [br]is so raw and you still feel it.

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I think it's that it doesn't [br]want to hide its past.

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When I first came to Berlin,

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this was one of the first [br]places I came to actually.

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Train stations, they're very evocative [br]places, places of departure and separation.

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That has a melancholy feel [br]about it, I think, the station.

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I love that sound.

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I'm interested in the emotive and [br]psychological effects of sound.

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Often I'm just looking for a place that has an [br]interesting acoustic or architecture history.

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Like in Kassel, for instance, it was the [br]atmosphere of the train station that drew me.

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“Study for Strings” started from [br]standing at the platform's end

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and thinking about sound coming from a distance.

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I discovered that Kassel is where they made [br]major deportations of the Jews to Theresienstadt,

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which was a concentration camp where [br]they sent all the creative people.

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I started thinking about Pavel Haas [br]who'd composed this composition,

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“Study for Strings,” while [br]he was interned in the camp.

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It was to feature in this [br]propaganda movie for the Red Cross.

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They wanted to pretend that [br]everything was great in the camp.

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It was really tragic because it was straight after [br]it was shot, they were all sent to Auschwitz.

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In the original composition, [br]it was a 24-piece orchestra.

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What I decided to do was to [br]record just two of the parts.

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Silence really makes you think about the absence [br]of the other performers who would've been killed.

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Eoghan McTigue: There was never a point where we were [br]working together as a collective.

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It just seemed to develop out [br]of our shared life together.

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After we moved to Berlin, it became [br]clear that Susan was getting very busy.

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I started to manage some of Susan's productions.

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Susan is much more intuitive and can determine [br]the tone or the atmosphere of a space.

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Susan has a very good understanding of space,

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when a space is layered and [br]when the meaning is just there,

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just below the surface,

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and then just doing something very [br]minimal to let it reveal itself.

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Susan Philipsz: I was invited to make a work that [br]marks the 80th anniversary of the

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annexation of Austria to Germany as [br]that happened after Hitler's speech.

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It's not something that they're proud of, [br]but they want to acknowledge their part in it.

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With each new project in public [br]space, I make a sound test just

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to get an idea of how the sound [br]would be in this particular space

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because sometimes it can do [br]really unpredictable things.

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You can place anything in the Heldenplatz, I mean and it will take on a political connotation because of the context.

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At the beginning, I tested a work which used the sound of a viola.

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And another work where I actually used my voice.

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Singing has always been

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part of my life, singing with my sisters.

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Then I was in a band for a little while.

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Then I became aware of what happens when you

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project your voice into a room [br]and how it can define space.

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I think it's clear that I don't have a trained voice.

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I'm singing in a way that you [br]might sing if you were on your own.

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The songs I've sung in the supermarket [br]I originally

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performed live where I sang over [br]the PA system at hourly intervals.

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It has quite a disarming effect because you feel [br]like you're listening to something quite private.

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I'm trying to create this sense of [br]solitude in this very public place.

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I thought of songs as found objects.

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Singing them unaccompanied and [br]then placing them in a particular

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context could make you see the place in a new way,

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or the words might take on a new meaning.

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The song “Lowlands,” which was [br]this old 16th century Scottish

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ballad about a sailor who comes back to [br]say a final farewell to his loved one,

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it's a very sad lament, but the context [br]prevents you from really being moved.

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Recording for my voice, or battling with [br]the sounds of the trains and the traffic,

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you're all of a sudden aware [br]of where you are because the

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ambient sound is really loud and hostile.

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When I was really young, I was more interested in

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the historical part of the museum [br]rather than the painting galleries

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because I found that really boring.

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“War Damaged Musical Instruments” is a work that [br]has been going for a few years now.

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I've been recording these musical [br]instruments that have been damaged in war.

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The first ones I came across [br]were the ones here in Berlin.

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That led me to different musical [br]instrument museums here in Germany.

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It was clear to see that these instruments [br]could never play music anymore.

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They were so badly damaged. But [br]they still could produce sound.

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Sometimes it would be a very fragile, delicate [br]sound, and it was really more about the breath.

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I became interested in breath [br]being a metaphor for life.

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Each of the speakers plays a tone from the [br]“Taps” and represents a different instrument.

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Originally it was used on the battlefield.

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It was one of the signals that [br]meant it was safe to come back.

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It makes you wonder who was the last person [br]to have played it and what happened to them.

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As a student I wanted to make political art with a [br]capital P, but I was never happy with the results.

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Those political themes come through [br]the work in a more subtle way.

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In Vienna, the work that was the [br]most successful was the sound of

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me rubbing the rim of four crystal wine glasses.

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It does have this kind of feeling of a voice.

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I wanted to give voice to those forgotten [br]voices who were persecuted during the Holocaust.

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By defining the space with sound, you draw [br]attention to and remind people what happened here.

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Sound can really act as a trigger for memory, then [br]can bring you back to a particular place and time.

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I wanted to bring those voices [br]from the past into the present.