In AMPLIFICATION! A Collective Invocation, Sylvi Kretzschmar initiated a hybrid of live art and political demonstration. Led by the performance of ten women with megaphones, audience, activists, residents, neighbours and passers-by formed a protest march to the site of the so-called Esso houses at Hamburg’s Reeperbahn, which were soon to be demolished in an area severely affected by gentrification. The Megaphone Choir became, in the literal sense, amplification and reinforcement of voices of residents, tenants, and neighbours of the buildings. An all-female choir ‘armed’ with megaphones spoke and sang their interview statements. It assembled acoustically the knowledge of the interviewees as citizen experts (Alltagsexpert*innen) of their district. Kretzschmar, Sylvi, AMPLIFICATION! A Collective Invocation, 2013, Hamburg!
