Der (—) Turm / Warming Up

In summer 2019 I was artist-in-residence at The Watchtower in Schlesischer Park, Berlin. My project worked with the watchtower’s historical and geographical visibility as monument, landmark and tool of surveillance. In 1987 London-based artist John Smith made the work ‘The Black Tower’; a film addressing the appearance of a mysterious black tower that menacingly stalks the artist across east London. Its process of becoming is facilitated by Smith’s narration encompassing everyday voices that witness the structure’s emergence. The Tower never fully appears in the film, glimpsed, partial and manifesting as hearsay. Reading the work forty years later ‘The Black Tower’ becomes an omen and marker for redevelopment that wields equal power in Berlin and London.

‘Der (—) Turm’ and ‘Warming Up’ are conceived as an aural response to ‘The Black Tower’. Listenability rather than visibility is used to explore The Watchtower as an historical and contemporary witness. I conducted weeks of sound recordings using contact, coil, binaural, shotgun and omni microphones. The audio-work embraces dualistic East and West German approaches to Hörspiel (radio-plays); combining disembodied and didactic experiences. The work developed in response to an intense relationship with the Tower and the goings-on in Schlesischer Park. The sound-work consists of a number of field-recordings and warming-up exercises to synchronise my voice, body and cadence with the Tower endeavouring to activate dormant sonic potentials.

Open Sound: REWIND, Outpost Gallery, Norwich. July 2024

Radiophrenia, Glasgow CCA. January 2022

The Watch: Transmissions, Cashmere Radio (88.4 FM Berlin). 8th November 2019