Five Floors

Kuhn succeeds in re-awakening the very concept of hearing so that you find yourself listening to the world with a new set of ears, while thinking twice before adding your voice to the cacophony around us. — High Performance, US 

Artangel commissioned Hans-Peter Kuhn to create Five Floors in the 40,000 square feet of Angel Square's Block One. Angel Square is an imposing office development on the corner of Islington High Street and City Road.

For two weeks from 12 October 1992, three passenger lifts and a flight of stairs connected a limited number of visitors with five different worlds of sound and light. Twice during the residency, Artangel presented Five Dances - a series of choreographic works for each floor, featuring Ellen Van Schuylenburch and Gary Lambert - conceived by Ian Spink in response to Kuhn's environment.

Hans-Peter Kuhn returned to Artangel in 1995 to collaborate with award-winning theatre director Robert Wilson on the project H.G.

​Image: Five Floors, 1992, photograph: Gerhard Kassner

Hans Peter Kuhn on Five Floors, 2002

I think it was in 1991 or early 1992 that the dancer Laurie Booth introduced me to a person in London who just had started a new arts organization together with a partner. I told him about my work and that I was very interested in doing a new work in London. Unlike the usual ‘business’ meetings this case was seriously different. Not only that it was really a very enjoyable lunch that we had together, the men I spoke to became very quickly serious and after I explained that I was looking for a ‘non-museum’ space – I was especially interested in an old grain storage or similar for a new installation – they got excited. Shortly after that meeting they had found a place that was actually very different, a newly built office building at the Angel Subway stop. (I still do not know if this was pure coincidence or if this was planned by some sort of mighty power – with Angels one never knows – that the name of the building ‘Angel Square’ was so much like the name of the organization that these men were running, ‘Artangel’). Anyhow, I am almost sure that some sort of celestial support was involved, since these two men not only became excited about the project they also managed to produce my piece not only in the most professional but also very human, friendly – really lovely – way. As I mentioned before the building was indeed very different from what I originally was looking for, except it had the same structure as the kind of building I was hoping for. I had five almost identical floors and we could use them all. And that was exactly what I wanted. They found the perfect place, fitting and challenging at the same time.

A few years later they called me again and asked if I could help them to convince Bob Wilson to do a piece. And I have to admit, I pushed a little bit them I said; "knowing Bob, he will ask me anyhow to make the sound for it, so why not invite us together?" I was surprised that they immediately agreed. (But that is obviously the way these two men are – direct, fast, personal, and always fully engaged.) So we did H.G. together. Again they found the perfect site. I am sure I can say this also in Bob Wilson’s name, that the site was again inspiring and challenging.

Image: Five Floors, 1992, photographer: Gerhard Kassner

Selcted Press

Floor One, called Elementary, aims to disorientate the audience by conjuring up an artificial storm. Sound will be unleashed in sudden, crashing bursts and flashes of light will illuminate vast areas of darkness. The audience will be confined to a tiny space to make the surrounding blackness all the more awesome. 'I don't think people will spend very long in here,' comments Kuhn. Instead, he thinks the place they'll linger will be Floor Three, entitled Jungle, which is a far more cluttered affair. Here, dense coils of coloured cables snake across the floor, the office's neon lights have been masked with tape leaving just a slim shard of light shining. The room is filled with the daily noises of urban life: a phone ringing, a television chattering, the murmur of traffic. — Ellen Cranitch, The Independent, 13 October 1992.

People stay five minutes, other people stay hours. It’s much more your individual decision … I use sounds that are unnerving, but I put them in contrast or in relationship so that they have a function within the piece. I am not interested in provocation. I would invite people to come and simply listen, because I have the feeling that many people don’t hear any more. Wherever you go, you have all this trash noise going on. Generally it’s too much. Your brain blocks it off. So if there is something like an intention, that’s the only intention, giving a chance to listen. I don’t teach anybody to listen, I’m just giving a chance, I’m not the mastermind behind all this, there is no ideology … You can be there and experience the situation of listening and looking.” — Hans Peter Kuhn, The Wire, London, Issue 139.

The film director Andrej Tarkovsky wrote in his book Sculpting in Time about the role of music in film: “It does more than intensify the impression of the visual image by providing a parallel illustration of the same idea; it opens up the possibility of a new, transfigured expression of the same material: something different in kind”. Tarkovsky was talking about the effect which music can have on the visual image. This installation offered a similar kind of revelation but in reverse: showing the process by which sound can be transformed by its relationship to space, lighting and the possibility for the listener of moving through, inside and away from it. — Nick Cauldry Variant, Issue 13, Winter / Spring 1993.

Images: (left and above) Hans Peter Kuhn, 1992. Photograph: Gerhard Kassner.

Credits

Artangel is generously supported by Arts Council England, and by the private patronage of The Artangel International Circle, Special Angels, Guardian Angels and The Company of Angels.

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