Hannah Weinberger, 1988
Art
Jury report
Sounds, noises and, ultimately, language are Hannah Weinberger’s tools of choice for creating the immersive situation that is “milk in first”. The setting is extremely basic: the sound source is suspended above the viewers’ heads within an empty booth, and as they listen, they themselves become part of the installation. The audio track combines, with exquisite precision, fragments of everyday sounds and a spoken text that appropriates the vocabulary used to improve the performance of everyone from sports stars to managers. Weinberger’s parodic commentary on these self-optimisation strategies is especially topical in the context of the Swiss Art Awards competition, inasmuch as it raises fundamental questions about the existence of artists.