MARC BEHRENSNEWSBIOMUSICARTWORKSTEXTBANDCAMPYOUTUBECONTACT
2005
Entity Mülheim
sound and video installation
(Mülheimer Profile 2005/Mülheim klingt, Kulturbunker Mülheim, Cologne, Germany; 7th annual SOUNDplay Festival, Theatre Centre, Toronto, Canada)

duration installation version (2005) 23:06 + 27:03 (repetitive)
duration DVD version (2006) 28:38 + 30:36
format: digital video (DVD), installation: two monitors on pedestals, four speakers, two of them mounted inside the pedestals

[excerpt from:] Audiovisual Entities

In 1998 I began to work on a series of installations which pick out a particular location as their central theme, to determine it by means of its sonic appearance and at the same time to define their sound as an entity (a being, an essence).
The first one of these works—Entity INM (1998)—was released on my CD Four Installations and consisted of a 6-channel audio processing of sounds from a server room at INM-Institut für Neue Medien, Frankfurt am Main. The sounds, thoroughly filtered and distributed over two floors and an elevator shaft, were diffused back into the building, so that the impression of a fourdimensional sound entity was created, moving through the building.
Entity K (2002) was a simple sound installation controlled by a motion detector in an exhibition space for jewellery (Schmuckmanufaktur Kneist, Darmstadt). Short successive compositions, appearing like individual pearls on a thread, were switched on and off by the movement of the spectators.

Entity Mülheim (2005) is a commission for Kulturbunker Mülheim e. V. (for the Mülheim klingt/Mülheimer Profile festival in autumn 2005), which was presented as an audiovisual installation and that is now available as a double DVD.
The location to be determined here is not a single building or a single space, but a district of Cologne, which is characterized in two ways: through two individuals, who could be regarded as typical for the two biggest population groups in Mülheim (on the one hand the German population, on the other hand the Turkish immigrants respectively the integrated Turkish Germans, first- through third-generation) and by its architectural and urban conditions. The latter are also affected by social and ecomonic circumstances.

As a starting point for the work, a Turkish mother, about 40 years old, and a circa 60-year-old German man were confronted with four questions about the representative of the respectively other population group and about the district Mülheim itself.
The answers, recorded to video, were scrambled, their time structure dissolved into inconsistency, so that sound fragments and syllables are heard, but no discernible language can be made out, …

… sound and video recordings were attributed to the two different persons in blocks, some of them directly referring to what was said in the interviews.
That way two complementary audiovisual compositions evolved, one of which is attributed to the “German”, the other to the “Turkish” aspects of Mülheim—two similar, but unequal sides of the same object …

Entity Mülheim, DVD Release


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