Lasse-Marc Riek

Location Sound Recordings from harbours in Europe. (1999–2007)

Imagine an incredibly large hall. Its walls are brick built and covered with some sort on lichen. Many of its stone have already started to crumble. The huge space might have witnessed a cotton mill. Anyway, the former industrial site has disappeared. Instead of an majestic void an empty space like this would usually create storage racks have been put into the hall almost touching the cover. Besides, every inch of the solid steel shelves is occupied by folders. Thick like those files from the law series. Compact as they wait on their shelves all of them are closed in storeys high as an apartment block. Impossible to look inside of them, though every single sheet of paper must be covered with signs and letters, symbols and tables from either side. Billions and billions of pages and of characters. What will you hear when you walk the aisles between the storage racks? Between the steel racks, bricks, folders, pages and a cover that lies so high above that it is impossible to figure out what it is made of. Will you hear how the bricks go on crumbling when time passes by? Would the steel groan under its heavy burden and when the draughty air sucked the humidity from the documents? Could you listen to what is inside the folders themselves? Their history, their sad and funny stories, the undoubted truth in and by them? Now, what do you hear when you walk on a dock? (Stefan Militzer)