2 channel audio 2015
The Constitution Hill precinct is located at 11 Kotze Street in Braamfontein, Johannesburg near the western end of the suburb of Hillbrow. The original prison was built to house white male prisoners in 1892. The Old Fort was built around this prison by Paul Kruger from 1896 to 1899.
Built into the northern wall of the fort are a series of rooms, concrete on all sides. The doors, no longer on their hinges, are stacked in the furthest room. They are thick steel doors with small sliding openings. Hooks hang from bars close to the ceiling in each room.
A long corridor leads to isolated rooms, mirrored below by identical rooms accessed via heavy wooden trap door in the floor. There is a tunnel that leads from these rooms to the city morgue and the Hillbrow Police Station.
The official story is that these rooms were used for file storage during Apartheid.
Storage 1986 – 2015 is comprised of recordings of these empty rooms, resonant frequencies amplified in an attempt to call out from the dark empty spaces a felt presence.
A stereo version of this piece appeared in the Leonardo Music Journal No.25 (2015) and the exhibition Audiosphere – Sound Experimentation 1980-2020, curated by Francisco López at Museo Reina Sofía (2020).
Pictured above: 8 channel installation version in collaboration with Noluthando Lobese-Moropa.
