there is always sunrise (Haus am Waldsee)

Following the invitation to create an installation for the Haus am Waldsee’s 80th anniversary, Ayumi Paul turned to the songs of the birds inhabiting the museum’s sculpture park to trace an ancient pulse that still resonates today. At dawn, birds’ voices emerge in a precise order - a sequence they have followed in the Berlin region since the end of the last Ice Age, some 11,000 years ago. Within them, more than 150 million years of avian history continues to reverberate in the species that have spread across Brandenburg since that time.

On the morning of June 21, 2025 - the longest day of the year - Paul recorded the soundscape of the sculpture park from 3:35 am until sunrise at 4:44 am. The recording captures the first birdcall of that day, the arriving S-Bahn at Mexikoplatz, the rustle of leaves and undergrowth, the hum of insects, a frog and a duck, and gradually, as if attuned to the light, the swelling polyphony of birds.

Although urban development and city planning have reshaped the original fabric of this dawn chorus, reminiscences of its structure remain. The sound work there is always sunrise (Haus am Waldsee) makes this continuity audible: a sonic image layered across millennia, interwoven with the newer noise of human presence, and marks the starting point of Paul’s commitment to reinscribe the history of Haus am Waldsee within the intertemporality of millions of years, rather than within human or institutional lifespans.