For Pieza Blanca her first show in Buenos Aires in 1968, Graciela Carnevale presented an empty room, entirely painted white, brightly illuminated, and filled only with the sound of an amplified heartbeat. For her solo exhibition at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein in 2025, the artist performed one subtle yet significant alteration. Whereas the 1968 iteration featured the sound of a pre‑recorded heartbeat on vinyl, looped on tape – a medical recording provided by a doctor friend – Carnevale replaced this found, archival sound with a recording of her own heartbeat. Reflecting on her own mortality, and on the time as it was then and as it has passed since, the use of her own heartbeat asserted with renewed clarity that the piece is about time, about the present moment, and fundamentally about life.

The LP conceived by Graciela Carnevales for the “n.b.k. Records” series includes, in addition to the new soundtrack for Pieza Blanca, a work based on a project titled La Huerta, a workshop offering gardening and horticultural training to young people and adults from disadvantaged neighbourhoods – a space of mutual learning, exchange, and profoundly political work. The audio recording presents the sounds of the Southern Hemisphere as they were played inside the library at the Université du Québec in Outaouais in Canada, where the work was first presented.

Graciela Carnevale (*1942 in Marcos Juárez / Argentina) lives in Rosario / Argentina. She is one of the key figures of the Argentine avant-garde movement of the 1960s. A member of the platform Red Conceptualismos del Sur and a longtime lecturer at the Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Carnevale has, throughout a life of constant exploration and experimentation, worked to establish collaborative practices that place the community at their core and embrace ecological concerns.

The record can be purchased at local bookshops, via the website of Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, and at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein.