Photo Mira Turba
In Musical Chairs, I understand territory as access — temporary, fragile, and never guaranteed. Belonging emerges not from personal desire, but from structural conditions.
The reference to musical chairs is structural: as long as sound continues, movement is possible; when it stops, someone is left without a place. This mechanism mirrors social systems in which inclusion and exclusion operate as normalized processes.
By replacing music with voices, I shift the focus from competition to listening. Sitting becomes an ethical act — a temporary holding of space for another’s experience, aware that this position is never secure.
The reference to musical chairs is structural: as long as sound continues, movement is possible; when it stops, someone is left without a place. This mechanism mirrors social systems in which inclusion and exclusion operate as normalized processes.
By replacing music with voices, I shift the focus from competition to listening. Sitting becomes an ethical act — a temporary holding of space for another’s experience, aware that this position is never secure.
Visitors move through the space, choosing where to sit and when to leave. The number of chairs is limited: not everyone can occupy a place at the same time.
Title "Musical Chairs" reffers to a popular game, the project emerged from the course Displaced Artists on Their Way Home at the Summer Academy in Salzburg (August 2025).
The installation brings together nine anonymous recorded voices of artists from Serbia, Venezuela, South Korea, Israel, Palestine, Belarus, Rwanda, Kashmir and Germany. Each story is told in the speaker’s mother tongue, preserving the materiality of voice and the untranslatable textures of displacement. One chair holds one story, and two more empty spaces with no chair as two stories left untold—two artist refused to share, being scared to speak due to political situation.
The installation brings together nine anonymous recorded voices of artists from Serbia, Venezuela, South Korea, Israel, Palestine, Belarus, Rwanda, Kashmir and Germany. Each story is told in the speaker’s mother tongue, preserving the materiality of voice and the untranslatable textures of displacement. One chair holds one story, and two more empty spaces with no chair as two stories left untold—two artist refused to share, being scared to speak due to political situation.
Musical Chairs is a sound installation in which I explore territory and belonging as unstable, contested conditions rather than fixed places. Using the familiar structure of chairs arranged in space, I transform a common game into a situation of listening, waiting, and exclusion.
Each chair carries a recorded voice — artists and cultural workers with experiences of displace-ment across different contexts. The stories are spoken in their mother tongues, preserving accent, rhythm, and silence.
Each chair carries a recorded voice — artists and cultural workers with experiences of displace-ment across different contexts. The stories are spoken in their mother tongues, preserving accent, rhythm, and silence.
Displaced Artists on Their Way Home, Salzburg, 2025
Audio installation, 2025
Photo Olesya Gumenenko
Displaced Artists on Their Way Home, Salzburg, 2025
Photo Mira Turba
Displaced Artists on Their Way Home, Salzburg, 2025
Rather than representing a community, I create the conditions for a fragile community of listeners. The work does not seek empathy through identification, but foregrounds asymmetry, discomfort, and responsibility.
Listening here is active. It requires time, presence, and the acceptance of limits: not all voices can be heard. Some stories will remain unheard.
This refusal of total access is central. I resist extractive storytelling and propose listening as a situated, partial, and ethical practice.
Listening here is active. It requires time, presence, and the acceptance of limits: not all voices can be heard. Some stories will remain unheard.
This refusal of total access is central. I resist extractive storytelling and propose listening as a situated, partial, and ethical practice.
Audio 1:04:48, 11 stories, 9 chairs
Musical Chairs
Displaced Artists on Their Way Home, Salzburg, 2025
