CITYMAKERS

Deutsch

“Finding Home” is a sound installation that asks: What does “home” mean for young people with migration backgrounds? The project emerges from conversations with young adults living in Berlin, synthesizing a range of personal perspectives that are shaped by movement across borders, memories carried from elsewhere, and the process of finding home away from home. The installation presents recorded voices alongside symbolic objects: small things mentioned in each story, held onto or remembered. Each voice is housed in a moving box, creating a tactile and intimate archive of migration, memory, and the many ways we try to define what home can be — physically, emotionally, and symbolically.

THE INITIAL INSPIRATION

Berlin is a city of immigration. Twenty-five percent of Berliners are foreign nationals. That’s 972,000 people from 170 countries. Even within our group, we come from Italy, Denmark, Germany and the United States. We started to think about the emotional cost of leaving your home and moving to another country. We also started to think about what “home” means: Can you truly feel at home in a place where people will always see you as a foreigner? Or, conversely, what happens if you return to the place you’re “from” and feel like a stranger there? What does it mean to bring home with you? What does it mean to leave home behind?

THE PROCESS

Were there key moments that defined the direction or shifted your approach? What were the main challenges? What was the methodology you applied? Why and how is “storytelling” a good way to approach the topics?

Already during our week at C*SPACE in March, certain themes began to surface repeatedly — movement, flow, and migration. Though still vague at the time, these early conversations laid the foundation for what would eventually become our project. In the weeks following the initial workshop, it was challenging to find a clear, collective direction. The topics felt broad and difficult to unify. But as the process unfolded, we found that a meaningful starting point for the project lay in the intersection between the city, ourselves, and young people.

We all have personal experiences with moving between countries and navigating different cultures, and living in a multicultural city like Berlin shaped our reflections. At some point, a central question crystallized: What does “home” mean when you’ve left what you once called home and are trying to build a new one in a foreign place? This is an intimate and personal topic, and we found that working with sound as a medium could be an effective way to transmit a sense of intimacy and closeness.

We further wanted to explore how each interviewed person’s story of home could be both heard and “housed”, and that’s where the idea of constructing a sculptural element to present the audio stories was born. We began experimenting with different ways of exhibiting the project. Early on, the idea of using moving boxes emerged, as they could serve both as a sculptural form and as a symbol of transition, relocation, and being in-between homes.

Furthermore, it was important to us to include an interactive and immersive aspect in the installation. We wanted to create a space where people were invited to physically engage and connect through their senses and own experience. We drew inspiration from each personal story and translated the elements mentioned into spatial and sensorial experiences. Step by step, we tested various formats and ways of building and creating immersion.

Finally, adapting the project idea to a new environment in Sofia allowed it to evolve, shaped by the site itself, as well as by the people who engaged with and contributed to the ongoing storytelling by adding their own perspectives on home.

THE COLLABORATION

We are a group coming from 4 different backgrounds, so it was quite challenging to find a common idea — but interesting as well. With different tests, we defined the project and created an interactive audio installation that revealed different outputs. The idea of “home” arose from the interviewees’ memories, a wide range of feelings. This led us to step up the project, building it with a simple yet evocative material, the moving boxes, which allowed us to create a flexible and versatile installation.

LEARNINGS

There’s this idea that if you’re young, it’s easier for you to leave your old home behind and integrate into a new place, especially if you spend your entire adult life in that new place. But we were surprised to discover that even for people who’d moved here quite young, they kept a part of their old home with that. Some of them even considered their old home their “true” home, even if they didn’t plan on moving back.

THE SCHOOL

During the Urban Storytelling School, we had intense brainstorming sessions with all the participants on the topics of youth, spaces, cities. Every person and group exposed ideas, proposals and feedback, in a very inclusive way. It was a great experience. We learned a lot through each other’s ideas, personal views and experiences.

In the more advanced stage, through the stories collected in our project, we decided to represent key elements of the interviews in the boxes themselves. This representation raised new questions for us: How could we develop the installation not just through audio interviews and sounds, but also by adding a sensorial and interactive element? The result was unexpected. Thanks to a collaborative approach, we learned and discovered new possibilities, incorporating new unplanned features into our idea.

Guglielmo Sandri Giachino is an architect, spatial designer and independent researcher. His work focuses on sustainability, community-driven strategies, urban analysis and critical reading of the space.

Sofie Bang Kirkegaard has a background in social science and works in social urban development. She engages in interdisciplinary collaborations and explores critical perspectives on the city including urban activism and sustainability. With a foundation in urban planning and performance design, her work is driven by a strong interest in community engagement, cultural exchange, and social inclusion.

Jamie McGhee is a novelist and historian who explores the systemic policing of marginalized bodies. McGhee’s work has been supported by art fellowships from Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Zürich University of the Arts and the Folger Shakespeare Institute. 

Charlie Wanda is an illustrator and art mediator based in Berlin. Her work combines drawing, performing arts and participatory practices. She has developed projects with  people with disabilities and in refugee centres. Her commitment aims to foster empathy and reduce social barriers through artistic encounters.She works with institutions such as the Goethe Institute, the Institut Français, the Akademie der Künste and the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. She designs multi-sensory performances, accessible exhibitions, inclusive workshops and live drawings, exploring care, perception and living together.