Amie Siegel: The Silence at ArkDes

June 3–October 30, 2022

The Silence (2022), a new moving picture project by Amie Siegel, will have its world premiere at ArkDes, the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design. The Silence is a two-part video installation that studies the relationship between architecture, music, sound, and the immaterial. It was recorded and performed in two churches created by Swedish architect Sigurd Lewerentz (1885-1975): St. Mark’s (Stockholm) and St. Peter’s (Klippan).

Each “side,” or video projection, performs a musical score that the artist adapted from the unique brick-patterned walls of the chapels and had played on the organs Lewerentz constructed for each room, much like a vinyl album. The uncanny resemblance Siegel draws between Lewerentz’s graphic brickwork and player piano scores—paper rolls dotted with patterns of small, perforated absences that generate ghostly “self-playing” music—here alludes to the larger existential questions of presence and absence, sound and silence, that frequently guide or contravene spiritual life, and thus imbues “The Church” as a unique architectural space where such inquiries take shape.

Jeff Murcko arranged the musical compositions for The Silence for organ, which were performed by Lina Wijk Furali and Eva Karpe, with sound recorded by Jonas Goldmann and produced by Jon Russell. Amie Siegel edited the film, which also incorporates Christine A. Maier’s cinematography, Anton Bergström’s camera help, Frederik Nordesjö’s lighting aid, and Jonathan Lee’s grip with David Bensouda’s assistance. Lars Edlund did the digital imaging, and Alex Beyer did the color at Post Republic in Berlin. Johan Seth produced the film with Isabel Wiklund’s help. The artist wishes to express his gratitude to the staffs of St. Mark’s in Stockholm and St. Peter’s in Klippan.

The Silence runs parallel with the exhibition Sigurd Lewerentz: Architect of Death and Life in Boxen.

Amie Siegel
Amie Siegel (b. 1974, Chicago) works variously in film, video, photography, sound, sculpture, and installation. She is known for meticulously constructed works that trace and perform systems of value, examine relationships between objects, materials, and spaces, and expose the plasticity of the moving image through sound and performance. The artist’s current and recent exhibitions include Bloodlines, Scottish National Museum Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2022); 34th São Paulo Biennial, Brazil; (2021); Medium Cool, Blaffer Art Museum, Houston (2019); Winter, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2017); Strata, South London Gallery (2017), Double Negative, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich (2016) and Ricochet, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2016). Siegel has been a fellow of the DAAD Berliner-Künstlerprogramm and the Guggenheim Foundation and a 2021 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award recipient. She lives and works in New York City.