Wettmar Soundwalk

In April 2026 I spent a few days at Gallery Beckers Hof in Wettmar, Germany, to record materials for a soundscape composition  for the June Sommerspaziergang exhibition in the same location. This should be an interesting experience as I grew up in village.

The official blurb so far: 

For the Sommerspaziergang event in Wettmar (Burgwedel), Iris Garrelfs is developing a locally recorded soundwalk that allows the village to be experienced anew through a listening-based practice in the form of a stereo composition.

Having grown up in Wettmar during the 1970s and 1980s, she returns to this place both as an insider and as a researcher, directing her attention to how sound can make distance, change, and continuity perceptible within everyday environments. The work understands listening as a form of returning to a place, after many years of living and working abroad, and foregrounds personal experience, memory, proximity, as well as the social structures of village life.

Developed during a residency at Gallery Beckers Hof in April 2026, the soundwalk combines recordings of local places and conversations with residents with Garrelfs’ own vocal reflections. Her voice does not function as an explanatory commentary, but rather as a reflective presence within the work, moving between observation, memory, and speculation.

Through this multilayered approach, the piece invites listeners to experience Wettmar as a relational, lived soundscape shaped by personal and collective stories. Rather than documenting the village from a distance, the soundwalk understands recording as a form of thinking with and through the place. By interweaving environmental sounds, spoken voices, and reflections, the work foregrounds listening as an embodied and situated practice, inviting participants to move through Wettmar while developing their own relationship to its sounds, stories, and atmospheres.