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