Alexa – performance by AGF
03.07.08 / Tuned City day 3 : sound and social commmunication
Alexa shopping mall, Alexanderplatz – Berlin (DE)

Algunas semanas después del evento, rescatamos otra de las audioacciones realizadas en Berlin como parte de Tuned City. Antye Greie (alias AGF) realizó una performance al mediodia en Alexa, un gran centro comercial situado en Alexanderplatz, uno de los puntos más concurridos de la ciudad y en cuyas inmediaciones tuvo lugar la programación del festival aquel día, dedicada al sonido y la comunicación social. No pudimos asistir pero ahora leemos las impresiones de la propia artista en su blog y acceder a este video documentando la performance.

[video of the performance – filmed by QUIO]

…another performance in the frame of a architecture versus sound festival Tuned City it was very very impressive to perform via the house / muzak system into all the shops and toilets and floors. people were stunned and outrageous, teenagers shouted at me (you sound shit), security guards flirting and ice licking grannies wondering, shop owners calling police and the head of the shopping mall was insulted by the sound (this is no music) but was impressed about the reactions of the people, many artist friends were very touched while wondering through all the levels and shops in this disagreeable space. thanks much to carsten stabenow and gesine pagels and their team for realizing this event.

y la info oficial del festival sobre esta audioacción dice así:

The interplay of this exhibit helps flesh out the contours of performance in contemporary art. AGF works with performance strategies that articulate a distinct relationship between artist and community. By placing this show into a shopping mood, the expression into a public consumer environment comes off stage.

It is all about nature of future. About the audible site of development, speed energy, compositions with technical noise, sound that wants you make to hear the building of your own heart. How the volume of the speaker systems changes if your skin would be the membrane. And how it brings protest strategies into an architectural sound context.

AGF won’t mention social change: she will sow and catalyze it in order to comment from a personal perspective on the systemic problems that prevent human progress. This self-imposed task suggests an allegorical confrontation with psychological barriers more than a way to address specific injustices (although these barriers are connected to societal inequities).