1 00:00:28,080 --> 00:00:33,840 Susan Philipsz: Living in Berlin, the history  is so raw and you still feel it. 2 00:00:34,560 --> 00:00:37,200 I think it's that it doesn't  want to hide its past. 3 00:00:42,480 --> 00:00:44,040 When I first came to Berlin, 4 00:00:44,760 --> 00:00:46,920 this was one of the first  places I came to actually. 5 00:00:48,180 --> 00:00:54,480 Train stations, they're very evocative  places, places of departure and separation. 6 00:00:55,560 --> 00:00:59,340 That has a melancholy feel  about it, I think, the station. 7 00:01:00,660 --> 00:01:01,680 I love that sound. 8 00:01:08,640 --> 00:01:12,480 I'm interested in the emotive and  psychological effects of sound. 9 00:01:14,940 --> 00:01:20,460 Often I'm just looking for a place that has an  interesting acoustic or architecture history. 10 00:01:23,700 --> 00:01:28,680 Like in Kassel, for instance, it was the  atmosphere of the train station that drew me. 11 00:01:32,220 --> 00:01:35,580 “Study for Strings” started from  standing at the platform's end 12 00:01:35,580 --> 00:01:38,280 and thinking about sound coming from a distance. 13 00:01:46,200 --> 00:01:52,200 I discovered that Kassel is where they made  major deportations of the Jews to Theresienstadt, 14 00:01:52,200 --> 00:01:56,820 which was a concentration camp where  they sent all the creative people. 15 00:01:59,160 --> 00:02:03,720 I started thinking about Pavel Haas  who'd composed this composition, 16 00:02:03,720 --> 00:02:06,780 “Study for Strings,” while  he was interned in the camp. 17 00:02:15,420 --> 00:02:18,540 It was to feature in this  propaganda movie for the Red Cross. 18 00:02:19,920 --> 00:02:23,400 They wanted to pretend that  everything was great in the camp. 19 00:02:26,580 --> 00:02:31,980 It was really tragic because it was straight after  it was shot, they were all sent to Auschwitz. 20 00:02:35,040 --> 00:02:38,580 In the original composition,  it was a 24-piece orchestra. 21 00:02:40,320 --> 00:02:44,040 What I decided to do was to  record just two of the parts. 22 00:02:45,660 --> 00:02:50,400 Silence really makes you think about the absence  of the other performers who would've been killed. 23 00:03:11,640 --> 00:03:18,600 24 00:03:36,660 --> 00:03:40,020 Eoghan McTigue: There was never a point where we were  working together as a collective. 25 00:03:40,020 --> 00:03:44,100 It just seemed to develop out  of our shared life together. 26 00:03:46,380 --> 00:03:50,340 After we moved to Berlin, it became  clear that Susan was getting very busy. 27 00:03:50,340 --> 00:03:53,160 I started to manage some of Susan's productions. 28 00:03:54,540 --> 00:03:59,400 Susan is much more intuitive and can determine  the tone or the atmosphere of a space. 29 00:04:07,140 --> 00:04:09,780 Susan has a very good understanding of space, 30 00:04:11,460 --> 00:04:15,900 when a space is layered and  when the meaning is just there, 31 00:04:15,900 --> 00:04:16,980 just below the surface, 32 00:04:19,620 --> 00:04:23,160 and then just doing something very  minimal to let it reveal itself. 33 00:04:42,900 --> 00:04:48,300 Susan Philipsz: I was invited to make a work that  marks the 80th anniversary of the 34 00:04:48,300 --> 00:04:53,820 annexation of Austria to Germany as  that happened after Hitler's speech. 35 00:04:55,200 --> 00:05:00,000 It's not something that they're proud of,  but they want to acknowledge their part in it. 36 00:05:14,280 --> 00:05:18,840 With each new project in public  space, I make a sound test just 37 00:05:18,840 --> 00:05:22,500 to get an idea of how the sound  would be in this particular space 38 00:05:22,500 --> 00:05:25,080 because sometimes it can do  really unpredictable things. 39 00:05:45,339 --> 00:05:51,963 You can place anything in the Heldenplatz, I mean and it will take on a political connotation because of the context. 40 00:05:59,230 --> 00:06:03,958 At the beginning, I tested a work which used the sound of a viola. 41 00:06:04,744 --> 00:06:07,849 And another work where I actually used my voice. 42 00:06:19,241 --> 00:06:20,168 Singing has always been 43 00:06:20,168 --> 00:06:23,820 part of my life, singing with my sisters. 44 00:06:23,820 --> 00:06:25,500 Then I was in a band for a little while. 45 00:06:27,235 --> 00:06:29,160 Then I became aware of what happens when you 46 00:06:29,160 --> 00:06:31,860 project your voice into a room  and how it can define space. 47 00:06:40,713 --> 00:06:42,960 I think it's clear that I don't have a trained voice. 48 00:06:43,860 --> 00:06:47,400 I'm singing in a way that you  might sing if you were on your own. 49 00:06:48,848 --> 00:06:51,600 The songs I've sung in the supermarket  I originally 50 00:06:51,600 --> 00:06:56,040 performed live where I sang over  the PA system at hourly intervals. 51 00:06:58,028 --> 00:07:02,340 It has quite a disarming effect because you feel  like you're listening to something quite private. 52 00:07:03,060 --> 00:07:07,680 I'm trying to create this sense of  solitude in this very public place. 53 00:07:11,100 --> 00:07:13,740 I thought of songs as found objects. 54 00:07:13,740 --> 00:07:18,840 Singing them unaccompanied and  then placing them in a particular 55 00:07:18,840 --> 00:07:22,380 context could make you see the place in a new way, 56 00:07:22,380 --> 00:07:24,420 or the words might take on a new meaning. 57 00:07:32,447 --> 00:07:36,240 The song “Lowlands,” which was  this old 16th century Scottish 58 00:07:36,240 --> 00:07:40,980 ballad about a sailor who comes back to  say a final farewell to his loved one, 59 00:07:43,380 --> 00:07:49,080 it's a very sad lament, but the context  prevents you from really being moved. 60 00:07:52,897 --> 00:07:57,637 Recording for my voice, or battling with  the sounds of the trains and the traffic, 61 00:07:57,960 --> 00:08:02,400 you're all of a sudden aware  of where you are because the 62 00:08:02,400 --> 00:08:05,400 ambient sound is really loud and hostile. 63 00:08:22,920 --> 00:08:25,440 When I was really young, I was more interested in 64 00:08:25,440 --> 00:08:29,400 the historical part of the museum  rather than the painting galleries 65 00:08:29,400 --> 00:08:30,780 because I found that really boring. 66 00:08:53,640 --> 00:08:58,320 “War Damaged Musical Instruments” is a work that  has been going for a few years now. 67 00:09:00,540 --> 00:09:03,608 I've been recording these musical  instruments that have been damaged in war. 68 00:09:04,369 --> 00:09:06,840 The first ones I came across  were the ones here in Berlin. 69 00:09:07,500 --> 00:09:10,740 That led me to different musical  instrument museums here in Germany. 70 00:09:51,371 --> 00:09:54,660 It was clear to see that these instruments  could never play music anymore. 71 00:09:55,260 --> 00:09:58,980 They were so badly damaged. But  they still could produce sound. 72 00:10:00,360 --> 00:10:06,780 Sometimes it would be a very fragile, delicate  sound, and it was really more about the breath. 73 00:10:11,640 --> 00:10:15,720 I became interested in breath  being a metaphor for life. 74 00:10:30,240 --> 00:10:35,880 Each of the speakers plays a tone from the  “Taps” and represents a different instrument. 75 00:10:37,440 --> 00:10:40,020 Originally it was used on the battlefield. 76 00:10:40,020 --> 00:10:44,880 It was one of the signals that  meant it was safe to come back. 77 00:10:46,132 --> 00:10:51,240 It makes you wonder who was the last person  to have played it and what happened to them. 78 00:11:18,900 --> 00:11:24,960 As a student I wanted to make political art with a  capital P, but I was never happy with the results. 79 00:11:26,640 --> 00:11:30,660 Those political themes come through  the work in a more subtle way. 80 00:11:32,100 --> 00:11:36,060 In Vienna, the work that was the  most successful was the sound of 81 00:11:36,060 --> 00:11:39,060 me rubbing the rim of four crystal wine glasses. 82 00:11:40,020 --> 00:11:43,140 It does have this kind of feeling of a voice. 83 00:11:45,120 --> 00:11:50,280 I wanted to give voice to those forgotten  voices who were persecuted during the Holocaust. 84 00:11:53,700 --> 00:11:59,100 By defining the space with sound, you draw  attention to and remind people what happened here. 85 00:12:09,835 --> 00:12:16,080 Sound can really act as a trigger for memory, then  can bring you back to a particular place and time. 86 00:12:18,360 --> 00:12:22,080 I wanted to bring those voices  from the past into the present.