Susan Philipsz: The Internationale

Sound Installation/ Mowbray Park entrance

FREE / No booking required

Experience Turner Prize winning artist Susan Philipsz’ emotive sound installation ‘The Internationale’ this Spring.  Running every Thursday until 13th May 2021.

The below video shows the sound installation in action and where you can find it, outside Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens near the entrance to Mowbray Park.

Video: Michael Davidson

About the Artist:

Susan Philipsz (OBE) is a Scottish artist now based in Berlin. Originally trained as a sculptor, Philipsz is best known for her intimate and emotive sound installations.

The sound installations, often publicly situated, respond to their location. Philipsz uses her own untrained voice a-capella to create a dislocation between place, space and sound. She has reworked songs from sources as diverse as Nirvana and David Bowie, through to traditional folk music and sixteenth century ballads.

About the Sound Installation:

‘The Internationale’ (1999) was once a rallying call for socialists around the world but is now almost forgotten. Philipsz notes ‘it could be interpreted as either a lament for something that has passed or as the song suggests, a clarion call for political action.’ ‘The Internationale’ was first installed in a public underpass in Ljubljana, Slovenia, a former Soviet country.

This installation is an Arts Council Collection National Partners Programme Exhibition. Credit: Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London. © the artist. For more information about the partnership and Arts Council Collection visit: https://sunderlandculture.org.uk/acc-national-partners-programme/

Student Takeover:

Simon Green, Breathe, 2021, Digital video, 7 minutes

Responding to: Susan Philipsz, The Internationale, 1999

Inspired by Susan Philipsz ‘The Internationale’ in Mowbray Park, and the dislocation of sound in an outside environment, ‘Breathe’ takes aural and visual elements of the Tyneside coast and relocates them thirty miles inland to the North Pennines, to create a contemplative projection reflecting on the reduced distances that we have been allowed to travel in the past year.