Sonic Acts

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.

www.sonicacts.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.

📖 – Visit our website for the show notes of this episode.

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, and 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.

Credit:

Recorded at Erik's house, Amsterdam

Sound design and editing by Tobias Withers

www.sonicacts.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 the interview in the Sonic Acts Podcast series.

→ Explore more of the Sonic Acts Biennial 2024 programme

Credit:

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.

www.sonicacts.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

Credit:

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.

www.sonicacts.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 2024.sonicacts.com

Credit:

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.

www.sonicacts.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 2024.sonicacts.com

Credit:

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.

www.sonicacts.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 2024.sonicacts.com

Credit:

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.

www.sonicacts.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 2024.sonicacts.com

www.sonicacts.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 2024.sonicacts.com

Credit:

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.

www.sonicacts.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1978, in the Dutch towns of Veghel and Almelo, two groups of migrant women from Turkey were involved in simultaneous labour disputes. They asked their employers for collective agreements, regular work hours, higher pay, and holiday time. The labour-intensive work of plucking chicken feathers in Almelo and peeling onions in Veghel has been lost in institutional archives – only traces of these historical moments remain. As belit sağ illuminates, the institutional archive guides the researcher towards constructing a coherent narrative. Meanwhile, the subjects of those histories voice different realities, expressed through touch, smell, jokes, movement and gossip.

A historical analysis of the climate crisis reveals how power is concentrated on certain classes and resources. Countering such mechanisms entails actively investing in structures of collective care, repair (and reparations), centralising affected communities and their lineages, and collectively imagining nonlinearly and otherwise, also in the way the histories are reimagined through the archives. Here, the embodied surfaces as the basis of thought and action where there is a growing need to ground ourselves within our bodies, our communities, and our environments in order to connect to ourselves and beyond.

The lecture is followed by a Q&A session with Rachael Rakes and audience members.

24 February 2024

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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

Credit:

Production: Sonic Acts

Camera: Engage! TV

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.

www.sonicacts.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.