28 October 2016

Photo credit: Kate Brehme

I was commissioned to compose a soundwalk for UrbanTOPIAS. Discussing the Challenges of Changing Cities. The 4th Annual Conference of the International Graduate Research Program Berlin-New York-Toronto “The World in the City: Metropolitanism and Globalization from the 19th Century to the Present”.
I wanted to confront the busy ‘self-satisfied’ modern metropolis with its appalling levels of homelessness, with humans apparently in worse conditions worse than the adjacent animals in the Zoologischer Garten. I was thinking of China Mieville's 'The City and The City', in which a parallel city is deliberately un-seen.
Behind the everyday hum of the city an unidentifiable machine threat could be heard, generating a mounting sense of unease. Whilst walking through the modernist blocks of Hansaviertel as dusk was approaching I was reminded of Antonioni's ‘L’Eclisse’. Soundwalks really do have extraordinary cinematic potential.
The result can be listened to at https://soundcloud.com/beechbuchanan/oc-berlin-west