Karim Ben Khelifa

In 36,000 Ways

A Sensory, Responsive Installation

In this intimate, site-specific variation of his ongoing project, Karim Ben Khelifa shifts the experience of war from cognition to embodiment, confronting audiences with its physical and emotional weight.

Inside a solitary booth, a single shard of missile shrapnel collected from frontline sites in Ukraine is presented to the visitor. As each person enters, their presence is detected and subtle physiological signals captured non-invasively, translated into a responsive low-frequency soundscape, where the visitor's own heartbeat becomes a quiet, persistent rhythm of resilience within the wreckage.

A larger, collective installation is in active development.

More about the artist and his previous projects
www.karimbenkhelifa.com

Access

For curators, presenters, and funders: a fuller picture of the project , manifesto, tech rider, video walkthrough, and the larger installation in development , is available on this website through a password, on request.

inquiry@in36000ways.org

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Full Project Dossier

In 36,000 Ways

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01, Manifesto

Unlike every project I have created so far, my attempt with In 36,000 Ways is to bypass cognition and go straight for the body.

02, Technical

Tech Rider

Full technical specifications for the single-visitor booth installation: spatial requirements, equipment list, power and connectivity needs, build and strike timelines, and requirements for technical director presence.

Download Tech Rider (PDF)

03, Experience

Video Walkthrough

A guided walkthrough of the current single-visitor installation, presented at IDFA Documentary Festival, Amsterdam, November 2025.

04, In Development

The Larger Installation

The larger installation is in active development.

The full-scale version of In 36,000 Ways expands the intimate encounter of the booth into a collective, architectural experience. Thousands of real missile shrapnel fragments, collected from frontline sites in Ukraine, are suspended as a frozen explosion above a 6×7 metre walkable stage.

Visitors move through the installation one at a time. Their physiological presence, detected non-invasively via radar sensing, shapes a spatial soundscape in real time. Haptic feedback, synchronised to each visitor's heartbeat, runs through the floor. The installation inverts the logic of its own materials: military-grade hardware repurposed from instruments of death toward tools of presence and care.

The work addresses compassion fatigue and emotional disengagement among young Europeans regarding war and geopolitical conflict. A research partnership with neuroscientists is in development to measure its civic impact.

Touring version: 6×7m stage, single-visitor, full technical support. Venue enquiries welcome.

Credits

Artist Karim Ben Khelifa

Production Director Enzo Leclercq

Ukraine Producer Igor Burdyga

Soundscape Felipe Sanchez Luna

Creative Technologists Pascal Staudt & Max Weber

Co-produced by Atelier Non-Fiction & KLING KLANG KLONG

Supported by

Center for Advanced Virtuality at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA

Center for Humans and Machines at the Max Planck Institute Human Development Lab, Berlin, Germany

The City of Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine

Odd Systems, Kyiv, Ukraine

Special thanks to the Choir of the City of Kryvyi Rih