In art, as in most things, context is content—our understanding of what we see and hear is shaped by the circumstances in which we encounter them. This idea is explored to intriguing ends in the work of Basel-based artist Hannah Weinberger, whose sound-based installations promote the interplay of coinciding elements, actively embracing the influence of external, ostensibly peripheral factors that lie beyond the artist’s prediction or control. Her compositions typically combine warm ambient tones into lulling tapestries of sound that she sections off into loops of varying lengths: each piece is then played back through a series of multi-directional speakers that serve as the work’s only apparent visual presence. This unassuming display is purposefully designed to accentuate the more ephemeral, perhaps unacknowledged aspects of the audience’s experience. As a result, in moving through the space, each viewer-listener discovers a constantly shifting sonic landscape whose effect is at once composed and perceived individually: an improvised soundtrack unfolding in real time. Weinberger’s most recent offering, an eponymous installation made of six screens, three beamer projectors and seven soundtracks currently on view at Fri-Art, Fribourg, explores and pushes forward these ideas: the work’s fluid negotiation of interior and exterior space operates as a metaphor of the act of perceiving, stressing thus its inherently subjective peculiarity open to the building of personal narratives and memories. (Christopher Schreck)

Hannah Weinberg’s exhibition at Fri-Art, Fribourg, runs through February 9.