Stefan Römer and Thomas Meier
Taking Sonic Care of a Painting-Topology (2024)
23’
site-specific research and sound installation with headphones

A tribute to the wall painting Berlin Melody by N. K. Jain (1978)

Berlin Melodie, Narendra Kumar Jain, 1978 © Pavel Stichta

Taking Sonic Care of a Painting Topology investigates the weathered mural Berlin Melody , created at the site of HAUNT/frontviews in 1978 with the intention of attending to the locality on multiple levels: sonically, art-historically, spiritual, and in terms of social policy. The artists interviewed residents and painter N. K. Jain, before composing site-specific architectural resonances into an ambient soundscape.

Conceived by the artists as a performative site, the work moves between sound and image, city and wilderness, care, Yoga, and urban politics. It invites visitors to listen to as well as look at the mural with its image of meditation, and to experience a complex topological passage of care consisting of dysfunctional, infrastructural, transcultural, environmental, and social aspects.

The research into the continuing resonance of the gigantic mural in this Berlin backyard extends outward into Klaus Schulze’s and Edgar Froese’s historic recording studio and David Bowie’s one-time apartment in the neighbourhood. Suggesting that German social policy, like the mural, is in need of restoration, the work transforms the site into an audiovisual tableau vivant informed by the overlapping interests of the residents, the painter, the audience, and the exhibition.

Photo: Berlin Melodie, Narendra Kumar Jain, 1978 © Pavel Stichta