Pipelife is a site-specific installation of sonic sculptures activated through a live performance. As their second collaboration, Heyse Ip and regiment further explore their approach to ideas of liveness and presence by amplifying the innate sonic qualities of materials themselves.

In their collaborative works, there is always a sense of an ‘extraction’, to pull something out of its usual context, and transform it into a sonic object that is somehow a sort of ‘instrument’. The materials of their chosen sites are therefore fundamental inspiration and factor, and for this project, they were intrigued by the infrastructure networks of pipes which - although ever-present - are often hidden from sight.

Pipelife takes its name from the company that made the pipes used to make the work. The pipes were originally intended for 5G and energy networks in the valley but were abandoned in Bschlabs, where the artists found them.

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Their interest in the question of what a non-anthropocentric narrative of an object could be leads them often back to the philosopher Jane Bennett’s idea of a ‘Thing Power’. A fundamental aspect is the fact that the ‘instrument’s voice’ is defined by its shape and not vice versa. Therefore, the artists see themselves as ‘activators’ of the work, so that the voice can speak for itself without the need for the audience to listen or look at them as ‘performers’.

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Heyse Ip and regiment come from a position where they do not want to be the subject of the artwork, yet they are both interested in ideas around what constitutes a performance. With Pipelife it is a deliberate choice to hide the performers entirely from the audience’s view. It became much more about staging and making a place ready for a performance - but with no performers to be seen. Thus the focus is on the strangeness of the pipes in their sculptural presence, installed suspended from a storage shed and allowing the audience to focus purely on the sonic experience.

This project was shown and performed at medienfrische 2024, a festival of experimental and media art in Bschlabertal in Tyrol, Austria.

Read about the artists in conversation with Komplex Kultur Magazine here.

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Photo credits: Johan F. Karlsson & Artists