www.simonwhetham.co.uk
"Totem of Frequencies" installation for Artists House residency, Pärnu, Estonia
Throughout October 2025 I was in residency at the Artists House, Pärnu in Estonia by invitation of curator Janno Bergmann. Through collecting various obsolete technological products I had pairs of devices such as analogue radios, scanners, CD-ROM drives and VCRs, which I reanimated and adapted in various ways to interact with each other.
The photo below shows the installation on the opening night and the videos show the elements in situ and in the studio:

Regarding this residency I was expecting to mainly focus on making a work to be shipped to Vienna, Austria to be exhibited in December as part of Klangmanifeste 2026, but it became clear I was going to make another large scale installation work. Especially when the decided space to present the work was Tempel Kultuurklubi. Following some visits we decided the work would be installed on a large wooden structure jokingly called 'the lift'. After a great deal of consideration I decided all the elements of the project should be mounted on the one long face of the structure, with a speaker installation on top. This meant that almost every element had to be reconsidered and had to be installed on this surface with limited access.
I want to thank curator Janno Bergmann so much for his resourcefulness and calm during the installation as this helped so much to successfully put the elements in place and connect them. Many thanks also to Andres and the team of Tempel for hosting the work, which will be a permanent fixture in the space!

