Georg Klein (composer)


Georg Klein is a German artist and composer based in Berlin, Germany. He has lived in Rome, Los Angeles, and Istanbul. He has worked in the media of sound, video, and media production. He is a professor of sound art and director of the master's program of Sound Studies and Sonic Arts at the University of the Arts, Berlin.

Biography

Early life and education

Georg Klein was born in 1964 in Öhringen, Germany. Klein began his studies in sound engineering and communication at the Technical University of Munich before continuing at the Technische Universität Berlin. He later pursued studies in the philosophy of religion, psychoanalysis, and ethnomusicology at the Freie Universität Berlin. From 1991 to 1994, he worked as a research assistant at the Technische Universität Berlin, focusing on visualizing sound for the deaf. In 1999 and 2000, he lectured at the Freie Universität Berlin on the intersection of music and religion.

Career

Transition to Composition and Sound Art

In 1996, he began working as a music composer and in the following years worked in the Electronic Studio of the TU Berlin on live electronic and computer music. In 2001, he began focusing on public installations such as Transition in 2001 and Ortsklang Marl Mitte, which won the German Sound Art Award in 2002. From 2001 to 2005, he was chairman of the Berlin Society of New Music, a forum dedicated to issues related to production and reception aesthetics, as well as cultural policy in contemporary music. He later began to incorporate video into his work.

KlangQuadrat and Public Installations

In 2003, Klein and Julia Gerlach established KlangQuadrat, an office for sound and media art. Their projects have received support from the Capital Cultural Fund in Berlin, the Goethe-Institut, the German Foreign Office, the German-Polish Foundation, and the Schering Foundation. TRASA connected Warsaw and Berlin for two months. He created interactive media art at urban places such as subway entrance halls. With the Swiss performance artist Steffi Weismann, he created installations such as pickup in 2005, takeaway in 2006, venture doll in 2008, and UNorJUSTNESS A+B in 2013. In his installation turmlaute.2: watch tower, he simulated the founding of a political organization.

Projects Addressing Borders and Social Themes

In 2009, Klein created Sprich mit mir, a site-specific research and interactive installation in the red-light district of Braunschweig, and RamallahTours, a car and travel agency installation in Israel, the latter dealing with falseness in public space and the internet. In 2010, Klein presented a dual audio-visual installation on assassins: gunmen and martyrs in Berlin and Istanbul. He also explored borders, as seen in his exhibition "borderlines" and his work tracing Godwin with an illegal immigrant from Nigeria appearing in the streets of different European cities. With his work GNADE / MERCY, installed in front of banks and job centers, the work UNzuRECHT / UNorJUSTICE, and toposonie:spree, he addressed social themes.
In 2015, he received a prize at the Dialogue Award of the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Germany, for his project European Border Watch Organisation at the European Media Art Festival in Osnabrueck. According to the jury : "The European Border Watch encourages us to police the borders ourselves from the comfort of our homes. This project forces us to strengthen our own arguments and be continually vigilant against the slippery slide of fanatical ideas." Borders and migration are topics in subsequent works like Deep Difference Unit, Grün Hören / Listening Green and The Sound before Silence - Souvenirs from North Korea. In 2020, he received the Audio Walk Award for his soundwalk toposonie::engelbecken, which connects historical radio testimonies with the present. His audiovisual installation Dark Matter traces the development of hate speech in radical right-wing music and propaganda and ends with the attack in Halle in the 2019 Halle synagogue shooting.

Curatorial Work and Lectures

Klein has organized and curated events and exhibitions, and chaired the Berlin Society of New Music . He co-founded the Errant Bodies group Berlin, curated at the MuseumsQuartier Vienna and the DYSTOPIE - sound art festival, 2018, funded by Senate of Berlin, and 2020, financed by Kulturstiftung des Bundes. Since 1998, he has lectured in Germany and internationally, and has published essays on sound and media art as well as on art in public space. He has conducted workshops at institutions including the Berlin University of the Arts, Istanbul Bilgi University, and, in 2015, the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. Since 2013, he has held a lectureship in General Studies at the Berlin University of the Arts and serves as Professor of Sound Art and Director of the Master's Program in Sound Studies and Sonic Arts.

Artistic Practice

Klein's artistic practice incorporates sound, video, text, and photography. His installations and interventions in public spaces integrate visual, acoustic, situational, and political concepts. Some installations incorporate visitor involvement through interactive or participatory means.
Klein's work engages with sites and situations, emphasizing their contradictions. His work explores themes of borders and their transgression in psychological and political spaces. His projects explore transborder audio-visual communication spaces and address perceptions of boundaries between art and reality. He employs strategies of artistic fabrication in works that create uncertainty for audiences.
In recent years, the artistic debate on power in politics and the economy has been a focus of Klein's artistic and curatorial work.

Awards

Audio Walk Award, Germany 1st prize IGA Sound Art Competition 2017, BerlinEMAF Dialogue Award of the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Media Art Festival, Germany Medien-Raum-Award 2006, Skulpturenmuseum Marl / NRW Deutscher Klangkunstpreis / German Sound Art Award WDR / Skulpturenmuseum Marl / NRW
  • ''Gustav-Mahler Composition Prize Austria''

Works (selection)

3 new nurses, 3-part sound installation in Schwesternpark Witten passage, Interactive sound installation under a traffic bridge Dark Matter, Immersive Sound-Video-Installation The Sound before Silence, sound and video installation with objects Fog Zone, audiovisual installation in a fog space, DYSTOPIE - sound art festival Grün Hören / Listening Green, permanent sound installation at IGA / Gardens of the World Deep Difference Unit, sound sculpture, Art Biennale Daegu ungrounded, walk-in space bubble with interactive installation European Border Watch Organizations, European Media Art Festival EMAF The Interactive Piano, installation, Festival Klangwerkstatt, Sophiensaele PCFS - Post Colonial Flagship Store, in coop. with Sven Kalden, Exhibition at MuseumsQuartier toposonie::spree, sound Walk with smartphone app UNzuRECHT A + B, in coop. with Steffi Weismann, installation and performance, Schlossmediale Werdenberg GNADE / MERCY, intervention in public space and media altar of mercy tracing Godwin, participative poster action, Europe, since 2011mirror songs, installation at a prison facade Cuts and Creeds – Young, male assassins in an oriental-occidental perspective, RamallahTours, installation with a travel agency Sprich mit mir, interactive sound installationventure doll, in coop. with Steffi Weismann, sonic parole, Media Facades Festival meta.stasen, tram installation turmlaute.2: Wachturm, border project Festival MaerzMusik turmlaute.1: Hungerturm, sound and video installation takeaway, in Koop. mit Steffi Weismann, installationsonambiente Intern. Klangkunstfestival sixis, für Sextett mit Spiegelsextett DADAyama, in coop. with Tetsuo Furodate pickup – Intervention at a Kiosk, in Koop. mit Steffi Weismann TRASA warszawa-berlin, Ein bimedialer Kontaktraum, PeerGynt – stage music/conductor, Imperial News, wel-come, sound installation Ortsklang Marl Mitte – blaues blach – VielKunst.WenigArbeit, transition – berlin junction, interactive sound installation Li.. und die Erde I+II, amor fati,

Catalogs or reviews

Errant Sound Reader - Thoughts and Practies from the Berlin Artist-Run Space, Ed. Mario Asef, Golo Föllmer, Georg Klein, Brandon LaBelle, Errant Bodies Press 2025, borderlines - Auf der Grenze, Thematic catalog of works of George Klein, Ed. S.Sanio, German/English, Kehrer 2014, Drehung im Kopf, George Klein. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Heft 5-2014, Ed. Rolf W. Stoll, Schott Music 2014, ISSN 0945-6945BLICK-Interview by Barbara Kepa with George Klein, English, Berliner Pool, 2013Gratwanderung zwischen Kunst und Politik 2012, Stefan Fricke / George Klein, In: MusikTexte, Issue 135, ISSN 0178-8884Stadtkunst als Bild, Text, Klang 2011, George Klein Sprich mit mir, In: KUNSTFORUM International, Issue 212: res publica 2.0, Hg. Paolo Bianchi.Don't call it art! – On strategies of media art in public space, ISEA 2010 Ruhr Conference Proceedings, Ed. J.Funke, A.Broeckmann et.al., Revolver Berlin 2010, 29 km Katalog Kunstgalerie Umm El Fahem, Ed. Shlomit Baumann, dt.-arab.-hebr., Jerusalem 2009klangstaetten|stadtklaenge Katalog+DVD, Ed. Allg. Konsumverein e.V., dt.-engl., Braunschweig 2009Site-Sounds – On strategies of sound art in public space, In: Organised Sound 14/1, 2009, ISSN 1355-7718Deutsche Video-Kunst / Medien-Raum-Wettbewerb 2006-2008, Katalog, sonambiente Klangkunstfestival Katalog, 2006, The Making of Alex Katalog Urban Art Stories, 2005, transition – berlin junction, eine klangsituation Katalog, 2001, Deutscher Klangkunstpreis Katalog, 2002, TRASA warszawa-berlin Katalog, 2004, Electronic in New Music 2006, Unter freiem Himmel – Klangkunst im öffentlichen Raum In: musik|politik, BGNM-Jahrbuch 2002, From the sound installation to the sound situation In: Organised Sound 8/2, 2003, ISSN 1355-7718
  • Kazuo Uehara Sound Art in re-unioned City of Berlin. Osaka Univers. Journal of Arts No.18, 2002
  • Christa Brüstle: TRASA – Kontaktraum zwischen Warschau und Berlin. In: Positionen 62
  • Barbara Barthelmes: Georg Klein oder der Künstler als Orts-Seher. In: Katalog TRASA warszawa-berlin. Kehrer-Verlag, Heidelberg, 2004,
  • Doris Kolesch: Gehör-Gänge – Zu George Klein's Klangsituation "transition" in Richard Serras Skulptur "Berlin Junction". Art lecture 2002. SFB Kulturen des Performativen, Freie Universität Berlin
  • Sabine Sanio: im vorübergehen? kunst und eingedenken In: textbuch transition, Pfau-Verlag,