WANDERLUST

For the project Wanderlust, proposed by the Junge Deutsche Oper, we designed an expedition through the city of Berlin, in an attempt to rewrite our perception of it and its inhabitants, to reweave knots of relationality through a new narrative.

Together with a group of young people, the Deutsche Oper and the artistic team, we set off on the coldest and windiest Sunday of the year. This expedition led us through landscapes with different expressions of urbanity, to compose one of many portraits of the city of Berlin. We encountered local initiatives and garden colonies, several streets, narrow, wide, paved, the canal, former horse stables, cemeteries, a mobile wood stove, the underground, postmodern towers, parks with free-roaming and caged animals.

Along the way, we encountered different kinds of creatures, small and large, including several humans, some accompanied by dogs, plants, bacteria. Some are considered native, others invasive, some harmless, others dangerous, all are living side by side, surrounded by static and moving objects. Each of them produces its own sounds. Walking in different rhythms, sometimes blindfolded, sometimes equipped with a sound recorder or camera, we discovered a polyphony of togetherness through our senses.

We collected inspirations, images and sound for a piece, later elaborated by the young participants together with sound artists Felicity Mangan and Evelyn Saylor, writers Elisa Aseva and Kuku Schrapnell and filmmaker Leon Leesch. The piece was performed on the stage of the Tischlerei at the Deutsche Oper.