François Morice
Schneeeule, Berlin Carré, Berlin
17-23 November 2012
Berlin Carré is a building that knows its imminent future: it is to be closed and torn down next year. From November 17 to 23 the space occupied by Schneeeule is left empty and closed, and the exhibition is pushed out into the public spaces of the building.
Taking the multiplex cinema as a template, the exhibition proposes a different use for the ageing shopping centre, with multiple films playing in certain locations across both floors of the building. The films are projected without pictures; just their soundtracks can be heard, forming localised pools of sound that overlap with the noise of daily life inside the Carré. The soundtracks are taken from various films made by Woody Allen; a prolific director whose films seem to exist primarily through their audible dimension, as a cinema of speech and music. Still active in his field, but neither trendy nor forgotten, Allen seems trapped in a time that is familiar but not present – similar to the Berlin Carré itself. In his films, and in the public imagination, Allen exists not only as an important director but also as a character; constant, but continually redefined in every film. This character, multiplied and fragmented, is used here to fill the building's empty spaces.
Another layer of audio fills the Berlin Carré a second time over: recordings of water in various states – the creaking of ice, the trickling of water running in streams and the rushing sound of steam – are played over the building's PA system. These sounds of movement and of shape-shifting changes of state resonate through the indoor public spaces, voicing the building's own state of flux as it moves slowly but inexorably towards closure and destruction. Like the multiplicity of characters played out in the film soundtracks, this second audio piece presents the building as fluid, with no fixed form, and points towards its future, yet to be defined, as a new building or public space.
