Live Audio Performance — ME+BeFallen
To conclude the exhibition Symbiotic Wood at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin, the five tracks of ME+BeFallen were presented as a spatially staged live performance, made audible to all simultaneously. The performance was complemented by live readings by Anna Kubelík (DE/EN).
INSTALLATION VIEW
FACTS
- Date: 23 Nov 2025
- Time: 3:00 pm
- Venue: Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin
- Context: Symbiotic Wood (＿matter Festival 2025)
- Duration: approx. 20 minutes
IDEA
ME+BeFallen was originally conceived as a headphone-based work, offering an intimate and individual listening experience. For the closing event, this format was opened up into the space. The audio tracks were experienced collectively and spatially organised. Listening thus became a matter of position, proximity, and overlap.
SETUP
Two loudspeakers were positioned approximately eight metres apart, facing each other.
- From one speaker, only the English-language tracks were played.
- From the other, only the German-language tracks were played.
All five tracks were played once (without loop) in the following order:
- Annas Fichte / Anna’s Spruce
- Kupferstecher / Engraver
- Waldsparbuch / Forest Savings Book
- Ruine des Kapitalismus / Capitalist Ruin
- Im Chthuluzän / In the Chthulucene
LIVE MOMENTS
In tracks 2 and 4, the voice was integrated live into the performance:
- In track 2, only the sound atmosphere was played through the German-language speaker. Anna Kubelík spoke the text live into a microphone, directed towards the English-language speaker.
- In track 4, only the sound atmosphere was played through the English-language speaker. The text was spoken live in English and directed towards the German-language speaker.
- The remainder of the work was played from the audio tracks.
DRAMATURGY
The performance translates the core principles of ME+BeFallen — polyphony, shifts in perspective, and overlap — into a spatial situation. By positioning the two languages opposite each other, no comfortable translation relationship emerges. Instead, there is a deliberate coexistence – two streams that overlap and mix differently depending on the listener’s position.
The audience becomes part of the montage, selecting through movement and position how much separation or interweaving to allow. The live voice creates a productive rupture: it steps out of the recording into the present moment, connects languages without smoothing them over, and renders the materiality of voice perceptible as an event.
DOCUMENTATION
CREDITS
Live Audio Performance
- Concept & realisation: KubelíkGoetzke
- Live reading: Anna Kubelík
- Photos: Julia Rhein
ME+BeFallen
- Text & sound design: Tarik Goetzke
- Voice (all roles): Anna Kubelík
- Production: KubelíkGoetzke