IDEALSTADT (2018)
theatre / sound installation / audio walk / research
by RUHRORTER, with Max Brands and Wanja van Suntum
This was a theatrical installation by RUHRORTER, realized in a cleared housing complex in Mülheim (Ruhr). It consisted of a walk through three empty houses, where the audience could listen to a program that was streamed live from a small broadcasting studio in the courtyard. Passing abandonded flats, sonically revived with fictional memories, they would hear and discover interviews with urbanists, historians, activists, radio journalists, residents and refugees and could participate in a live broadcast situation. The installation centered around utopian visions of a diversified communal living. In an epilogue of voices, light and multichannel music and sound, where the house complex seemed revived for a short time, the evening ended with the audience coming together in the courtyard next to the studio.
For this work, I built the studio and set up the broadcasting system, as well as a 20-channel system providing audio for the different soundscape speakers in the flats and the radios installed in some of the rooms. I electronically modified different radio devices and worked on the interviews, soundscapes and music.
The audio recording of the broadcast can be listened to here.
