A Composition for Voice and Truth.

How much can we see in strangers? The experimental radio play searches for answers. The author randomly follows people in public space, describes their path, their behavior, what she perceives and spins stories about the people she follows. In the process, the question always arises: about whom does this say something?

She uses artistic traditions from Edgar Allan Poe to Antje Vowinckel, from Following to Automatic Speaking. She carries an discreet microphone and recording device, with which she seamlessly records the pursuit. For the descriptions she uses the method of Automatic Speaking invented by Antje Vowinckel – a voice improvisation of pauseless speaking, which expresses everything unfiltered that comes to mind. Through this method and the immediate speaking while walking, acoustic material with a specific rhythm is created. The method is extended in that it serves as a starting point for the author’s own imagination, instead of remaining in pure descriptions of real events, in the here and now – as intended by Antje Vowinckel. As soon as the author believes the story or the persecution reaches a dead end, she approaches the persecuted person and asks for the real story.

The piece playfully raises questions about privacy, voyeurism, boundary drawing, and projection. In reference to Edgar Allan Poe’s “Man of the Crowd,” it is always also about the encounter with one’s own in the stranger. And in the digital age, the experimental arrangement transfers to the analog world what is commonplace in the digital space: following profiles – from morning coffee in a favorite cup to business lunch at the in place for grandma’s 90th birthday.

Funded with a radio play stipend by Film- und Medienstiftung NRW.

Project shortlisted for Prix Phonurgia Nova 2019.