Annika Kahrs (*1984)

In her videos, films and performances, Annika Kahrs (*1984) explores the margins of what we call music by addressing the cultural and social functions of music and investigating its communicative aspects and formal properties. Her film »Infra Voice« (2018) combines, both on the acoustic and visual level, the rare musical instrument, the octobass, with the equally fascinating giraffe along with the recent field of research on the animal’s acoustic communication. Playing a central role in the work are the sound of the instrument—whose lowest note lies in the infrasound range inaudible for the human ear—and the low-pitched sounds produced by the animal. Using the media of a film installation, the octobass stands across from the giraffe and makes contact with it via the sound and formally. The different proportions of the instrument, animal and human shift in scale, shrinking and expanding their actual dimensions to establish a new ratio in the film. »Infra Voice« refers to the discourse on communication through sound and the human perception of the latter.