006 Urban Songline, 2012 – Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany

The staircase of the Pinakothek der Moderne as the stage for generating a site-specific sound-profile through the re-enactment of Murakami’s ‘Kafka on the Shore’. The backdrop is formed by a series of images created in Yakushima’s ancient ‘enchanted’ forest where the ghosts of forefathers living in the trees are portrayed for their human features.

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Part of the project Urban Songlines, a utopian/dystopian series of collaborative translations of buildings, urban structures and public spaces into music through site-specific sound-generation. These performances are a way of connecting to places by listening to them as well as a research into how we use and experience the public domain and to what degree we can claim ownership over it, discussing notions of inclusion, becoming and belonging.

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The staircase of the Pinakothek der Moderne is a mountain on the island of Yakushima in Japan. Dancer Stephanie Felber re-enacts a scene from Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore by taking a group of schoolchildren to gather mushrooms when they suddenly all loose consciousness under strange circumstances. While she runs down to fetch the village doctor I transform the recording of the sounds of her dance in the first act into music which she dances to in the second act when coming back up, reviving the children, all but one, whom she carries down.

The backdrop is formed by a series of images created in Yakushima’s ancient ‘enchanted’ forest where the ghosts of forefathers living in the trees are portrayed for their human features.

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Dancer: Stephanie Felber