In a non-publicly accessible piece of wild urban nature sandwiched between rail and highways near Westkreuz, we placed a live microphone and a streaming box from Radio Earth on 4 and 5 May. With this, anyone could listen to the area from anywhere.
This stream contributed to REVEIL, a relay of streams during sunrise on the first May weekend that allowed you to make a listening tour around the world in 24 hours. This year marked the 11th time REVEIL was organised.
Listen back to part of the stream at Archive.org
Why Westkreuz?
We think this peculiar place can teach us something about being in the world. We heard a hodgepodge of loud, subtle, distant, nearby, intermittent and sustained sounds. Much of what can be heard in on Westkreuz is man-made. Is someone responsible for this strange mix? Can we as humans ever hope to make a more peaceful connection with everything we encounter within this fragile ecosystem that is the biosphere?
What is Westkreuz?
Westkreuz is an ancient urban infrastructural knot. Due to the crisscrossing of roads, highways, rail and metro tracks the area is shredded into small, sometimes hardly accessible places that each have their own particular milieu. Westkreuz includes one of the oldest and at the same time most trafficked highway interchanges in Germany and has quite a peculiar genesis (keywords: AVUS, NS zeit, Reichsbahn, DDR, S-bahn). This is the origin of car traffic. Here was the Automobil- Verkehrs- und Übungsstraße (‘Automobile traffic and training road’) also known as AVUS), the first road in the world only acessible for cars.
Soundtrackcity has been studying this area since 2013 through sound walks and other listening practices. The overarching question is how (fast) traffic and large scale infrastructural constructions determine an urban environment sonically in different ways.
The isolated areas of Westkreuz are only accessible by tunnels or bridges or not at all. Each area has its own sonic character and use (or non-use). You can find woodlands, parking lots for lorries, derelict buildings, a grandstand from a former race track, a cemetry, refugee camps, shunting yards, unruly nature and beautiful well-tended alottments.
