→ Betontonton

Products From The Time Department Store, Sleep” was first presented in 2020 as a multichannel sound installation accompanied by video at Elephant Space in Seoul, South Korea.

The installation explores people’s dependence on their own perception of time and the influence of temporality on Seoul’s soundscape. By weaving together the city’s auditory environments, brief narrative fragments, and compositions of music and text, it offers a meditative acoustic portrait of a fast city governed by time.

The segment titled “Sleep” focuses on a captivating section structured around piano, synthesizer, field recordings, and voice. Warm synth tones and the repetitive motion of the piano are layered with the opening verse of Dylan Thomas’s poem “I Fellowed Sleep.” These elements form a musical framework that guides the listener through Tim Loehde’s own texts and selected quotations, translated into Korean and spoken aloud.

Betontonton is a platform for international sound art located at Ebertplatz in Cologne, Germany. Its purpose is to provide a (public) space for artists and experimental musicians to showcase their work and for commuters & visitors to experience (at least a fragment of) all that sound art can be.

In 2020, a sound system was installed in the east passage of Ebertplatz, which has hosted works by Dublab, Roman Jungblut, and Óstov Collective. The ongoing use of the installation and space was initiated by Roman Jungblut and funded by Kulturamt der Stadt Köln, with support from Unser-Ebertplatz.koeln and the Kultur-AG Ebertplatz.