Can You Voice Me?
Multimedia installation with speech karaoke, 2013
Visitors approach the microphone and select between colored squares on the prompter. Behind each one is a karaoke scrolling-text video generated from interviews and political speeches, recorded live or found in archives in Berlin. These address the theme of migration to the city – reports of one’s own experience or that of others. Sometimes combative, sometimes hesitant, they describe arriving in Berlin and discuss the contentious right to the city, the ongoing struggle for urban commons. Since the text videos follow the often rapid pace of the original recordings, sometimes the tempo of the original speech is simply impossible to follow and sustain as karaoke.
Multimedia installation with speech karaoke, 2013
Visitors approach the microphone and select between colored squares on the prompter. Behind each one is a karaoke scrolling-text video generated from interviews and political speeches, recorded live or found in archives in Berlin. These address the theme of migration to the city – reports of one’s own experience or that of others. Sometimes combative, sometimes hesitant, they describe arriving in Berlin and discuss the contentious right to the city, the ongoing struggle for urban commons. Since the text videos follow the often rapid pace of the original recordings, sometimes the tempo of the original speech is simply impossible to follow and sustain as karaoke.
Prepared lectern, prompter, microphone, loudspeakers, sound shower, 6 color-coded karaoke text videos ranging from 1 to 2 minutes in length, in French, English, and German. Featuring reflections of Kilometre, Fernando Jiménez-Cavieres, an anonymous persson from Ghana, John F. Kennedy, and an anonymous person who grew up in Berlin’s suburbs.
Commissioned by District Berlin.