Fav Non-ambient Mixes (mostly)

Your 2021 Playback

mnemotopia — mnemopoetry — mnemopolitics

Anne-F Jacques/Takamitsu Ohta, Oto to Secchi

section of a sound work constructed from sound recordings made with\in a WWII bunker

2020-21

Les Horribles Travailleurs

Photo made during a recording session

WWII bunker - Sound work 1

Dobra voda is a small bay on the island of Silba. A remote beach is situated an hours walking distance from the only village on the island.

This mystical and completely secluded place was once a summer commune, gathering creative minds from Yugoslavia but also from all over Europe. A versatile art scene emerged, the one that preceded Ljubljana's alternative theatre scene, Rijeka's new wave and some of the most influential ex-Yu alternative bands; "[...] The music was coming from every single bush: violins, cellos, saxophones, trumpets, and, of course, mostly guitars [...]."

One of my dearest friends, Natasha Kadin, curator and cultural manager of SEA Silba Environment Art organised a wonderful exhibition in 2018 with found archive photos made by Marijan Blažina, one of the artists from the commune. Croatian multi-disciplinary artist and author Boris Greiner wrote more about this exhibition: www.silba-environment-art.hr/en/blog/boris-greiner-slikovne-poruke-s-dobre-vode/

I visited Dobre vode on a few occasions, but this particular time I wanted to record a sonic palimpsest, built from water memories and other environmental simulacra of this magical little bay. I recorded with hydrophones from various angles, listened to the interplay between water and salt and different geological formations. The movement of the pebbles from the sea bed, water sliding down the rocks and crevices, burying my "ears" under the sea bed but also inside the enormous piles of dry Posidonia oceanica, commonly known as Neptune grass or Mediterranean tapeweed, a seagrass species that is endemic to the Mediterranean Sea. It forms large underwater meadows that are an important part of the ecosystem. The Posidonia has a very high carbon absorption capacity, being able to soak up 15 times more carbon dioxide every year than a similar-sized piece of the Amazon rainforest.

Dobra voda bay is positioned to accumulate dry Posidonia once it is washed ashore. It is absolutely impossible to be still in those clouds of dry seaweed and be completely silent. Even so, I tried.

The sound piece is a mix of 16 chosen recordings placed in a dronesque metaphor of passing time. 

released August 25, 2022

All sounds recorded, edited and composed by Manja Ristić
Recorded during SEA Silba Environment Art Residence 2021
www.silba-environment-art.hr
Hydrophone built by Jez riley French
jezrileyfrench.co.uk
Mastering La Plant Studio Belgrade
laplantstudio.com

Dobra voda

August 25th, 2022

Bandcamp

long-form audio installation
artistic research
booklet in English – containing aural photography, theoretical discourse on the culture of listening, and more...

sound, text, images: Manja Ristić
editor: Sonja Leboš
sound mastering: La Plant Studio, Belgrade
design: Nevena Vasiljević
proofreading: Mark Vernon
production, publishing, distribution: ELL Studio 2023
artistic research in collaboration with the Association for Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Research, Zagreb

water memory is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia

read more about the project >>> 
https://manjaristic.bandcamp.com/album/water-memory-mnemosonic-topographies-of-the-adriatic

water memory

water memory – mnemosonic topographies of the Adriatic

premiered at the Listening Biennial 2023 Belgrade, on July 20th, 2023 –– "Dobra voda, act two" is a continuation of exploring the sound material gathered at SEA Silba Environment Art residency (2021).

the compositional approach of act two moves the focus from holistic listening to the chosen locale toward the phenomenological positioning of oneself in relation to geomorphic bio-acoustics — re-imagined as micro-environment was (consciously) listening back.

little is discussed about field recording practice being an intrusion into the landscape; also, not much attention is given to Nature's intelligence and its system-based intercommunication, which undeniably has means of perceiving our presence.

this work is deeply inspired by the constant movement of the sea.

released July 20, 2023

all sounds recorded, edited, and composed by Manja Ristić
hydrophone made by Jez riley French
mastering by La Plant Studio
supported by SEA Silba Environment Art

Dobra voda, act two

The deeper I am investigating field recording as both artistic and listening practice, the more I become aware that each recording session is an intrusion into the landscape and that the landscape, whatever historical, biotic, or environmental system defines it – is sentient to my presence.

No matter how considerate my “intrusions” are, an abstract form of communication always takes place, and it largely depends on my ability to maintain this connection, which goes beyond the soundscape and sonic properties of the place. In this sense, my capacity to employ deep intuition and activate a specific neural architecture developed through a compound of skills also defines the recording process and its future aesthetic transformation. Thus, making a field recording fully personalized practice and soundscape composition a discipline of open interpretation, as well as a vast field for misuse and false representation. Regardless of an evaluation system, whether we contemplate an act of listening through scientific observation of one’s cognition event boundaries or through the capacity to comprehend the existential phenomenology of Zulu spiritualism, the possibility that two or more listeners can have the same listening experience is minuscule.

We are all deeply rooted in a diversity of psychological constructs; neural and sensory imprints, memory compounds, cognitive abilities, and many body-mind pathways determining our current psycho-physical state. Therefore, if the field recording practice is based on any form of active listening – it is a discipline based on interpretation.
With that in mind, I am asking: How do we approach the landscape of severe devastation and a dense history of warfare? Knowing that serious ethical and moral consequences are involved in the effort to interpret a particular soundscape.

In the work “ghosts” I am using obsolete instruments – a modular synthesizer built in 1970, a discarded wheelchair wheel salvaged from the Adriatic Sea, and the piano fallen in disuse which belonged to the Austrian conceptualist, filmmaker, improviser, photographer, environmentalist, and writer – Karl Katzinger aka John Tylo (October 1953 – April 2021). Next to these elements of the past and their voices rediscovered, I am incorporating hydrophone and field recordings from several locations appropriating them through the discourse of critical tourism and a culture of memory – more specifically through listening to the inherent memories of environmental devastation due to exploitation of natural resources as well as warfare – in the South Adriatic (Old town Dubrovnik and island of Vrnik), and the Czech-Austrian borderlands nearby of Mauthausen–Gusen concentration camps. 

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Instruments:
EMS Synthi 100
Wheelchair wheel salvaged from the sea
John Tylo’s old piano

Field recordings:
Dubrovnik – Stradun air conditioning units and collection of rubbish containers
Vrnik Island South Adriatic – crickets in an ancient limestone quarry
Adriatic dolphins *hydrophone recording by Robertina Šebjanič
Harrachstal village on Czech-Austrian borderlands – crickets in the abandoned granite quarry
Hydrophone recordings of the river Schwarze Aist
Train coming into Freistadt train station in Austria

All sounds performed, recorded, composed & edited by Manja Ristić
Some sounds gathered at the SHAPE + musikprotocoll residency, July 2023

Hydrophone used for an underwater recordings made by Jez riley French
jezrileyfrench.co.uk

Mastering by La Plant Studio
laplantstudio.com

ghosts

LINE_151

Serbian sound artist, poet, curator, and researcher, Manja Ristić returns for her second release for LINE after 2023's 'Awakenings' (LINE_138). Her new album 'Ma' recalls the incredibly subtle, detailed works of Steve Roden, Francisco López, or Bernhard Günter fused with the adept field recordings of Jana Winderen and the delicate resonances of Toshiya Tsunoda. Two entrancing long form works incorporating field recordings, acoustic instruments, and unexpected found sounds.

> https://lineimprint.bandcamp.com/album/ma 

Ma — depth of the space, of the environment, of relations and mystical interrelatedness. The hidden or obvious void that defines the form and liberates from it at the same time. Ma and the sound? The weight of emptiness and quietness is revealed by unexpected density—the space chants, the chants spread in waves, pulsations, a pellucid spectrum of timbre.

“I hear the water dreaming” echoes in my mind.

Patterns of the forest chorus build pandiatonic clouds, on the brim of sonic hallucinations, we hear the space breathing, vellum of light expanding, beyond our hearing range.

Sounds of Ma deep in the ground, on the surface, underwater, on the surface of the water, in the air, between gravity and the air; Ma between air and objects, tubes and thermal bodies, between the Moon and its reflection; bottom of the silent lake and the stratosphere far beyond our world next to the frozen planet with the hidden ocean.

Ma of the soul caught on the tape.

Nothing is necessary.

Nothing holds everything together.

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List of field recordings and samples:

• Giant anthill in the abandoned forest quarry
• Cricket chorus next to Pohořský rybník lake
• Hydrophone recording of the “silent lake” Stierhüblteich
• Hydrophone recording of the river Schwarze Aist and its various tributaries
• Bowing cymbal under the full moon next to the Schwarze Aist (recorded by Abby Lee Tee)
• Museum of Contemporary Art Ljubljana—ventilation in the man’s toilet (recorded by Mark Vernon)
• Cassini passing between Saturn and Enceladus Moon (NASA sounds)
• Dad’s boiler
• Breath and broken tape recorder hum extracted from Toru Takemitsu’s tape “Ki Sora Tori” (1956)
• Bowing glass vase
• Two wine glasses gently trembling in front of the fan
• Electro-magnetic field around the broken socket
• Violin

Sounds, composition, images, text by Manja Ristić
Mastering La Plant Studio

MANJA RISTIĆ - Ma - 02 Full Moon Trembles On The Surface Of The Creek

Interview and tracklist: http://thefader.com/2015/04/07/cuushe-fader-mix-and-interview

FADER Mix: Cuushe

MIX #3 L'Hiver Moderne

Endgame & Leevisa   (November 28, 2018)

This year London has experienced several weekends of the hottest summer and that moved the Australian sound artist Kate Carr, whose practice is centred on articulating the relationship between people and place through sound, to point her microphone at the city. This volume is based on her recordings during a particularly hot long weekend in a corner of very busy intersection in London, where she resides now. In Heatwave, Carr is interested in both the serious and also the more prosaic aspects of soundscapes related to climate change. She investigated the throbbing summer music from her neighborhood, people’s efforts to keep cool, and the uneasiness which accompanies these everyday activities in this moment of environmental crisis. The way these pieces construct and compensate, with all the tangible sounds that fold into larger moods via multiple instruments, exemplifies her acumen in creating sonic stories that reflect our multi-layered experience of reality.

Humidity - from Heatwave out now via Hasana Editions

Philip FM on NTS April 7th 2020

Life is painful and hilarious: Selective bgms for Hyundai card art street 2020 (YBS)

DOB Gallery Belgrade October 13th >>> sound installation for the exhibition of drawings and paintings by Simonida Rajčević
http://simonidasimonida.com/

Strelice >>> Arrows >>> exhibition by Simonida Rajčević

Manja Ristić: Sonic Ontology of Negligence
7 Nov 2021–8 Jan 2021
FM exhibition, exhibition of 8-channel sound installation

7 Nov 2020 at 12.00 (noon) on FM 88.8 MHz – in-situ FM walk (at Park Tivoli)
10 Nov 2020 at 18.00 p.m. on FM 88.8 MHz – in-situ FM walk (at Park Tivoli)
18 Nov 2020 at 20.00 p.m. on programme Ars – radio exhibition opening

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For more please point your cursor to:
http://www.steklenik.si/en/manja-ristic-sonic-ontology-of-negligence/
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Sonic Ontology of negligence is a continuous research evolving from listening to abandoned places and landscapes reshaped by extensive intervention of human presence and exploitation, and eventually “given over“ to Nature to reclaim the space. In the process of conceptualizing Sonic Ontology of negligence, Manja Ristić resided in places that were heavily exploited and forever changed by the human urge to build, comprising thousand years-old quarries as well as present-day mega-structures, abandoned as a result of corruption and consumerist socio-political turmoil. The nucleus of the compositional structure is devoted to abandoned construction building site of the Stožice mega-structure, while layers of mnemopoetic sonic imprints are derived from an old lime-stone quarries from the island of Korčula in South Dalmatia, such are Glogovac, Lenga, Defora and Vrnik, but also abandoned mineral mines and lime pits from Fruška gora in Vojvodina, North Serbia, and other sites such is the military compound placed in the middle of the Avala forest in the suburbs of Belgrade. The poetical accent is given to the dynamics and textures of waters and aquatic micro spaces, which are building the formative/reproductive environments in the process of re-establishing bio diversities.

Manja Ristić graduated from the Belgrade Academy of Music and later also completed her post-graduate diploma in Solo-Ensemble Recital at the Royal College of Music, London. Besides performing in the field of instrumental electroacoustic music, her sound-related research is focused on an interdisciplinary approach to sound art, field recordings and experimental radio art.

Credits:
Artist: Manja Ristić
Curated by: Irena Pivka, Brane Zorman
Organisation: Irena Pivka, Katarina Radaljac
Translation and editing: Katja Kosi, Melita Silič
Public relations: Katarina Radaljac
Production: Cona, Institute for Contemporary Arts Processing, 2020
Venue: Steklenik gallery for sound bioacoustics and art, FM 88.8MHz, 3rd programme of Radio Slovenia – programme Ars

Exhibition is being part of the Acoustic Commons project support from the European Union’s Creative Europe program.

Manja Ristić: Sonic Ontology of Negligence (stereo version of an 8 channel sound exhibition)

CONA zavod / institute