The starting point was Tamara Grcic’s interest in heterophony. The term is used in music to refer to simultaneous variations of a single melodic line and relies on polyphony and sound variations on the score. Another aspect was the fact that Rüsselsheim has a highly varied population structure comprising over a hundred different nationalities. It was the artist’s intention to create a choreography for the Rüsselsheim exhibition space in which the concept of nations is abandoned and differences fuse to produce an open, permeable diversity.

The result is a sound piece that occupies the entire building. In every room voices resound, male, female, young or old ones. Tamara Grcic met and interviewed people of different nationalities asking her subjects to describe a room or house of special importance to them. The artist also requested them to sing a song in their native language.

The actual content of the recordings remains preserved within the individual languages. Tamara Grcic is interested in language as an abstract, sound-based system, and its various tone colors. By combining different sound sequences from her material to create abstract compositions, the artist produced a total of 13 sound pieces for the Opelvillen.

Grcic has the voices flow together in different ways. They seem to jump back and forth in the room, enter into dialog with one another, to alternate or merge. In the succession of rooms, the voices engage with one another, and the movement of the sounds from room to room causes the entire building to reverberate with a loud humming, that constitutes a language of its own. As the visitor moves through the rooms and responds to the various sound sources, he creates his own rhythm in this choreography arranged by the artist. The whole effect is further reinforced by special lighting and color filters in front of the windows.