Sneak audio-pod of Berlin Umbrella

Berlin Umbrella
to be launched in  Kreuzberg, Berlin on 3rd, 10th and 17th June, 2018.

For sneak preview/aural extract from Berlin Umbrella, see Lettretage.

My voice, James T Harding's and percussion, sound effects and
natural water sound recordings by Sonja Heyer.


See previous posts on 'How it happened.'

Nächster Beitrag

Berlin Umbrella: How it happened PART 3: The Sound Artist's p.o.v.

In Today's Blog, I'm handing over to my Collaborator on the 
Berlin Umbrella Project,  the Sound Artist, Sonja Heyer.

Sonja Heyer

Stephanie and I first met on a Scottish Hebridean island. She wrote poems,

I made sound recordings for my water archive, which I started to put on at 

that time. After that we lost sight of each other. Then four years ago suddenly

a mail: the Internet made  it is possible to find each other again. And soon

came the idea to try something together.  Water was my topic for a long time.

So when Stephanie showed up, it was natural to combine it with her poetry.

Previously,  I was working with a group of young Chinese-Taiwanese artists.
We had been invited to Lutherstadt Wittenberg for a one-month artist 
residence to the KulturBotschaft . It was November.

What do you do as a sound artist, if you are allowed to play a small court
garden in November? You are considering how to protect the speakers that
are used. So I came up with the idea to put small speakers in umbrellas. It worked! And transparent umbrellas made sure that the visitors could see
the starry sky during the audio walk. 

The listening umbrellas, or sound umbrellas, have since been my form into
which I can pack various contents.

Swopping Sound Umbrellas mid-walk

We then traveled as an artist group to an artist residence in Taiwan. 
The country was plagued by a prolonged drought for months. So water 
became my topic for the sound installation in Taiwan. I asked people 
what water meant to them and thus learned many touching stories. In 
order to absorb bubbling springs, they had to drive high into the mountains.
The rivers were dried up.

I invited Stephanie to Berlin and decided to record the Spree for one year 
from January to December 2017. I traveled to their sources in the Upper 
Lusatia, recorded the sound environment at the point where the river 
passes the border between Berlin and Brandenburg, dipped my underwater microphone (a 'dolphin's ear') in almost all city locks and accompanied the Spree 
to its mouth in Spandau. In January and December I recorded on the Lichtenstein Bridge, where in 1919 the corpse of Rosa Luxemburg was thrown into the
water. In 2017, the canal wore a thin layer of ice.

A part of the Berlin excursions we have undertaken together. And to our surprise, it turned out that the water and sewage system of Berlin, the so-called radial system, was once a collaboration between British and German engineers. So far, I only knew the Radialsystem V, the art space on Holzmarktstraße. So my excursions allowed me to get to know my own city even better and from new sides!

UMBRELLA hat inzwische

Stephanie und ich, wir lernten uns einst auf einer schottischen Insel kennen. Sie schrieb Gedichte, ich machte Tonaufnahmen für mein Wasserarchiv, das ich zu dieser Zeit begann anzulegen. Danach verloren wir uns aus den Augen. Dann vor vier Jahren plötzlich eine mail: das Internet machte

 es möglich, sich wiederzufinden. Und bald entstand die Idee, etwas gemeinsam zu versuchen.

Ich arbeitete gerade mit einer Gruppe junger chinesisch-taiwanesischer Künstlerinnen zusammen. Wir waren nach Lutherstadt Wittenberg für eine einmonatige artist residence an die KulturBotschaft eingeladen worden. Es war November.

Was macht man als Klangkünstlerin, wenn man einen kleinen Hofgarten im November bespielen darf? Man überlegt, wie man die Lautsprecher schützen kann, die zum Einsatz kommen. So kam ich auf die Idee, kleine speaker in Regenschirme zu setzen. Es funktionierte! Und durchsichtige Schirme sorgten dafür, dass die BesucherInnen während des Hörspaziergangs den Sternenhimmel sehen konnten.

Die Hör-Regenschirme oder sound umbrellas, sind seitdem meine Form, in die ich verschiedene Inhalte packen kann.

Wir reisten dann als KünstlerInnengruppe zu einer artist residence nach Taiwan. Das Land wurde zu dieser Zeit von einer seit Monaten anhaltenden Dürre geplagt. So wurde Wasser zu meinem Thema für die Klanginstallation in Taiwan. Ich fragte Menschen, was ihnen Wasser bedeutet und erfuhr auf diese Weise viele berührende Geschichten. Um sprudelnde Quellen aufnehmen zu können, mussten hoch ins Gebirge fahren. Die Flussläufe waren ausgetrocknet.

Wasser blieb lange mein Thema. Als Stephanie auftauchte, lag es daher nahe, es mit ihrer Poesie zu verbinden. Ich lud sie nach Berlin ein und beschloss, ein Jahr lang, von Januar bis Dezember 2017, Tonaufnahmen von der Spree zu machen. Ich reiste zu ihren Quellen in die Oberlausitz, nahm das sound environment an der Stelle auf, an der der Fluss die Grenze zwischen Berlin und Brandenburg passiert, tauchte mein Unterwassermikrofon in fast alle Stadtschleusen und begleitete die Spree bis zu ihrer Mündung in Spandau. Im Januar und im Dezember machte ich Tonaufnahmen an der Lichtensteinbrücke, an der 1919 die Leiche Rosa Luxemburgs ins Wasser geworfen wurde. 2017 trug der Kanal eine dünne Eisschicht.

Einen Teil der Berlin Exkursionen haben wir gemeinsam bestritten. Und zu unserer Überraschung stellte sich heraus, dass das Wasser- und Abwassersystem Berlins, das sogenannte Radialsystem, einst aus einer Zusammenarbeit britischer und deutscher Ingenieure entstand. Ich hatte bislang nur das Radialsystem V, den Kunstraum an der Holzmarktstraße, gekannt. So erlaubten mir unsere Ausflüge, meine eigene Stadt noch einmal besser und von neuen Seiten kennenzulernen!

UMBRELLA hat inzwischen viele Stationen erlebt. Berlin UMBRELLA bedeutet für mich, zum ersten Mal mit Poesie zu arbeiten – eine wundervolle Möglichkeit! Stephanie hat die Offenheit der Hör-Regenschirme inhaltlich und formal aufgegriffen: Ihre Verse funktionieren wie kleine Geschichten, die sich separat aber auch im Zusammenspiel mit anderen erschließen. Die Hör-Regenschirme wiederum bilden einen halboffenen Raum: man kann sich hörend darunter zurückziehen, man kann den Schirm aber auch vor sich ins Gras legen; dann vermengen sich die sound loops mit der Hörumgebung. Schließlich kann man Schirme mit anderen BesucherInnen tauschen – eine schöne Gelegenheit, miteinander ins Gespräch zu kommen, oder einfach gemeinsam zu lauschen.

Berlin Umbrella: How it Happened Part 2: the Poet's p.o.v.

On another day, I made a trip up and down the Spree from the Dom (the Cathedral) round the Museum Insel (Island) then up past the Reichstag to the Tiergarten and back again which was a good introduction to the city's history. I knew I wanted to incorporate that inner-city trip but for it to be more than just a description of architecture plus facts about World War 2 destruction and the Cold War. (For instance, I learnt that the river was one of the boundaries during the Cold War.) 

Stories, people connected to the city's history through its river is what I wanted to discover.  Back home, during research into river connections with the Nazis, I came across two horrific atrocities - the first, the murder of Rosa Luxemburg, communist and critic of the Nazis, whose murdered body was weighted and thrown into the Spree;

Rosa Luxemburg

 the second atrocity happened in Hitler's last few days, when he was hiding in his bunker and heard rumours that the Russians were advancing through the underground systems. Hitler ordered the wall separating the underground from a lock on the canal that leads off the Spree to be blown up, so that the underground was flooded, drowning thousands of Berliner civilians who used the tunnels as air raid shelters, also drowning wounded troops lying in hospital carriages.

But that is to jump ahead.  To go back to my on the spot research in Berlin,  it helped to already have seen the white crosses put up on the riverbank below the Reichstag in memory of those who were shot and drowned attempting to swim to freedom during the Cold War.  The drownings were all along the Spree but they decided it was more effective to have one spot as a memorial.

On the Spreeboden, riverbank below the Reichstag.

 I knew that the giant statue, Molecule Man by Jonathan Borofsky, a symbol of hope, would appear in one of my poems. The statue appears to walk on the river between the opposite banks of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, districts separated during the Cold War, but now united.

Molecule Man by Jonathan  Borofsky.

One warm evening, Sonja had another engagement, so I sauntered along the river to Montbijou where people were relaxing with beers sitting on deckchairs or on the grass banks around an open-air tango area. I too watched the impressive tango dancing, had a beer and a hot-dog (Sonja was horrified when I told her. That was not a German sausage) and also chatted to a few people - who mainly turned out to be tourists from other German cities, and one English couple, about what they liked about rivers/ water in cities, so some of their thoughts appear in my poems. Thanks to any of those people if you are reading this. As the sun set and the lights came on along the river banks, it was time to head back.

Not all my research was river-based. I also visited the Nikolaikirche which is now a local history museum as a graphic way of learning about Berlin's history. Also the Film Museum, because Berlin is Film and you can't not go. 

Asta Nielson, silent movie star

I'm delighted I managed to get Asta Nielson, one of the early stumm (silent) movie stars into the poems. She refused to work for propaganda films for Hitler and managed to survive. Her films were made using silver nitrate film (later discontinued since they were highly flammable) but which gave films of that era their glossy black. 

Films unspooling, looping like memory, images rising and falling like reflections in the river...the metaphoric possibilities already playing in my mind.  To see what resulted,  you will have to listen to the poems.

Magma launch at Europe House, Westminster

Great to have a poem, 'Hanmar's Agate' in the European edition of Magma magazine, Issue 70.  Paul Stephenson and Sarah Hart, the editors, had cannily managed to get Europe House, the HQ of the governmental European commission in Westminster as our venue.  Top security etc.  Near to Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey - what with Brexit looming, sadly this venue may soon be no longer in use.

Europe House, Westminster.

Anne Ballard, me, D.L. Prince (Davina) and Eleanor Livingstone (Artistic Director of StAnza.)

A great excuse to hotfoot it down to London, as did quite a few poets (or whom I know from StAnza) from Scotland also there.

Sir Thomas Hanmer as a young man with beribboned lovelock.

  There was not too much bewailing of Brexit in the poetry (though much during the social chats). Many of the poems celebrated Europe - some holiday or other trips commemorated but others celebrating the various cultural debts we have to Europe, as did my own, specifically the introduction of tulips, by way of France, not as you would suppose, from the Netherlands.

Sir Thomas Hanmer (17th c), a Royalist was exiled to France during the English Civil War, and at the end of the war, returned with tulip bulbs, and one which he developed and came to be  known as 'Hanmer's Agate'.  The story that struck me was that Hanmer was in correspondence with many other 'tulip fanciers' including Cromwell's second-in-command, Major-General Lambert.  Hanmer sent Lambert the gift of his Agate, specifically the 'mother-root' so that Lambert could grow more.  An example of how to transcend political differences after a Civil War and something that has echoes in our time, though thankfully, we have not resorted to war.

Extract from 'Hanmer's Agate':

Hanmer’s Agate: Experiments of a Tulip Fancier,

Sir Thomas Hanmer  (1612-1678)

Returned from exile, he stands in a muddy field,

once his garden of formal parterres; 

the trees are war-torn, storm-slashed;  fireweed

rages through the grounds and the unhinged door

into the great hall;  mice rampage,

bird shit weeps on the lace and lovelock

of his portrait as a young man;  dung in the chapel

requisitioned for Parliamentarian horses.

Far from the Commonwealth’s courts, Sir Thomas

tends his garden, remembering the promise packed

in papery brown bulbs brought back from France

in the ship’s hold, his first wife left behind in her grave......

For full poem, read Magma Issue 70.