Sweepcase is an old suitcase, found at a flea market, that waits open and empty. We invite our audience to put into it whatever they happen to carry, a key, a glove, a lighter, a stone picked up on the way. When the lid is closed the suitcase begins to sound, and only for as long as it stays closed. The objects remain hidden, and what reaches the audience is their weight, their place and their colour, heard as a sound shaped by this one arrangement of things.

What the suitcase holds

Suitcases have long served artists as archives of memory, of journeys, exile and personal history, and Marcel Duchamp's Boîte-en-valise carried a whole body of work in miniature. Sweepcase keeps the suitcase and leaves it without content of its own. What it holds is brought each time by someone else, chosen in a moment and taken back a moment later, so that the work is completed anew with every visitor and authorship is shared between the artists, the suitcase, the objects and the people who fill it.

Nothing has to be learned to play it. The familiar gestures of a suitcase, lifting it by the handle, opening, filling, closing and locking it, are the entire interaction, and the suitcase itself, rather than anything presented inside it, becomes the place where attention gathers.

Listening to what is hidden

The suitcase does not try to recognise its content or to give it a name. It listens to what the objects are, how heavy they are, where they rest and which colour they reflect, and lets these qualities shape a soundscape that sounds from within its walls. A heavy object resonates differently from a light one, a bright one differently from a dark one, and several objects together produce a sound that none of them would make alone. Opening the case ends the sound, so that seeing and hearing never meet, and the things we carry every day can be heard as material, before they are recognised as useful.

Exhibitions

beyond_repair art & research collective

Antoni Rayzhekov and Martin Murer are interdisciplinary artists and researchers working at the intersection of music, interaction design, and creative technology. Together, they form the art and research collective beyond_repair, exploring new relationships between everyday objects, hybrid instruments, and artistic expression. Combining perspectives from experimental music, human-computer interaction, and design research, they investigate how everyday materials can become expressive interfaces. Their work aims to contribute equally to artistic practice and academic research.