Talking & Listening (Reden & Zuhören / Discuorrer & Tadlar / Parlare & Ascoltare)



“Talking & Listening..."  is a site-specific, performative work by Hanna Burkart, realized during her residency in Lavin (La Stalla, January 2026). The work addresses the personal conversation as an artistic work and examines listening and speaking as a time-based practice framed by economic conditions.
The point of departure is the activation of an abandoned telephone booth in the village square of Lavin. It functions as an interface and symbolic threshold: a site of visibility, contact, and invitation. Under the title Talking & Listening—formulated in the languages spoken in the Engadin (German, Romansh, Italian, and English)—a clear proposition is made: a personal one-to-one conversation with the artist, 1 minute at 1 CHF. The explicit payment marks the conversation as artistic labor and positions time, attention, and presence as central materials of the work. The project shifts artistic production from object to situation. The conversation is consumable but not standardizable; it resists comparison, repetition, and scalability. The conversations are recorded, remain under private custody, and may be acquired by the participants as singular documents. In this way, the work oscillates between ephemerality and archive, between performative enactment and individual appropriation. The design of the telephone booth is an integral part of the work. Six posters mounted on the exterior vary the words TALKING / LISTENING / REDEN / ZUHÖREN / DISCUORRER / TADLAR / PARLARE / ASCOLTARE in different sizes and spacing. This graphic arrangement translates the rhythm of conversation and listening—pauses, intensifications, accelerations—into a visual structure. Inside the booth, the wall where the telephone was once installed is entirely covered with a photographic work by Burkart, showing excerpts from her past practice. Rather than functioning as a retrospective display, the images serve as an open reference system and as prompts for conversation.
Talking & Listening is rooted in Burkart’s long-term nomadic practice, which has been shaped by encounters and conversations with initially unfamiliar people. Against this background, the work understands conversation as a fundamental cultural technique and listening as a form of shared responsibility. The telephone booth is reactivated as a former piece of public communication infrastructure, while the actual conversations take place in the artist’s studio. The booth marks the transition between public space and private encounter, between invitation and commitment.
Talking & Listening conceives art not as representation or object, but as a time-limited, paid, and relational experience—situated in everyday life and effective through direct enactment.

“Talking & Listening”
(Reden & Zuhören / Discuorrer & Tadlar / Parlare & Ascoltare)
The telephone booth is open from 14–28 January.

One-to-one conversations can be arranged with the artist and take place in her studio.
Costs: 1min / 1 CHF , Tel.: +43 676 921 4696, studio@hannaburkart.com