WEBVTT 00:00:28.080 --> 00:00:33.840 Susan Philipsz: Living in Berlin, the history  is so raw and you still feel it. 00:00:34.560 --> 00:00:37.200 I think it's that it doesn't  want to hide its past. 00:00:42.480 --> 00:00:44.040 When I first came to Berlin, 00:00:44.760 --> 00:00:46.920 this was one of the first  places I came to actually. 00:00:48.180 --> 00:00:54.480 Train stations, they're very evocative  places, places of departure and separation. 00:00:55.560 --> 00:00:59.340 That has a melancholy feel  about it, I think, the station. 00:01:00.660 --> 00:01:01.680 I love that sound. 00:01:08.640 --> 00:01:12.480 I'm interested in the emotive and  psychological effects of sound. 00:01:14.940 --> 00:01:20.460 Often I'm just looking for a place that has an  interesting acoustic or architecture history. 00:01:23.700 --> 00:01:28.680 Like in Kassel, for instance, it was the  atmosphere of the train station that drew me. 00:01:32.220 --> 00:01:35.580 “Study for Strings” started from  standing at the platform's end 00:01:35.580 --> 00:01:38.280 and thinking about sound coming from a distance. 00:01:46.200 --> 00:01:52.200 I discovered that Kassel is where they made  major deportations of the Jews to Theresienstadt, 00:01:52.200 --> 00:01:56.820 which was a concentration camp where  they sent all the creative people. 00:01:59.160 --> 00:02:03.720 I started thinking about Pavel Haas  who'd composed this composition, 00:02:03.720 --> 00:02:06.780 “Study for Strings,” while  he was interned in the camp. 00:02:15.420 --> 00:02:18.540 It was to feature in this  propaganda movie for the Red Cross. 00:02:19.920 --> 00:02:23.400 They wanted to pretend that  everything was great in the camp. 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. 00:02:35.040 --> 00:02:38.580 In the original composition,  it was a 24-piece orchestra. 00:02:40.320 --> 00:02:44.040 What I decided to do was to  record just two of the parts. 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. 00:03:11.640 --> 00:03:18.600 00:03:36.660 --> 00:03:40.020 Eoghan McTigue: There was never a point where we were  working together as a collective. 00:03:40.020 --> 00:03:44.100 It just seemed to develop out  of our shared life together. 00:03:46.380 --> 00:03:50.340 After we moved to Berlin, it became  clear that Susan was getting very busy. 00:03:50.340 --> 00:03:53.160 I started to manage some of Susan's productions. 00:03:54.540 --> 00:03:59.400 Susan is much more intuitive and can determine  the tone or the atmosphere of a space. 00:04:07.140 --> 00:04:09.780 Susan has a very good understanding of space, 00:04:11.460 --> 00:04:15.900 when a space is layered and  when the meaning is just there, 00:04:15.900 --> 00:04:16.980 just below the surface, 00:04:19.620 --> 00:04:23.160 and then just doing something very  minimal to let it reveal itself. 00:04:42.900 --> 00:04:48.300 Susan Philipsz: I was invited to make a work that  marks the 80th anniversary of the 00:04:48.300 --> 00:04:53.820 annexation of Austria to Germany as  that happened after Hitler's speech. 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. 00:05:14.280 --> 00:05:18.840 With each new project in public  space, I make a sound test just 00:05:18.840 --> 00:05:22.500 to get an idea of how the sound  would be in this particular space 00:05:22.500 --> 00:05:25.080 because sometimes it can do  really unpredictable things. 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. 00:05:59.230 --> 00:06:03.958 At the beginning, I tested a work which used the sound of a viola. 00:06:04.744 --> 00:06:07.849 And another work where I actually used my voice. 00:06:19.241 --> 00:06:20.168 Singing has always been 00:06:20.168 --> 00:06:23.820 part of my life, singing with my sisters. 00:06:23.820 --> 00:06:25.500 Then I was in a band for a little while. 00:06:27.235 --> 00:06:29.160 Then I became aware of what happens when you 00:06:29.160 --> 00:06:31.860 project your voice into a room  and how it can define space. 00:06:40.713 --> 00:06:42.960 I think it's clear that I don't have a trained voice. 00:06:43.860 --> 00:06:47.400 I'm singing in a way that you  might sing if you were on your own. 00:06:48.848 --> 00:06:51.600 The songs I've sung in the supermarket  I originally 00:06:51.600 --> 00:06:56.040 performed live where I sang over  the PA system at hourly intervals. 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. 00:07:03.060 --> 00:07:07.680 I'm trying to create this sense of  solitude in this very public place. 00:07:11.100 --> 00:07:13.740 I thought of songs as found objects. 00:07:13.740 --> 00:07:18.840 Singing them unaccompanied and  then placing them in a particular 00:07:18.840 --> 00:07:22.380 context could make you see the place in a new way, 00:07:22.380 --> 00:07:24.420 or the words might take on a new meaning. 00:07:32.447 --> 00:07:36.240 The song “Lowlands,” which was  this old 16th century Scottish 00:07:36.240 --> 00:07:40.980 ballad about a sailor who comes back to  say a final farewell to his loved one, 00:07:43.380 --> 00:07:49.080 it's a very sad lament, but the context  prevents you from really being moved. 00:07:52.897 --> 00:07:57.637 Recording for my voice, or battling with  the sounds of the trains and the traffic, 00:07:57.960 --> 00:08:02.400 you're all of a sudden aware  of where you are because the 00:08:02.400 --> 00:08:05.400 ambient sound is really loud and hostile. 00:08:22.920 --> 00:08:25.440 When I was really young, I was more interested in 00:08:25.440 --> 00:08:29.400 the historical part of the museum  rather than the painting galleries 00:08:29.400 --> 00:08:30.780 because I found that really boring. 00:08:53.640 --> 00:08:58.320 “War Damaged Musical Instruments” is a work that  has been going for a few years now. 00:09:00.540 --> 00:09:03.608 I've been recording these musical  instruments that have been damaged in war. 00:09:04.369 --> 00:09:06.840 The first ones I came across  were the ones here in Berlin. 00:09:07.500 --> 00:09:10.740 That led me to different musical  instrument museums here in Germany. 00:09:51.371 --> 00:09:54.660 It was clear to see that these instruments  could never play music anymore. 00:09:55.260 --> 00:09:58.980 They were so badly damaged. But  they still could produce sound. 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. 00:10:11.640 --> 00:10:15.720 I became interested in breath  being a metaphor for life. 00:10:30.240 --> 00:10:35.880 Each of the speakers plays a tone from the  “Taps” and represents a different instrument. 00:10:37.440 --> 00:10:40.020 Originally it was used on the battlefield. 00:10:40.020 --> 00:10:44.880 It was one of the signals that  meant it was safe to come back. 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. 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. 00:11:26.640 --> 00:11:30.660 Those political themes come through  the work in a more subtle way. 00:11:32.100 --> 00:11:36.060 In Vienna, the work that was the  most successful was the sound of 00:11:36.060 --> 00:11:39.060 me rubbing the rim of four crystal wine glasses. 00:11:40.020 --> 00:11:43.140 It does have this kind of feeling of a voice. 00:11:45.120 --> 00:11:50.280 I wanted to give voice to those forgotten  voices who were persecuted during the Holocaust. 00:11:53.700 --> 00:11:59.100 By defining the space with sound, you draw  attention to and remind people what happened here. 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. 00:12:18.360 --> 00:12:22.080 I wanted to bring those voices  from the past into the present.