Ten years after its last performance, the megaphone choir returns to Spielbudenplatz on Hamburg’s Reeperbahn. This was supposed to be the site of a building district planned by local residents. Instead, there is a gaping hole surrounded by a fence. Time for a sonic exploration: What does the acoustic architecture of a plan suspended in limbo sound like? What future will not take place here?
Eleven women with megaphones become mobile samplers, recording and reproducing the sounds of the environment: between spoken word, sound experiments and political speeches, statements from interviews with neighbours and former residents are set to music. These were part of a ‘wish production’ by planbude – an internationally acclaimed form of urban planning based on the knowledge of the many.
It's not even a fence.
It's really a black wall
Which does a
Wich does a lot
When you stand
In front of it
You misread this place completely
If you don't know it
You misunderstand it completely.
From here
«For the Megaphone Choir, Kretzschmar collects everyday language. With all its filler words, pauses for thought and breath, stumbles, drastic formulations and apt word pictures, a libretto is created which, when spoken collectively, reinforces the repressed knowledge of everyday life and makes it heard with force and dignity. Songs reminiscent of the underground hits of the black New York disco punk band ESG. On top of the rhythmic skeleton, there are sparse layers of electronic and locally produced mechanical patterns, construction work as Sisyphean labour, demonstratively pointless activity that builds up from scraping and creaking to tribal rhythms, fuelled by combative shouts.« – Christoph Schäfer, DÉRIVE /ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR STADTFORSCHUNG
Credits:
Concept/Direction/Composition: Sylvi Kretzschmar
Composition/Development/Graphic Design: Rahel Kraft
Performance and Development: Andrea Hantscher, Heike Nöth, Sibylle Peters, Liz Rech, Annika Scharm, Frida Stein, Rahel Kraft, Sylvi Kretzschmar, Ann-Kathrin Quednau, Alyssa Marie Warncke, Anne Brüchert
Costumes: Amo Jermies
Artistic assistance/production: Kerstin Oppermann
Dramaturgical consultation: Sibylle Peters
Sound Technician: Peta Devlin
Lighting: Lars Rubarth
Funded by the Hamburg Ministry of Culture and Media: Programme Art in Public Space With thanks to Paulina Gilsbach and Jan Wagner from the project ‘Essos Echos - Returning Fragmentary Memories to a Seemingly Empty Space’ at the Institute for Urban Design/Hafen City University Hamburg.
Photos: Heike Schluckebier, rasande tyskar, Hinrich Schulz
Video: Margit Czenki
