polyphonic birds

Polyphonic Birds

Klangtour, Kottbuser Tor Berlin 2017

4 sound channels: speakers, bird cages, small lights. 20 min composed loop.

Polyphonic birds weaves abstract sounds into the dense urban public space. The area is known as a multicultural neighbourhood, which shapes its local soundscape into a vivid sonic mesh. This work is inspired by a squeaking fan found on a travel in a restaurant in Thessaloniki sounding like birds. The memory of a sound is contained in a cage which resembles our perception. Others can access through the reproduction of recorded sounds these memories, but never have the same experience as we had. The old birdcages are all different and full of traces and stories, becoming symbolic containers of memories. The captured sounds are re-played into a different space and time, exposed to new perceiving subjects, blending into new surroundings. Sounds are like birds dettached from their original environment. In the complex and busy acoustic urban space, the sounds of this intervention fade into the thick atmospheric whole of the city scape. There is a flower shop, there is a tree, there is a kurdish restaurant. Unlike birds, sounds are capable of escaping cages.

–> listen to an excerpt of a recording at the installation: