> Originally operational between 1856 and 1979, Sweden’s Vita Duvan prison, in Luleå, in the far north of Sweden, was the country’s only ‘panopticon prison’: an environment designed to facilitate maximum social control through psychological techniques, including isolation and limited human contact. It instilled an omnipresent feeling of being watched via its circular structure. For Swedish composer, artist and electronic innovator Maria W Horn, the prison – now abandoned – was an intriguing prospect.
Maria explains: “As I visited the city in order to research the area for The Arts Biennial, I passed by this circular building that I found fascinating. It turned out to be a former prison. The only ‘panoptic’ prison in Sweden. As I started working on an installation, the history of the prison gradually unfolded.”
Sonic projects of this type are nothing new for Maria: her 2021 work , for example, focuses on the acoustics and spectral properties of an abandoned machine hall. The Stockholm-based composer is a well known figurehead of the city’s experimental electronic scene, which was underlined by her co-founding of label XKatedral in 2015. Operating at the intersection between audio/visual art and working as a music artist, Maria’s latest project was spurred by a fascination with the lives of the people who were held at Vita Duvan. “In this work, I was trying to imagine the experience of the individual prisoner, whose first three years were often spent in total isolation, during which all
