Amie Siegel: The Silence

ArkDes, the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design, is excited to present the premiere of The Silence (2022), a new moving image installation by Amie Siegel. A double video projection composed of two alternating segments—each filmed and performed in two churches designed by Swedish architect Sigurd Lewerentz (1885-1975): St. Mark’s (Stockholm), and St. Peter’s (Klippan)—The Silence considers the relationship between architecture, music, sound, and the immaterial.

The Silence behaves much like a vinyl album—each “side,” or video projection, performing a musical score the artist adapted from the unique brick-patterned walls of the churches and had played on the organs Lewerentz designed for each space. The uncanny similarity 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 often guide or contravene spiritual life, and thus imbue “The Church” as a unique architectural space wherein such inquiries take shape.

The musical scores for The Silence were arranged for organ by Jeff Murcko and played by Lina Wijk Furali and Eva Karpe, with sound recorded by Jonas Goldmann and mixed by Jon Russell. The work is edited by Amie Siegel and features cinematography by Christine A. Maier, camera assistance from Anton Bergström, lighting assistance by Frederik Nordesjö, and grip by Jonathan Lee with assistance from David Bensouda. Digital imaging is by Lars Edlund, and color by Alex Beyer at Post Republic, Berlin. Production by Johan Seth with assistance from Isabel Wiklund. The artist extends special thanks to the staff at St. Mark’s, Stockholm, and St. Peter’s, Klippan.

The Silence is presented in Boxen, in tandem with the exhibition Sigurd Lewerentz: Architect of Death and Life.

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.