Falling Forward Slightly, 2023

In autumn 2021, I travelled to Istanbul, checked into a hotel on Hasnun Galip Street in the lively Beyoglu district and searched for things, buildings and people that I had previously discovered and investigated in Berlin on geo-referenced services such as Google GM-Street View, Mapillary and other satellite-based platforms. Research on live screenings of seismic activity in this earthquake-prone zone also influenced the concept - linked to global themes of shaking, dislocation and the diffuse sense of anticipation of danger. Ambivalence and also pain are reflected in the relationship of navigation apps and satellite images to places that still show integrity in the moments of a tremor or destruction.

The technical latency, or the time delay with which the systems can react to reality at different speeds, turns these places into diffuse spaces that are 'inhabitable' only virtually. The reality of the February 2023 earthquake has overtaken and changed the working process for this installation, and a myriad of new questions arise in the face of the catastrophe that has occurred. Transience is fluid. The past becomes a present condition.

I linked the GPS data and my own movements, as well as those of people live on site into a score for sounds and images of this particular street spot and of the hotel, first virtually inhabited via GM-Street View and then in real life. Specific sound fragments of the field recordings are composed and engraved on specially produced vinyl records. The scanning 'seismographic gesture' of the record players is enacted as part of the installation. The title quotes a song by Laurie Anderson [With each step, you fall forward slightly. And then catch yourself from falling]* and the work transforms its gentle vibration into a new image-sound space.

_{*Walking and Falling, Laurie Anderson, Album Big Science,1982}

Concept, camera, video audio editing, image & colour processing: Claudia Brieske
Production Vinyl & Mastering: Francesco Passantino | Berliner Vinylwerk
Voice: Franziska Baumann

Saarländischer Rundfunk/ARD Mediathek: Claudia Brieske: Künstlerin der SaarART 2023 im Porträt

SaarArt 2023