SENSOR BERLIN 8x speed
SENSOR BERLIN 8x speed
Sensor Berlin
Signals from Teufelsberg
Jury’s Choice Award for the Video-Sound-Installation at Filmgarten Berlin
SENSOR BERLIN functions like a melting pot of everything we perceived and felt during our visit to Teufelsberg 2022. The Area Composing makes Berlin’s history from the Second World War to the city’s current pulse palpable. At Filmgarten Berlin, the festival for new film art, SENSOR BERLIN 2024 received the Jury’s Choice Award. The installation will return to Teufelsberg in 2025 as part of a live event.
The Teufelsberg – Lost Place full of life
Teufelsberg in Berlin’s Grunewald forest is only 120 metres high, but filled with history like no other mountain. It was created by 26 million cubic metres of rubble from Berlin houses destroyed in the Second World War. The stories of Berliners scarred by the war are thus stored deep inside. After the war, the US army set up a monitoring station on the mountain plateau, and its domes have become the landmark of the Teufelsberg.
The tattered remains of the occupation period make the mountain seem like a lost place. But it is as full of life as a conquered mountain of rubble can be. Nature, graffiti art and party culture have now taken over the mountain. We recorded the messages and signals from then and now with cameras, microphones and all our senses and wove them into an audiovisual installation.
Dramaturgy of SENSOR BERLIN
At the beginning, the deepest note of a bass clarinet is heard: sound waves, quasi, from the depths of the mountain, messages, signals. We approach the place via the torn domes. The abstract triangular shapes with graffiti elements only give a hint of the location. The structures of the stairs leading up to the domes resemble antennae. The sound echoes the history of the monitoring station. Now the site with the domed architecture becomes visible. We are on the Teufelsberg. People are approaching. Nature and art have (re)conquered the place.
Remains of the buildings, concrete and steel are reminiscent of the rubble that lies underground. Original sounds of the bomber pilots and Winston Churchill’s speech remind us of the end of the war – the origin of the Teufelsberg. Berlin’s history lies in the rubble. People’s personal belongings are still there. We hear signals of their everyday lives, their fates. But new life emerges from the rubble, a lively place full of art and (techno) music, the pulse of Berlin. The installation ends with a view from the mountain into the unknown …
Premiere at Filmgarten Berlin
The premiere of SENSOR BERLIN took place on 7 April 2024 as part of the festival for new film art Filmgarten Berlin. The Area Composing was honoured with the Jury’s Choice Award.
We are pleased about the award from Filmgarten Berlin 2024
JURY STATEMENT
This film uses sounds and liquid images based on photographs of the decommissioned old American bugging station on Berlin‘s Teufelsberg. An almost painful longing for contour, clarity and recognizability activates and enlivens the emotional inner world of the viewer. The film is courageous and powerful, a fantastic disruptive factor beyond the expected.
Live-Event on the Teufelsberg
When our image-sound compositions return to their place of origin, Area Composing becomes complete. We are currently working on showing SENSOR BERLIN live on the Teufelsberg, as a 360-degree projection in the domes.