Grüneis, Olaf Conversation with Christian Hasucha An audio excursion by Walter Siegfried and Christian Hasucha Around the Berlin district Gropiusstadt, a tribune is repositioned seven times. Passers-by listen to songs by Franz Schubert and Johannes Brahms, presented by Walter Siegfried with piano accompaniment by his backpack loudspeaker, mixed with random everyday noises. 'Die Dinge singen hör ich so gern" (“I willingly hear things sing”) (Rainer Maria Rilke) Participant Olaf Grüneis in conversation with Christian Hasucha The following transcripts from Olaf Grüneis, director and writer from Berlin, have in some cases been shortened C.H.: ? O.G.: The by-passers became part of the activity and were at least as important as the listeners on the tribune. There were many people in the square at the beginning and only a few in the car park but they were quickly drawn into the activity. C.H.: ? O.G.: If you think only, you will never understand; but if you feel something, you can think about your feelings. For me for example, the feeling of being there in company was different to the feeling I would have had alone. C.H.: ? O.G.: Yes, it was a peculiar inversion of the usual concertante; in other words, the audience were in fact the actors on the stage. For me this was the key – the audience rather than the singers were standing on the stage. The actors on the tribune were the link between singer and by-passers. Without the lines of sight that are created by the position of the tribune, the community of disparate strangers would not have appeared. C.H.: ? O.G.: The random by-passers were listeners and spectators for other listeners at once. C.H.: ? O.G.: No, even in this small community one felt in good hands; but this would not have worked without the singing. In particular the elegiac romantic Schumann songs that brought people together from otherwise different backgrounds to partake in a shared experience. I think that was very important, that is why the initial contrast between the place and the car park was also very significant. One noticed that the group welded together, that the emotional feeling levelled the difference between the others and myself as the music became more and more intensive. C.H.: ? O.G.: The tribune attracted people to stand on it – there was always the temptation for passers by join in. In a concert hall, this would have been impossible. C.H.: ? O.G.: I don’t know if it was consciously, but surely they were challenged in their social roles. The day I was there, there was a little girl who asked what we were doing; and some stood behind the curtain and watched. C.H.: ? O.G.: Yes, that is very personal now: if the situation in which something happened had been used more. C.H.: ? O.G.: Yes, I am able to sing a song or I can use a certain stylistic vocabulary. It comes naturally, depending on where one is doing something – in the forest or in the subway. C.H.: ? O.G.: When a director comes to the scene and finds something that he didn’t conceive at home, in probably ninety-nine per cent of cases, he discovers something that is better than anything he wrote down at his desk. C.H.: ? O.G.: Because it created a correspondence between the different experiences on the tribune, I don’t want to refer to the people asunits of experience, but what they carry with them… They all carry a form of emotional baggage so there is a big difference in the reaction of deeply traumatized people and those who are naturally more relaxed. C.H.: ? O.G.: Yes, the appeal, the imperative to be here in the company of others doesn’t appear this strongly elsewhere. C.H.: ? O.G.: Even the banana vendor at the fish market in Hamburg naturally plays theatre, if not he would not sell anything. It’s impossible to separate the practice of everyday life and aesthetic horizons. C.H.: ? O.G.: A simple social sensitivity is enough it’s absolutely sufficient. The only competence you have to have is a certain capacity to feel. It is not yet aesthetically developed, you don’t have to have been at drama school to stand on the podium. Nevertheless, the process of performance develops without having been trained. C.H.: ? O.G.: That’s a peculiarly cunning and disconcerting aspect of those who participate. In the moment in which I am emotionally absorbed by the music, I am thrown back by the same protective mechanisms my social mask threatens to break. C.H.: ? O.G.: On the other hand, there is this social control. You don’t know the others. In this atmosphere of potential conflict your intervention comes into being. Christian Hasucha in conversation with Olaf Grüneis, December 2003 "Since 1995 I have been working on the project “Situational Singing”. It is a continuation of a basic idea developed during the project “City Dance”: Where in, for a specific period of time, the attention of the audience shall be directed toward a particular detail of everyday life. The more unspectacular, the more or less short attention things provoke – the more successful the work seems to me. The intention is to arrest attention and bind it, to direct it to a field without forcing it." (Walter Siegfried) I gladly belong to those people who are accidently confronted by such thinks. (Christian Hasucha) Piano recordings, which accompanied Walter Siegfried by his backpack loudspeaker, by Thomas Emmerling, art & piano, Munich. An acoustic sequence of singing/noises is available on the internet at www.floraberlin.de project "soundbag", index no. 125, an internet sound archive by Ralf Langebartels. Translated by Tricia Flanagan