Sonic Acts Biennial 2024

For Lula, Mississippi by Sonic Acts artist in residence Arjuna Neuman is a two-part radio show and audio companion to a forthcoming book. The research unearths the ecological unconscious of Black music; by following early blues back to Choctaw music and culture, and forward through dub, drill and flute-trap, a certain buried history is uncovered. For Lula, Mississippi was produced as part of the Sonic Acts residency programme Overexposed.

Following a live audio broadcast on NTS Radio, the first part is now available to listen to online alongside an accompanying essay by Arjuna.

"This elemental mixtape, EM002, is here set to shuffle. It is a series of essays that are in a process of deposition, which is to say planetary grief and its witness – moving along the LU meridian towards a new subjectivity and a new way to breathe. They are an accompaniment to the film and exhibition Soot Breath / Corpus Infinitum due later this year, which is to say all this over-spillingthinkingfeeling is made together with my collaborator, Denise, who I make many long journeys with".

https://overexposed.sonicacts.com/for-lula


Arjuna Neuman is an artist, writer, and filmmaker based in London. He works with the essay form with a multi-perspectival and experimental approach in which he explores the economic, social and ideological systems that shape our lived experiences. Selected projects include collaborations with Denise Ferreira da Silva on films and installations Serpent Rain (2016) and 4 Waters-Deep Implicancy (2019). His works have been shown at major biennials and exhibitions such as Berlin Biennial 10, Serpentine Gallery, Whitechapel, Sharjah Biennial, Bergen Assembly, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, etc. He also grows tomatoes and chillies in his studio.

OVEREXPOSED
OVEREXPOSED is the new residency programme from Sonic Acts investigating pollution and its effects on everything living and non-living. The resident artists and researchers are Ameneh Solati, Angela Chan, Arjuna Neuman, Devin Hentz, Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, and MELT.

Part of Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

Arjuna Neuman – For Lula, Mississippi: mix 1

A podcast in collaboration with Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, investigating pollution and its effects on everything living and non-living. The participants of the Sonic Acts OVEREXPOSED residency programme speak about artefacts that have moved their practice in a lasting way: from tenderness and floating schools to the Blues and The Last Angel of History.

In this episode, Andrea and Arif speak to Overexposed resident Devin Hentz about trash archives, data thieves and the death of clothes in Senegal.

Devin Hentz is an independent researcher and writer based in Dakar. Devin is interested in exploring the private experience of embodiment in what we choose to wear, as well as the global currents at play in getting certain items on and off of our bodies. Thinking between contemporary art and dress practices, she interrogates and sometimes intervenes in the black visual ecumene. Devin works with words, images and cloth as sites for play and to develop transcultural connections. She is currently pursuing a Masters in Fashion Studies from Parsons School of Design, New York.

Presented and produced by Andrea Gonzalez and Arif Kornweitz of Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee. With additional production by Monty Mouw.

Overexposed Podcast: The Last Angel of History with Devin Hentz

MINOR TOM

"Нежность" (Tenderness) 

Ekaterina Efremova – vocals, guitar, electronics 
Andrey Gaiduk aka 23:59 – computer 
Hilary Jeffery – trombone, computer 
Svetlana Matveeva – vocals, keyboard, electronics 
Timur Mizinov – guitar, electronics 
Anna Rotar – trombone 
Maria Rusinovskaya – production, logistics, co-curator and facilitator 
Victor Skorbenko – vocals, guitar, electronics 
Kristin Alsos Strand – cello 

composed by Aleksandra Pakhmutova, lyrics by Nikolay Dobronravov and Sergey Grebennikov (1966) 
recorded live at Murmansk Spaceport on 28 November 2015 
edited and mixed by Hilary Jeffery at Berlintune Studio 2022 

Hilary Jeffery’s Murmansk Spaceport was an environment designed for exploring unknown territories. During November 2015 musicians from Murmansk(RU) and Bodø (NO) in the Barents Region worked together with Hilary Jeffery to perform Murmansk Spaceport. A port is a place of departure and arrival, of temporary transactions and unstable conditions. Murmansk Spaceport encouraged the musicians to travel imaginatively into areas they do not know, to explore dark territories of which they have little or no experience.

For Hilary Jeffery this meant exploring the atmosphere and mood of Murmansk in November, which for him was unusually dark. Additionally, he attempted to enter into the sound of Russian, a language unknown and new to him. In a similar way each musician was asked to explore areas in which they are non-expert, to literally enter the dark and unknown. With music as a central focus, various means were used for navigation, including solo and group improvisations, introspective language explorations, sound and image recording, associative writing and map making.

Commissioned by Sonic Acts and Hilde Methi for Dark Ecology (2015)

https://minortom.org/spaceport
sonicacts.com/portal/dark-ecology-project
www.hiljef.com

Murmansk Spaceport

Murmansk Spaceport – Tenderness

Drawing from notes and recordings made during the Sonic Acts residency programme 'Overexposed x Lives of Deltas', sound artist Minji Kim aka Unknown Kim tells us about her ongoing research into the sonic qualities of the Zandmotor 'sand engine' experiment in the Netherlands. 

In this episode of the Overexposed Podcast, Andrea Gonzalez speaks with Minji Kim, discussing the interplay between human life and the environment, the sonic qualities of wind and the use of auditory technologies in tracing diverse forms of decay.

Overexposed Podcast interviews participants of Sonic Acts’ annual OVEREXPOSED artistic research residency about artefacts that have moved their artistic practice in a lasting way. Presented and produced by Andrea Gonzalez and Arif Kornweitz of Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee. With additional production by Monty Mouw.

Overexposed Podcast: Eavesdropping Environmental Crises with Minji Kim

NIGHT AIR: SHIFTING SANDS
Félix Blume – Desierto
22 April 2022 – OT301, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Félix Blume’s talk and ‘Desierto’ (2021, 24’) listening session transported the audience to Altiplano Potosino in central Mexico, a major gold and silver mining hub. Commissioned by ARTE Radio, the piece is filled with recordings from these elevated plains, emphasising that the desert, far from being hostile, is prolific with life.

In the audiovisual work and installations of sound artist and engineer Félix Blume, listening emerges as a core tool, a means to encourage the awareness of the imperceptible, and as an act of encounter with others. Blume’s artistic practice is often collaborative, working with communities and using public space as a context within which to explore and present work. Intrigued by myths and their contemporary reinterpretations, he hones in on human dialogues with both inhabited natural and urban environments, tuning into what voices can say beyond words. Blume's pieces have been broadcasted by radio stations around the world. A recipient of the Paysage Sonore Prize for the video piece ‘Curupira, Creature of the Wood’ (2018), Blume was also presented with the Pierre Schaeffer prize for ‘Los Gritos de México’ (2015) at the Phonurgia Nova Awards. He has participated in festivals and exhibitions including LOOP Barcelona, Ex Teresa, Arts Santa Monica, CTM, Thailand Biennale, IFFR, etc. Blume resides between France, Mexico, and Brazil.

Digging into the relationship between sand, the history of pollution, and economy, Shifting Sands featured an audiovisual work by Félix Blume, talks from scholars Jeff Diamanti and Michaela Büsse, as well as films from Enar de Dios Rodríguez, Maika Garnica, Ans Mertens and Yanjin Wu. In the latter part of the evening, artist Farzané delivered a performance of ‘LÖSS’, before DJs Femi, TAAHLIAH, Snufkin, and Europa took over for the night.

More information about Shifting Sands and its participants can be found at sonicacts.com/discover/night-air-shifting-sands

NIGHT AIR
Night Air is a series of Sonic Acts events that aim to make pollution visible by bringing forth the various side-effects of modernity: from exploitation of people and resources to perpetual inequalities brought about by the destruction of the environment and common land – in other words, capitalist practices that shape both our environment and human-nonhuman relations.

CREDITS
Curation & production: Sonic Acts
Design: Toni Brell https://tonibrell.de
Video editing: Marie Debarbieux https://mariedebarbieux.wixsite.com
Sound mastering: Poul Sven de Haan http://faboem.nl

Félix Blume – Desierto

Five Stories on Heat by Kent Chan
SONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 2022
16 October 2022 – Likeminds, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

‘Five Stories on Heat’ is a storytelling performance by Kent Chan that ruminates upon art's shared histories and futures with heat. The performance blends narratives of artmaking during the Vietnam War, Malayan and Hopi myths, with potential film plotlines and the first exhibition of Singaporean art in Europe. Like a mosaic, Chan’s storylines skip from East to West, from the past to the future. His work engages with the concept and representation of ‘the tropics’ in relation to colonialism, politics and identity, and highlights that ‘the tropics’ are not just solely defined by meteorology and geography, but also by Western narratives about aesthetic and cultural superiority.

Sonic Acts Biennial 2022 took place at various locations in Amsterdam, interweaving an exhibition, sound performances and discourse programme, accompanied by artist presentations, workshops, excursions and more. As a part of the Biennial programme, the Leaving Traces symposium  opened up a forum in which to become attentive to pollution’s invisible, yet harmful touch. Actively rethinking our relation to the climate and our planetary legacies, an array of artists, researchers, curators, and scholars spoke of the many faces of toxicity – from fossil fuels to plastic, from nuclear energy to chemical pollutants. The gathering staged real stories and events of exposure, thinking about ‘leaving traces’ not just as the material act of spreading toxicity, but as art’s potential to reach out and act as a disruptive force in the world.

Find out more at
https://sonicacts.com/archive/biennial2022
http://kentchan.info

Curation & production: Sonic Acts
Recording: Engage! TV https://engagetv.com
Sound mastering: Monty Mouw http://flippendisks.com
Design: Catalogtree https://catalogtree.net
Sound logo: Roc Jiménez de Cisneros http://www.vivapunani.org/

Kent Chan – Five Stories on Heat

The Future Waters of the Storm Surge by Aura Satz
SONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 2022
16 October 2022 – Likeminds, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

From the perspective of the Oosterscheldekering – a protective barrier that connects the Zeeland islands and is designed to protect the Netherlands from flooding from the North Sea – water is a threat, a potential source of disaster, an alarming sound. By exploring such sites visually and sonically, filmmaker Aura Satz is reimagining emergency sirens in an age of intersecting human-made and ecological disasters.

Sonic Acts Biennial 2022 took place at various locations in Amsterdam, interweaving an exhibition, sound performances and discourse programme, accompanied by artist presentations, workshops, excursions and more. As a part of the Biennial programme, the Leaving Traces symposium  opened up a forum in which to become attentive to pollution’s invisible, yet harmful touch. Actively rethinking our relation to the climate and our planetary legacies, an array of artists, researchers, curators, and scholars spoke of the many faces of toxicity – from fossil fuels to plastic, from nuclear energy to chemical pollutants. The gathering staged real stories and events of exposure, thinking about ‘leaving traces’ not just as the material act of spreading toxicity, but as art’s potential to reach out and act as a disruptive force in the world.

Watch the ‘The Future Waters of the Storm Surge’ trailer here:   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDWxEJGDW68&t=0s

Find out more at
https://sonicacts.com/archive/biennial2022
https://iamanagram.com

Curation & production: Sonic Acts
Recording: Engage! TV https://engagetv.com
Sound mastering: Monty Mouw http://flippendisks.com
Design: Catalogtree https://catalogtree.net
Sound logo: Roc Jiménez de Cisneros http://www.vivapunani.org/

Aura Satz – The Future Waters of the Storm Surge

Sensing Polluted Airs by Nerea Calvillo
SONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 2022
15 October 2022 – Likeminds, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Geoengineering projects sustain a state of affairs. But how can we think about infrastructures designed to deal with polluted air in the world we all share? Maybe by testing other modes of paying attention, treating or engaging with it; through infrastructures that acknowledge a broken world, but might trigger other ways of living in it; or with infrastructural experiments to test if collectively sensing pollution, rather than simply seeing information about it, can produce new responses and affects. To sense air physically, as well as emotionally, culturally, poetically…

Sonic Acts Biennial 2022 took place at various locations in Amsterdam, interweaving an exhibition, sound performances and discourse programme, accompanied by artist presentations, workshops, excursions and more. As a part of the Biennial programme, the Leaving Traces symposium  opened up a forum in which to become attentive to pollution’s invisible, yet harmful touch. Actively rethinking our relation to the climate and our planetary legacies, an array of artists, researchers, curators, and scholars spoke of the many faces of toxicity – from fossil fuels to plastic, from nuclear energy to chemical pollutants. The gathering staged real stories and events of exposure, thinking about ‘leaving traces’ not just as the material act of spreading toxicity, but as art’s potential to reach out and act as a disruptive force in the world.

Find out more at
https://sonicacts.com/archive/biennial2022

Curation & production: Sonic Acts
Recording: Engage! TV https://engagetv.com
Sound mastering: Monty Mouw http://flippendisks.com
Design: Catalogtree https://catalogtree.net
Sound logo: Roc Jiménez de Cisneros http://www.vivapunani.org/

Nerea Calvillo – Sensing Polluted Airs

NIGHT AIR: SHOCK WAVES
Elena Cohen – Sonic Weapons and Policing: A New York City Case Study
5 November 2021 – OT301, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Sonic weapons like the Long-Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), ‘roof knocking’, or ‘music torture’ are frequently used as part of the arsenal of state violence. During Night Air: Shock Waves, Elena Cohen presented a series of case studies demonstrating how these tools are deployed in protest, detention, and warfare, causing a range of harm from disorientation and psychological distress to permanent internal damage.

Elena L. Cohen is an attorney and professor. She is a founding partner of Cohen Green PLLC (‘Femme Law’), a small firm serving the needs of the New York City queer and activist communities. She teaches law classes to undergraduate students within the City University of New York system, and joined the faculty of Kline School of Law in 2022. She has litigated many high-profile cases, and is currently counsel for Sow v. City of New York, which challenges police practices related to the policing of Summer 2020 protests for Black Lives. She was lead counsel of Edrei v. City of N.Y. – a suit challenging the New York Police Department’s use of Long-Range Acoustic Devices (LRAD), which resulted in substantial policy reform. Her publications focus on sexuality, sound, and comparative constitutions.

Shock Waves is an evening event that considered the materiality of sound as a powerful means of resistance and control. The programme included talks by María Edurne Zuazu, Elena Cohen, and Yann Leguay, films by Aura Satz, an installation by Paula Montecinos and Pedro Matias, along with a performance by White Rose, and DJ set by Noise Diva.

More information about Shock Waves and its participants can be found at https://sonicacts.com/archive/night-air-shock-waves

NIGHT AIR
Night Air is a series of Sonic Acts events that aim to make pollution visible by bringing forth the various side-effects of modernity: from exploitation of people and resources to perpetual inequalities brought about by the destruction of the environment and common land – in other words, capitalist practices that shape both our environment and human-nonhuman relations.

CREDITS
Curation & production: Sonic Acts
Design: Toni Brell https://tonibrell.de
Video: Marie Debarbieux https://mariedebarbieux.wixsite.com
Sound mastering: Poul Sven de Haan http://faboem.nl

Elena Cohen – Sonic Weapons and Policing: A New York City Case Study

Hydrofeminist scholar Astrida Neimanis – author of the formative book 'Bodies of Water' (2017) – is interviewed by Sonic Acts curator and editor Hannah Pezzack in the context of Sonic Acts Biennial 2024.

Ahead of the workshop Weathering Together, which took place at Zone2Source on 22 February, and their presentation, 'Holdfast (Learning Feeling)' at the Sonic Acts symposium, Neimanis dived into her research and writing practices. The engaging conversation touched on poetry, hydrophones, and liquid language.

22 February 2024
Zone2Source (Amstelpark), Amsterdam, The Netherlands

→ Explore more of the 2024 Biennial programme at https://2024.sonicacts.com

Realised by Paradiso and Sonic Acts as part of New Perspectives for Action. A project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union. The visit of Astrida Neimanis was alsomade possible by the International Visitors Programme of the Nieuwe Instituut with support from the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Curation & production: Sonic Acts
Sound mastering: Gleb Foulga

Astrida Neimanis – Interview

Starlings sing new songs when they grow-up in persistently polluted lands. Desires and sexualities shift. The relations of our bodies go far beyond the skin, stretching outwards to lands, waters, non-humans, ancestors, and those yet to come. We make one another in difficult conditions. What can we become? How can we dream of land-body desires when fossil fuel capitalism and colonialism continues to thrive? Following Frantz Fanon’s example of ‘inserting invention into existence’, M Murphy brings Metis, Anishinaabe, and Haudenosaunee feminist and queer land-body relations to offer a desire-based and after-pessimism vision of anti-colonial justice.

24 February 2024
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

→ Explore more of the 2024 Biennial programme at https://2024.sonicacts.com

CREDITS
Camera: Engage! TV
Design: Knoth & Renner with Anja Kaiser
Production: Sonic Acts

Realised by Paradiso & Sonic Acts as part of New Perspectives for Action. A project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union.

M Murphy – Lessons from Birdsong: Land/Body Desires in the Aftermath

Researcher, educator, and curator Margarida Mendes’ lecture asks how our understanding of the environment is shaped on different scales from the way we sense, to social protocols and intergovernmental infrastructures. For Mendes, a collective sense of our surroundings is formed by practices and policies that mould our ecological pedagogies and politics, giving space (or not) to future worlds. Through her work she transmits an ontology of the sensory, starting with her experiments in listening to riverine sites that are undergoing transformation. Addressing acts of sensory co-emergence as non-linear and intertwined with ecosystems, she questions how the protocols of listening intercede with one’s relation to environmental grief, and what role the environmental humanities has in developing better ears towards the planet.

The lecture is followed by a Q&A session with curator and researcher Rachael Rakes, as well as audience members.

24 Feb 2024
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

→ Explore more of the Sonic Acts Biennial 2024 programme at https://2024.sonicacts.com

CREDITS

Production: Sonic Acts
Camera: Engage! TV
Intro sound: Jessica Ekomane
Intro design: Knoth & Renner with Anja Kaiser

Realised by Paradiso & Sonic Acts as part of New Perspectives for Action. A project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union.

Margarida Mendes – Sensorial Ecologies

Filmmaker and researcher Solveig Qu Suess traces how water, infrastructure, and documentary film intertwine. Her lecture follows the flood pulse of Southeast Asia's main river – the Mekong – since the 1990s. Construction of hydroelectric dams has caused drastic changes, reconfiguring downstream landscapes to accommodate for the expansion of plantations. Instead of being governed by the seasons, Suess tells us that the river's rhythms are now dictated by the energetic demands of distant cities. Along the banks of the Mekong, protagonists navigate a rogue river. A man measures the water every morning to monitor opaque activities from faraway dams, while a boat captain leaks information to environmental activists, and cascading rapids grow into mountains, creating both a border frontier and a new home.

The lecture is followed by a Q&A session with Professor Alice Twemlow and audience members.

25 Feb 2024
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

→ Explore more of the Sonic Acts Biennial 2024 programme at https://2024.sonicacts.com

Solveig Qu Suess – Holding Rivers, Becoming Mountains

In this performative lecture, artist Juan Arturo García presents his research project about a nuclear reactor in Colombia. Radioactivity, earthquakes, and applications like geochronology are used as props to explore the paradoxes of trying to visualise inaccessible phenomena. García’s translation, or poetics of displacement, taps into the present cultural, mystical, and political consequences of technological deployments in Latin America.

The lecture is followed by a Q&A session with Professor Alice Twemlow and audience members.

25 Feb 2024 
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

→ Explore more of the Sonic Acts Biennial 2024 programme at https://2024.sonicacts.com

CREDITS

Production: Sonic Acts
Camera: Engage! TV
Intro sound: Jessica Ekomane
Intro design: Knoth & Renner with Anja Kaiser

Realised by Paradiso & Sonic Acts as part of New Perspectives for Action. A project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union.

Juan Arturo García – A Minor Event in the History of Atomic Timekeeping

Author and researcher Astrida Neimanis gives the opening lecture at Sonic Acts Biennial 2024 Symposium. In a time of extinction and climate catastrophe, how are we to feel? Feeling intensifies, but also wavers. Feeling's temporal container pulses, its membrane now more porous: the past seeps in, the future jumps the gun. Feeling anything swims in the wake of what once was, and is burdened by what will or will not remain tomorrow. How do species-strangers care for and hold one another? What do we touch when we touch another, and what touches us back? Meditating on various instances of multispecies contact, moving from the edge of the ocean to the scientist's workbench, this talk examines the curious relationships between language and feeling, presence and absence, solid ground and being untethered at sea.

24 Feb 2024
Amsterdam, Netherlands

The lecture was followed by a Q&A session with scholar M Murphy, artist Sissel Marie Tonn, and audience members.

→ Explore more of the Sonic Acts Biennial 2024 programme at https://2024.sonicacts.com

CREDITS

Production: Sonic Acts
Camera: Engage! TV
Intro sound: Jessica Ekomane
Intro design: Knoth & Renner with Anja Kaiser

Realised by Paradiso & Sonic Acts as part of New Perspectives for Action. A project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union.

The visit of Astrida Neimanis was made possible by the International Visitors Programme of the Nieuwe Instituut with support from the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Astrida Neimanis –  Holdfast (Learning Feeling)

Following lectures from scholars Astrida Neimanis and M Murphy at Sonic Acts Biennial 2024, both were joined on the Symposium stage by artist Sissel Marie Tonn for a conversation addressing many topics, from pollution and violence, to language, creative methods, and direct action. Guided by questions from the audience, they also address indigenous knowledge and research, discussing how to negotiate one's position within Western science and university systems, as well as direct action methods.

24 Feb 2024
Amsterdam, Netherlands

→ Explore more of the Sonic Acts Biennial 2024 programme at https://2024.sonicacts.com

CREDITS
Production: Sonic Acts
Camera: Engage! TV
Intro sound: Jessica Ekomane
Intro design: Knoth & Renner with Anja Kaiser

Realised by Paradiso & Sonic Acts as part of New Perspectives for Action. A project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union.

The visit of Astrida Neimanis was made possible by the International Visitors Programme of the Nieuwe Instituut with support from the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Astrida Neimanis, M Murphy – Discussion with Sissel Marie Tonn

In Louisiana, artist, activist, writer, and architectural researcher Imani Jacqueline Brown uncovers Black antebellum cemeteries – portals to recover and remember Afro-diasporic ecological praxes.

Between 1820 and 1865, enslaved people were forced to clear Louisiana’s primordial forests to make way for the expansion of cane. They preserved small sections of forest where their loved ones were interred. These groves are both remnants of the erased bottomland hardwood forest and carefully stewarded microecologies – time capsules of lifeworlds that thrived against all odds in the back-a-plantations. There, enslaved people tended gardens and planted trees; organised dances and rituals; exchanged information and ideas; experimented with temporalities of freedom and plotted revolts. Today, their groves, which have survived generations of racial violence, industrial encroachment, and climate disaster, stand as the frontlines of more-than-human, intergenerational resistance to the continuum of extractivism.

24 Feb 2024
Amsterdam, Netherlands

→ Explore more of the Sonic Acts Biennial 2024 programme at 2024.sonicacts.com

CREDITS
Production: Sonic Acts
Camera: Engage! TV
Intro sound: Jessica Ekomane
Intro design: Knoth & Renner with Anja Kaiser

Realised by Paradiso & Sonic Acts as part of New Perspectives for Action. A project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union.

Imani Jacqueline Brown – Forest Islands of our Ecological Diaspora

Accompanied by her modular synthesiser, xenologist scholar and artist Adriana Knouf's presentation is proposed as a love letter. Eschewing the binary logic that pervades Western thinking, Knouf argues that all beings – trans*, cis, and xeno – are in a constant process of flux and transformation, always already more-than-human. From syringes of ​oestrogen to the trajectories of satellites orbiting the Earth, she investigates ongoing and future processes of ‘xenomogrifications’ – the becoming of something else.

Following her talk, Adriana Knouf also sat down with Hannah Pezzack to talk about everything from Elon Musk and SpaceX, to fungi and making synth parts. Find it amongst Sonic Acts Podcast episode or here on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/sonicacts/adriana-knouf-interview

→ Explore more of the Sonic Acts Biennial 2024 programme at https://2024.sonicacts.com

CREDITS
Production: Sonic Acts
Camera: Engage! TV
Intro sound: Jessica Ekomane
Intro design: Knoth & Renner with Anja Kaiser

Part of New Perspectives for Action. A project by Re-Imagine Europe, a collaboration between Paradiso and Sonic Acts (NL), funded by Creative Europe.

Adriana Knouf – Some Fragments of Xenology

What does it mean to DJ an archive? In the debut instalment of a new podcast series by Sonic Acts, junior curator Hannah Pezzack interviews Ruben Verkuylen (The Social Lover) about his DJ set from the 2024 Biennial, where he reimagined Sonic Acts archival material through turntablist techniques, sample pads, and effects. Recorded live at Het HEM and later broadcast by NTS Radio, his set drew upon a rich array of concerts, lectures, and conversations from 2003 to 2006 – a transformative era for electronic music, computing cultures, and digital art.

Discussing his process, Verkuylen reflects on pivotal technological shifts, from the work of early computer art pioneer Lillian Schwartz to the artistic possibilities of AI in the present day. Featuring snippets from his deep dive, the podcast explores what it means to remix archives as a form of collage – reinterpreting and layering history, and connecting to contemporary sound practices.

Sonic Trax: Remixing the History of Sound Art is a podcast by Sonic Acts exploring the institution's archive, which dates back to the mid-1990s. Examining creative approaches and interventions, the series reveals broader narratives about the lineage of sound art, tracing its evolution and enduring resonance.

Sonic Acts Archive projects are supported by the Mondriaan Fonds and Cultuurloket DigitALL. Realised by Paradiso and Sonic Acts as part of New Perspectives for Action. A project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union. 

CREDITS 
Recorded at Erik's house, Amsterdam 
Sound design and editing by Tobias Withers 

SHOW NOTES 
The Social Lover on NTS Radio – 30 Years of Sonic Acts (Guest mix for Elena Colombi) https://www.nts.live/shows/elena-colombi/episodes/elena-colombi-28th-october-2024 

The Social Lover – SoundCloud 
https://soundcloud.com/the-social-lover

Plafond 8 by Ekolali / Tala Drum Corps 
https://bakk.bandcamp.com/album/plafond-8 

The Art of Programming – Sonic Acts Press (2001) 
https://shop.sonicacts.com/product/the-art-of-programming-sonic-acts-2001 

The Art of Point • Pixel • Programming – Sonic Acts Press (2001) 
https://shop.sonicacts.com/product/the-art-of-pointpixelprogramming 

Synthetic Vocabulary by Raung Jagat Synthetic
https://prakarsa.bandcamp.com/album/synthetic-vocabulary 

Plastic Symphonies by Siriosa's Post-Human Symphonic Choir
https://prakarsa.bandcamp.com/album/plastic-symphonies 

Woodstock (1970 documentary film) 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodstock_(film) 

TRANCE: Sonic Acts Biennial 2024
https://2024.sonicacts.com/programme/trance 

From In Gome.. Wisisi. Dari Gome Papua
https://youtu.be/K48ajhogw5Y 

Jammer 
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkwbCp6tQZHAJD1UQnQCZtg 

Venetian Snares
https://venetiansnares.bandcamp.com/ 


Sonic Trax: DJing with the Sonic Acts Archive

Tune in for episodes two and three of Sonic Trax, Sonic Acts' new podcast series, where we explore the organization's rich archive. Join us as we uncover the captivating stories behind the evolution of sound art and its lasting impact, bringing these insights closer to you! 

In the two-part podcast 'Touched by Sound: Re-imagining the Legacy of Michel Waisvisz', hosts Sève I.V. Janssen and Flavien Gillié explore the profound impact of artist, performer, and instrument maker Michel Waisvisz (1949–2008). Through personal archives, interviews with collaborators, and sounds from the Sonic Acts Archive, the duo reimagines the sonic legacy of this key figure in Amsterdam’s experimental music scene and the international arts community (notably as the director of STEIM). Waisvisz was a true trailblazer in technological art, electronic sound art, and performance!

From the moment digital technology became available, he constructed experimental instruments and software activated by bodily movements such as 'The Hands' (1984) and 'Crackle Synth' (1974), both pressure-sensitive, touchable devices. This podcast features his sound archives, combining personal reflections from Waisvisz and his close collaborators, testimonials from those inspired by his work today, performance fragments, and radio archives spanning the 1970s to the 2000s. This exploration highlights Waisvisz' transformative approach to turning circuits into instruments of expression and vernacular moments into timeless artworks. In this process, voices, instruments, and the environmental context converge as equals, conducting a conversation where each responds with equal significance.

The first episode centres around Michel Waisvisz as a composer of the present and combines personal recordings with an interview with the artist and researcher Kristina Andersen, the caretaker of his archives today. The episode explores Michel Waisvisz’ distinctive spirit through the textures of his archives, where every crackle and hum becomes a tactile reminder, and Kristina Andersen talks about how materiality can connect generations and offer a sense of continuity, even between those who have never met.

Please note: 
Some of the archival sounds featured in this episode include Michel Waisvisz speaking in Dutch and French. In the first excerpt (Dutch, >6:40), Michel discusses his practice, describing it as musical theatre, though acknowledging that the term does not fully capture its essence. In the second excerpt (French, >9:15), a reporter and Michel highlight how his electronic music devices generate new, futuristic, and otherworldly sounds. In the final excerpt (Dutch, >15:15), we hear Michel reflecting on an analogy between striving for a climax in music performance and the myth of Tantalus.

Credit:
The sound archives of 'Touched by Sound' (Part 1) originate from the archives of Michel Waisvisz: Bologna 16-07-1982; Lisboa 14/15-02-1987; Bimhuis Amsterdam solo 08-09-1978; France Culture June 1987; Cologne 24-11-1978; Toklos Zurich 08-2-1986; Hands Houston 13-04-1986; various minidiscs, and excerpts of an interview with Kristina Andersen at the Bimhuis, Amsterdam, conducted on 2 March 2024.

Artistic development: Sève I.V. Janssen
Editing and mixing: Flavien Gillié
Voiceover: Leon Rogissart

Sonic Acts Archive projects are supported by the Mondriaan Fonds and Cultuurloket DigitALL. Realised by Paradiso and Sonic Acts as part of 'New Perspectives for Action', a project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union.

https://sonicacts.com/news/sonictrax-waisvisz

Touched by Sound: Re-imagining the Legacy of Michel Waisvisz (Part 1)

Tune in for episodes two and three of Sonic Trax, Sonic Acts' new podcast series, where we explore the organization's rich archive. Join us as we uncover the captivating stories behind the evolution of sound art and its lasting impact, bringing these insights closer to you! 

In the two-part podcast 'Touched by Sound: Re-imagining the Legacy of Michel Waisvisz', hosts Sève I.V. Janssen and Flavien Gillié explore the profound impact of artist, performer, and instrument maker Michel Waisvisz (1949–2008). Through personal archives, interviews with collaborators, and sounds from the Sonic Acts Archive, the duo reimagines the sonic legacy of this key figure in Amsterdam’s experimental music scene and the international arts community (notably as the director of STEIM). Waisvisz was a true trailblazer in technological art, electronic sound art, and performance!

From the moment digital technology became available, he constructed experimental instruments and software activated by bodily movements such as 'The Hands' (1984) and 'Crackle Synth' (1974), both pressure-sensitive, touchable devices. This podcast features his sound archives, combining personal reflections from Waisvisz and his close collaborators, testimonials from those inspired by his work today, performance fragments, and radio archives spanning the 1970s to the 2000s. This exploration highlights Waisvisz' transformative approach to turning circuits into instruments of expression and vernacular moments into timeless artworks. In this process, voices, instruments, and the environmental context converge as equals, conducting a conversation where each responds with equal significance.

The second episode continues the playful dimension in Michel Waisvisz’s work, questioning how a legacy can shape new generations, through the force of transmission, performance, and education, re-issuing key instruments, ideas or sets up by Waisvisz. The episode features interviews and recordings with collaborators and emerging artists such as Tarek Atoui, Takuro Mizuta Lippit, Ji Youn Kang, Julia Giertz, Boris Shershenkov and Görkem Arıkan.

Credit:
The Sound Archives of 'Touched by Sound' (Part 2) originate from the archives of Michel Waisvisz, with excerpts of interviews with Kristina Andersen, Tarek Atoui, Takuro Mizuta Lippit, Ji Youn Kang, Julia Giertz, Boris Shershenkov, with recordings from rehearsals, concerts and workshops as part of 'Touched by Sound', Sonic Acts Biennial in March 2024. 

Artistic development: Sève I.V. Janssen
Montage and mix: Flavien Gillié
Voiceover: Leon Rogissart

Special thanks to Kristina Andersen, Tarek Atoui, Görkem Arıkan, Maud Seuntjens (Sonic Acts) and the participants of the workshop.

Sonic Acts Archive projects are supported by the Mondriaan Fonds and Cultuurloket DigitALL. Realised by Paradiso and Sonic Acts as part of 'New Perspectives for Action', a project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union.

https://sonicacts.com/news/sonictrax-waisvisz

Touched by Sound: Re-imagining the Legacy of Michel Waisvisz (Part 2)

Drifting away from a state of stability, blurring acceleration, moving out of sight, but not out of mind. Invisible but audible, the consequences reveal themselves through the silence of species we have never heard. Jana Winderen’s new work Pasvikdalen is based on recordings made both above and under water close to the border between Norway and Russia. The work is a commission of Dark Ecology/Sonic Acts. The live premiere of Pasvikdalen took place on 27 February 2015 at the Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ, Amsterdam, as part of the Sonic Acts festival 2015. Jana Winderen talked about her work at the Sonic Acts symposium on 27 February, her talk was entitled ‘Listening without getting Answers’. 

Jana Winderen - Pasvikdalen [Excerpt]

5 Borehole

2 Long Hall

1 Outside KSD

SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL 2019 – HEREAFTER
The Otolith Group and Annie Fletcher – Eastman is the Matter at Hand24 February – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

With an introduction by Emily Pethick.

From the late 1960s until his death in 1990 at the age of 49, Julius Eastman, the queer African-American avant-garde composer, pianist, vocalist and conductor, wrote and performed compositions whose ecstatic militant minimalism initiated a black radical aesthetic that revolutionised the East Coast’s new music scene of the 1970s and 1980s. No recordings of Eastman’s compositions were released during his lifetime. In January 1980, Julius Eastman was invited by the Music Department at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois to present his compositions Crazy Nigger (1978), Evil Nigger (1979) and Gay Guerrilla (1979). 
A number of African-American students and one faculty member objected to the titles of Eastman’s compositions. The titles were redacted from the concert programme. Before the concert on 16 January 1980, Eastman delivered a public statement that responded to these objections. The speeches delivered by two speakers in The Otolith Group’s video, The Third Part of the Third Measure (2017) – on display as the installation at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam during the festival – are based on each performer’s adapted transcription of Eastman’s Northwestern statement. This talk by The Otolith Group – Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun – who will be joined by Annie Fletcher, will focus on the importance of this Afrofuturist artist and expand on ideas in making the film.
In May 2019, the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, will present the first large scale solo exhibition of The Otolith Group. The exhibition is curated by Annie Fletcher. 

Founded by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun, The Otolith Group makes films, installations, and performances that are driven by extensive research into the histories of science fiction and the legacies of transnationalism. Their works and curatorial projects explore the temporal anomalies, anthropic inversions and synthetic alienation of the posthuman, the inhuman, the non-human and the anti-human. In 2010 The Otolith Group were nominated for the Turner Prize.

Annie Fletcher is the chief curator at the Van Abbemuseum. Her projects include the solo exhibition of Qiu Zhijie, the ten-day project in collaboration with DAI called Becoming More in 2017, a collaborative research project led by Vivian Ziherl called Frontier Imaginaries: Trade Markings in 2018 and a large-scale and travelling museum retrospective of the Otolith Group in 2019. She tutors at De Appel, Amsterdam, Dutch Art Institute, Arnhem and Design Academy Eindhoven. She is part of a team that developed the Museum of Arte Útil with Tania Bruguera in 2013 and continues to develop the Association of Arte Útil today. Other projects include solo exhibitions or presentations with Ahmet Ögut, Hito Steyerl, Sheela Gowda, David Maljković, Jo Baer, Jutta Koether, Deimantas Narkevičius, Minerva Cuevas and long-term projects Be(com)ing Dutch (2006 – 09) and Cork Caucus (2005), both with Charles Esche.

Sonic Acts 2019: The Otolith Group and Annie Fletcher – Eastman is the Matter at Hand

SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL 2019 – HEREAFTER
Post-Screening Discussion: Louis Henderson
23 February – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Following the screening of Bring breath to the death of rocks (2018, 34 min)(work in progress) Louis Henderson discusses the films with Mirna Belina.

‘I feel this force that draws me towards the invisible doorway, and it is like a fire burning in my stiffened limbs. So I must walk through the fields of snow… there, to where my resting place is already prepared.’ (Édouard Glissant, Monsieur Toussaint, 1961)
Wandering from a study of the handwritten memoirs of Toussaint Louverture in the French National Archives to the prison cell in the Jura mountains in which they were written, Bring breath to the death of rocks (2018, 34 min) proposes an archaeology of the colonial history of France buried within its landscapes and institutions. Many millions of years ago the Jura was a tropical ocean, as it metamorphosed into the mountain range it is today it left behind large sedimented layers of time, creating the strata that fold along the horizon line. If stratigraphy is the writing of strata, here we have a reading of this strata in which the fossilised history of Louverture can be brought to life through a geologic haunting. The film dramatises the escape of Louverture’s ghost from his castle prison (through the body of a young Haitian researcher) into a form of marronage and errantry within the fields of snow and a dark baroque-like cave. Through historical détournement the past is revisited in order to imagine an alternative future, and in doing so the film offers what Glissant described in the introduction to his play Monsieur Toussaint as ​‘a prophetic vision of the past’. We hear an echo, a spiral retelling.
Featuring extracts of text from Monsieur Toussaint by Édouard Glissant (1959) and Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (1939) by Aimé Césaire. Actor: Jephthé Carmil, DOP: Diana Vidrascu, Editor: Louis Henderson, Producer: Olivier Marboeuf, Spectre Productions. Work in progress.

Louis Henderson is a filmmaker who is trying to find new ways of working with people to address and question our current global condition defined by racial capitalism and ever-present histories of the European colonial project. Interested in exploring the sonic space of images, his work aims to develop an archaeological method in cinema, listening to the echoes and spirals of the stratigraphic. Since 2017, Henderson has been working within the artist group The Living and the Dead Ensemble. Based between Haiti and France, they focus on theatre, song, slam, poetry and cinema. Henderson has shown his work at various film festivals, exhibitions and biennials worldwide. His work is in the public collection of the Centre National des Arts Plastiques, France, and is distributed by LUX and Video Data Bank.

Sonic Acts 2019: Post-Screening Discussion with Louis Henderson

Sadaf speaks to Ivan Cheng in this first episode of the Sonic Acts x Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee podcast series on the occasion of Sonic Acts Academy 2020, taking place in Amsterdam 21 - 23 February. Read more about both artists below.

2020.sonicacts.com

Sadaf H Nava (Sadaf) is an Iranian-born, New York City-based composer and visual artist whose multidisciplinary interventions include sound, film, painting, performance and text. Sadaf’s layered and cinematic visuals, sonics and confrontational performative tactics oscillate between opacity and narrative. Her work upends the inward-looking affect inherent to contemporary performance, subverting the languages of auto-fiction and the artist/ muse. These original compositions comprise intuitive and clashing material inspired by contemporary global archaeologies of sound, always flirting with noise.

Ivan Cheng, who is a regular on Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, also edited this episode. He focuses within his practice on misunderstanding, abrasion and desire in the act of reading, often gesturing towards systems of power and reproduction. He also works as a performer, clarinettist, curator and writer. He holds an MFA in Critical Studies (Sandberg Instituut), having previously studied at the Royal Academy of Music and Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Text-based performances have been presented in Sydney, Melbourne, London, Amsterdam, Vilnius, Tokyo, Berlin, New York, Krakow, Lyon, Saint-Etienne, Bonn & Köln. He initiates project space bologna.cc in Amsterdam.

Photo by John Spyrou

Podcast: Sonic Acts x Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee – Ivan Cheng in conversation with Sadaf

Lukáš Likavčan and Leonardo Dellanoce speak about extinction, spectres and the game Death Stranding. They discuss how the future influences the present and how computer modelling fails to predict the Australian forest fires. This is the second episode of the Sonic Acts x Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee podcast series on the occasion of Sonic Acts Academy 2020, taking place in Amsterdam 21 - 23 February. Read more about the speakers below.

2020.sonicacts.com

Theorist Lukáš Likavčan, who will speak at Sonic Acts Academy, collaborates on art projects, including the simulation alt’ai, questioning machine protocols in communicating with environments. Exploring imaginations of Earth from the impersonal, totalising view to one in which humans are environmental accidents at home anywhere, he finds resonance in a line from Holly Herndon’s Extreme Love (2019): ‘We are completely outside ourselves, and the world is completely inside us.’ Concluding his PhD in environmental studies at Masaryk University, Brno, he now teaches at Center for Audiovisual Studies at FAMU in Prague and Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow. Likavčan just released a book Introduction to Comparative Planetology (2019, Strelka Press) that presents an analysis of visual cultures of imagining the Earth and the geopolitics of climate emergency.

Leonardo Dellanoce, invited by Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee to host this conversation, is an art historian who explores technological realities using art and design as navigational tools. Collaboration is at the core of his practice, as he works with artists, spatial designers and theorists on a variety of projects. Among others, he is co-leading the cross-disciplinary research project Vertical Atlas: a Techno-political Cartography, and co-curating Digital Earth, a 6 month research fellowship for artists and designers in Africa and Asia. Currently, he is also editor of Volume magazine where he initiated the long-term research project Trust in the Blockchain Society.

Podcast: Sonic Acts x Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee – Leonardo Dellanoce in conversation with Lukáš Likavčan

SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020
T. J. Demos – Beyond the End of the World
22 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Celebrated writer T. J. Demos rarely leaves a seat empty at his talks on politics, ecology and art, often attending to decoloniality within nature. His most recent book addresses the occlusions embedded in the academic use of the term ​‘Anthropocene’ (human-caused planetary change) in shielding problems as opposed to opening inroads for change made accessible by artists.

This presentation discusses the ongoing research and exhibition project, Beyond the End of the World, directed by T. J. Demos of the Center for Creative Ecologies at University of California, Santa Cruz (beyond​.ucsc​.edu). In the wake of the end of multiple worlds, we already live in a post-apocalyptic present following countless genocides and colonialisms. With reference to diverse traditions of the oppressed, this year-long research project addresses what lies beyond dystopian catastrophism, past and present end-of-world narratives, and how we can imagine and cultivate radical futures of social justice and ecological flourishing.

T. J. Demos is an award-winning writer and Professor of Visual Culture at University of California, Santa Cruz and Director of its Center for Creative Ecologies. He writes widely about contemporary art, global politics and ecology and is the author, most recently, of Against the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today (2017) and Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology (2016). Demos co-curated Rights of Nature: Art and Ecology in the Americas, at Nottingham Contemporary in 2015 and organised Specters: A Ciné-Politics of Haunting, at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid in 2014. He is currently working on a Mellon-funded research, exhibition and book project dedicated to the questions: ​‘What comes after the end of the world?’ and ​‘How can we cultivate futures of social justice within capitalist ruins?’

#politicsandart #ecologyandart #anthropocene #future #experimental art

Sonic Acts 2020: T. J. Demos – Beyond the End of the World

SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020
Nadim Samman – As We Used to Float / Iroojrilik
23 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Curator Nadim Samman gives a performative lecture that takes to the psychology and aesthetic of the sea, drawing on his explorer’s path through art as co-founder of the Antarctic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015 and 1st Antarctic Biennale in 2017. His work has carried him from Moscow to Marrakech to Lima, uncovering the secrets of remote art and the mutual exchange that evolves from that act. 

Straddling the genres of travelogue and critical essay, As We Used to Float: Within Bikini Atoll (2018, co-written with artist Julian Charrière), explores Bikini Atoll as a space of fantasy and trauma. Toggling between a personal account of a sea journey, above and below water, and a critical investigation of postcolonial geography, the book develops broader reflections on place and subjectivity. These spring from a series of narrative immersions, variously, taking on the psychological and aesthetic parameters of ultra-deep scuba diving, the abject poetics of sea craft and the stakes of subaquatic image-making. As We Used to Float is a sea-story for our time. This performative lecture combines reading from the book with a screening of Julian Charrière’s video work, Iroojrilik (2018).

Nadim Samman is a curator and art historian based in Berlin. He read Philosophy at University College London before receiving his PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art. He co-founded the 1st Antarctic Biennale in 2017 and the Antarctic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015. In 2016 he curated the 5th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, and in 2012, the 4th Marrakech Biennale (with Carson Chan). Other major projects include Treasure of Lima: A Buried Exhibition (a unique site-specific exhibition on the remote Pacific island of Isla del Coco) and Rare Earth (at Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna). In 2019 he won the International Awards for Art Criticism’s first prize.

Sonic Acts 2020: Nadim Samman – As We Used to Float / Iroojrilik

SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020
Lukáš Likavčan – Introduction to Comparative Planetology
23 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Errata: The lecturer would like to correct the crediting for Holly Herndon's 'Extreme Love’ track from her PROTO album and add co-authors Jenna Sutela and Lilly Anna Haynes.

Theorist Lukáš Likavčan collaborates on art projects, including the simulation alt’ai, questioning machine protocols in communicating with environments. Exploring imaginations of Earth from the impersonal, totalising view to one in which humans are environmental accidents at home anywhere, he finds resonance in a line from Holly Herndon’s Extreme Love (2019): ​‘We are completely outside ourselves, and the world is completely inside us.’

In his lecture Introduction to Comparative Planetology, Likavčan looks into how as a philosophical genre, comparative planetology presents an intertwined analysis of visual cultures of imagining the Earth and geopolitics of climate emergency. It compares different ​‘figures’ of the planet – the Planetary, the Globe, the Terrestrial, Earth-without-us and Spectral Earth. These five figures function simultaneously as visual paradigms, geopolitical regimes and design briefs; each of them has different prospects in guiding our interventions against runaway global heating, and ultimately against mass species extinction. While engaging in this conceptual, cosmological endeavour, comparative planetology seeks to become one of the navigational tools in plotting our way out of the impasse of modernity.

Lukáš Likavčan is a researcher and theorist who writes on the philosophy of technology and political ecology. Concluding his PhD in environmental studies at Masaryk University, Brno, he now teaches at Centre for Audiovisual Studies at FAMU in Prague and Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow, a graduate of their experimental New Normal programme. As a researcher, he was based at Vienna University of Economics and Business, Hong Kong Polytechnic University and BAK – basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht. Oscillating between academic practice and a broad zone between art and design, he focuses on infrastructural conditions of subjectivity, abstraction and imagination. Likavčan just released a book Introduction to Comparative Planetology (2019, Strelka Press) that presents an analysis of visual cultures of imagining the Earth and the geopolitics of climate emergency.

Sonic Acts 2020: Lukáš Likavčan – Introduction to Comparative Planetology

SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020
Anja Kanngieser – Listening to Ecocide
22 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

For political geographer and sound artist Anja Kanngieser, sound is the sense mechanism that drives their work – from a documentary interlacing stories on resisting deep sea mining in Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu to an audio walk on rising sea levels. As an academic, their work creatively amplifies social justice claims around politics and climate change.

Anja Kanngieser’s talk, aptly named Listening to Ecocide, addresses through sound the complexities faced by frontline Pacific communities. The Pacific Island of Nauru at the heart of the Pacific Ocean is the frontline of environmental crisis. Strip-mined by colonisers of its natural phosphate reserves, the backbone of industrial agriculture, the island nation has relied on Australia’s brutal offshore refugee incarceration régime for the last decade. With severe eco-systemic vulnerabilities – contaminated water, diminishing land, droughts and sea inundation – Nauru exemplifies the precarious position induced by extractive colonialism and racial capitalism. Bringing together site-specific audio recordings with Indigenous Nauruan voices campaigning for self-determination and self-representation, Kanngieser shows sound and listening as vital to understanding, and amplifying, the deep relations to land and sea that Nauruan’s hold and the complexities they face. 

Anja Kanngieser is a political geographer and sound artist based in Wollongong, Australia, who creatively investigates space and politics. In their work Anja begins with the premise of sound as a constant, a phenomenon that is always present – whether heard, felt, or sensed by human or non-human species and technologies. Their most current projects use testimony, field recording and data sonification to document and amplify social justice responses to the effects of climate change in the Pacific. In their first book, Experimental Politics and the Making of Worlds (2013), they open up communication between urban groups to find common sites for protest around precarious living and working conditions, migration and higher education. Research interests include labour practices in China, sound technologies for mapping movement and micro radio in Japanese urban politics. In their most recent project, Climates of Listening, community-oriented social justice responses to climate change in the Pacific are amplified. A Vice Chancellors Fellow at the Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research at the University of Wollongong, Australia, their writing is widely published and they are an editorial board member of journal Environment and Planning D: Society and Space.

Sonic Acts 2020: Anja Kanngieser – Listening to Ecocide

Sonic Acts Biennial 2026 · Melted for Love | Amsterdam | 5 Feb – 29 Mar | 80+ events · 200+ artists · 15+ venues | Reimagining home through love, care & belonging → 2026.sonicacts.com

Sonic Acts

Pinned to spotlight

Popular tracks