While Bill Fontana (* 1947, Ohio, USA)  is projecting the sounds of sustainable energy production on the inside of Kunsthaus Graz, his ‘Sonic Projections’ will also be broadcasting sounds of nature and culture from all over the world once every hour into urban space in Graz. This project is an adapted re-enactment of the sound installation he developed for the city as part of the 1988 steirischer herbst festival, which explored the National Socialist seizure of power. Although at the time it was quickly shut down by resistance to the political festival as a whole, Fontana’s work continues to resonate with a melancholic longing in the memory of many local residents.

For the Graz Year of Culture 2020, Fontana has reshaped the Sonic Projections from Schlossberg, using historical and more recent environmental sounds, such as a foghorn or an Australian lyrebird, to create a musical sound dialogue between the Graz clocktower and Kunsthaus. These unfamiliar sounds also call for attentive listening and a brief pause. Recorded in eight places around the city, the sounds blend with everyday noises in public space and are transmitted as a continuous sound pattern on the façade of Kunsthaus.      

Sonic Projections is a sound project for the urban space of Graz. Harmonious sounds of nature and culture gathered from all over the world are broadcast from two central locations – the roof of Kunsthaus and the clocktower on the Schlossberg – into the urban environment. The dialogue includes sounds such as the song of an American nightingale, an Australian lyrebird, or the blast of a foghorn from San Francisco Bay, regularly inviting us to enjoy a brief, private retracing of the ‘overlooked’.

Sonic Projections is the revival of Fontana’s 1988 piece commissioned by Heidi Grundmann (‘Kunstradio – Radiokunst’, Ö1, ORF) and curator Werner Fenz for the steirischer herbst festival. Originally transmitted from the Schlossberg, a hill in the Graz city centre, today it also resounds back from Kunsthaus Graz in a kind of dialogue. The first project, which had originally aimed at fostering harmony, was shut down after just a few days due to its politically charged nature—in 1988, the steirischer herbst festival conducted an unflinching exploration of the city’s fascist past with Bezugspunkte 38/88—and also because of a lack of public information. Nonetheless, the work continues to resonate with a melancholic longing in the memory of many local residents.Since then, not only have the institution and Fontana’s work itself become more participatory, urban structures also call for participation.

As an installative dialogue coupled with art education and an accompanying programme of events, the re-enactment has a compelling focus on exchange, investigating visions of urban coexistence. To this end, Kunsthaus Graz has been collaborating with many local partners and in exchange with broader public. With the local administrative offices, for instance, who are responsible for protecting the urban and natural habitat—in terms of safety, aesthetics, and also the city as a recreational area. An important place of reflection is also represented by the Kultur inklusiv working group accompanying the project, and the extremely committed group of people with visual and hearing impairments with whom we are working in creative exchange on a communication tool for a broad spectrum of perceptions of the city, of noise, of dangers and also local harmonies, or potential harmonisations.  The project has also been developed in partnership with Radio Helsinki and the Soundscapes project, which is working on acoustic cityscapes and planning public walks with us. With the Institute of Electronic Music and the independent, non-commercial network operator FunkFeuer, the sounds of the city are captured and taken into the city centre – to the façade of Kunsthaus (Lendkai) – using the latest digital technology.

Re-enactment Sonic Projections in city space as part of the Graz Year of Culture 2020, in cooperation with the ‘Kultur inklusiv’ Project, Ö1 Kunstradio (ORF), Radio Helsinki, mur.at, the University of Art Graz and FunkFeuer Graz 
Supported by AVL Cultural Foundation