View of the listening room within the module “Sounds of the World: Exploring Organized Sound” at the Ethnological Museum in the Humboldt Forum
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum / Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss / Foto: Stefanie Loos
Past events
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A collective listening experience where archival traces, queer histories, and migratory narratives intertwine.

fuga  is a sound exhibition by artist Netta Weiser, presented in the Humboldt Forum’s Hörraum (Listening Room). As part of the Long Night of Museums, this guided listening session offers a special opportunity to experience the installation through collective and embodied listening.

This exhibition reactivates an archive of audio recordings made in Egypt in the 1930s by Birgitte Schiffer, a Jewish-German composer whose life was shaped by displacement and exile. During her ethnomusicological fieldwork in the Siwa Oasis, an isolated community in the Sahara Desert, Schiffer recorded rare sonic documents, including a funeral song performed by a children’s choir and a collection of queer love songs.

Developed specifically for the advanced sound environment of the Humboldt Forum’s Hörraum, fuga transforms these archival traces into a choreography of sound and diasporic memory. In this guided listening event, Netta Weiser will share the remarkable story of Birgitte Schiffer and lead the audience through an embodied listening experience.

fuga  invites the public to listen across time and geography, bringing silenced histories of exile, desire, and complex identities into resonance within a sonic world in constant motion.

fuga

Sound Exhibition by Netta Weiser
Curator: Maurice Mengel
Performance with and by Roy Amotz

Installation in collaboration with:
Flute: Roy Amotz
Electronics: Michael Hauschke
Vocals: Chanan Ben Simon
Video: Itay Marom

Special thanks to Dr. Matthias Padzerny, Albrecht Wiedmann, Eleanor and Naomi Volaski Aram

Commissioned by the Media Department, Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Supported by Artis through its Exhibition Grant Initiative

An early version of this work was presented at the Maamuta Center for Art and Research at Hansen House, Jerusalem, supported by the Goethe-Institut Jerusalem Residency Program.

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