Pauline Boudry (b. 1972, Switzerland) and Renate Lorenz (b. 1963, Germany) have been working together in Berlin since 2007. They create installations that choreograph the tension between visibility and opacity. Their films capture performances in front of the camera, often beginning with a song, an image, a film, or a score from the recent past.

Silence has been described both as a violent experience (in the case of being silenced) and as a powerful act of performance and resistance, as has been carried out by various civil disobedience movements around the world. “Silent” questions how these two moments can be interconnected.

The piece begins with a performance of the 1952 score “4´33´´” by modern composer John Cage, which instructs the performer(s) not to play their instrument(s) for the entire duration of its three parts. The artist Aérea Negrot performs the score on a rotating stage set up in Oranienplatz, a public square in Berlin where a refugee protest camp was held between 2012 and 2014. In the second part of the film, she performs a song composed specifically for the film.