A Million Keys

Touched Echo (2007) by Markus Kison


touched echo – intervention in public space from MaUdK on Vimeo.

Touched Echo Project Description (from Markus Kison’s site.)

Every year millions of tourists visit Brühlsche Terrasse (Brühl’s Terrace) built on top of the Dresden city walls. At this historic place near the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) visitors enjoy the view across the river Elbe to the other part of the Old Town, called “Dresden Neustadt”. Markus Kison’s project “touched echo” intervenes here by telling a story about this place. The intervention – at first calm and invisible – consists in taking people out of the present into the past: into the night of 13th February 1945. That was the night, when Dresden’s Old Town was almost entirely destroyed by the allies’ air raid. The tourists (as far as the are willing to participate) are supposed to adopt a mentally as well as physically contemplative position. An icon on the balustrade will be the only hint given to describe the interaction. According to this instruction one is supposed to lay one’s elbows onto the balustrade, close one’s ears and look at the Old Town. In this position the motors of B-25 bombers resound and cannonade across the sky above one’s head; followed by explosions in the distance.


Instructions Attached to Railing

The sound is generated from four sound conductors, which are integrated in the railing. It is transmitted from the swinging balustrade through the arm directly into into the inner ear (bone conduction) and cannot be heard by anyone else. Visitors suddenly get an idea of what it must have felt like that night; they travel back in time to this situation. Everyone by dealing with this terrifying event becomes a kind of “memorial” of it. In their role as a performer they put themselves into the place of the people who shut their ears away from the noise of the explosions. (Translation by Cornelia Schupp)