wel-come is an outdoor installation and was the first time installed in the garden of the castle Wiepersdorf in Germany. The wide stereo installation uses 22 fragmentated voices of 22 people of different countries. All of them are saying the same word in their natural language. Through the fragmentation they come together in a new way, sounding strange and familiar at the same time, as a universal chorus.

In the garden version the different voices are partly filtered extremly, so that the sound of the human voices becomes a sound of birds, insects or frogs. The visitors in the garden don't know exactly if they are listening natural sounds or human voices while they are sitting between the speakers. Nearby a signé can be seen with the word in all used languages written by the speakers in their own hand writing.

There are 2 versions of wel-come: 8 minutes for inside passage ways without 'nature sounds', 22 min. for outside passage ways and parks with 'nature sound' - filtering. In different cities the piece will be installed in a site-specific way.

The 22 recorded speakers and languages:

korean: Unsuk Chin, Composer
hindi: Sudhir Kakar, psychoanalist/writer
japanese: Yoriko Ikeya, piano player
portugues: Regina Allgayer-Kaufmann, music ethnologist
argent./spanish: Mario Verandi, Composer
french: Blondine Costaz, actress
vietnamese: Ngyen Van Nam, music ethnologist
hebrew: Zoe Tuvia, singer
umbundu: Zito Ferreira, drummer
italian: Costantino Ciervo, Video artist
schwedish: Olof Lidin, Japanologe
greek: Alexandros Droseltis, Composer
english: David Prior, Composer
dutch: Kurd van de Velde, visual artist
turkish: Fidan Muzaffer, business man
german: Isabel Mundry, Composer
chinese: Xinping Li, chemical assistant
russian: Alexandra Parchina, singer
indonese: Rio Reinhardt, Global Production Engineer
arabic: Farhad Payar, Journalist
ukraine: Alan Pogrelinskiy, Student
ethiopian: Yebegashet Teklu, Student