MB: Does the Leisure Zone concept tie-in with your theory of the 'Non-place'?

Yeah. Before something becomes a 'Leisure Zone', it used to be a 'Non-place'. It's economically not of any interest to anybody, but this is when it's important for those who use it. People are going out with their dogs, injecting heroin, children are going there to play. It's simply a grey area. It doesn't have any existence verbally; it's not described; it's no public spot; it's just in between buildings or on the outskirts. But then take hold of it, call it a leisure zone, cultivate it, and something that used to be a non-place is brought into existence. It does appear. It has to serve people's health, for instance. Something that used to be natural and people took it for granted that their environment is there to serve the living, so therefore their environment has to be the leisure zone or Erholungsgebiet as well.

MB: Would you play Leisure Zone music in a leisure zone?

(Laughs) No, it's because it's not recognisable; it's a paradox. I once was asked to make a musical installation in a museum. It was during an art opening. So I put a CD player somewhere into the building. People came in and the exhibition and I had Leisure Zone going. The curator came back to me and asked me, 'Where is your music' and I said 'It's always there, all the time, that's part of the idea'. Do you see the analogy? It's as if they would take away the air that you breathe and put it in oxygen tanks that you have to pay for. This is happening all the time. It's happening to water. That's the Non-place concept - being aware of the things that don't exist yet. Or being aware of the things that get lost in the digital process of encoding. Some people don't mind listening to MP3s. I think that's tragic , because I immediately hear the difference. But people don't have the vocabulary to describe what happens. Some say it sounds Digital This is not an argument; I can't argue with that. So as long as the vocabulary is missing these procedures always continue to take away the substance, to make it more redundant. It's actually a process of higher redundancy that I'm working against.
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appeared in The Wire 266, April 2006