Bonn City Sound Artist 2025 Nika Schmitt is realising a sound installation in the pavilion-like entrance area of the Universität/Markt underground station opposite the Kreuzkirche to kick off the Beethoven Festival. The vernissage is on Friday 5 September.
You have been appointed Bonn City Sound Artist 2025 by the Beethoven Foundation – how does that make you feel?
For me, this is above all a very special opportunity because I can be directly present in the urban space with my artistic work, in the middle of people’s everyday lives, not in a less accessible exhibition space. But it is also an honour to be part of the now 15-year-old project »soundforum – bonn hoeren« and to realize a new work as part of Bonn’s Beethovenfest that is very specifically focused on a location.
How do you like the city of Bonn?
I experience Bonn as an interesting mixture: the historical gravity associated with Beethoven and the political history, and at the same time many quiet, inconspicuous corners that you only notice at second glance, or rather at second listening. I like this complexity. It’s ideal for my work because I like to work with what’s already there, the existing sounds, the architectural peculiarities and the unnoticed vibrations in the urban space.
And what does Beethoven mean to you?
For me, Beethoven is a figure who has always stood between opposites: radical and sensitive, loud and quiet. I find it fascinating that he lost his ability to hear so much and yet created worlds of sound that still have an effect today. For me, this means that hearing is not just something physiological, but also an attitude, a way of perceiving the world.
What exactly will be happening in the entrance pavilion of the University/Markt subway station over the next three months?
My sound installation »stille laute« (»quiet sounds«) can be experienced there every day from early in the morning until late at night. It takes the existing sounds of the place, the buzzing of the displays, the hissing of the loudspeakers, the resonances from the station, and sets them in motion. Two towers with slowly moving megaphone loudspeakers form a constantly changing acoustic field. It is nothing spectacular, rather something quiet and fragile: an invitation to pause in passing and listen differently. I am interested in precisely this moment when you suddenly become aware of everyday sounds.
Nika Schmitt: »stille laute« sound installation in the subway entrance Universität/Markt
September 5 to November 30 2025, daily 8 a.m.–10 p.m.
