Crossroad Bridges Chronicle
Crossroad Bridges Chronicle (2012)
Two travelers performing a timetravel through Karaoke-bars.
Medium: The performance includes: an overhead projector, two microphones, two women, a TV, a guitar amplifier, images, sounds, songs (to sing- along) and race track „Criss Cross Crash).
Credits: Echo Ho with Karin Harrasser
Performance at Graduale 12, American House, Berlin 2012
Crossroad Bridges Chronicle is both science fiction and ethnographic study. It tells the story of two women who travel Chinese cities in the year 2012. Another woman is possessed by the idea of going back to the old tradition of playing the Qin – an ancient Chinese musical instrument – in tune with nature.
A fourth woman, an ethnographer, is fascinated by the magic of modern mega city life. Both the possessed and the ethnographer try to understand something that is completely foreign to their own cultural habits: The agency of non-human actors, and the deep secrets of human behaviour. Taking a closer look at life in big cities, one can only be amazed: thousands and thousands of mechanical vehicles do not crash, myriads of animals somehow find a modus vivendi, commodities, bodies and words are interchanged within seconds. Is this brutal noise or a beautiful song? Is it a storm or a swirl? Apocalyptic accident or happy chaos? While the possessed starts to play her Qin on traffic islands in Beijing and Shanghai, the ethnographer gathers data: She takes photographs and films, she scans the surfaces, collects plants, records every sound, takes notes of whatever she sees and hears. And suddenly she realizes something: it is not the possessed who believes in some long-lost magic, it is she herself who practices sorcery by quickly signing off everything that comes across her perception. And the possessed understands that both of them are witnesses in a very special way. And the two travelers? They are performing a timetravel through Karaoke-bars.