Artists

KMRU

Press release

FOLDS (in tape fields) is a cooperation between Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and IMAI – Inter Media Art Institute, realised as part of IMAI's biennial exhibition project Circulation Copies on screens and loudspeaker systems throughout Düsseldorf's urban space. FOLDS (in tape fields) is the first project in the new series Kunsthalle unterwegs, which begins in April 2026. KMRU explores how urban infrastructures condition and shape listening in public space. Working with listening walks, detours and incidental recordings, he approaches Düsseldorf as an auditory field in which routines, rhythms and expectations overlap and intersect. The four-part sound piece FOLDS (in tape fields) unfolds across various locations and speaker systems throughout the urban landscape. Sound-based motifs, loops and field recordings can be heard at staggered intervals and recur without forming a closed whole. Time is stretched, interrupted or folded back on itself. Meaning emerges in passing by, in lingering, or equally through what goes overheard. Rather than offering a fixed cartography, the work opens out to expansive, layered modes of perception. "IN THE BEGINNING there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry." Ben Okri, The Famished Road, 1991 Berlin-based sound artist KMRU (Joseph Kamaru, * 1997 in Nairobi, Kenya) works with field recordings, ambient sound, and experimental techniques to explore listening cultures beyond dominant perceptual norms. He produces compositions, installations and performances internationally and has released multiple albums, including with his own label, OFNOT.