Interview with Bernhard Leitner
Bernhard Leitner is an Austrian artist who makes sound sculptures and sound installations. He lived in New York from 1968 to 1982 and in Berlin from 1982 to 1986. His current exhibition in the Hamburger Bahnhof, Tonraumskulptur, focuses on the New York period, and takes place from February 1 to March 24, 2008. I had a conversation with Mr. Leitner on January 29, 2008 in the Hamburger Bahnhof, as we viewed his exhibition. The catalogue for the exhibition is titled "Bernhard Leitner. TonRaumSkulptur" (Museum für Gegenwart 12/2008, dt./eng., 128 S., Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin 2008). Bernhard Leitner’s most recent publication is P.U.L.S.E. (HATJE CANTZ Verlag 2008).
Interview by Sabrina Dax
Could you explain the concept of your current exhibition?
The director of the Hamburger Bahnhof, Eugen Blume, wanted the show to reflect the period from 1968 to 1976 in New York, when I first started working with sound as a sculptural material. He refers to it as a “Quantum Sprung” (a quantum leap): the invention of something that could not actually be materialized, because it was a utopian idea. You take sound away from music and declare it a sculptural and architectural material. You build spaces with sound. That’s the main focus of this exhibition. Blume wanted to have a look back into history. Sound has become a very important element in media art, but it’s always very close to music or used in a narrative way. I wanted to deal with sound an abstract way, and compose spaces with lines of sound. I’ve been working in this field for thirty-five years. The idea to use sound in a totally new way opened up many new fields, not just for me, but for others too.
How did you come up with the idea to use sound as a sculptural material?
I studied architecture in Vienna. I was very interested in modern music. I was also interested in dance. When I moved to New York in 1968, dance was very important. Because dance is the movement of bodies, with spaces in between, in a certain way I transferred dance movement into the new field of sound sculpture and sound architecture. And I spent two years just on theoretical thinking. In 1971, before I had done any practical, empirical investigations, I published an article about my idea in Art Forum. Then, I started an aesthetic research. When you combine the field of sound, which is time, with the field of architecture and sculpture, which is space, you create a new world, a new language. This took me about six or seven years. I rented a studio in the West Side of New York, and then I had a huge loft in Tribeca to carry out these experiments.
It’s really a new field. But as I said already, one should not think of it as an extension of music, or an experimental field of new music, but it is rather an extension of three dimensional, four dimensional thinking in the 20th century. It has to do with kinetics, because it has to do with movements. Introducing sound as a new element in the field of plastic arts was really a breakthrough, because it didn’t exist before.
Could you explain the technical aspect of your sound sculptures?
One of my original ideas was to distribute a number of loudspeakers in a certain configuration, and then move sound between these speakers, which would create spaces. For example, you create an arch, or a pendulum space, or with this exhibition, a spiraling space. This installation looks like the set up I used in ‘71, but with today’s technology.
Could you tell me more about this piece?
I composed a motion or a line of sound between eight speakers, and the speakers are set up in a vertical plane, so the sound moves upwards, arches over you, and comes down on the other side. So you create a circle. Now you hear a circling sound [plays sound for me]. As you walk through the exhibition, you hear a spiraling space.
Where do you work now?
I have a huge studio outside of Vienna. 20,000 square feet. It’s a huge, old factory.
What do you do with the installations after an exhibit?
I have books that document large exhibitions that do not exist anymore, but you can set them up again. I also have some permanent installations, such as the one at the Technical University in Berlin, which is a piece of electronic architecture.
Are there other people working in this field?
Sound has become a very interesting field, in many different ways, but I would say sound space, sound sculpture, is still a very narrow field.
How are you affected by changes of technology?
It’s very exciting, because technology is also a source of inspiration, not just consumerism. I use the work of all these hundreds and thousands of engineers as inspiration, because you can do many wonderful things with it.
Could you tell me more about the period in New York?
I was working for the department of City Planning in New York, and then I was a professor at New York University teaching architectural history and city planning, parallel to working on my sound spaces. Since it was such a new idea, no gallery was interested. But it was an important and wonderful period with many drawings, many models, many etchings and photographs, and that’s what we’re showing here. I was there in the 70s and the early 80s, which was a fantastic period in the States, very open and curious.
And how did you decide to show the New York period in Berlin? What is the significance of Berlin in your field?
Berlin is a very interesting city, in terms of sound and art, and I think much more so than the United States. I taught media art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna for the last fifteen years, but I always had a very close connection to Berlin, and I lived here for four years. This city is very “hot” in terms of sound and sound art. There are many people here who are already familiar with this new field.
In the United States, you would have to start from scratch. In 1979, there was a very important exhibition at PS1 in New York, but there was no follow up. I was in that exhibition and I showed my sound chairs. John Cage lay down on the sound chair and was quite amazed by the sound moving, not just on the body, but inside the body.
Is there a difference between how your work is received here and in the US?
My work is not received in the US at all. They’re just beginning to know a little bit about the field. All this work happened in New York, and I’m showing it in Berlin.
Why hasn’t this idea caught on in the US?
I haven’t been there in quite a few years now and my work is also far away from anything commercial. You cannot really buy my pieces, which makes it a bit difficult, but at the same time it makes it magical and wonderful. There are smaller objects that you can buy, but it was difficult in the beginning, because there were not too many collectors interested in media art. That’s changing, because now you have fantastic collectors who collect video and film. Collecting sound art and sound sculpture will come.
Do you think people in the US have a more commercial attitude towards art than in Europe?
Here in Germany, every city has a Kunsthalle. And a Kunsthalle does not have to show art that will sell immediately. They can show ideas. That doesn’t really exist in the United States. There are some alternative spaces and galleries, but basically a museum has to prove that it’s commercially viable, and that what it is doing is saleable. So that is certainly a difference. But as I said, the United States in the 70s was a wonderful place of inspiration, especially New York.
So do you feel that the time you spent in the US was important in developing your sound spaces?
Central. I could not have done it in Europe.
Why is that?
Because you need a certain freedom of thinking, and at the same time you are anonymous, and the city was full of this empirical, experimental thinking. It was really absolutely a great period. Conceptual art, minimal art, new minimal music, the famous dancers, Yvonne Rainer, etc. It was a fantastic period.
So your sound sculptures were really born in the US.
Exactly. And we’re showing them here in Berlin.