Suspended between floor and ceiling beneath a harsh neon light are evenly spaced pressboard squares, mounted with remnants of “real” walls — fragments of wallpaper, notices, and posters salvaged from an abandoned dormitory for Vietnamese contract workers in Berlin (the building’s exterior is featured in the black-and-white photographs of Long Live Tourism! #2).
In front of this mute wall stand four small, low plastic stools, typical of street settings in Vietnam. Attached to each stool is a set of headphones connected to a CD player, playing a Vietnamese language course, either German-Vietnamese or English-Vietnamese. While the installation may spark curiosity about the stories these wall fragments hold, the only audio offered is the language course. This suggests that to truly understand what once happened here, one must first learn the language — not just linguistically, but culturally, emotionally, and historically.
The stools are fixed to the ground, compelling viewers to sit low — close to the floor, close to the mute wall — assuming a position that echoes both physical and metaphorical proximity to the voices that are no longer present. This enforced posture reflects the embodied experience of marginalization, subtly mirroring the social positioning of immigrant communities relegated to the periphery of dominant narratives.
The installation resists passive consumption. It withholds easy access to personal histories, demanding effort, humility, and the willingness to engage with the unfamiliar. In this silence, there is both absence and defiance — a quiet refusal to be reduced to spectacle. The wall may be mute, but it is not empty; its fragments hold the weight of lives lived, languages lost, and memories that resist erasure.
This site-specific installation was created for the gallery at Haus Schwarzenberg / Neurotitan in Berlin, with the architectural support of Alexander Mähl.
