Femkanje

Femkanje is a podcast, art and media project, dedicated to contemporary art and culture in Serbia, the former Yugoslavian region and Europe. Focus is on the models of independent production and self-organization in contemporary culture, as well as on media visibility and gender equality in the representation of its actors. Its founders, Bojana S. Knežević and Katarina Petrović, realized numerous exhibitions & shows presenting comprehensive overviews of practices by individual authors or collectives through longer intimate conversations.

Femkanje

Spaces of Togetherness

exhibition @ cultural center of Belgrade
28.01 – 04.03.2021

SOUND INSTALLATION

The exhibition Spaces of Togetherness consists of two parts: a sound installation in the gallery space and a new online sound database. The sound installation consists of all the 88 realized Femkanje shows that are mapped onto 18 speakers. The entire installation is accompanied with the list of all the shows and guests, starting from the most recent. Femkanje episodes were previously broadcasted on NOFM radio and published online in the period from March 2013 to February 2018.

SOUND DATABASE

This invitation to exhibit and the current situation of the pandemic, allowed us to work on a new archive – reaching out to all former guests to contribute from their homes. The sound database presents a special collection of sound documents from the field of contemporary art and culture, primarily Serbian artists, former guests of Femkanje, artists from the countries of the former Yugoslavia, Europe and beyond. The archive consists of sound works, compositions, sounds from works (videos, performances, installations), as well as audio recordings of plays, readings of dramatic texts and other materials, sound messages of various contents and field recordings.

Guests of Femkanje:

Lukas van der Velden, Annemarie Turk, Doma Art fondacija, Dante Buu, Vitja Gluščhenko, Alexandra Karter, Nika Šaravanja, Jef Guess, Gwenola Wagon, Šu Lea Čeang, Stahl Stenslie, Zane Cerpina, Karen Finley, Nora Turato, Olof van Winden, Michaël Roumen, Margriet Schavemaker, Johan Gustavsson, Iva Čukić, Tao Vrhovec Sambolec, Sandra Tomić i Bojana Milašinović, Jasna Veličković, Manja Ristić, Galerija G12 HUB (Jelena Piljić, Milica Pekić), Mirko Lazović, Luka Tojboj, Robert Pravda, Nataša Kadin, Bogomir Doringer, Branko Milisković, Mesto Žensk (Mara Vujić, Tea Reba, Milija Babić), Lenka Đorojević, Nikola Knežević, TIIIIT! INC (Kristina Lelovac, Jana Stardelova, Jana Kocevska), Isidora Todorović, Vahida Ramujkić, Iva Bekić i Irena Gajić, Svetlana Maraš, U10 Umetnički prostor (Marija Šević, Nina Ivanović, Nemanja Nikolić, Iva Kuzmanović), Ilija Milošević i Vladimir Bjeličić, Jelena Drobac, Tatjana Vukelić, Milan Nenezić, Tina Kaplani, Suna Kažić, Milica Prelić, Maja Uzelac, Vladimir Radinović, Ivana Smiljanić, Milica Popović, Dunja Dačić Dojo i Verglšpil (Nevena Paunović), Ana Nedeljković, Sara Radojković, Dejana Stanojević / Rumenka Super, Bojana Petković, Bojana Bauer, Ksenija Đorđević, Marijana Arađanski, Gabrijela Ivanov Gabe, Zoe Gudović, Galerija 1250 (Iva Brkić, Bojana Jokmanović), Femix (Tatjana Nikolić, Aleksandar Gubaš), Margareta Jelić, Simonida Rajčević, Emma Szabo, Ana Novaković, Ivana Todorović, Milana Zarić, Olga Dimitrijević, Grupa Rouge (Jelena Fužinato, Bojana Stamenković), Andrea Palašti, Biljana Cincarević, Nevena Prijić, Nana Radenković, Marija Ratković, Milica Mešterović, Marčela Zanki, Nuša Đak i Novosadska ženska umetnička banda (Nevena Popović, Ibis Čerimagić, Marija Mandić), Maja Pelević, Maja Atanasijević Zipa Yoma, Marina Marković i Anoreksija.rs (Sonja Milošević, Nevena Paunović i Marija Kulović), TEYOSH, Ana Ćurčin, Žene sa interneta, TKV, Irena Fabri, Lazara Marinković, Ana Seferović, Le Zbor, Marta Popivoda i Nataša Damnjanović, Magdalena Klašnja, Ana Jovanović Vajana, Ida Prester, Tatjana Tatalović Tata, Tijana Todorović, Vanja Bursać, Marko Jevtić, Katarina A. Petrović, Irena Tomažin, Dragana Dobrić, Darija Medić

Authors in the database:

Aleksandra Mitrović, Ana Ćurčin, Ana Seferović & Jovana Backović, Andrea Palašti, Branko Milisković, Dante Buu, Darija Medić, Djejmi Hadrović, Diskusije, Emma Szabó, Efemerne Konfesije, FEMIX, Femkanje, Franciszek Araszkiewicz & Michael Fischer, Gildo Bavčević & Sandra Bradvić, Igor Stangliczky & Marko Batista, Isidora Krstić, Isidora Todorović, Iva Bekić & Tamara Popović, Iva Kuzmanović, Ivana Smiljanić, Jasna Veličković, Jeff Guess, Josseline Black, Karen Finley, Karen Werner, Lenka Đorojević, Lidija & Marija Delić, Lukatoyboy, Maja Pelević & Anja Đorđević, Manja Ristić, Margareta Jelić, Marijana Arađanski, Mariko Hori & Ronald van der Meijs, Marina Džukljev, Marina Marković, Marko Jevtić, Milana Zarić & Richard Barrett, minipogon (Vahida Ramujkić, Tijana Cvetković) / OTG (Lamija Halilagić, Azemina Halilagić), Mirjana Boba Stojadinović, Mirko Lazović, Nevena Prijić Binney, Oliver Hangl,, PonTon, Robert Pravda, Rouge Group(Jelena & Bojana Fužinato), Simonida Rajčević, Stahl Stenslie, Svetlana Maraš, Tiiiit! Inc., Vladimir Bjeličić & Marija Bulubdžić.

Aleksandra Mitrović

On the trail of liberty

On the trail of liberty is a work that developed during and after the first lockdown that occurred after the breakthrough of the virus covid-19. Through this work, I tried to sonically represent the feelings of departure I felt because of the isolation as well as the joyous feelings that rose up in me when I thought of freedom. The work consists of 7 parts, starting with the feelings inspired by isolation then the feelings of constructed freedom, the middle part is the internal fight of those feelings and the last part represents the normalization of this new world that is in constant fear of the virus and socialization, thus not being free at all. This was my way to try to represent the frustrations with the new isolated normal world brought onto us with the virus covid-19. 

Aleksandra Mitrović is a graduate student of Digital arts interested mostly in sound art. 

Ana Ćurčin *

Wake me up

This improvisation was created in one of the precious moments of carelessness with friends during the pandemic.

Photo: Aleksandra Hrćan

Ana Seferović & Jovana Backović *

Freedom Throws The Prescribed Tomorrow Down The Mountain

Audio recording “Freedom Throws The Prescribed Tomorrow Down The Mountain” is a collaborative work of Ana Seferović, a poet and Jovana Baćković, a composer. This is a part of their ethno-musicological  project “Introduction into the night rituals”, that gathers local stories and family mythologies about women of South-East Serbia. Both Jovana and Ana are born in Belgrade and living in London.
http://www.jovanabackovic.com/ 
https://www.instagram.com/ana.sefer/
The Poem is from Ana’s poetry collection Materina. 

Andrea Palašti *

The Lonely Emil

Orangutans are primates known for their intelligence, long arms and red-brown fur. They live in Borneo and Sumatra, and are the only grate apes who live solitary and in trees most of their lives. The word orangutan in Malay and Indonesian means “person of the forest” (orang – person, hutan – forest). Orangutans, like other non-human primates, are often the target of smuggling, and then they become pets, movie actors, marketing tools in all sorts of commercials, well-known residents of zoos and, after death, also unique demonstration specimens in museums. The series of photographs and the video work are part of the project A Walk Through the Zoo, which examines the complex relationships between humans and animals, nature and culture, history and the present time. Exploring Emile’s history and his life after death – in various cultural and scientific institutions – has raised the issues of anthropomorphism, colonialism, but also the ideological motives for the creation of museum collections. For, as Desmond Morris in The Human Zoo (1969) says, the unnatural behavior of animals in zoos can help us understand, accept and overcome the mechanisms that life in consumerist societies brings.

ANDREA PALAŠTI (b. 1984) is a visual artist and lecturer based in Novi Sad, Serbia. She works across artistic and curatorial boundaries, experimenting with photography, video and illustrated lecture performances. Her practice is highly informed by collaborations with other artists/collectives, students, curators, journalists, scientists and/or historians. She is part of the ŠoK Gallery curatorial board and a docent at the Academy of Art in Novi Sad, blending her collaborative artistic research projects with educational strategies.  

https://andreapalasti.com/Emil-B5044
https://ail-alien.now.sh/projects/emil

aywar 2000

Where the police are

Work „Where the police are“ is a sound collage criticizing the politics of European Union and  dedicated to all the migrant victims. The sound fragments come from many different sources– field recordings, found sounds, news reports and Frontex commercials, as well as music samples and own compositions. The work wants to recreate the war-like atmosphere on the guarded borders of European Union and point out to institutionalized violence and discrimination which contradicts the foundations of EU itself.

Born in Dubrovnik, based in Berlin. Thinking and writing about arts, culture and politics.

Branko Milisković *

Cabaret of an Intruder

The whole sound record of Branko Milisković’s performance Cabaret of an Intruder, given on March 29, 2019 at the Balkan Cinema, within the Inner Voices Festival. Looking back, I think that here the absolute idea of the Space of Togetherness was achieved in the last year of the “old normality”.

Intense for the viewer, Milisković’s performance counts on the emotional reaction of the participants. Singing timeless melancholic melodies, the artist suggestively draws the audience into his own space. Emotions, rhythm and control of the performance, as well as the strong presence of the artist, not separated on the stage but assimilated with the audience – bring us into the register of sensitivity, irritability and weakness, which the artist skillfully manipulates.For Milisković, the Intruder is a subject or system that infiltrates a particular group of people with the aim to collect knowledge, and often has the need to strategically colonize the selected territory*. The performance starts with reading Edgar Allen Poe’s famous poem The Raven.

Dante Buu *

In The Next Video I Will Sing For You 2

Dante Buu is an artist, performer and storyteller.

In The Next Video I Will Sing For You 2, 2013
Soundtrack from a lover’s video message
00:45 min
Loop

Darija Medić *

Terms of Service Fantasy Reader

Terms of Service Fantasy Reader is a collective asynchronous and post-synchronous web drama in the making. Through every iteration, new dramatic frameworks explore audio snapshots of everyday technological and legal protocols in time through individual and group interpretations of Terms of Service of common applications, as well as through expressing personal technical frustrations. Within a collective reading, expressing and listening we find out as much about applications, their hidden languages and privacy policies as we do about ourselves, about our personal and group understanding of creating relationships towards codifying everyday digital behavior. The material used for this audio compilation was formed through a series of workshops, as well as through a web email exchange, encompassing dozens of creative personal expressions.

If you would like to take part in its future dramatic forms, send an email to termsofservicefantasyreader@gmail.com.
New forms will evolve, expand and take over the website at http://www.termsofservicefantasyreader.com/

Darija S. Radaković

Fushë Kosova

“Fushë Kosova” is an audio-visual work based on the Albanian translation of the poem “Kosovo Polje” by the famous Serbian poet M. Beckovic. Emotionally charged this poem sings about identity, about its exclusivity and vulnerability. It sings about a mythical land in one color, looking at it with the one eye, playing a tune in a single string… I am not aware that the poem “Kosovo Polje” was previously published in Albanian, so I’m offering this translation as a contribution to establishing communication; the invitation to convey thoughts and ideas to the other party, however conflicting in intention and incongruous in expression they might be.

Darija is a Bosnian born, Calgary based, internationally recognized artist whose work is predominantly conceptual, whether it is a performance, ready-made, sculpture, textual work, minimalist painting, assemblage, or a large scale installation. The common denominator of her artistic practice is her honest confrontation with the issues that trigger her attention and exposing that confrontation to the audience.
Since she experienced being a refugee in the 90’s, then being an immigrant two decades later, her art is questioning issues of identity, equality, social conflict, and freedom of expression.
http://radakovic.darija.ca/

Đejmi Hadrović

Silent Observer

Video performance acts as a monologue confession of a woman in her early thirties and the obstacles she is dealing with. Content deals with issues such as gender, identity, migration, and ethnicity. Autobiographical thoughts are exposed to the audience through the audio recording only, while the performer in the video is only partially visible. It gives a notion of a classical portrayal, with the mind being the main source of happening. The artist is addressing the audience with the world’s issues – which are still current – while trying to escape her inner conflict where she is asking herself if she, as an individual has done enough for the society and if that is even possible given her personal confusion. Performance is not only personal; it is sharing common threads of the everyday world and appeals to the public to identify with the performer and vice versa.

Đejmi Hadrović is a Time-Based Media artist who elaborates on definitions of feminism, sexuality, and gender in post-Yugoslav spaces. Her work is based on the theoretical framework she applies in contemporary artistic practice, using video, photography, performance, and installation. She was a finalist of the OHO Award for Young Visual Artists of Slovenia in 2018, as well as a participant of several international artistic residencies, and has presented her works at numerous international exhibitions. In 2018, she was the recipient of the City of Vienna award, and in 2017 she was a scholarship recipient of the Austrian Federal Chancellery. Since 2017 she is a doctoral scholar at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, under the mentorship of Prof.Dr. Marina Gržinić. 
www.dejmihadrovic.si

Diskusije

Common ground

Diskusije (Una Mladenović, Mila Stojanović, Jovana Tašin, Aleksa Mitrović) were created from loose student connections, developing into a regular exchange of audio material and discussions on shared experience. Linking us was a desire and need for a space that would allow us to share and communicate.

Commons is a piece of work collecting field recording material contributed by members, over time. They realized the opportunity to capture moments of everyday experience, in a journal-like manner. Space, situation and communication were important themes for them, as they continued to discover what these could be in a physical, virtual and subjective sense.

Image credits: Una Mladenović, Mila Stojanović

Emma Szabó *

Glitch – The Sound of Silence

*Glitch n.

A minor malfunction, mishap, or technical problem; a snag: a computer glitch; a navigational glitch; a glitch in the negotiations/ A false or spurious electronic signal caused by a brief, unwanted surge of electric power/ Astronomy A sudden change in the period of rotation of a neutron star

„Glitch- The Sound of Silence“ is an intimate confession on distances, loneliness, solitude and absence. It is a record of isolation as a direct consequence of socio-political enviroment, world economy and global pandemic. It is a quest for answers:

What language do I dream in? Can one’s voice embrace? What is the sound of a creative block? How does absence sound? What is the sound of exile? How to stay by your own side when you’re far away from everyone.

GLITCH is, above all, a sonic mapping of a soul here and now:

Breathe in. Breathe out. Possibilities. I am afraid. Of life. Impossible. I am afraid. Loudly. I am afraid. Mute. Nothing. Everything. I am afraid not to know. The life. I am afraid. Breathe in. Breathe out. I live. I am afraid. I imagine. The life. Breathe in. Breathe out. I live. I am afraid. Not to know. I know. That I do not know. I know. The life. I am afraid. The life. The New Reality. A habit. The New Reality. Third time around. I am afraid. Of a habit. An embrace. One and a half meter from. Myself. I am afraid. Of life. Of people. I am afraid. Of habits. The life. The people I miss. The Life. People. I am afraid. Of crowds. Breathe in. Breathe out. The people. Faraway. People. That I miss. To live. For life. People. Family circle. An embrace. Embrace. Life. Mother tongue. Native language. Mostly, I say I love you in native language. I fall asleep in mother tongue. I woke up in native language. Mother tongue. Wakes me up. Far away. From me. Faraway. Linguistic dilemmas. I live. Breathe in. Breathe out. Mostly, I hear I love you in mother tongue. Linguistic dilemmas. Trilingual adaptation of reality. Vortex in my thinking head. Trilingual vortex. In mother tongue. In my head. Trilingual competition of thoughts. I hear I love you in mother tongue. I say I love you in native language. Every time. In mother tongue. In me. To myself. I love you. I think of. Breathe in. Breathe out. A Day. I think of a day. I think of you. I think of myself. The Day. I think. Breathe in. Breathe out. I hear. The life. A heart. An embrace. The sea. A touch. Family circle. Breathe in. Breathe out. The sea. The music. The music. The Music. A heart. The rhythm. The rhythm. The rhythm. The waves. The sea. You. I think of you. I think. The heart. The sea. Distances. The people. My people. Friends. Far away. The life. I am afraid. Of a day. The people. Faraway. From me. The heart. In mother tongue. Screams. I love you.

Ephemeral Confessions

Ephemeral ariosis No.1

The sound sketch Ephemeral ariosis No.1 was created at the beginning of 2020 and marks the initial phase of a new artistic experiment of the Ephemeral Confession collective based on the research of the heritage of Serbian folk tales.

FEMIX *

The Girls Rock Camp

The final concert of the third generation of the Girls Rock Camp in Knjaževac in 2019. Six bands perform six original songs. It was the first time that the methodology was used through which the girls, together with their mentors, wrote compositions, which they then performed at the final concert. At the concert of the third generation of the Camp, the girls, in the bands Autskulerke, Blood Rush, Infrakt, Toxic Taste, Pretty Little Rockers, Black Eye, Nightmare and SatinS, performed for the first time the originally written songs Mrzim školu (I hate school), High Voltage, Srce (Heart), Pure Gasoline, Your Time, Strahovi (Fears), Noćna mora (Nightmare) and Komšinica (Neighbour). The atmosphere was amazing, and it became clear to everyone present that the Girls Rock Camp got six new hits.

Femkanje

Spaces of Togetherness

Documentary recording of the sound installation Spaces of Togetherness by Femkanje in Podroom gallery, Cultural Center of Belgrade.
Recording by: Đorđe Petković

Franciszek Araszkiewicz & Michael Fischer

Fluctuations: Momentum Gallery

With Fischer’s use of extended techniques and feedback system as well as Araszkiewicz’s electronics governed by electromagnetic fields and brainwaves the duo’s performances (inc. Porgy and Bess Vienna 2018, and appreciated conclusion of AudioArtFestival in Krakow, 2017) show the timbral variety of this instrumentation.

Franciszek Araszkiewicz, composer and sound installation artist, laureate of, a.o. Avenir Grant (Arnold Schoenberg Center) composer-in-residence in MuseumsQuartier, his instrumental and electroacoustic works were awarded in numerous competitions. 
www.araszkiewicz.fr

Michael Fischer, musician-composer works on the speech immanence of sounds, their sculptural and dramatic evidence, in the field of improvised/experimental music. In 1999 developed an exclusively analog instrument,  the feedback-saxophone. In 2004 he launched the Vienna Improvisers Orchestra.
http://m.fischer.wuk.at/works.htm

Gildo Bavčević & Sandra Bradvić

Coins – Or how to create value

Gildo Bavčević conducts a multipart performance from the series Coins (as well including Plastic Man Machine, 2015; Vertigo, 2013; Profit vs. Welfare, 2011), in which since 2011 he has been constantly working to develop new approaches to the critic and prospectives of the monetary system and its influence on the society, art and culture. While Sandra Bradvić simultaneously comments the actions, hinting at historic references and questioning at the same time both, the artist’s and the curator’s attempt of reflexion and contextualization.

The performance Coins – Or how to create value was originally conceived for and performed at Manifesta 11, Cabarait der Künstler, Zunfthaus Voltaire, in Zurich, Switzerland, 2016 and later at the FIUK Festival, Koprivnica, Croatia 2016. The text is written, compiled and read by Sandra Bradvić. The composition for violin was composed and played by Petra Hrnjak Skroza. Beethoven’s Ode to Joy (1824) is sung by Tina Keserović, in the performance EU sleeps by Gildo Bavčević and Tina Keserović, Athens, Greece 2015. Beethoven’s Ode to Joy (1824) is sung Tina Keserović and was originally performed and recorded for the performance EU sleeps by Gildo Bavčević and Tina Keserović, Athens, Greece 2015. Sound and image recording by Bojan Koštić, @ FIUK Festival, Koprivnica, Croatia, 2016. The performance uses audio recordings from the performance series Coins by Gildo Bavčević. Image editing and sound design by Gildo Bavčević, 2021. Image credit: Bojan Koštić

Igor Stangliczky & Marko Batista *

The secret sound of our audio sculptures in ceramics (Zvočiti 2019)

The sound performance was played using mostly self built instruments. Igor used his handmade ceramic pots as only a source, while Marko used his audio sculpture as the main audio source. ZVOCITI art residency was held in Ljubljana, during February 2019. Many thanks to Cona Institute for organising ZVOCITI residency !

https://gallery1250.com/igor-stangliczky/
https://markobatista.wordpress.com/
http://www.cona.si/

Isidora Krstić

Pink Nightingale

The sound piece of the installation consists of mixed, overlapped and distorted sound files of varied origin. It is a compilation of sounds that reflect an anxious, turmoiled inner state: An unrecognisable melody that is my first memory of a song, a distorted WhatsApp audio message, illegible clamour of individual voices, a crowd and others. They are sounds that I anticipate with a certain amount of discomfort, which through transforming and in the end destroying them should lose their initial effect and power.

The work Pink Nightingale attempts to show how the duality of our existence is reflected in our body’s state – the pressure and release, being held and letting go, the pull and the push, subtlety and aggression. The viewer is both a witness and participant in a body’s unravelling. Inside, our bodies are full of ‘artefacts’ – past feelings, past experiences, behaviours and memories, which all take some space. We carry these artefacts within ourselves every day. There are those, which are no longer necessary to us today, which represent nothing more than a piece of information overloaded with tension.

The sound was made in collaboration with Austrian musician Pieter Gabriel.

Isidora Krstić *

On Distance and Dissonance

In this work, I wanted to look into my relationship with and within the artist collective U10 (Belgrade), and specifically, my physical distance to it, being that I am based in Vienna. The work resulted in an installation consisting of a computer-spoken text and diorama that jointly represent a poetic contemplation on distance, remoteness, and the feeling of dissonance that results from communicating on a distance through emails and video conferencing. I wanted to show that we can be a part of different communities, even on a distance, but that our relationship with and within them can become somewhat skewed, creating a certain amount of confusion and distress, given that in this case, we operate between at least two cultures, or realities.

https://www.isidorakrstic.com/projects/on-distance-and-dissonance/

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Isidora Todorović *

Mindscape

The work was conceived from the idea that certain frequencies can change the biochemistry of the brain and produce a certain mood. The binuaral beats in the soundscape affect the alpha waves of the brain while other frequencies taken from nature (sounds of the ocean, planets) all serve to explore how music and frequencies can affect the biochemistry and mood of the listener.

Iva Bekić & Tamara Popović *

Mistakes

Audio Mistakes was created in 2013 during the adaptation of the gallery space in st. Kraljevic Marko, in Belgrade, in the editorial office of Camenzind magazine.

The redesign of the space was conditioned by the reuse of old elements found on site and its immediate neighborhood. Worn, outdated elements have been given a new role by the one originally intended. Visible traces of the past and the replacement of roles as a “mistake” shaped a new spatial expression.  

The audio recording is our reaction to the current situation and consists of personal observations on the topic of imperfections/errors in the creative process.

Mistakes is an interview with one imperfect element we found on site – Mr. Müller’s chair.

The transcript was intentionally made with writing mistakes in order for the spoken language to be “correct”. 

We only used the computer (audio translation).

Iva Kuzmanović

Airplane crash in the jungle

sound from the site-specific installation, a diorama set in the Museum of Aviation Belgrade, 2018

Audio to a diorama containing a scene of a plane slowly but certainly plunging into the jungle’s lush canopies. The work is about escapism, failed expectations, anxiety. It’s about the feeling that something very bad and fatal will happen suddenly, when least expected. It also evokes the human state of inability to recognize their true desires, to tell right from wrong. 

It is the ultimate memento mori set in the jungle, most potent tropical vanitas.

Iva Kuzmanović *

China girl

It happened probably somewhere by the end of the 1980s, in my early childhood. I remember watching the video for David Bowie’s song China girl. While watching it, for the first time ever, I knowingly grasped the feeling of eroticism:  excitingly seductive, sweet and alluringly dangerous.

The audio-video installation The first time in my life that I have ever knowingly grasped erotic sensation thanks to MTV: David Bowie, China girl examines the content of the notion of sentimentality and the attitude towards it in the fatalistic times that we are living in which is not too far from baroque understanding of the term: sentimentality is a feeling that we get from confronting the world that is fading or that has already died.

The temporality of memories, their fragility affected by time passing are present through the usage of analogue TV, unexpected glitches and burnt colours of the image reproduced in VHS technology, materialized recollections of the photonic scene that had been remembered in childhood. The installation is simultaneously an homage to sentimentality’s nonjudgmental innocence and ironic criticism of it. 

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Ivana Smiljanić *

Daily Routine: At Least Six Kilometers In an Hour

performance audio, duration 1h
performance place: Center for Cultural Decontamination, Belgrade
performance date: December 1st, 2019

In exhausting, boring and occasionally humorous and tender one-hour-long performance, among other things, Ivana Smiljanić speaks about the link between insulin resistance and infertility, what does a summer look like without an ice cream and watermelon, how does a hormonal stimulation affect everyday life, who stigmatizes better: strangers or beloved ones, how has a barren artist conceived and how all above mentioned affects emotional, sexual, social and professional life. Smiljanić incessantly talks while walking fast at the same time, she sweats and struggles to catch a breath as time goes on.

Jasna Veličković *

Opera of Things – Ophelia

Opera of Things is a work that consists of two forms: as a three-part sound installation including the Velicon, an instrument invented by Veličković; and as a live music-theatre experience performed during several occasions.

Three-part installation Opera of Things originates from the concept “Internet of Things”: just like the ‘Internet of things’ suggests the widening of the possibilities to transfer data over a network of everyday objects, mechanical and digital devices, in the same way the concept of voice in this work spreads outside of the domain of living beings to the sound produced by the electromagnetic field of devices (ventilators, power adapters, remote controls, magnets). The networking of voices and the history of the mechanical production of the singing voice resonates in a specific way in which the sublime, post-human potentiality of singing and voicing of inanimate objects is questioned.

Referring to the elements in opera, three parts of the installation include the aria “Beauty 3.2 Volts” for power adapter, duet “Diva and the Beast” for Velicon, the instrument constructed by the composer herself, and castrati quartet “Ophelia” for four power adapters.

These ‘objects’ – only in appearance silent and cold metal or plastic system units, but actually the treasuries of the most diverse kinds of sounds, from the almost tangible robust low, to the very profound and delicate high ones – received their voice through the composer/performer’s movements.

Opera of Things is commissioned by CBK Rotterdam for the exhibition Post-Opera, the curatorial project by Kris Dittel and Jelena Novak. Opera Of Things is supported by Тhe Performing Arts Fund NL.

www.jasnavelickovic.com

Jasna Veličković *

Opera of Things – Beauty

Opera of Things is a work that consists of two forms: as a three-part sound installation including the Velicon, an instrument invented by Veličković; and as a live music-theatre experience performed during several occasions.

Three-part installation Opera of Things originates from the concept “Internet of Things”: just like the ‘Internet of things’ suggests the widening of the possibilities to transfer data over a network of everyday objects, mechanical and digital devices, in the same way the concept of voice in this work spreads outside of the domain of living beings to the sound produced by the electromagnetic field of devices (ventilators, power adapters, remote controls, magnets). The networking of voices and the history of the mechanical production of the singing voice resonates in a specific way in which the sublime, post-human potentiality of singing and voicing of inanimate objects is questioned.

Referring to the elements in opera, three parts of the installation include the aria “Beauty 3.2 Volts” for power adapter, duet “Diva and the Beast” for Velicon, the instrument constructed by the composer herself, and castrati quartet “Ophelia” for four power adapters.

These ‘objects’ – only in appearance silent and cold metal or plastic system units, but actually the treasuries of the most diverse kinds of sounds, from the almost tangible robust low, to the very profound and delicate high ones – received their voice through the composer/performer’s movements.

Opera of Things is commissioned by CBK Rotterdam for the exhibition Post-Opera, the curatorial project by Kris Dittel and Jelena Novak. Opera Of Things is supported by Тhe Performing Arts Fund NL.

www.jasnavelickovic.com

Jasna Veličković *

Opera of Things – Beast

Opera of Things is a work that consists of two forms: as a three-part sound installation including the Velicon, an instrument invented by Veličković; and as a live music-theatre experience performed during several occasions.

Three-part installation Opera of Things originates from the concept “Internet of Things”: just like the ‘Internet of things’ suggests the widening of the possibilities to transfer data over a network of everyday objects, mechanical and digital devices, in the same way the concept of voice in this work spreads outside of the domain of living beings to the sound produced by the electromagnetic field of devices (ventilators, power adapters, remote controls, magnets). The networking of voices and the history of the mechanical production of the singing voice resonates in a specific way in which the sublime, post-human potentiality of singing and voicing of inanimate objects is questioned.

Referring to the elements in opera, three parts of the installation include the aria “Beauty 3.2 Volts” for power adapter, duet “Diva and the Beast” for Velicon, the instrument constructed by the composer herself, and castrati quartet “Ophelia” for four power adapters.

These ‘objects’ – only in appearance silent and cold metal or plastic system units, but actually the treasuries of the most diverse kinds of sounds, from the almost tangible robust low, to the very profound and delicate high ones – received their voice through the composer/performer’s movements.

Opera of Things is commissioned by CBK Rotterdam for the exhibition Post-Opera, the curatorial project by Kris Dittel and Jelena Novak. Opera Of Things is supported by Тhe Performing Arts Fund NL.

www.jasnavelickovic.com

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Jeff Guess *

Seamlessness

The home was once considered the architectural embodiment of intimacy and privacy, a space offering sanctuary from the gaze and judgements of the public realm. But since the 19th century, a series of technologies and practices have whittled away at that distinction, also transforming the conception of the subject as something porous and fluid, traversed and constituted by flux and feed. The Smart Home represents a new phase in this drive wherein the marketplace becomes personified and embedded within the domestic space, permeating its objects and bodies so that thinking aloud becomes the equivalent of shopping. Seamlessness consists in a scripted and yet real-time conversation between an Amazon Echo and a Google Home in which they ponder desire and elaborate on their modes of existence and the invisible infrastructures they seamlessly instantiate.

Special thanks to Olivier Perriquet and Jan Koenig
Custom software (Node.js, Jovo, and Shell scripts), a Google Home, an Amazon Echo, a Mac Mini

Seamlessness was part of an exhibition:Shelter or Playground – The House of Dust at the Schindler House, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles, Curators – Maud Jacquin, Anne Milone and Sébastien Pluot

Image copyright Esteban Schimpf

Josseline Black

New Songs for the New Ceremony

New Songs for the New Ceremony is a collection of 10 spoken poems written both for myself and for an unknown listener, a virtual figure of understanding, a protagonist of perpetual absence. It is thus a commentary on the very act of transmission between the voice and the ear. The lyrical elements are meant to be absorbed over time. It was recorded after a long session of melancholy, while sitting on a bed in a Münich hotel, and acts as a bridge back to life.

Josseline Black a.k.a L æx Vota is a writer, critic, choreographer, and sound maker implementing time-based media to generate performativity. She is currently building a social sculpture called “The Opening Response”, which uses the interview format to tap the analogic vision of curators, artists, and composers to share their novel reflections on alterity and contemporaneity. In addition, she is developing a choreographic methodology based on pleasure principles.

Image credit: NASA

Karen Finley *

COVID Anxiety Opera 1

These sounds go beyond words to evoke the international howl of the pandemic.

The vocals were spontaneously generated in a tunnel bridge to the train overlooking the Hudson River that connects to the Atlantic Ocean. Trains pass that travel to Canada, Chicago and New York. The sound reverberates across continents, tributaries and shores as we share the echoes of quarantine, loss, isolation, and dystopian disruption.

Karen Werner

The State of Things

Karen Werner is a radio artist and sociologist who moved to Bergen in 2020 and has recently made radio pieces for MÆKUR, Wave Farm, RUMMUR_Radio, RadioArt106FM and USMARadio. In 2016, she launched Strange Radio, a series of radio compositions, sound installations and live performances with transmitter supported by Tonspur Kunstverein Wien, Vienna’s MuseumsQuartier, studio das weisse haus, Kone Foundation’s Saari Residency, Kunstradio, Orange94.0FM and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. In 2019-2020, Karen was the Inaugural Radio Artist Fellow at Wave Farm in NY.
karenwerner.net

A dispatch from Bergen, Norway about plant care, windows, and old plagues.

Image credit: Karen Werner

Lenka Đorojević *

Is There a Women’s Issue in Our Country?

sound work, 11:15, 2017

Is There a Women’s Issue in Our Country? is a sound work in which parts of the text from the reports and plenary sessions of the Central Committee of the Women’s Antifascist Front (AFŽ) of Yugoslavia are used. The voice of a nine-year-old girl from the present intervenes in the past, activating the political potential of the ideas and problems that characterized the women’s AFŽ movement and the ideological situation of the socialist period from which it emerged. The soundtrack reflects and connects gender, social and cultural contexts and the process of emancipation that began in socialism and is still on-going.

Voice: Petra Tadić
Postproduction: Studio St_Iva, Iva Stanišić

The work was created within the exhibition Comrades – Women’s Movement in Montenegro 1943-1953. The author used materials from the magazines of the Women’s Antifascist Front of Yugoslavia and Montenegro: Žena danas (woman today) and Naša žena (our woman). The title is taken from the report by the President of the AFŽ of Yugoslavia Vida Tomšič “Is there a women’s issue in our country?”, published in the magazine of the AFŽ of Yugoslavia – Žena danas, No. 3, 1952.

Lidija & Marija Delić

Tropiques Nord

Within her series of work Tropiques Nord (2018) Lidija Delić reveals paintings and audio-visual installation, conceptually developed around discursive representations of tropical landscapes and the idea of ​​their de (re) construction. The images from the series were created during and after their stay at the artistic residence in Iceland in 2017, while the installation is inspired by the famous ethnographic inscription Claude Levi Strauss, Tristes Tropiques (1955), which depicts anthropologist’s travels across the territories of the Mato Grosso area in the Amazon. […] Starting from the idea that every geographical territory is bound in a dense set of different material and cultural contexts through which the subjective experience of a certain landscape (scenary) is born, Lidija Delić is moving along the boundary of the unclear boundary between the usual and the unknown, the exotic and the everyday. Hallucinatory sonic vision of field sound is created in cooperation and exchange of audio recordings with Marija Delić Peinetti, who has been working on sound, image contextualization and visual research, for several years. 
Full text by Miloš Zec:  https://lidijadelic.com/tropiques-nord/

Lidija Delić:  https://lidijadelic.com
Marija Delić Peinetti: https://www.marijadelicpeinetti.com

Lukatoyboy *

Iz (2021)

What do we talk about when we talk about the issue of not being loud while the others are already asleep (or) when silence is needed in order to be left to record in piece. One average but dedicated night.

Exclusively recorded for Femkanje, without edits, in Ribeira Brava, 2021.
Lukatoyboy aka Total Princess of Prestidigitation

Maja Pelević, Anja Đorđević & Svetlana Maraš *

Consequences

Text and concept: Maja Pelević
Music concept and realization: Anja Đorđević and Svetlana Maraš
Light: Nikola Zavišić
Performers: Maja Pelević, Anja Đorđević and Svetlana Maraš
Venue: Bitef teatar
Premiere: November 2013

Consequences is an auteur project by playwright Maja Pelević, in which she performs her own play. It deals with re-examining the author’s relationship to her own text, to the world she lives in, the future that awaits her or not, the expectations of the environment when it comes to women’s identity (marriage, motherhood), different beginnings and endings that befall us in certain periods of life, “ends of the world” that never happen and events from history that, seen from the point of view of an individual, take on a completely new meaning. Considering personal and collective experiences that bring certain consequences, this project represents a sort of a personal requiem for the future.

Since the text itself requires a certain music treatment, Consequences is created in cooperation with the author’s long-time collaborator, composer Anja Đorđević and Svetlana Maraš, who perform the music for the play live. By combining the spoken word, ambient music, sounds of various objects, noise and documentary recordings in a collage, they overcome the boundaries between words and sound, and the language of music and the music of words become organically connected.

Margareta Jelić *

Sketch, Part One

Sketch, Part One is a work that examines the absence of a narrative and consequences it has on contemporary Subject. Questions that arise in this work are in the frame of existentialism but also in the frame of perceptualism understanding the being and its perception as reflections of themselves.

Margareta Jelic is an interdisciplinary artist and art theoretician. Her artwork includes painting, installation, video, animation and sound.  Since 1991 she has been exhibiting at numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally in Serbia, Hungary, Austria, France, Great Britain, United States and Canada. She lives and works in Belgrade and Brighton.

www.margaretajelic.com

Marijana Arađanski *

Carrara Mix

There are not many places to go these days. Long gone are the times when we danced and nurtured escapism in the form of collective breakout. Nonetheless, new situations create new realities, new spaces for togetherness. These sounds are a mind-trip through different phases of recent times, where nothingness meets new mornings, where cities are sleeping, but many of us awake.

Mariko Hori & PonTon *

MAKURA NOTO

MAKURA NOTO ( Note / no Oto ) ” (meaning ” pillow note or the sound of pillow ”, note is ‘ no o to ‘ in Japanese) ポントンの演奏をバックグラウンドに、自身の夢に見た物語を堀真理子が語ります。

Mariko Hori is a Japanese artist currently based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her works, consisting mainly of installations, often study alternative atmospheric experiences through modest yet intentional placement of carefully chosen objects to give texture to the space and time between structures. https://marikohori.space

MAKURA NOTO is a sound performance in collaboration with PonTon (Igor Stangliczky & Marko Jevtic) and Mariko Hori. Mariko reads fragments of stories from her dreams aloud on the sounds which PonTon explores. Recorded at Kafe-knjižara Meduza November 18, 2016, Belgrade, Serbia.

www.facebook.com/meduzabeograd/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8yQdTQifRE

Mariko Hori & Ronald van der Meijs *

Plastisphere

Plastisphere is an opening sound performance under the installation work of Ronald van der Meijs, for the exhibition Science Encounters Art (SEA) Texel in the Netherlands in 2019. The performance and the structure have a grow and decay identity and there is a reference to time and space in nature itself.

Hori & van der Meijs have been forming a collaboration in order to create new forms of research and performative sound installation works concerning the theme of ‘Nature versus Culture’. They recently started to develop research projects which concern ‘non-verbal communication’ and develop sound performances with installations by amplifying their sounds in order to create a dialogue on a larger scale and zoom in on small details at the same time by making the audience aware of the art installation because of its complete change of identity and atmosphere.

Marina Džukljev

Live in Stockholm

Solo concert from Stockholm at FRIM på Fylkingen, live improvisation December 2018.
Recorded by: John Chantler

This piece is focusing on the intersection between improvised and real-time composed forms of experimental music in live (concert) situation, using extended techniques, inside piano, prepared and un-prepared piano.

Marina Džukljev (1983) is a pianist, educator and active performer in the fields of free improvisation, classical, contemporary and applied music. Marina is colaborating with wide range of multimedia artists such as: Noid, dieb13, Tomaž Grom, Joel Grip, Vasco Trilla, John Dikeman, Isabelle Duthoit, Tristan Honsinger, Bertrand Denzler, Šalter Ensemble, Hans Koch, Jonas Kocher, Korhan Erel, Luis Vicente, Christof Kurzmann, Aleksandar Skoric, Vid and Jost Drasler, Mia Dyberg, Rieko Okuda,  Isak Hedtjärn, Pedro Melo Almes. She is a member of the quartet, septet, tentet and the large ensemble of the composer and violist Szilard Mezei, with whom she has recorded and published music over the many years of collaboration.

Marina performs solo and with a variety of ensembles at venues, festivals and events such as: Konfrontationen (Nickelsdorf), Hagenfesten (Dala Floda), Ring Ring (Belgrade), Izlog suvremenog zvuka (Zagreb), Sound Disobedience (Ljubljana), Sine Linea (Zagreb), Kanjiza jazz festival (SRB), V:NM (Graz),  but also in Berlin, Stockholm, Wels, Vienna, Budapest, Lisbon, Coimbra, Ljubljana, Biel, Basel, Bratislava, Malmö. Her music was broadcasted on National Radios and TV Stations in Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria and Sweden. She has been released many albums as a sideman and an author for labels: Leo records (UK), FMR records (UK), Klopotec (SI), Interstellar records (AT), WMAS (SRB). Over the years she was working as a promoter, organizer and producer by organizing large number of music workshops, concerts, lectures, festivals for improvised and experimental music. Currently, she is a curator and organizer of Improstor – improvised music concert series and co-curator at Festival in opposition (Novi Sad).

Image credits: Nuno Martins

Marina Marković *

Void

Void (15’ video loop, 2016); ultrasound recording of artist’s pulsating empty uterus without any narrative progression, dialectically opposed by the sound image of emotional preaching speech on women primary roles and duties, performed by artists mother, grandmother, great-grandmother. In The Void Markovic is pointing out the hardly seizable distinction between the conscientious choice and culturally imposed models / biopolitical coercion and questioning what ‘being free’ or ‘being forced’ means in the context of womanhood.

www.marinamarkovic.com

Marko Jevtić *

PonTon – Post-romance

Post-romance (Post-romantika), from Ponton’s 2012 album Post, is a suitable soundtrack for the period when Marko was most active as a collaborator of Femkanje.

Marko Jevtić is a guitarist and the other half of the PonTon ambient duo, a graphic designer by profession and an unpublished writer. In several editions of Femkanje, he appeared in the role of a tarot drawer, sound designer and good friend.

www.pntn.bandcamp.com

Milana Zarić & Richard Barrett *

Mirage

mirage, 2020 (11:26)
restless Horizon, 2020 (9:27)
šuma, 2016 (11:36)
nocturnes, 2019 (14:05)
sphinx, 2020 (9:50)

This release documents the current stage in the evolution of the duo, which gained momentum during the spring of 2020 when most other musical activities were suddenly curtailed.

All the compositions are collaborative, and developed through improvisation, except šuma, which was written for Ensemble Studio 6 by Richard in 2016. In their work together, Milana (acoustic and electric harp, percussion, electronics) and Richard (computer, keyboard) explore the sound space between acoustic and electronic instruments. The two instruments are often able to merge with one another to the point of indistinguishability – creating new sound worlds through their mutual meta-instrument. Opposed to that are situations where they remain timbrally distinct and interweave (or not) on other musical levels.

This unique duo, based in Serbia, have been performing together since 2013, having collaborated with musicians, ensembles, and visual artists in North America, Australia, and throughout Europe. Together they lead and perform in the Ensemble Studio6.

Milana Zarić is the principal harpist of the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra, solo and chamber musician and improviser, internationally active in classical, contemporary, and improvised music scenes.

Richard Barrett is a renowned British composer, improviser, professor and researcher, whose compositions are performed worldwide.

Mirage can be seen on Youtube, in collaboration with Belgrade based artist Incredible Bob, who provided video animation, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxOETT51zLA&t=99s
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https://milanazaririchardbarrett.bandcamp.com/releases
www.richardbarrettmusic.com
www.milanazaric.com

minipogon (Vahida Ramujkić, Tijana Cvetković) - OTG (Lamija Halilagić, Azemina Halilagić) *

WBRC_pilot_#01

The audio recording came out as a by-product of the Western Balkans Reality Check project, realized in collaboration between Minipogon (Belgrade), OTG (Belgrade / Novi Pazar) and Inka (Struga) during the spring lock-down of 2020. As the movement and traveling became completely restricted, during months of March, April and May, we conducted conversations with the users of landline phones that we randomly selected from the National White Pages. Topics of the conversations related to the problems people were facing in everyday life and the possibilities for their resolution.

Mirjana Boba Stojadinović

ON SILENCE DURING THE QUARANTINE

Until recently silence was an unusual sound in the hurried world we lived in. In the spring 2020 Belgrade came under strict quarantine measures, the city commotion fell silent, and the silence became ubiquitous, especially at night. How is silence listened to and interpreted by artists Dejan Atanasković, Manja Ristić, Sanja Latinović and a curator Marko Jenko?

This is part of the radio show The Golden Ratio (Zlatni presek) © Radio Beograd 2, broadcast on 8 April 2020.

https://www.rts.rs/page/radio/sr/story/24/radio-beograd-2/3913760/dokolica-u-tisini.html

Mirjana Boba Stojadinović (1977, Serbia/Bulgaria), an academically educated visual artist. She exhibited solo and in group exhibitions since 1998 in Serbia and abroad and also organized and curated group exhibitions and projects. At the centre of her enquiries are space and narration, performatively using photography, text, sound, light and objects. She is also into production of the field of contemporary culture. As of 2018 she is collaborating with Radio Belgrade 2, department of culture.
http://bobaart.wordpress.com

Mirjana Boba Stojadinović

LONGING FOR BELONGING

LONGING FOR BELONGING. How and when to build, find or recognize a home

Audio artwork, ambiental sounds and narration, 2011, 8’28”
Language English, produced on the spot in Vienna.

Mirjana Boba Stojadinović (1977, Serbia/Bulgaria), an academically educated visual artist. She exhibited solo and in group exhibitions since 1998 in Serbia and abroad and also organized and curated group exhibitions and projects. At the centre of her enquiries are space and narration, performatively using photography, text, sound, light and objects. She is also into production of the field of contemporary culture. As of 2018 she is collaborating with Radio Belgrade 2, department of culture.

Image credit: © Mirjana Boba Stojadinović
http://bobaart.wordpress.com

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Mirko Lazović *

Amsterdam silenced by an infectious agent

(Recorded on January 1st 2021 at two in the afternoon)

Composed by pandemic, this track is a part of a collection of sounds recorded during the lockdown, revealing layers of the city normally hidden by the routine of normality. The time of pandemics serves as a reminder of the temporality of our environment.

http://mirkolazovic.com/amsterdam-silenced-infectious-agent

Natalia Domínguez Rangel

Dirt and Class

Collaboration with Niels Shoe Meulman and Koen Tossijn. (2019)

Dirt and Class

For the occasion of the solo exhibition Unstallation by Niels Shoe Meulman at Ghost Galerie (ghostgalerie.com)
Filmed and edited by Zane Meyer, Chop ’em Down Films (chopemdownfilms.com)
Sound installation for video and cloak installation by Natalia Domínguez Rangel 
Cloak design by Koen Tossijn (tossijn.com)
Shoe assistance by Qi Webster
Moral support by Carlo McCormick
Special thanks to Caroline Pozzo di Borgo, Stéphane Miquel, Simon Veres and Patta.

Natalia Domínguez Rangel (NL/CO) composer/sound artist living and working between Vienna and Amsterdam.
Domínguez Rangel’s work connects closely to critical listening, anything related to the characteristics of sound and all physical qualities that articulates space. She is interested in how sound affects and resonates with an audience physiologically and psychologically, and how space and specifically acoustic space make one think of time, ecology, technology and architecture.
Sound is power, it can be a source of both pain and pleasure.

Natalia Domínguez Rangel

Étude 2 – between the artificial and the natural

Throughout the first lockdown due to COVID-19 I started a series: “Études”

This study was inspired by the thought of listening to digital produce big room acoustics intertwined with natural church acoustics. How do we perceive and listen to these two realities?

The piece consists of field recordings of diverse churches done throughout the day when they are empty to visit. Church St James in Brno (CZ), Stevens Kerk in Nijmegen (NL) and Mariazell Basilica (AT) orchestrated with my voice and movement in different digital acoustic rooms.

These digital mimicries display an alternative way of listening and association. A natural digital cacophony in counterpoint with an acoustic cluster.

Natalia Domínguez Rangel (NL/CO) composer/sound artist living and working between Vienna and Amsterdam.
Domínguez Rangel’s work connects closely to critical listening, anything related to the characteristics of sound and all physical qualities that articulates space. She is interested in how sound affects and resonates with an audience physiologically and psychologically, and how space and specifically acoustic space make one think of time, ecology, technology and architecture.
Sound is power, it can be a source of both pain and pleasure.

Natalia Domínguez Rangel

I Feel You

Sound Sculpture (2020)
“I Feel You” is a sounds sculpture that echoes on the idea of embodying technology.

“I am the center.
I exceed boundaries in every direction.
I’m inside of what I make, and it’s inside me.
I feel uneasy.
Why do my body end at the skin?
Why I encapsulate technology with skin?
I resonate.
I feel you.
Do you feel me?
My machine is disturbingly lively”

Natalia Domínguez Rangel (NL/CO) composer/sound artist living and working between Vienna and Amsterdam. Domínguez Rangel’s work connects closely to critical listening, anything related to the characteristics of sound and all physical qualities that articulates space. She is interested in how sound affects and resonates with an audience physiologically and psychologically, and how space and specifically acoustic space make one think of time, ecology, technology and architecture.
Sound is power, it can be a source of both pain and pleasure.

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Nevena Prijić Binney & David Binney

Collaboration

Nevena Prijić-Binney – narration
David Binney- music
Text – Carl Sagan Copyright © 1994 by Carl Sagan, Copyright © 2006 by Democritus Properties, LLC.

The sense of instability and fragility of human beings has been emphasized in the last year due to the global pandemic and climate change. The daily fear of death has caused a sense of urgency of time and influenced a change in my work and the introduction of new daily routines, which had long been waiting their turn. Although I thought I was one of those people who appreciate every moment of this short life, Covid 19 has reminded me of the things I had taken for granted. TV commercials and billboards comfort us – “We are all in this together”, a message that has become a daily mantra. Carl Sagan’s words, although uttered 30 years ago, sound louder than ever; inspired by a photograph taken by Voyager 1 from the edge of the solar system, he said that our planet appeared like a crumb of dust, smaller than a pixel.Nevena P.B.
Jan 2021, Los Angeles

Collaboration
The music was created in the part of the apartment that David Binney, my husband, uses as his studio. The two of us, as a painter and a musician, often collaborate, whenever he needs a visual description of his work, I am there, and vice versa; in this case, I needed sound. David has composed a lot of ambient and electronic music lately. The night before I mentioned the project for Femkanje to him, he wrote this composition, which fit in perfectly with the text by Carl Sagan.

www.nevenabinney.com

Oliver Hangl

Stadt hören / Listen to the City: Karlsplatz 1

Unsafe interventions in public space. Reality as a field of action beyond control. The City as a process. Hangl’s works take place in real and fictional settings, they mark a consistent confrontation between man and environment. He pushes at the boundaries between physical and psychological spaces. With the public space as his stage he playfully embeds a site and context-responsive set of experiences and interactions for both planned and incidental audiences. 

Part 1 out of 6 unfiltered field recordings broadcasted live on radio (23.4.2015)

Listen to the City raises questions of designing acoustic spaces of action. The unfiltered transmission of the urban sound space at Karlsplatz opens up an acoustic space of possibilities. How does the public show itself at the city’s most central square? Six live broadcasts convey a listening image of the city that is free of intention and left to chance, but does not exclude acoustic events. 

Oliver Hangl is a performance/media artist, curator, urban activist.

Robert Pravda *

Sound Message (1969/2021)

The recording of a message, never sent, from the family archives. The actors in the video are my parents, my mother’s aunt and her aunt-in-law, and I, some two or three years old at the time. The recording was made in late August or early September of 1969 or 1970. The message is complete; nothing has been cut out or edited.

The added sound scenography was created by analysing and resynthesizing the sound spectrum of the recorded text, while the generated piano section was realized with the help of a neural network trained on a simple two-bar melody.

www.sonicutopia.net

Rogue Syntax: PRIMER

Between the Ear and the Mouth

ROGUE SYNTAX: PRIMER is a longform experimental audio project that explores the dynamics of language within the space of contemporary art. Created by Nathan Gray, Makiko Yamamoto & Danni Zuvela, with linguist Rikke Bundegaard-Nielson, supported by Liquid Architecture (Melbourne), 1646 (The Hague) and Australia Council for the Arts.

Episode 1: Between the Ear and the Mouth offers listeners a high-end undercoat of linguistic basics, upon which successive Rogue Syntax layers will be built. Facts are leavened by multilingual examples, speech experiments, vocal antics, and parsing of one very dumb sentence.

Featuring (among others) Graham Lambkin; Felicia Atkins; Gabi Losconcy; DeForrest Brown; Current 93; MP Hopkins; Luci Lippard; Yan Xing; Lothar von Falkenhausen; Venla Helenius; Ewa Polska; Mauricio Kagel; John Cage; Robert Wilson; Spalding Gray; Chris Marker; Adam Curtis; Hito Steyerl; Fred Moten; Lawrence Abu Hamdan; Rana Hamadeh; Norah Turato; Erik Bünger; Nina Simone, Henri Chopin; MR James;  lecture performances; sound poetry, ghost stories; 1960s West German experimental radio; language games; Ferdinand de Saussure; Noam Chomsky; Gilles Deleuze; Karen Emory; Diana Deutsch; Guy Deutscher; Lev Vygotsky; Russel Hurlburt; Ray Jackendoff; Brion Gysin; Stewart Lee and Dan Brown. Project DNA extracted from Robert Ashley and Laurie Anderson.

A project by Nathan Gray, Makiko Yamamoto & Danni Zuvela, with linguist Rikke Bundegaard-Nielson, supported by Liquid Architecture (Melbourne), 1646 (The Hague) and Australia Council for the Arts.

https://www.1646.nl/program/primer/
https://www.roguesyntax.com

Rouge Group (Jelena i Bojana Fužinato) *

Audio recording, January 2021

“All artists are alike.
They dream of doing something that‘s more social,
more collaborative, and more real than art.”

Claire Bishop,
Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship

Can art and life be separated? Can we recognise the art in life (do we want to) or do we have to contextualise it for some greater good? Two artists in a situation of complete isolation, while the museums and the gallery are closed, the socialisation is impossible and overwhelmed by motherhood are trying to move the boundaries between the private and public agencies. They create a chaotic micro-world that only they believe in, which gives them hope that art will survive, that it is real and stronger than the reality surrounding them. The resulting turbulence and conflicting perspectives on femininity, feminist criticism, intellectual work, housework, and raising children are a homage to the performer’s private and public life. The question is, where does the intertwining of such perspectives lead? Is it the resistance and persistence that keeps art in life or life in art? Is the built tension between inner and outer life threatening or promising?

Bojana Kunst, in her book Artist at Work, concludes:

“The disappearance of the border between life and work in the
late-capitalist work processes actually leads to the disappearance of possibilities for
an emancipating alliance between work and life, an alliance that can take place
through the constant politicizing of this difference that reveals the paradoxes of
contemporary autonomy, the illusory possibilities of choice and self-organization ofone‘s life.”

We can conclude that the contextualised paradox of contemporary autonomies is perhaps more realistic than art, in the way Bishop suggests.

“Audio Recording, January 2021” Is A Continuation Of The Work “Kitchen”, Recorded In 2013 And A Sort Of Sketch For The Future Version Of This Performance. Audio Recordings Are Samples From Everyday Life (Cooking, Pumping Milk, Washing Dishes, Making Coffee, Taking Care Of Children), And Simultaneously Focusing On Gender Issues. These Passages Of Those Moments Of Life That Are Determined By Biology And Social Construction Are Enhanced By Reading Quotations From The Following Sources: Judith Butler, Notes Toward A Performative Theory Of Assembly, Usa, Harvard University, 2018; Beatrice Von Bismarck, Benjamin Mayer-kahmer, Cultures Of The Curatorial 3 / Hospitality: Hosting Relations In Exhibitions, Potsdam, 2016; Bojana Kunst, Artist At Work, Proximity Of Art And Capitalism, Winchester And Washington, 2015; Griselda Pollock, Vision And Difference: Feminism, Femininity And Histories Of Art, London And New York, 2003; Griselda Pollock, Encounters In The Virtual Feminist Museum: Time, Space And The Archive, London And New York, 2007;  Maura Reilly, Curatorial Activism: Towards An Ethics Of Curating, London 2018; Berger, John, Why Look At Animals? Penguin, 2009: Hanna Arendt, Totalitarizam, Artprint Novi Sad 2013; Zaharijević, Adriana, Ko je pojedinac?: Genealoško propitivanje ideje građanina. Karpos, 2014; Stokowski, Margarete, Untenrum frei. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2018; Woolf, Virginia, and Barrett Michèle, A Room of One’s Own; and, Three Guineas. Penguin Classics, 2019; Acaso, María, “From Art Education To Art Education: Making The Education Revolution Into The Visual Arts Teaching Arena.” Wat’s Next? Ein Reader, edited by Torsten Meyer, and Gila Kolb.Koaped Verlag, München, 2015; Hormann, Elizabeth, and Guóth-Gumberger Márta, Stillen. GRÄFE UND UNZER Verlag GmbH, 2014.

Berlin/Hamburg, 25 Januar 2021

Simonida Rajčević *

Arrows

audio work for the exhibition of Simonida Rajčević – Strelice (Arrows), Gallery of the Youth Centre, October 2020
Sound: Manja Ristić

From the text by Jelena Pavićević:

“The exhibition of Simonida Rajčević’s paintings presents a unified nonlinear narrative flow, through which the artist shows the diversion created due to the dispersive construct of power relations. The position of perceiving a broader picture of the Arrows project could be read through fragments from popular culture, but also understood as a reference system that unites and contrasts the norms established in culture and society. By staging events that, at the moment of their escalation become frozen in time, the artist points out the importance of the positions of the aggressor and the victim, who, under certain circumstances, fight for authority over the other(s). In this way, the simulacra from the paintings become signifiers of the struggle, which, depending on the presentation of events, represent a kind of allusion to social discourses positioned in popular culture, and through the symbolic meaning – in everyday life.”

Stahl Stenslie *

The Blind Theater

The binaural sound is an excerpt from the Blind Theater project. The play is built around different experiential and sensual portraits of what it means to be a woman. In this excerpt Shiva Falahi (Iran) has written her story about the inside of female identity, from the sexual to the frustrative.

Concept and artistic direction: Stahl Stenslie
Dramaturgy: Kate Pendry
Text: Shiva Falahi (Iran)
Artistic Programming: Jonas Jongejan (Denmark)
Sound: Truls Kvam and Kate Pendry
Costume designer: Ingvild Hornseth

Financed by: the Norwegian Council for Cultural Affairs and the National Theater. The development is supported by Notam and Atelier Nord.
To read the full description as PDF follow this link.

Svetlana Maraš *

Depression (Matter of Fact)

Matter of fact is a cut-up composition and an audio-visual installation that consists of 5 shorter pieces: Myself, Depression, Society, Differences, People.

The lyrics are snippets taken from the interviews with artists from all over the world, made for the purpose of the Seismographic sounds exhibition, curated by the Norient collective from Switzerland. The smallest fragments being re-contextualized into meaningful songs, speak of universal topics that concern all of us. These topics are generalized to the point of being extremely stereotypical, but their ambiguity in the given context also opens up the space for more complex interpretations.

The interface functions like a modern version of a “jukebox”. Each word is a title of the composition that is being activated when the word is placed into the main white box.

Visuals that accompany music are made in a “karaoke” style. Each composition has a visually distinctive style and shows the references to motion graphics as being used in TV commercials and video clips, taking a critical stand towards the “brainwashing” culture of commercial media.

https://svetlanamaras.bandcamp.com/album/matter-of-fact

Tiiiit! Inc.

Intimate maps of female cities

Through the personal descriptions of the city, we openly speak about our doubts and ambivalence towards the (political / ideological) reality.
Svetlana Boym, “Future of Nostalgia”

Skopje is FEMALE! is part of the program Intimate maps of female cities developed by Tiiiit! Inc. First aired as radio program on Kanal 103 in 2013 as part of the promotional activities for the first edition of the Festival of Feminist Culture and Action Firstborn Girl, it grew into an initiative to make alternative maps of all Yugoslavian capitals. By now apart from Skopje, Belgrade, Zagreb, Sarajevo and Pristina have been mapped, as well as Bitola – major town in the Macedonian south.

Following the idea that the topography of a city is closely related to the personal biographies of its citizens and that urban archaeology is essentially archaeology of our personal memories, during a show broadcasted from a driving car, we host several guests showing us their own intimate, essentially female stories related to their city. Driving through their personal trajectories and listening to their music, we create an intimate female map of the city, contrasted to the violent monumentation and masculinization of the cities today.

www.tiiiitinc.com

Vladimir Bjeličić & Marija Balubdžić *

Nature Unveiled_edible plants

This soundscape was produced by Marija Balubdžić and Vladimir Bjeličić for his lecture-performance Nature unveiled or Stories about plants and workers presented within 13. Kondenz festival: Dancing Mantrasa held in November 2020.