Forever Sounds (Ewigkeitsgeräusche)
September 22, 2024–September 21, 2026
The Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum is pleased to present Forever Sounds (Ewigkeitsgeräusche), a sound sculpture by Berlin-based artist Moritz Fehr. From September 22, 2024, through September 21, 2026, the museum’s entrance hall becomes the site of a vast installation where the hidden infrastructures of post-mining resound in shifting layers of vibration and resonance. Entering its second year, the exhibition will be accompanied by a series of public events.
With Forever Sounds, Fehr makes audible what usually remains unheard: the ongoing acoustic life of infrastructures that persist long after extraction has ceased. The work is immersive and meditative, transforming the entrance hall into a resonant body where geology, technology, and history converge.
The closure of coal mines in the Ruhr region did not end mining. Beneath the surface, a network of pumps, sensors, ventilation shafts, and control systems continues to operate. Their task is not production but maintenance and prevention: protecting the region from groundwater flooding, collapsing voids, and toxic residues. These operations, known as „Ewigkeitsaufgaben“ or “perpetual tasks,” must continue without foreseeable conclusion.
Fehr gathers their sonic traces through extensive fieldwork. He recorded the steady flow of mine water, the hum of fans, the electromagnetic sounds of generators, and the rhythmic compression of cement into unstable shafts. He also integrated seismic data provided by Dr. Kasper Fischer (Seismological Observatory, Ruhr-University Bochum), capturing the subtle tremors of the earth adjusting to decades of excavation.
As part of the sculpture, twenty-one loudspeakers distribute the composition throughout the space, surrounding visitors with an acoustic presence that shifts in density, volume, and timbre. At times dense and vibrating, at others receding into near-silence, it invites attentive listening. Semi-transparent sculptural panels translate the seismic activity into delicate vibrations, allowing visitors to perceive the subterranean tremors not only with their ears but also through subtle visual and tactile cues.
Beyond the museum walls, Forever Sounds also exists in augmented reality. On the lawn in front of the building, visitors can use a smartphone app to activate a virtual sound sculpture. With headphones, they enter a parallel spatial sound environment that overlays the physical site with intangible presences, existing between grounded infrastructure and virtual space.
Ultimately, Forever Sounds reflects on time. Mining is often told through economic or historical narratives, yet these are fleeting compared to the geological transformations it leaves behind. The Ruhr’s strata are permanently altered, and infrastructures of maintenance must endure indefinitely. What began as industry has become an inheritance of obligation, extending into the future as a form of perpetual care.
Within the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum, an institution dedicated to preserving and interpreting the legacies of extraction, the sculpture combines material presence with acoustic resonance. Fehr’s work does not simply represent echoes of mining; it enacts them, surrounding visitors with an acoustic continuum that resists closure.
Moritz Fehr (b. 1981 in Dortmund, Germany) is an artist currently living and working in Berlin. Following a conceptual and research-based approach, he explores constellations of objectivity and emotion, technology and nature, and psychological and perceptual aspects of listening and seeing. He realizes works with spatial sound and dimensional images, which he often presents as site-specific installations, interventions or environments.
Forever Sounds (Ewigkeitsgeräusche): An artwork by Moritz Fehr (2024)
Realisation: Moritz Fehr in co-production with the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum (DBM), Leibniz Research Museum for Geo-resources, represented by its Scientific Director, Prof. Dr. Sunhild Kleingärtner; Realisation of the Augmented Reality App in co-production with Ikonospace BV (Joris Demnard, Manuel Farre). Funding by the Stiftung der Sparkasse Bochum zur Förderung von Kultur und Wissenschaft.
Press contact: Sophia Sievers, +49 (234) 5877-264, presse@bergbaumuseum.de.
