About the Project
The Idea
A singing encounter
Sing along, Berlin! has one goal: to bring together people with different social and cultural backgrounds by singing together and experiencing community with others. The idea is to discover ones own voice, give it its due space and share it. Singing together initiates encounters between people in private and in public.
The Berlin Philharmonie will be the space to be conquered first. In a weeklong camp the participants will study songs in different languages. Their themes shall all revolve around welcome and arrival. Children, adolescents and adults with or without a previous training will join together. By singing together in an informal setting, singular connections shall develop and diverse relationships shall be endowed.
On the basis of this personal and practical experience Sing along, Berlin! wishes to expose the dimensions of the singing voice and give the participants a sense of its possible impact. These mentioned aspects and the development of a community shall play an important role in the camp’s rehearsal process. Sing along, Berlin! is looking for a singing community, which will – after intensive days of rehearsal in the protected space of the Philharmonie – dare to step out into the public space and share this sense of encounter (and create new moments of encounters). Two prominent places of public life shall make way for this momentum: Kulturforum Berlin and Berlin’s Main Station.
At the Main Station
The idea of the camp to create temporary social spaces by communal singing will be continued inside the Main Station. The event shall give a momentary structure to the general confusion of voices at the station. The commuters will be literally “picked up” and invited to experience an emotional situation and let themselves be touched. The Main Station signifies a place of arrival, meeting and departure. It is a public space that at different rhythms turns people into observer, people waiting, searching or rushing. All different pulses are to be found simultaneously.
This major traffic junction owns a very specific acoustic and with its crossing paths it creates an architecture full of emotion and a swinging atmosphere. It is a polyphonic space that comes to life and is shaped through the various voices – an architecture of movement.
All of the above makes Berlin’s Main Station into an attractive performance space for Sing along, Berlin! which stands for the welcome and the offer to accompany the travellers. They are to be engaged and invited to a brief halt in their journey by voices. These voices prepared themselves in a working group to unexpectedly receive and welcome others and accompany them for a short distance.