no man’s land — Giuliana Marmo

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No Man’s Land
2024

Posters, audio environment, sound 12:32

When thinking about the soundscape of Weimar, for the most part, a very bucolic environment comes to mind. As a very small city, its regular rhythm composed of birds, bikes, and not so many cars, gets regularly and stably interrupted by a group of drunk teenagers, the daily tourist guide performing a tour for a group of elders, and the sporadic university party, which are so usual that are barely noticed. To this predictability there is one exception, the protests by the German right-wing extremists, who have been consistently taking to the streets every Monday for the last couple of years with an overwhelming regularity, to loudly chant their racist slogans while marching around the city.
The demonstrations align with the Afd’s agenda. This growing nationalist German party advocates for democracy for Germans, by being actively against refugees and asylum seekers, who are being used as scapegoats for a deep political and economic discomfort within the German population. Although popular belief and public opinion frame this uneasiness as a class issue, as the majority of its participants did not pursue higher education or are part of the middle to lower class, the latest developments have proven that this issue extends to every strata of German society. This speaks of a bigger problem, that of an embedded systemic and structural racism sheltered under the umbrella of German culture, that is being instrumentalized by political parties, and bolstered by the widespread polarization.
In the last months, given the upcoming regional elections and the spring European elections, many groups have organized to counter-protest at the same time, driving them out of the main square where they used to protest by registering the counter-protests every Monday from now until the elections. Although these groups support the rights of refugees and immigrants, they don’t seem to be included in the conversation, as it seems to be oriented as well towards protecting democracy, but from the complete opposite side. This very active public opposition creates a space in the middle, both physically and metaphorically, where the voices of the people being defended or antagonized fall upon, go unheard and feel unseen.
This is the space in which No Man’s Land positions itself, as a parallel narration of the conflict from the people that are at the center of the argument, but whose postures are not being taken into account. In this way, becoming invisible protagonists that have no power to either oppose or contribute, because the argument itself is not oriented towards conflict resolution, but towards a suppression of voices from each of the sides. As a collection of individual and shared experiences, mistranslations, continuous censorship, and potential futures, the project proposes alternative readings of the democratic system from the people that both most benefit and are most affected by it, the people that belong to no land, the displaced.

Sound design by René Andrade Martina - Here