The Dutch artist, composer, and researcher Edwin van der Heide —who participated last year at Eufònic with the magnificent installation “Phasing air” at Lo Pati— has just presented his project Spiral of Time at MACBA. This is a participatory work designed specifically for a particular space, inviting users to travel through time via sound. For nearly a year, this device has been recording (and continues to record) one minute of sound every hour, 24 hours a day, creating an archive that, through an interactive spiral-shaped interface, allows the captured sound material to be played back in different ways (altering duration, sequence, frequency, etc.). The result is a fascinating exercise in retrospective listening and sound organization, revealing diverse patterns and offering a testimony to the transformation taking place in the square where MACBA is located, currently under construction for the museum’s expansion. The work can be understood as an exercise in socio-political sound monitoring, but also as a piece of institutional critique, in which the museum listens to the effects of its own expansion on the Raval neighborhood. This work (which currently has a twin version active in the Amazon rainforest) takes on special relevance in today’s context, where the simple act of listening can become a form of resistance and resilience.
A conversation between Arnau Horta (curator) and Edwin van der Heide
