Cu

With works created between Copenhagen and New York, Martha Hviid investigates the conductive function of copper - technologically, physically and spiritually. Copper in cables makes public transport possible. Copper in phones enables us to communicate, despite physical distance. Copper in the human body is necessary for nerve impulses and brain function. Here, the metal becomes the actual symbol for a binder which holds us together, both personally and collectively. Simply, a vehicle for everything that we carry with us and exchange with each other.

The works investigate the physical impact of travel on the body and mind, while the motifs themselves compose an inner bodily journey. Copper plate etchings depicting the cochlea, the larynx, a diaphragm and an arm in motion appear as investigative dissections of the inner and outer world of the body. The chest controls our ability to expel air up to the vocal cords in the throat, which emit sounds to be received by the inner ear. The arm pushes through an unknown mass, illustrating the body's constant movement through atoms and molecules, invisible to the human eye. The more abstract motifs in the series show visualisations of the sound of copper. With the help of contact microphones, sound waves have been extracted from the copper plates, then manipulated and sent back into them again as physical vibrations creating the images. All the prints act as remnants from an action; ghosts that loop back around to mirror the plates they originated from.

The hour-and-a-half-long soundpiece Not What It Is But How It Is gathers voice-notes received from locations around the world. The work bears witness to relationships across borders, languages and cultures. While listening you get a glimpse into a number of personalities and their perception and experience of the world that surrounds them. What do we have in common as humans, and is it possible to train our empathic apparatus through listening to each other? The voice messages are accompanied by a saturated sound collage; vocal sounds of almost field recording-like nature, recordings of dripping water and rushing wind playing with the sound of traffic and transport. All of it is tied together by an underlying music mix, consisting of commissioned compositions by musicians Angel Deradoorian, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Christian Mirande and Hisham Akira Bharoocha together with Dustin Wong, as well as found music. The length of the piece invites you to tap in and out of the soundscape, which fills the invisible yet physical mass of air in the exhibition.

The sound piece was originally created for the Floyd Bennett Field Public Arts Festival, which took place in a closed down historic airbase and airport in Brooklyn, New York. Now the piece is playing on &gate's speakers, with the sounds of Copenhagen Airport in the background.

- Text by Sille Gercke

at &gate.
All photos by Halfdan Kajhøj.

2024.