Michaela Melian’s Memory Loops in the Munich city area

Michaela Melián
Memory Loops
300 Audio Tracks on Sites of
NS Terror in Munich 1933–1945

www.memoryloops.net

With Memory Loops, Munich has created a virtual memorial for the victims of National Socialism. Michaela Melián’s audio work of art comprises 300 German and 175 English audio tracks which can be called up under www.memoryloops.net and downloaded free of charge.

To complement the website, MP3 players with one-hour Memory Loops audio tracks are also available for hire free of charge in a number of museums and institutions in Munich: Haus der Kunst, Münchner Stadtmuseum, Jewish Museum Munich, Villa Stuck, Lenbachhaus museum shop, Infopoint of the NS Documentation Centre.

Memory Loops in the Munich city area

Signs around the city with telephone numbers provide direct-dial access to 60 audio tracks associated with a particular location at local rates.

These 60 voice-collages are also available as an iPhone App (via the App store) which contains additional information such as a city map with location markers. Direct navigation to the relevant sites is possible via the phone’s GPS mode.

Memory Loops is an audio artwork largely based on the transcription of historical and recent material from victims of National Socialism and contemporary witnesses: witnesses of the discrimination, persecution and exclusion to which people in Munich were subjected under the NS regime. The reports and interviews have been transcribed and recorded by actors and actresses, with children reading the historical documents.

All the voices have been embedded within the constant flow of an original musical score which links the individual text sequences. Melián used for the composition fragments of historical recordings of works by Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Kurt Weill and Coco Schumann and arranged them into one delicate, atmospheric sound.

Michaela Melián, an artist and musician, lives in Munich and Hamburg. She is a professor for time-based media at the Hochschule für bildende Künste (HfbK), Hamburg. She is a member of the band F.S.K.

A project by the Municipal Department of Arts and Culture of the City of Munich / ‘Freie Kunst im öffentlichen Raum’ in cooperation with the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation / Radio Play and Media Art Dept.

Contact
presse@memoryloops.net
www.memoryloops.net