Release of Degeneracija [TEV-​24] by Sz. Berlin ± Panic

TEV-24 was the first collaboration between Sz. Berlin ± Panic. Panic’s visual documentation of the ruined Vlaška thermoelectric power station main hall is accompanied by its atmospheric soundtrack, rendered from photos and videos gathered on site, plus archival sources. It was filmed for use as the static video installation TEV-22, which was shown alongside the cdx-foto exhibition Autarcheum at Burren College of Art, Ireland in November 2022. This 2024 reimagining introduces new tensions, ruptures and contradictions, reanimating the space and its ghosts.

Vlaška began operating in the Raša Valley in Istria in 1939, as part of a large-scale industrialisation of a previously rural, marshy landscape. It supplied power to the mine in nearby Raša (Arsia in Italian). Raša was built in 1937-8 as a model industrial settlement and designed as a self-sufficient “Città dell’autarchia” (City of Autarchy). Bombed by the Allies during World War Two and restored by Yugoslavia, operating until it fell silent in 1976. Since then, time, looters and the climate have sculpted it into the atmospheric ruin we see today.

Sections of the concrete walls and floors hang improbably and precariously, waiting for gravity to deliver a final blow. The other invisible yet potent presence is a range of contaminants. The Raša coal that fired the plant is a source of super high-organic-sulphur and colossal quantities of it were stored and burnt here. It is both sulphurous and serene, contaminated but far from dead. Birds sing in the turbine hall and in the summer much of the structure disappears behind the vegetation that is increasingly colonising the site. The new film and remixed soundtrack brings a futurist(ic) new 21st century life to this modernist relic. The soundtrack is available on Bandcamp and other music platforms.

This is the second part of the “Trilogy of Decay / Trilogija Raspadanja” – an alchemical A/V response to three abandoned sites in Croatia that the duo have been compelled to witness and to process. In the films and their soundtracks a power station, a rail depot and a coal separator are fleetingly re-animated. The works transform them from dead industrial powerhouses to newly un-dead post-industrial powerhouses. Each carries its own host of memories of the three ruling systems that created them: the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Fascist Italy and Socialist Yugoslavia. In their derelict, looted state, these sites have become terrible to many, and many would prefer them to disappear entirely, yet much can be salvaged from them – fragments, atmospheres, sounds and visions for the new times in which they find themselves and in which these projects are made.

Release of Separacija [PLM​-​22] by Sz. Berlin ± Panic

The Sz. Berlin action PLM-22 took place in a former coal separator in Istria during the night of 3rd October 2022. All sounds generated on location. Witnessed by Panic.

The passing of the high tide of 20th Century industrialisation in Istria has left a toxic but inspiring legacy. Titanic industrial structures that just a few decades ago housed cutting-edge technologies are now beached carcasses whose concrete bones are bleached by the Istrian sun and wind, and whose metallic veins and organs have long ago been stripped clean by hordes of scavengers. As time passes, they are colonised by plants, birds, animals and rust. Beyond the sounds of the wind, the birds and the occasional wanderer these sites are mostly mute.

The Yugoslav-era coal separator in which the action PLM-22 took place is a slight exception to this rule. The distant drone of the still-active power station that it once served is audible within the space, and at night the power station lights can still be glimpsed through the ruined façade. This vast concrete carcass was the ideal location for an experiment in re-animating such a space for one night only.

Using a vintage Yugoslav era radio and advanced contemporary sonification software, the building was allowed (or forced) to resonate again, in a delayed echo of the sounds of industry that it was once filled with. Just as Sz. Berlin scanned and played the sound of the space back into itself, Panic lit and shot it in a way that animated it, allowing it to “perform” for the camera and impose its textures and shapes on contemporary viewers. All that you see in the film was filmed in the course of one evening, and all sounds were generated live on site by Sz. Berlin. The final edited film condenses the long night hours of sonic and visual experimentation into a portrait of a forgotten but unforgettable building and its (re)-created sights and sounds. The soundtrack has also been released on Bandcamp.

The collaboration with Panic is ongoing and this release is the first part of the “Trilogy of Decay / Trilogija Raspadanja” – an alchemical A/V response to three abandoned sites in Croatia that the duo have been compelled to witness and to process. In the films and their soundtracks a power station, a rail depot and a coal separator are fleetingly re-animated. The works transform them from dead industrial powerhouses to newly un-dead post-industrial powerhouses. Each carries its own host of memories of the three ruling systems that created them: the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Fascist Italy and Socialist Yugoslavia. In their derelict, looted state, these sites have become terrible to many, and many would prefer them to disappear entirely, yet much can be salvaged from them – fragments, atmospheres, sounds and visions for the new times in which they find themselves and in which these projects are made.

Premiere of Sz. Berlin ± Panic’s short film Separacija [PLM-22]

The Sz. Berlin action PLM-22 took place in a former coal separator in Istria during the night of 3rd October 2022. All sounds generated on location. Witnessed by Panic. 

The passing of the high tide of 20th Century industrialisation in Istria has left a toxic but inspiring legacy. Titanic industrial structures that just a few decades ago housed cutting-edge technologies are now beached carcasses whose concrete bones are bleached by the Istrian sun and wind, and whose metallic veins and organs have long ago been stripped clean by hordes of scavengers. As time passes, they are colonised by plants, birds, animals and rust. Beyond the sounds of the wind, the birds and the occasional wanderer these sites are mostly mute. 

The Yugoslav-era coal separator in which the action PLM-22 took place is a slight exception to this rule. The distant drone of the still-active power station that it once served is audible within the space, and at night the power station lights can still be glimpsed through the ruined façade. This vast concrete carcass was the ideal location for an experiment in re-animating such a space for one night only. 

Using a vintage Yugoslav era radio and advanced contemporary sonification software, the building was allowed (or forced) to resonate again, in a delayed echo of the sounds of industry that it was once filled with. Just as Sz. Berlin scanned and played the sound of the space back into itself, Panic lit and shot it in a way that animated it, allowing it to “perform” for the camera and impose its textures and shapes on contemporary viewers. All that you see in the film was filmed in the course of one evening, and all sounds were generated live on site by Sz. Berlin. The final edited film condenses the long night hours of sonic and visual experimentation into a portrait of a forgotten but unforgettable building and its (re)-created sights and sounds.  

Latest Sz. Berlin film will feature in New York group exhibition T.F.I.D.

Embryogallery is pleased to announce T. F. I. D. A group exhibition at our new location in 32 Union Square East, New York City.
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T. F. I. D.
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Opening November 10th
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​Ghost Hand: The drawings of Alan Vega
Mysterious figures seemingly in transition to the Spirit world, materialized from the hand of the legendary Alan Vega. The exhibition features twenty drawings spanning across decades.

A film by Edward Quist: The Future Is Dead
In the year 1996, a transmission was received from Earth’s Sun. The signal appeared to be a broadcast from the distant future. “The Future is Dead ” is a series of bootleg video recordings stolen from the United States military’s analysis of the mysterious future transmissions.

The gallery will also be showcasing three additional film projects:

Ilpo Väisänen: Paintings Projektio
One half of the legendary Finnish experimental outfit Pan Sonic, Ilpo Väisänen presents his evocative paintings in projected form for the first time.

Alex Rutterford: The Tomorrow Memory
A recorded A.I. transmission from a future temporal destination, is subconsciously implanted as dream code, taking the form of a liminal digital space, explored by the receiver.

And

Sz. Berlin: Spiel mit zeit (HDV-23)
The Haludovo Palace Hotel is a union of two (un)dead futures in concrete form: a gamble on a happy union between US capitalism and Yugoslav socialism. Its days were always numbered, and its repressed catastrophic future returned long ago. Yet it retains an uncanny, luminous atmosphere. In Spiel mit Zeit the ghostly radiance of a lost future haunts the shattered spaces of a lost dream.
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32 Union Square East, Left elevators, Suite 911
6pm- 10pm
eq@embryoroom.com

Disonantna sinteza live in Nova Gorica, 06.10.23

At 18.30 on 6th October, Sz. Berlin will present an enhanced version of its A/V performance Disonantna sinteza [Dissonant Synthesis] at the Grand Hall, Municipal Palace, Trg Edvarda Kardelja 1, Nova Gorica. The event is free to attend and takes place in the context of the R.o.R. Festival in collaboration with in cooperation with Architects Day 2023: Ravnikar Enigma – the question of the future of Slovenian architecture, organised by the Chamber of Architecture and Spatial Planning of Slovenia.

Agenda 2022

Screenshot from Sz. Berlin RZZ-22 video

Following relocation to Istria in 2021, Sz. Berlin is intensifying its activities in 2022, inspired by the architectural and industrial heritage of its new surroundings.

Each Sz. Berlin project or action will now be assigned a “catalogue number” and will be named in this three letter/three number format. The first of these was RZZ-22 in May. Next was PLM-22 in October.

This will be followed by the performance Schmerzbau Berlin SZB-22 in Berlin on October 14th. In November the video TEV-22 will premiere at Burren College of Art, Ireland, in conjunction with the cdx-foto exhibition “Autarcheum”.

The year will close on 16th December with a local exhibition, Disposizione schematica (RZR-22), at DKC-Lamparna, Labin.

Towards a concrete dys(u)topia. Sz. Berlin return to Iklectik, 26.01.19

This special audio-visual performance at Iklectik in January will explore the sonic and symbolic properties of concrete in London and beyond. Using field recordings, archive material, live electronics and processing, it will provide a soundtrack to the ambivalent and even terrifying status of concrete and Brutalism in the public imagination.

New album and video: Windstärke zwölf

Our CDR album has now been officially released via VEB89 on bandcamp. Based on the pieces composed for our performance aboard the M.S. Stubnitz in Hamburg, the album includes other tracks from the same sessions plus a special bonus track: Autopsia’s stunning remix of DDR60 track Nationalhymne 2009.

The tracks created for the Stubnitz and the wider album explore the dark legacy of the East German navy (Volksmarine) and fishing fleets, which were decimated following German re-unification, with social and political consequences that are still unfolding today. The album presents a ghostly glimpse into the lost world of the Cold War at sea and the lives of those engaged on its frontlines.

 

Photos from the Stubnitz

Read about our recent performance on the Stubnitz.

Sz. Berlin plays at Iklectik, London, 17.5.17

We can now announce our next London show, scheduled for 17th May. This will include a premiere of our material composed for our appearance aboard M.S. Stubnitz at the Primal Uproar festival.

Our guests are Jose Macabra and Am Not, with DJ support from Nihil.

View the Facebook event here.