Ayumi Paul: Matane またね

The artist Ayumi Paul has been working closely with the Gropius Bau for several years. In 2024, she developed a sound work that announces the building’s closure via loudspeaker every evening: The exuberant laughter of children is followed by farewells in a variety of languages, which are currently spoken by the Gropius Bau’s employees. The work’s title – Matane またね – roughly translates to “see you again” in Japanese. The sound piece is played 30 minutes before closing every day and can also be found in German Sign Language and International Sign Language on the screens throughout the building.

“Beyond their literal meaning, words are sound, and sound is what carries intention, content and essence.

When I was asked to create a sound piece to mark the moment of saying goodbye to the visitors of the Gropius Bau, the question of language – a topic I have been dedicated to, researching and contemplating for decades – suddenly needed to be formulated and transcended into something useful, and within only a handful of seconds.

What is a sound that everyone can relate to? A sound that exists within each of our sensory repertoires, even if lost in many adults. Imagine everyone and everything as a toolbox of sounds and vibrations, a vast internal instrument. The same sounds, the same waves, amplify each other. I see this phenomenon as fields. In physics, it’s called Sympathetic Resonance.

When children laugh, the string within ourselves that resonates with our inner child begins to vibrate in harmony with what we hear or feel. The more courageously we open ourselves to this sound, the stronger it gets amplified. A field is created. Now, within that field, how do we want to live? How do we want to treat each other? Ourselves? How do we feel? What is relevant and what is not?

There is a fairytale, The Emperor’s New Clothes, where children’s instantaneous laughter breaks the illusion of the sovereign wearing clothes that only the clever can see. There should always be space for children’s laughter. If children cannot laugh, if the childlike string within each of us is not vibrating, something needs to change. A linguist once told me that it is conceivable that laughter was one of the foundations for the development of word-based language. That made sense to me. Laughter can be like a handshake or a bow, signifying that we agree not to harm each other. From there, we find ways to communicate.

What is the beginning of language? What do we want from language? There is a heart language. It’s the sound behind the words. That’s the universal language. It can translate into all words, into the movement of hands, and it translates into silence, because the intention of the heart moves air, and this, in turn, is perceived by everything around it.

There is much heart language in the few seconds that will sound at the Gropius Bau’s farewell. The voices woven together for the finale of the goodbye sound may change over time, new ones will be added, forgotten languages will be remembered and new words will be invented.”

— Ayumi Paul, August 2024