Lasse-Marc Riek

Location sound recordings from harbours in Europe (1999–2007)

Imagine an incredibly large hall. Its walls are made of brick, covered in some kind of lichen. Many of the stones have already begun to crumble. This vast space might once have housed a cotton mill. But the former industrial site is long gone. Instead of the majestic void such an empty hall would usually evoke, storage racks now fill the space, reaching almost to the ceiling. Every inch of the solid steel shelves is packed with folders, thick like the files you'd see in legal dramas. Compact and orderly, they sit on the shelves, stacked as high as an apartment block. It’s impossible to peek inside, but every single sheet of paper within must be filled with signs, letters, symbols, and tables, covering both sides. Billions upon billions of pages and characters.

What do you hear as you walk through the aisles between the storage racks? Between the steel, bricks, folders, pages, and a ceiling so far above that you can’t even make out what it’s made of? Will you hear the bricks continue to crumble as time passes? Will the steel groan under its immense load, or will the dry, drafty air draw moisture from the documents? Could you even hear what’s inside the folders themselves—their history, their sad and humorous tales, the undeniable truths they hold?

Now, what do you hear when you walk on a dock? (Stefan Militzer)