Lasse-Marc Riek

Location Sound Recordings from more than 200 churches in Europe (2003-2016).

Like Adam in front of the closed sky…
From autumn 2003 to spring 2016 Lasse-Marc Riek visited mosques and churches in Europe.
Spontaneously, between 10:30 am and 6:30 pm, he went to one of the "sacral rooms".
The visit to the church should be included in the city visit. If the door was locked, Riek made a sound recording in front of the main entrance. He did not want to look like a museum visitor after the opening hours.
The work should also be interesting for phenomenologists of the sacred space. The longing for accessibility, silence and concentration, which some connect with a church space, must in some places give way to the feeling of highway detente.
In the inner city church of St. Leonard (Frankfurt/Main, Germany), one hardly notice the difference between inside and out. On a different recording from St. Marien (Lübeck, Germany), during a church round trip, drilling machines seem to decompose the church walls. "In these tourism churches you are not coming to your mind," says Riek. But in some recordings also familiar church sounds shimmer through. But since it is generally known that "most people in our western world attach little importance to environmental noise in their everyday life" (Bill Fontana), the city dwellers have adapted themselves to traffic noise. They seem to have few acoustic signals-coughs and hall-to associate the corresponding holiness in the church ship. (Costa Gröhn)