H.I.P.P.O.

Site-specific, text-driven audio installation in public space (since 2019)

WORLD TIME CLOCK — STATION 7

Person wearing a hippo mask standing in front of the World Time Clock at Alexanderplatz, arms outstretched.
Station 7: World Time Clock

OVERVIEW

H.I.P.P.O. is a site-specific, text-driven audio installation in public space that addresses the sixth mass extinction from non-human perspectives. In three parallel audio walks, participants move through Berlin-Mitte while listening to one elemental entity: WATER, AIR or SOIL. The voices analyse, comment on and evaluate the surroundings according to their own logic, raising a central question: who should become extinct — humans, all life, or no one?

AUDIO TEASER

Teaser (49 s): Excerpt from Station 7 ‘World Time Clock’.

Note: The teaser audio is in German.

Show English translation

Yeah, maybe
not everything
will die after all
and some kind of species
maybe
so, no primates
something else
something more cunning
perhaps very small
well adapted
to the barren environment
maybe
after a few million years
evolutionary development
and after a few more million years
a completely new species
with a consciousness
seemingly intelligent
maybe
they will dig here one day
find the World Time Clock
as a fossil
petrified
and wonder
why …

THREE PERSPECTIVES

  • WATER – wants everything to survive; speaks of circulation, storage and transformation.
  • SOIL – rejects universal survival; argues that the human species should become extinct.
  • AIR – embraces mass extinction; imagines a world without all living beings.

AUDIO AND AUDIENCE SETUP

  • Three parallel audio walks through Berlin-Mitte leading to the World Time Clock.
  • Participants choose one perspective (WATER / AIR / SOIL) at the beginning.
  • Individual listening experience via headphones.
  • The work can still be experienced independently on site via Guidemate.

CONTEXT

The title H.I.P.P.O. refers to an acronym describing the main human drivers of the current mass extinction: Habitat destruction, Invasive species, Pollution, Population and Overharvesting. The work translates this scientific diagnosis into a speculative narrative in which seemingly silent materials become speaking entities.

The video documentation shows a version with live performance elements; the audio track corresponds exclusively to ‘H.I.P.P.O._blau’.

MEDIA

Participants on the way to the World Time Clock; Birte Flint performing as the hippo.
Participants on the way to the World Time Clock; Birte Flint performing as the hippo (Photo: Loris Rizzo).
Station 2 – Remains of the Berlin Wall, Littenstraße.
Station 2 – Remains of the Berlin Wall, Littenstraße (Photo: Tarik Goetzke).

FACTS & CREDITS

  • Format: Site-specific, text-driven audio installation (audio walk)
  • Context: Monologfestival 2019 “ALARMSTUFE ROT”
  • Text & Production: Tarik Goetzke
  • Voice / Live performance: Birte Flint
  • Co-production: Monologfestival 2019 / Theaterdiscounter Berlin
  • Video: Christopher Hewitt
  • Photos: Tarik Goetzke; Loris Rizzo

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