‘Berlin Anamnetic’ is the outcome of a two-month residency at Berlin’s ZK/U (Centre for Art and Urbanistics). It seeks to integrate the ‘real’ acoustic soundscape with the embodied, imagined soundtrack evoked by a particular time and place.
The working process for this series involved long walks, generally from the outlying regions of Berlin to the city centre; these were documented via audio recordings, photos, and notes. Particular attention was placed on locations of emotional resonance, whether the source of this resonance was historical, personal or serendipitous. The associated sound files were then subjected to extensive spectral processing, melding the mnemonic soundtrack (usually overheard pop songs or earworms) with the real (diegetic) soundtrack. As such, sounds were structured in a quasi-painterly fashion rather than arranged in a more conventional linear time-line (i.e. in a DAW such as Ableton, etc.). Correspondingly, the pieces that comprise ‘Berlin Anamnetic’ also seek to adopt a narrative form that is textural and emotive, eschewing typical narrative structure for something that is more akin to the body’s ‘real’ movement through a landscape.