Artist's talk: Cardiff/Miller and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

The installations by the Canadian artist duo Janet Cardiff (b. 1957) and George Bures Miller (b. 1960) are situated on the interface between cinema and theater and focus on acoustic perception in illusionistic spaces. In their works, Cardiff and Miller refer to the audience's behaviors and expectations, only to simultaneously undermine them. A central artistic element is the close, even intimate relationship between viewers and the sounds in their immediate vicinity: the reproduction of binaural sound simulates the proximity of a person within whispering distance and results in a hyper-realistic aural perception. 
The duo has had solo exhibitions in the Whitechapel Gallery in London; Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, and many other venues. Their work "The Paradise Institute" won the La Biennale di Venezia Special Award at the Venice Biennale in 2001.
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev works primarily on the relationships between the historical avant-garde and contemporary art. She has held positions including that of senior curator at P.S.1 in New York from 1999 to 2001. She was also the artistic director of the 16th Biennale of Sydney, the director and chief curator of the Museo di Arte Contemporanea di Torino, as well as currently acting as the artistic director of dOCUMENTA (13). She wrote the first monographs on Janet Cardiff, including the artist’s collaborative works with George Bures Miller and William Kentridge.

Artist's talk on the occasion of the exhibition opening of "Cardiff/Miller — Works from Sammlung Goetz" in Haus der Kunst