Everybody tells me, there is no center in Berlin. It is a city that moves from district to district, place to place, neighborhood to neighborhood, and scene to scene. Each is constantly changing, reinventing itself and transforming. And its people, like the city, seem to be equally transitory. Every couple of years they move to a different area. Or perhaps they travel to and from this city, living only part time here and part-time in other towns. One can’t escape this decentered condition; change and renewal is part of the cities very publicized and ever-present history. This is its character.

A little over a month ago when I began planning the project Berlin: Open Your Windows! with Sparwasser HQ (the residency program that produced this project), I asked Katja Meyer[ii], over Skype, to find me people who have lived in Berlin for a long time, and in neighborhoods where not much has changed during the last 10-20 years. Her response was “IN BERLIN???”, followed by an emoticon of a smiley face holding a hand over its mouth stifling a giggle.

It was a silly question…I guess.

This sensation of placeless movement must be a bit disconcerting and dizzying for the politicians, city planners and the citizens who live in this city. Having no center can be a bit disorienting. However in reverse I suppose the sensation could be felt as actually liberating: a city of multiple centers, multiple personalities, and multiple scenes. A city, which is made from many cities, has a lot of potential. In this way, Berlin can be understood as a place with a continually rewritten narrative. Here, one can start over or simply carry on unnoticed.

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Berlin: Open Your Windows! began with a question, what is public space to a Berliner during a cold and snowy mid winter? I thought, in winter public spaces are mainly transitory. We don’t linger in public areas, we move through them retreating into the private spaces of our homes and apartments. We wrap ourselves in our domestic interiors, safe intimate spaces that shield us from the darkness, cold, rain and snow outside. And the windows of our apartments become gateways from our interior lives to the exterior. Our windows are both connections and separations from the external world of the public space outside.

So, I considered, what if one was to open a window and transform these private spaces into semi-public spaces. I proposed using an open window from several apartments throughout the city, for a series of personal declarations aimed at defining the character of the neighborhood and the various individuals living there who intern define it; and I aimed to conflate the space of the interior with the exterior, defying the enclosure of winter.

An opera singer became the perfect vehicle for these declarations; for opera singers are performers trained to project their voices to large audiences without the aid of mechanical amplification generating clearly audible declarations, and because opera is not normally heard outside of the concert hall or music school, these operatic declarations would increase each performance’s conspicuousness, prompting greater awareness and attention from curious listeners as to what was happening in their space.

Berlin, a city in a constant state of change, provided ample content for each declaration. I talked to the residents of several apartments throughout the city–where each declaration would subsequently be performed–about their feelings regarding their neighborhood and Berlin: what they liked, what they didn’t, and how their impressions have changed over time. When I went out to bars, cafes, opening or public events, I, asked other people similar questions. Most provided their perspectives without my prodding; the city is a common subject of conversation here. People gave their opinions and stated facts about their neighborhoods and they suggested movies, books, news articles, and songs dealing with the city: all of this content ended up in some part, in each aria. [iii]

When I met with Emily Dirks, the opera singer hired to perform this project, we dicided together to use Susana’s recitativo and aria, from the fourth act of Le Nozze di Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Emily knew the song well and the setting of the aria fit the subject of the project—Susana is standing in a garden outside a palace singing to the count inside and to a jealous Figaro hiding in the bushes—she sings in a public space to an unseen and private listener.

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Four performances took place from four apartments throughout the city.

On Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 16:00 hours, an aria was sung from a window in the apartment of Jana and Markus, in Kreuzberg, Berlin.

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On Friday, February 26 2010, 18:30 hours, an aria was sung from a window in the apartment of Jan and Julia in Friedrichshain, Berlin.

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On Friday, February 26, 2010 at 24:00 hours an aria was sung from a window in the apartment of Christian and Jan in Mitte, Berlin.

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On Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 15:00 Hours an aria was sung from a window in the apartment of Lise and Janos in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin.

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[i] This text is a transcript from a talk I gave on my project Berlin: Open Your Windows! on March 1, 2010 at 20:00. It was presented by Sparwasser HQ at gallery Feinkost.

[ii] Katja Meyer at Sparwasser HQ, worked very closely with me on this project. Katja assisted with the documentation and organization of each event, she translated the text I wrote from English to German and also served as speech or pronunciation coach to the opera singer Emily Dirks. She was instrumental to the projects successful completion and I owe her a great deal of thanks.

[iii] Some of the references mentioned in the arias were: the songs, “Kreuzberger Nächte” (1978) by Gebrüder Blattschuss, “Castingallee” by Rainald Grebe, and the film “Herr Lehmann” (2003) by Leander Haussmann.