listening to the underground
in listening to the underground in 1qm (2024–2025) we engaged in a one year collective act of attunement, sinking into the depths of a green space in Hellersdorf, Berlin, through a collaboration with Cornelia Kahl (Naturschutzinitiative e.V.) and fifth-grade students from the Schleipfuhl Primary School, as part of Classroom in the Green by the neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK) Hellersdorf.
to remotely navigate and attune to the green space memories dive here~
“Listening to the Underground” is an artistic research proposal—a submergence into the sonic undercurrents of underground waters, those elusive manifestations of damp, subterranean ecologies. Silenced by the weight of urban infrastructures and extractive imaginaries, these systems remain hidden, their presence overlooked in the everyday clamor of city life.
to navigate the undeground water’s memories is to traverse a dynamic and mysterious ecosystem, a world where life pulses unseen beneath layers of soil and sediment. Here, reeds sway silently above, while below, chirping cicadas, entangled roots, and shifting sediments weave complex ecologies. Time flows differently in this underworld, shaped by seasonal cycles and the ceaseless ebb and flow of water levels—a stage forever in flux.
how does a single square meter of green space hold within it the echoes of broader, more intricate ecologies?
each group of students focused on a single square meter, a microcosm of the larger ecology, observing and documenting in scrapbooks what they were sensing, the transformations within that space. Plants that emerged, lingered, or faded; animals that wandered in and out of view; the subtle, shifting rhythms of the seasons—all were noted, all were listened to.
this endeavor builds on a collaboration begun in the summer of 2023 with Cornelia Kahl and the nGbK Hellersdorf Station. That summer, we embarked on a sound walk along the Wuhle, titled Walking ~ Listening with the Wuhle. Mimetic Acts of Reciprocity. Cornelia proposed that young people focus on a single square meter of green space, immersing themselves in its details, writing down what they observed—the life that grows, the life that disappears.
Through the crafting of hydrophones and the development of deep listening practices, we attuned ourselves to the underground. This process, equal parts science and storytelling, revealed the subterranean ecologies of Hellersdorf as alive, intricate, and interconnected. Here, listening became a way of knowing, an act of reciprocity with the urban underworld.
