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picture by Magnus Schaefer

First read this fifty/fifty

The box you see on the picture is the confection of the cassette. We (Harold Schellinx and me) sold it to Magnus Schaefer for fifty minutes of recording. We made this special price, because the box came without the cassette player. Magnus promised to buy one, and to record this adventure on cassette.

Now the tape is ready. He has bought a walkman (see picture above) on the fleemarket at the mauerpark in Berlin; it costed him 3 euro. It functions as well, though sometimes it doesn't. The inbuilt microphone is okay, but the recordbutton doesn't work. It is twice as big as a normal walkman, therefore doesn't fit in the box. A special feature is a deep hum that appears when the walkman is without his cassette. The frequency and intensity can be changed with the volume.

The recordings of the acquisition were made with a 30-years old "standard radio company"-cassetterecorder, very big, very heavy, a bit kaputt. The microphone was outside the bag, and the recording device in the bag on the luggage carrier of his bicycle.

The tape starts of with his failed attempt to buy a walkman on the fleemarket in schlesischen strasse, corner cuvrystrasse in kreuzberg. His attempt failed, because the fleemarket doesn't exist anymore. Then we will hear his bicycleride through kreuzberg, goerlitzer park and wrangelkiez.

A day later he takes the u-bahn to prenzlauer berg, records this trip and also his walk to the mauerpark, and then the actual walking around surrounded by voices speaking different languages. And then he encounters the walkman and buys it.

Total running time: 50 minutes.

Markus Schaefer writes for Vital Weekly.