Sylvi Kretzschmar conducts discomfort-research. She follows her own inner resistance to certain political gestures and sounds. Her artistic-scientific dissertation examines the effects of sound-amplified voices and deals with PA (public address) media of voice amplification (e.g. microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers, but also speech choirs) in the context of political gatherings.
The megaphone choir produces an unusual and powerful form of political speech that is deliberately ineloquent: everyday language that stutters, hesitates and slips up. In participatory artistic research with activists, artists, residents and neighbours of the so-called ‘Esso houses’ in Hamburg’s St. Pauli district, Sylvi Kretzschmar developed the megaphone choir for the specific context of the Right to the City movement and tested it performatively: 15 women* with megaphones amplify statements from interviews with neighbours, users and tenants of the now demolished houses. They speak in verbatim reproduction instead of the interviewees. The megaphone choir is still used today as a medium of representative voice amplification in the context of urban protests.
In PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEMS – Voice Amplification as Choreography of Political Assemblies Sylvi Kretzschmar combines findings from artistic research with media history analysis to reflect on the politics of amplified voices.
See also: ESSO HOUSES ECHO – An Obituary
Credits:
The work was created as part of the artistic-scientific graduate programme "Assemblies and Participation: Urban Publics and Performance" (Hafencity University, Research Theatre/FUNDUSTHEATER/K3 Centre for Choreography | Tanzplan Hamburg).
video: Utopie TV
photos: rasande tyskar
