The Voices – the sound installation by Susan Philipsz in the Neue Burg

Once a day, the sound of glass resonated through the imperial staircase of the Neue Burg: the sound installation ‘The Voices’ by artist Susan Philipsz.
 

Visitors were able to hear the sound installation in public space back in 2018 and 2019 – throughout Heldenplatz square, between the Neue Burg palace and the temporary parliament pavilions. Philipsz created the work at the invitation of the House of Austrian History. It refers both to the ‘Anschluss’ rally on the Heldenplatz in 1938 and the November Pogrom of that year. Now, in vicinity of the balcony where Adolf Hitler gave his speech on Austria’s ‘Anschluss’ (‘annexation’) to Nazi Germany on 15 March 1938, the artwork is being reinstalled, this time inside the building. It was after all the chandeliers over the main staircase that inspired Susan Philipsz’s choice of glass as a medium for this artistic installation.

The work remembers all those who were silenced by the ‘Anschluss’ and marks the abrupt end of academic and artistic freedom in 1938. When located at this historic site, the sound installation is also a call for democracy and human rights in the present.

Read more about the artistic installation and its background here (only in German).

Susan Philipsz, The Voices, 2018

Four-channel sound installation

Heldenplatz, Neue Burg

Main staircase, Alma Rosé-Plateau