releases

installations

The work Patient Love is a live-set recording conceptualized for To Be Continued 2021 Music Marathon, an original concert lasting 24 hours, during which Stazione di Topolo is broadcasting live sets from many countries worldwide. The event, which covers World TB Day in its entirety was coordinated by Antonio Della Marina and Moreno Miorelli. The initiative is under the aegis of the Global Health Incubator, established in July 2009 in Topolò by Dr. Mario Raviglione, today professor in Global Health at the University of Milan, to create links between the world of creativity and that of science.

As I needed to lift this work further, I invited multi-talented artist Aleksandar Lazar to contemplate ambient visuals for the sonic scaffolding of the Patient Love, as we already did together several times in the past through concert performances, employing intuitive composing, improvisation, live cinema, and inexhaustible source of audio-visual magic — a cymatic plate.

In 2023, the work won The Golden Award for Extended Media by The Association of Fine Artists of Serbia.

Patient Love contains decomposed sequence by Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin's piano sonata no. 8, performed by Vladimir Ashkenazy.

Patient Love

Depression for Bass Clarinet is a graphic & object score made for the exhibition The Flickerings [org. in Serbian, Treperenja] presented in 2018. Graphic is an appropriation of a series of miniatures/drawings made with black marker on small pieces of crepe paper. The context is driven by my efforts to objectivize depression and challenge the rational boundaries of The Body by inhabiting it with an abstract but fully self-defined object - a body of its own. Which is deeply interwoven with all intrinsic functions of The Body, and behaves as a nexus-point between psychological and physical, further conditioning The Body's overall well-being. The work reflects my research on the energy traits of sound and its formative effects on the extended body-mind.
Interpretation of the score was made in 2018 by Serbian clarinetist Vasa Vučković [http://vasavuckovic.com/]

Depression For Bass Clarinet [graph. score Manja Ristić; interpretation Vasa Vučković]

Synaptic Reveries is an audio-visual work produced in collaboration with visual artist Mario Kolarić. Mario and I have a few collaborative actions behind us, and we hope this is only the beginning of a larger-scale collection, exhibition, or AV installation.

The new collaboration is symbolically inspired by the synaptic space — a scientific model of synapse function where "communication" between two neurons occurs, a space for information exchange essential for most subsequent functions of the nervous system. Ultimately, the context of this work relies on the concept of the Greek philosopher Epicurus, who extensively studied the state of ataraxia — a state of lucid calmness. This complex ancient philosophical concept has various interpretations, and "Synaptic Reveries" aligns with those that bring mental-emotional balance and support sensory ecologies opposing the cacophony of everyday life, informational saturation, and the commercialization of human perception and attention.

Some of the sounds included in the work are the biggest waves on Earth, recorded at Praia do Nort and Praia da Nazare, in Portugal.

All sounds recorded & composed by Manja Ristić
All visual content by Mario Kolarić
Mastering by Goran Simonoski / La Plant Studio

This project is supported by the Dubrovnik-Neretva County Department of Education, Culture, and Sports.

Synaptic Reveries

In its fifth year, the traditional January 27th release spirals around Mark Vernon’s birthday. Interestingly, the "year one" occurred just a few weeks before we began communicating. As with many occasions, we can wonder whether it was precognition or coincidence...
[read more on Bandcamp]

Happy birthday to the sound wizard Mark Vernon!

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Released January 27, 2025

Recorded, edited, and composed by Manja Ristić.
Field recording of popping algae made by Joana Guerra in Barreiro, Portugal.
Field recordings of bat swarms, various cicadas, and an underwater reef made by Mark Vernon in various locations in Thailand.
Instruments used include violin, EMS Synthi 100, JrF hydrophones, and JrF contact mics.
Locations include Montreal, Canada; Nazare and Barreiro, Portugal; Isle of Arran, Scotland; the islands of Vrnik, Mljet, and Silba, Croatia; Harrachstal, Austria; various locations around Thailand; Lago Miraflores, Panama; and Avala Mountain, Serbia.

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Mastering: Goran Simonoski / La Plant Studio
Cover image: Žarka Radoja, the dunes of Lençóis Maranhenses National Park, Brazil
Cover art: Manja Ristić

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For Mark

Bandcamp

genesis

"ghosts, coming out of the hell of the past to sublimate it. A therapeutic work." Salima Bouaraour, PAN M 360

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One year after the premiere of the work "ghosts," I am delighted to share a remixed version, which served as the context for my performance at Akousma — International Festival of Immersive Digital Music in Montreal, in October 2024. akousma.ca

The work is enriched with recordings that captivated my imagination over the past year and will mutate through different compositional settings in some of my forthcoming releases.

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ghosts (2024) 20’

How do we approach a landscape of severe devastation and dense history of warfare?

In the performance "ghosts," I use obsolete instruments: a modular synthesizer EMS Synthi 100, a discarded wheelchair wheel salvaged from the Adriatic Sea, and a piano fallen into disuse that belonged to the Austrian conceptualist, filmmaker, improviser, photographer, environmentalist, and writer Karl Katzinger, aka John Tylo (October 1953 – April 2021).

Alongside these elements of the past and their rediscovered voices, I incorporate processed hydrophone and field recordings, the treatment of found objects, electromagnetic fields, crystals, limestone pebbles, Atlantic shells, Aleppo pine cones, different chemical compounds, and extended techniques improvisation on a 200-year-old violin. I appropriate these elements through the discourse of critical tourism, environmental issues, and a culture of memory. Specifically, I focus on listening to the inherent memories of places with a dense historical imprint of ecological devastation and warfare—in the South Adriatic, on the Atlantic coast, and in the Czech-Austrian borderlands, formerly part of the Iron Curtain belt.

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Review of the Montreal performance panm360.com/gig_review/akousma-cime-rumeurs-et-ghosts-a-lusine-c/  

All sounds performed, recorded, composed & edited by Manja Ristić
except for Adriatic dolphins *hydrophone recording by Robertina Šebjanič
The cover image of the micro and macro plastic of the Atlantic Ocean was taken in Nazaré Portugal, April 2024.
Hydrophone used for an underwater recording made by Jez riley French
Mastering by Goran Simonoski / La Plant Studio


ghosts remixed

release on 2nd May 2025 : www.wabi-sabi-tapes.bandcamp.com
@manja-ristic

Manja Ristić is a Serbian violinist, sound artist, published poet, curator, and researcher. In her work, she sets ecosystems in resonance and translates the human activity that criss-crosses them.

Manja Ristić - Olovo (extract)

New vinyl LP from prolific musician, composer and artist, Manja Ristić. To be released in June 2025 on Rekem records - more details forthcoming.

Wounded Sky

excerpt from an installation following an exhibition by Simonida Raječević, Belgrade Cultural Centre, August 6th, 2020.

Lažni bol - exhibition of paintings & objects by Simonida Rajčević

Audio work for an exhibition of paintings & objects by Simonida Rajčević, Belgrade Cultural Center, August 2020.

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

Synaptic Reveries

Manja Ristic