Jan St. Werner: Vibraception—Investigations in Wavespace

The Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb presents a solo exhibition by Jan St. Werner, a researcher, sound artist, and composer of electronic music, titled Vibraception—Investigations in Wavespace. The exhibition transforms the museum space into a sound environment, using sound as a tool to activate both space and architecture. Precisely directed sound waves shape the environment, creating dynamic soundscapes that change depending on the location of the visitors. Within the interior of the Museum, panels are installed that, by directing sound waves, create unpredictable resonances and changes in the perception of the building’s architecture, building upon the interactive sound panels of the author’s Excitatory Yards work displayed on the MSU plateau in September 2024.

Based on Werner’s concept of vibraception, which emphasizes that reality and memory exist in constant interplay, much like the source of sound and its echo, which merge and replace each other, the exhibition explores sound as vibration in dialogue with reality, perception, and memory. It explores how sound shapes our experience and relationship with space and time. In this process, sound does not merely appear as a result of air vibrations, but as a means of exploration in which sound sources and their echoes constantly intertwine and change. Memory plays a key role in this process: it acts like a sound echo, never holding a stable form, but continuously reshaping itself through new layers of memories, experiences, and contexts. Thus, memory is constantly reassembled like sound in space, and the boundary between source and echo becomes indistinguishable. Within this conceptual framework, the exhibition at MSU becomes a field of vibrations, where visitors are immersed in spatial-sound conditions that confuse the senses, erase linear cause-and-effect relationships, and encourage a different way of listening to and perceiving space and reality.

Werner first presented the concept of vibraception at MSU in September 2024, in the form of the Vibraceptional Plate, a vibrating installation located on the southern plateau near the main entrance to the Museum. The plate, created for the research project SONCITIES at the University of Oxford led by Gascia Ouzounian, serves as both a vibrating structure and a platform for exploring the perception of vibrations—vibraception. The project stems from Werner’s long-standing interest in sound and its effect on space, with his anarchic architecture using sound and psychoacoustics to challenge traditional architectural forms.

Throughout the exhibition, there will be performances, workshops, and a discursive program, as well as a promotion of the publication featuring theoretical texts, short concepts, interviews, artistic collages, and contributions from prominent experts and theorists in sound, vibrations, architecture, and space, published by K. Verlag, Multimedia Institute MaMa, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb.

The exhibition and publication are supported by the City of Zagreb and the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia. The project is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) as part of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, under the project Sonorous Cities: Towards a Sonic Urbanism (grant agreement No. 865032). It is organized with the support and collaboration of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb.

Jan St. Werner
Vibraception: Investigations of Wavespace
MSU Zagreb, space for temporary exhibitions
March  11, 2025–April 19, 2025
Curator: Ana Škegro