Föhrenwald, 2005, Slide installation with audioplay, German and English Version, 60:00 min.

Föhrenwald, a housing development on the outskirts of Wolfratshausen, was originally built as a showcase example of National Socialist housing policy. In 1940, it was converted into a camp for foreign forced laborers and conscripted German workers in the nearby munitions factories. After the war, it became an exterritorial housing facility for Jewish displaced persons: for more than ten years, survivors of the extermination and concentration camps who were unable to return to their native countries lived in the homes. The self-governed camp was eventually closed, and starting in 1956, German families who had been expelled from the eastern territories of the Reich were moved into Föhrenwald.
The development’s outward appearance has changed very little, despite its checkered history, which is best illustrated by the changing street names: “Danziger Freiheit,” or “Freedom of Danzig,” became “Independence Place” and finally “Kolpingplatz,” afteran early leader of the Catholic social movement. The houses, planned by architects hired under Nazi rule, have remained largely unaltered and even today typify the idyllic vision of the cozy single- family home.
Michaela Melián’s Föhrenwald tells the story of the development (now known as Waldram) in the form of a multimedia installation: the environment features a slide projection in which drawings of the houses in white lines on a black ground visualize the area as it appears today. Hovering weightlessly in the dark room and slowly cross-fading into each other, they trace an imaginary stroll through the neighborhood. Superimposed on the looped series of images is an acoustic loop composed of spoken language and music.
Multiple voices tell stories from the different phases in the development’s history. The script is based on documents relating to the initial construction, the memories of forced laborers, and interviews with Jewish residents as well as the German expellees who moved in after 1956—some of their families still live there. Professional actors speak the edited interview texts in a neutral voice, while children read the historic documents. The polyphonic collage is embedded in a musical score whose even flow ties the different sources together. The composition weaves a dense sonic ambiance out of fragments—often no more than the static and scratching sounds, i.e., the playback noise—from shellac discs with works by Bach, Beethoven, Donizetti, Mendelssohn, and Schubert. The samples were taken from records released in Germany by the Jewish-owned companies Semer and Lukraphon in cooperation with the Jewish Cultural Federation between 1931 and 1938.
The soundtrack for Föhrenwald was produced by the department for radio plays and media art at Bayerischer Rundfunk. The radio play won the Online Award at the German federal broadcaster ARD’s Hörspieltage radio play festival in 2005. In 2006, it garnered the Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden, the most important award for audio art in the German-speaking world.
Heike Ander

Föhrenwald, 2005
Diainstallation mit Soundtrack, 60:00 Min.
Stimmen: Marion Breckwoldt, Peter Brombacher, Philip Götz,
Eva Gosciejewicz, Gabriel Hecker, Leonie Hofmann, Hans Kremer, Anna Barbara Kurek, Stefan Merki, Stephan Zinner
Text: Michaela Melián
Musik: Michaela Melián, Carl Oesterhelt
Produktion: Kunstraum München, Bayerischer Rundfunk – Hörspiel und Medienkunst, Kulturstiftung des Bundes