Move Along
Before the Sun Rises
94 square meters, 338.2 cubic meters. The space, located at Pasadegplatz 3-4, 13088 Berlin, Weissensee, unfurls its large bay window onto the street, thus revealing its sheer volume.
The space is empty.
Formerly the neighbourhood’s only supermarket, Kaiser’s – the storeline, bought by Edeka and Rewe after legal battles, no longer exists – enlivened and supplied the area. Part of the program for artistic working space by Kulturraum Berlin GmbH and in cooperation with Gesellschaft für StadtEntwicklung GmbH (GSE), the building was transformed into artists’studios.
In 2021, the former shop’s storage became Neun Kelche.
Today, after the dismantling of its previous exhibition, in place from December 2024 to end of February 2025, the art space is beginning a seasonal break.
The space is empty, completely or almost, though it is still sometimes used to store a few pieces. This eerily resonates with the prevailing climate in Berlin, following drastic budget cuts in the cultural spheres (and others like education or social programs), leading to the closure of numerous venues, and the lurking uncertainty.
The space is empty, and it’s precisely this intermediary state and the apparent unpredictability of its future situation that interests artists Emilie Ding and Alizée Lenox. What does it mean to let a vacant space in Berlin? What does the sign of an empty window case in the urban landscape of a metropolis refer to? When architecture is considered as part of an ever-evolving collective process, as a member of the social body that creates meaning. On a rather individual level, what are the possibilities and projections that this void allows?
The artists have chosen to embrace the absence of the usual presences and visuals through a multichannel sound installation in favor of listening. Thus, as an alternate way to understand and live this type of emptiness, as an invitation to reconsider space and our direct environment through hearing.
Through a sensitive approach to the site and extended field recordings, Emilie Ding and Alizée Lenox write their piece with the reverberations of walls; they sense the large glass windows, the corridors and the electrical appliances. White noise, drones, vibrations and frequencies are amplified from Neun Kelche’s premises. The acousmatic sounds, assembled into a composition where the interplay of sources—chosen for their vibratory quality and timbre—combined with a multi-diffusion system, draw us into a somatic experience, whilst opening up new fields of mental and sensorial projections.
NEUN KELCHE x DISPLAY
BERLIN - DE
2025
Curated by Marie Dupasquier, Kira Bell, Laura Seidel
Site specific composition & spatialized sound installation.
Text: Marie Dupasquier
Photo credits: Chroma