Humboldt ForumMitte
fuga: Sound Exhibition by Netta Weiser
Netta Weiser's first sound exhibition in Berlin, in the Listening Space: 1930s wax cylinder recordings from Siwa, Egypt, by Brigitte Schiffer, reworked through a queer-diasporic lens.
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In the 1930s the German-Jewish composer Brigitte Schiffer took a phonograph to the Siwa oasis in western Egypt and recorded children singing a lament in a funeral procession. Netta Weiser starts from that wax cylinder and layers it with Schiffer's 1934 piece on the melody, children reenacting the song today and Roy Amotz improvising on flute.
The second part uses call-and-response songs that date harvesters sang from the tops of palm trees, about migration, money and hints of queer love. Vocalist Chanan Ben Simon sings the answering voice the archive is missing. You sit on circular seating in the Listening Space, a room with curved, lit walls, while its 3D audio system moves the sound in circles around you and a six-channel video drifts across the choir's photo from Schiffer's 1936 thesis.
Come to sit and listen. It runs only Wednesday to Monday, 4 to 6:30 pm, on the second floor. The SMB lists the €9 Ethnological Collections and Asian Art ticket (€4.50 concessions) for it.
Look for
The children's funeral lament
Listen for a 1930s wax-cylinder recording of children singing in a Saharan funeral procession, woven with Schiffer's 1934 composition, today's children reenacting it and improvised flute.
The palm-tree harvest songs
Date harvesters' call-and-response songs, once shouted from palm tops, now answered by vocalist Chanan Ben Simon singing the voice the archive never captured.
The six-channel choir video
Itay Marom's video moves slowly across a single archival photograph of the children's choir, reproduced in Schiffer's 1936 dissertation.
Good for
- Going Solo
- Locals Who've Seen It All
- Nerding Out
Skip if
You want objects to look at: it is a sound installation with a single video.
Free in the same building
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- Palace CellarFree walk through the archaeological remains of a medieval monastery and the original palace foundations beneath the building.
- The Gate of SanchiFree full-scale replica of the East Gate of the Great Stupa of Sanchi, a UNESCO World Heritage site in India, installed outside on the Lustgarten side.
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Image credits
8
- A Country in a Container – The Disposal of East German State SymbolsCourtesy of DDR Museum
- Founded on Antiquity: Berlin's First MuseumPhoto: Johannes Laurentius
- Nature and German History. Faith – Biology – PowerCourtesy of Deutsches Historisches Museum
- Humboldt ForumMike Peel / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- DDR MuseumAndreas Praefcke / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0
- Altes MuseumJean-Pierre Dalbéra / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- Deutsches Historisches MuseumAvda / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Alte NationalgalerieManfred Brückels / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain