4th of July - Tuned Citizens

On the first days of July an event called Tuned City was held in Berlin. I quote from the programme: ”Tuned City between sound and space speculation is an exhibition and conference project which proposes a new evaluation of architectural spaces from the perspective of the acoustic.” I was invited to curate one evening of dkfrf on the Wriezener Bahnhof, a stretch of wasteland in Friedrichshain along the railway track. The idea was to have a pleasant evening of listening under a star spangled sky, given all visitors a perfect example of a new evaluation of an architectural space from the perspective of the acoustic.

Derek Holzer who invited me and Carsten Stabenow who agreed on having the dkfrf at Tuned City – and my gratitude goes out to them, also from this digital screen – must have had similar visions to mine: A warm summer’s evening, sounds coming from a perfect sound system to give every listener the chance to dive into an acoustic wonderland, no outside noises to disturb the sonic flow, and enough land to walk around for those who wanted to chat without disturbing the dedicated listener.

Alas.

The great weather prophet in the sky looked down on Berlin, saw a blending sheet of white sunny days spread over the city, and decided to treat that image in the same way Lucio Fontana did to canvas: He took out a Stanley knife and made a deep and sharp cut. On ’our’ Thursday temperature had dropped twenty degrees. Rainstorms swept over the barren land. It was cold, wet, humid and unpleasant. One could expect a theatrical remake of Moby Dick, with Ahab climbing the mast and going berserk. One could expect the most violent scenes of Wagner’s ‘The Flying Dutchman.’ One could even expect Vietnam, Beirut or Managua. But one could not expect that the audience, who had been listening for three days to lectures and stuff, would lean back and listen. No, now it was their turn to talk, and talk they did. A lot.

Were they sitting in the mud? No, no, wasteland had it, that one of the buildings had a sane roof. What we had was a hybrid between a hangar and a market hall with excellent acoustic qualities. Too bad that only the ceiling had been complete renewed Made entirely of wood, it was an absolute masterpiece of German craftsmanship. Whoever commissioned it, was the secret star of the evening. The building also had doors, or rather, entrances, huge and wide entrances that gave a clear view, but above all, feel, of the weather conditions. The ambience was kind of brrr. The audience was kind of half eared. The performers were kind of lost. The dkfrf was kind of shipwrecked.

The next day summer had returned as if nothing had happened. The shore we had washed upon was a sidewalk in Neukölln.

An extensive report on the dkfrf evening at tuned city will appear in Harold Schellinx’ SoundBlog. He will also present an on line audio-impression.

Playing on that evening were ( in a continuous flow) preluded by a walkman performance by Harold Schellinx.

The Phonographic Arkester

Peter Prautzsch

Richard Francis

Somaya Langley

Soinumapa

Lasse Marc Riek

The recordings (from the mixer) will become available soon.