A Moment In Passing

Monheim Triennale II: The Sound – Sonic Art in Public Spaces

Mirrored cube, sound installation

A Moment In Passing sound tracks the migrant’s thoughts, as their feet continue to branch away from home. We soothe the growing pains with soul.

A Moment In Passing uses sound to contemplate social mobility.

It manifests as a looping episodic electroacoustic composition, playing from a mirrored cube in the centre of the under passage between “new” and “old” Monheim. Passages of sound serenade travellers as they transition through the day forming paths between Monheim’s heart and periphery.

Sound, in the form of dislocated song rearranged in public space, becomes a way of giving tangible shape and sensory form to the amorphous hurdles mediating the migrants' traversal of society.

Exhibition Text

The underpass between Heinestraße and Friedrichstraße is a typical urban transit space that has led pedestrians from the Berliner Viertel to the (new) Mitte in Monheim am Rhein and in the opposite direction since the late 1970s. A decade earlier, the Berliner Viertel had sprouted up as a large housing estate in a very short time and was viewed critically by some residents, as the project heralded the transformation into a city, a rapid increase in population and enormous modernization. As a typical “non-site,” the tunnel is characterized by movement, fleetingness, but also changeability, and aroused the interest of the Ghanaian artist Hakeem Adam.

While the Berliner Ring appears to be a borderline between neighbourhoods, the underpass not only supports pedestrian mobility but, in Adam’s view, can also naturally foster connections. With the expansive installation “A Moment in Passing,” Hakeem Adam takes a look at the urban situation in Monheim as a place of natural movement and potential (self-)encounter of people.

On the one hand, the directed sound of the loudspeaker boxes acoustically amplifies the movement of passers-by and makes it audible. On the other hand, Adam enables a surprising moment of pause in the tunnel: the artist has installed a mirror block there and thus allows the viewers to become part not only of the artwork but also of the urban situation.

— Written by Kathrin Jentjens

Commissioned by Monheim Triennale

Curators: Kathrin Jentjens + Frank Schulte

Images by: Niclas Weber

Video by: Jan Höhe

Installation support: Lukas Becker, Markus Oppenländer, Tobias Grahl, audiluma

Special Thanks to Emeka Ogboh

Road of the lonely ones

Between the tender shoots of spring

Through the mist that sunrise brings

This song leaves my lips

To trail the shadows of footsteps