Cities And Memory

"For centuries, the river Lech has played an integral part in the city of Augsburg’s water management system, which is part of the UNESCO World Heritage. In this system, a network of canals carries water from the Lech into the city while a network of streams carries spring water from the forest south of Augsburg into the city for drinking. While the clear spring water is potable, the Lech water, carrying sediments, is more suited to industrial uses (watermills, power generation etc.). In order not to mix the different types of water, the engineers devised a series of culverts or siphons (Düker in German) where underground streams can cross each other without mixing their water. "This (and the fact that in the original field recording from the Flow project, the water from the Lech is completely inaudible because masked entirely by human-made sound) inspired the structure of this piece, which is based, both in time and in space, around the contrast of clear vs sedimentary, natural vs cultural: it starts with a