Technical Breakdown
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We were invited by the Danish group for sound and listening culture, AUX, to take part in a major exhibition of international sound art in Copenhagen that ran from the 26 th of November 2005 to the 31 st of January 2006. Our job was to construct one of the four listening posts that were to be placed around the city and would contain around eight audio works each. We were given the liberty to decide our own location which made way for one of the more interesting placements of our works.

Panic Room was a 2*2m cubic space constructed from wood; one wall being equipped with a decorated two-way mirror which allowed a hidden gaze from the inside on the outside shopping-mania as well as a form of self reflection. Placed in the shopping gigantum Field's, the outside of the box mimicked the window shopping and quirky labelled theme-park atmosphere of the surroundings; the inside however challenged the very notion of the shopping mall and its abundant laissez-faire consumerism - using a variety of media. The title Panic Room usually refers to a place one seeks in case of emergency and danger. In Field's, the Panic Room both provided a shelter from the surrounding spectacle and simultaneously created a feeling of insecurity and chaos. The claustrophobic space was enhanced by the use of headphones, creating a distance that separated the individual from the shopping crowd and enabled the appreciation of a personal free-space as well as some form of deliberation.

The selected sound works dealt with some of the same themes as the listening post including: Surveillance, panic, critique and insecurity while sustaining a certain notion of confusion and buffoonery. In a corner above the headphones was a screen showing looped movies of distorted social constructs such as boxing matches, city streets, space rockets being fired etc.

A wee warning to all: When being housed by something like Field's whose only interest is to make more money, one can not expect much participation from them and the box was actually silent and had no movies running for half the period because the guards mysteriously could not figure out how to turn the appliances on using our minute instructions. Again, so be it, we still can’t believe that Fields actually agreed to house us in the first place, the work taken into consideration (– even the title).