To mark the commemorative year 2018 – 100 years since the proclamation of the First Republic – the House of Austrian History commissioned Scottish artist Susan Philipsz to create a site-specific installation for one of Austria’s central places of national memory: Vienna’s Heldenplatz. Making use of the infamous “Hitler balcony” above the entrance of the Neue Burg, where Hitler first announced the “annexation” of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938, Philipsz not only redefines the space for contemporary visitors, but also calls attention to the lingering effects of a violent past and Austria’s responsibility toward it.

The Voices, a temporary sound installation, is an eerie collection of sounds that meander and echo across the open space of the Heldenplatz, bouncing between, on one end, the balcony of the Neue Burg – the symbol of Austria’s complicity in Nazi crimes – and, on the opposite end, two temporary Parliament pavilions, a symbol of Austrian democracy today.

The sounds transmitted across the square, which were created by rubbing the rims of four glasses each containing different amounts of water, rise and fall, sometimes fading to an echo, sometimes rising to a shrill high pitch. The sound of glass is meant to approximate the sound of the human voice, while its fragility evokes the ghosts of the past. The reference point of this soundtrack is the frenzied crowd of some 200,000 cheering Austrians, vociferously welcoming Hitler and the Nazi Reich to Austria in March 1938 (2018 also marked 80 years since the “Anschluss”). Philipsz’ installation plays as much with silence as it does with noise, juxtaposing the feverish voices of cheering Austrians with the millions of voices that were silenced by Nazi violence.

Susan Philipsz studied Fine Arts and Sculpture in Dundee and Belfast. She was awarded the prestigious Turner Prize in 2010, and she carries the Order of the British Empire. She currently lives and works in Berlin.

Four Channel Sound Installation, Radio Transmission

daily at 12:30 and 6:30 p.m., Heldenplatz square

The Voices was made possible by the generous support of the Federal Chancellery of Austria.