Soletti Kollektiv, mobile and solar Soundinstallation “Soletti”. Weimar 2022
Geh'n Wir Mal Rüber
Autoethnographic Radio Piece · 2022
Historical Material · Dankmarshausen
Historical photographs: image archive WKM Heringen.
In this autoethnographic radio piece, Thrän speaks with their parents, Bettina and Gerhard Thrän, about their plans to flee to West Germany in 1985–86. Their conversation returns to Dankmarshausen, Thuringia, a village in the GDR’s former restricted border zone, where Maria grew up. The family’s voices bring questions of identity, origin, and German history into a personal exchange.
The work asks how borders and life under oppression in the former GDR shaped people and how those experiences are carried into later generations. Listening to the parents’ memories opens a conversation about inherited trauma and embodied knowledge. Their accounts connect family history to a collective memory of German history, moving beyond the border as a line on a map and beyond traditional archival methods.
Thrän aims to question traditional archival methods and remind listeners that oral history has been a fundamental way of sharing diverse voices, stories, and knowledge throughout human history. The piece has been broadcast nationwide on radio, presented at local festivals, and exhibited internationally as a listening space with subtitles.
Audio with English Subtitles
Artwork & Radio Presentations
Duration: 19:58 min Year: 2022
Artwork: Maria Thrän Master: Main Berlin
Presentations / radio play
September 2022: Slowart Festival, Griedel, Butzbach, Germany
July 2022: Soletti, Weimar, Germany
Protagonists: parents & author
Listening with English Subtitles: on Vimeo
Featured in Deutschlandradio Kurzstrecke
Exhibition & Image Credits
Exhibition: ROUND TRIP – FLUIDUM 2
3 August–9 September 2023
Sala Ex Cisterne, Fabbrica del Vapore, Milan, Italy
Presented by Fabbrica del Vapore and Viafarini as part of Vapore d’Estate.
Curators: Stefano Comensoli and Nicolò Colciago (Spazienne, Milan), and Elisabeth Sonneck (super bien! Berlin).
An exchange exhibition connecting independent art spaces in Milan and Berlin. Maria Thrän participated through Neun Kelche, Berlin.
Official exhibition information — Viafarini
Image documentation Hero: Soletti, Weimar. Source: Instagram @soletti_weimar, 2022. Historical photographs: Dankmarshausen border fortifications. Source: image archive WKM Heringen. Installation views: ROUND TRIP – FLUIDUM 2, Fabbrica del Vapore, Milan, 2023.
Soletti Kollektiv · Weimar, 2022
Soletti Kollektiv invited Maria Thrän to produce the piece, which premiered with the collective in Weimar, Thuringia, in July 2022. “Soletti” is a mobile, solar-powered eight-channel sound art project and public listening station, co-founded in 2021 by Sofie Heinz, Diana Karle and Thai-Tai Pham at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. It brings experimental radio plays, performative readings, electroacoustic compositions and other immersive sound experiments into public space, allowing people to gather and listen together in different urban locations.
The collective approaches sound art as an intervention in public space, encouraging attentive and collective listening in urban environments.
Soletti at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
ROUND TRIP – FLUIDUM 2 · Milan, 2023
ROUND TRIP – FLUIDUM 2 brought together independent art spaces and artists from Milan and Berlin at Fabbrica del Vapore. Initiated by Spazienne (Milan) and Elisabeth Sonneck (super bien! Berlin), the exchange highlighted the role of independent spaces in experimental artistic research and public discussion.
ROUND TRIP – FLUIDUM 2 · Milan, 2023 · Installation view
ROUND TRIP – FLUIDUM 2 · Milan, 2023 · Listening space
