Vulnérable Witness

Sound & video installation and a Record, 2024

In her film and sound works realised using the collage technique, the artist explores individual and collective memory. Her sound installation and LP "Vulnérable Witness" picks up on latent premonitions, things that can be heard through walls and protests, alluding to the fragility of the world order, whose changes often announce themselves quietly but audibly.

The six sound pieces of the sound, video installation and LP consist of different spoken noises that overlap and mix with atmospheric recordings from nature: An orchestra warming up, guitar sounds and the buzzing of flies, a babble of language ranging from commercial jargon to meditations on sleep, the voice of a teenager describing a series of disaster scenarios, fragments of radio programmes, voices in stairwells, dripping taps and flickering neon lights. All these elements, cut out of everyday life, suggest micro-fictions of very current, fragile temporalities.

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VULNÉRABLE WITNESS
Face 1
Par ici, c'est plus silencieux, 2017 2:17
Nouveau morceau, 2022 4:16
Désert, 2022 3:16

Face 2
Mehringplatz abstractions, 2017 6:00
Scénarios catastrophes, 2022 5:00
Thin walls, 2022 7:00






NYT record #6
Maya Schweizer, Vulnérable witness
Produced and mixed by Ethan Braun
Mastering by Sam Jones
Design by HIT
Editing by Anita Di Bianco
Label: Jacques Linard, Still life with shells
and coral, 1640
R.A.N.D. MUZIK
Brandenburger Str. 30, 04347 Leipzig
Thanks to David Schnell, Sebastian M.
Kretzschmar, NYT, Selma von Wedemeyer,
Anna Scherbyna, Hajnal Nemeth.
Photograph of the LP Joe Zarth

Particularly today und nichtsdestotrotz

"Maya Schweizer embroiders associative stories and text fragments into the fabric in loose stitches. Language is a medium of understanding and yet never achieves objective validity. The words evoke memories and trigger emotions, but in Maya Schweizer’s textile assemblages a stringent narrative does not really become tangible. The fabric falls in uneven folds, the letters dance out of line and the threads do not tighten. “N’importe quelle petite chose fait une conversation” (Every little thing creates a conversation). The change of languages further complicates the conditions.

So what is the point of writing and speaking if we may not understand each other? Why not instead assume that everything that is said is true or nothing? Or do both: make multiple connections and put the doubt itself into words. “Either a babble of voices or nothing at all” reads a sentence on the wall hanging. Maya Schweizer does not give priority to any single voice or statement. The complexity of human understanding is presented to us as fragile, ambivalent and always also processual."
Arne Linde, Januar 2022

Maya Schweizer, Sebastian Jung: En Route


Galerie ASPN