Excerpt from «Coffee City - Leben im Architekturmodell»

«Coffee City - Leben im Architekturmodell» is an audio piece about four young adults who know nothing other than everyday life in late capitalism. Set in a virtual environment somewhere between an architectural model, a new urban development and a brownfield site, a conversation unfolds about their own place in the world and the fear of waking up to a future that looks strikingly similar to the present.

The audio piece is based on an exploration of so-called render people – photos and renderings of people used in architectural visualisations to illustrate scale and depict social life. In «Coffee City», the model-like nature of these mini-people is taken literally: the figures, in an ostensibly innocent manner, conjure up an image of the near, habitable future. In this immediate future, people will still be drinking coffee to go (in recyclable bamboo cups), they will still be returning home with shopping bags, and they will still be standing in their front gardens to show their guests the privilege of their own green space. Everything will be ‘normal’. But what if this state of normality has long since become a state of emergency – a state of repression, uncertainty and fear?

«Coffee City» is based on the text of the theatre performance «Render Ghosts». In contrast to the visual nature of the performance, the audio piece focuses on the complete absence of visible images – and translates gestures of enlargement, zooming in and decomposition into acoustic spaces of listening.

The text for the audio piece was written collaboratively by Marten Flegel, Charlotte Lauber and Felix Worpenberg.

Duration: 32 mins, first broadcast on Deutschlandradio Kultur, Freispiel 31.03.2022

Audio play text «Coffee City - Leben im Architekturmodell»