Sonic Acts

Sunlight Doesn’t Need a Pipeline by Dani Admiss

SONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 2022

15 October 2022

Likeminds, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Dani Admiss looks at how a collaborative climate justice project Sunlight Doesn’t Need a Pipeline initiates a collective rethink about what forms of repair are needed in the art sector and beyond. The current solutions of climate repair are flawed; carbon accounting and offsetting practices reiterate a narrative where one party repairs for another and scarcity narratives such as the half-Earth ‘solution’ propose a redistribution that imposes violence for many and a feeling of loss for others. In her talk, Admiss talks about commissioned projects by Luiza Prado and Chanelle Adams within the context of the Sunlight project. She also thinks about how repair can be meaningful to people in their own lived experiences and communities, as well as within environments that are shaped by humanity but exist far beyond them.

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

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

Credit:

Curation & production: Sonic Acts

Recording: Engage! TV

Sound mastering: Monty Mouw

Design: Catalogtree

Sound logo: Roc Jiménez de Cisneros

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

Public Experiments in Chemical Regulation by Angeliki Balayannis

SONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 2022

15 October 2022

Likeminds, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Industrial chemicals form the infrastructure of modern life. The regulation of these chemicals – in particular the dominant permission-to-pollute regime – is built on logics that produce environmental and epistemic injustices. In light of this, what kind of interventions might enable different ways of ‘doing’ regulation; regulatory experiments that instead foreground justice? Regulation remains dominantly imagined as the work of civil servants and regulatory scientists. This talk invites a cultural and political expansion of the regulatory imaginary. Attending to regulatory geographies beyond the work of regulators opens up new sites for intervening in toxic legacies.

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

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

Credit:

Curation & production: Sonic Acts

Recording: Engage! TV

Sound mastering: Monty Mouw

Design: Catalogtree

Sound logo: Roc Jiménez de Cisneros

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

when we image the earth, we imagine another by Sophie Dyer & Sash Engelmann (open-weather)

SONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 2022

15 October 2022

Likeminds, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

‘As the weather image grew, Miel’s consciousness expanded, bending to the curvature of the Earth. Far from an out-of-body experience, the feeling was one of being profoundly situated: sandwiched between the sun-warmed Land, particle-laden air, cloud, satellite and cosmos.’ (S. Dyer, S. Engelmann, ‘When I image the earth, I imagine another’, Ecoes #3, Sonic Acts Press, 2022) Last year, on the first day of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, a network of people operating DIY satellite ground stations around the world captured a collective snapshot of the Earth and its weather systems: a ‘nowcast’ for an undecided future. Tuning into transmissions from three orbiting National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites, volunteers collected imagery and submitted field notes from their geographical locations. Combined, these contributions generated a feminist and fractal image of the Earth, and a record of conditions of climate crisis from Buenos Aires to Kinshasa to London. As open-weather, we ask: What does it mean to collectively image the Earth, and in doing so, reimagine the planet?

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

Find out more at https://sonicacts.com/archive/biennial2022 https://open-weather.community

Credit:

Curation & production: Sonic Acts

Recording: Engage! TV

Sound mastering: Monty Mouw

Design: Catalogtree

Sound logo: Roc Jiménez de Cisneros

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

Performing the Sublime Sea of Co-Mattering by Mary Maggic

SONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 2022

15 October 2022

Likeminds, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Through years of research through public ‘workshopologies’ on the project Open Source Estrogen, biohacking methodologies have proven to serve far more than spreading didactic knowledge. These protocols, which produce an existential knowing in our bodies and environments, inevitably lead to a form of collective worlding and knowledging – strategies that may help us out of ecological ruins. Combining biohacking with performance in a new dramaturgical workshop, ‘Performing the Sublime Sea of Co-Mattering’, participants embody the very agency of toxic molecules and their ongoing process of worldbuilding, emerging on the other side with a radical breakage from the past.

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

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

Credit:

Curation & production: Sonic Acts

Recording: Engage! TV

Sound mastering: Monty Mouw

Design: Catalogtree

Sound logo: Roc Jiménez de Cisneros

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

Sensing Polluted Airs by Nerea Calvillo

SONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 2022

15 October 2022

Likeminds, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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

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

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

Credit:

Curation & production: Sonic Acts

Recording: Engage! TV

Sound mastering: Monty Mouw

Design: Catalogtree

Sound logo: Roc Jiménez de Cisneros

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

Filtered Clouds_do not store in container by Hannah Mevis

27 May 2022 – OT301, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Although a vast body of water is present in the air at all times, clouds are only perceptible by a careful combination of distance, moisture density, and light. Mist and fog, despite causing low visibility, are a way for earth-bound critters to experience clouds. As they hang low and cling to surfaces, we breathe them in and absorb them through porous bodies. Drawing attention to these intimate encounters, Hannah Mevis’ artwork inspired by morning dew, 'Filtered Clouds_do not store in container', encouraged us to taste clouds. Harvested locally, the clouds were meant to be sent travelling through our digestive systems and beyond.

Curiosity towards the body and more-than-human lifeforms lies at the heart of Hannah Mevis’ artistic practice. Taking multiple, ever-changing shapes, she invites her audiences into participatory encounters such as wearing sculptures, floating a space, joining in on a political action or consuming culinary dishes while engaging with stories of food history. Currently, Hannah is focusing on states of exhaustion, alongside capturing a cumulus cloud. Night Air: Breathing with Clouds invited us to inhale deeply, sensing the fluctuations and formation processes of the atmosphere around us. The programme featured a presentation and performance by Park, a live film score performance with Sébastien Robert, a cloud tasting with artist Hannah Mevis and a screening of Ho Tzu Nyen's film 'The Cloud of Unknowing'. The evening culminated at high altitude and low pressure, with DJ sets from Emiranda, Rapala700, Bugasmurf and DJ G2G.

NIGHT AIR

Night Air is a series of Sonic Acts events that aim to make pollution visible by bringing forth the various side-effects of modernity: from exploitation of people and resources to perpetual inequalities brought about by the destruction of the environment and common land – in other words, capitalist practices that shape both our environment and human-nonhuman relations. More information about Breathing with Clouds and its participants can be found at https://sonicacts.com/archive/night-air-breathing-with-clouds

CREDITS

Curation & production: Sonic Acts

Design: Toni Brell

Video editing: Roman Ermolaev

Sound mastering: Poul Sven de Haan

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

NIGHT AIR: SHIFTING SANDS

Jeff Diamanti – Phosphate Futures: Body, Territory, Mutiny

22 April 2022 – OT301, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

In his talk ‘Phosphate Futures: Body, Territory, Mutiny’, Jeff Diamanti unfolds the figurative force of elemental phosphorus across four fields on Earth: Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Port of Elizabeth, South Africa; Laâyoune, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic; and the moraine of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Jeff Diamanti is Assistant Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Amsterdam. His book ‘Climate and Capital in the Age of Petroleum’ (2021) tracks the political and media ecology of fossil fuels across the extractive and logistical spaces that connect remote territories. His new research, Bloom Ecologies, is about phytoplankton, phosphorus, and the spectre of hypoxia. He organises a residency called FieldARTS together with Fred Carter. Digging into the relationship between sand, the history of pollution, and economy, Night Air: Shifting Sands featured an audiovisual work by Félix Blume, talks from scholars Jeff Diamanti and Michaela Büsse, as well as films from Enar de Dios Rodríguez, Maika Garnica, Ans Mertens and Yanjin Wu. In the latter part of the evening, artist Farzané delivered a performance of ‘LÖSS’, before DJs Femi, TAAHLIAH, Snufkin, and Europa took over for the night.

NIGHT AIR

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

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

CREDITS

Curation & production: Sonic Acts

Design: Toni Brell

Video editing: Marie Debarbieux

Sound mastering: Poul Sven de Haan

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

NIGHT AIR: SHIFTING SANDS

Michaela Büsse – Granular Grammar

22 April 2022 – OT301, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Michaela Büsse’s lecture and performative reading unearths how sand has become one of the Netherlands’ most important resources and focuses on the country’s centuries-long history of land reclamation. She will present clips from her new film that question how an industry that started out as protection against flooding has become serious business. Michaela Büsse is a Research Associate at the Institute of Cultural History and Theory, and Associated Investigator at the excellence cluster ‘Matters of Activity. Image Space Material’ at Humboldt University in Berlin. She is interested in the interplay of material practices, technologies, and geological processes. Digging into the relationship between sand, the history of pollution, and economy, Night Air: Shifting Sands featured an audiovisual work by Félix Blume, talks from scholars Jeff Diamanti and Michaela Büsse, as well as films from Enar de Dios Rodríguez, Maika Garnica, Ans Mertens and Yanjin Wu. In the latter part of the evening, artist Farzané delivered a performance of ‘LÖSS’, before DJs Femi, TAAHLIAH, Snufkin, and Europa took over for the night.

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

NIGHT AIR

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

CREDITS Curation & production: Sonic Acts

Design: Toni Brell

Video editing: Marie Debarbieux

Sound mastering: Poul Sven de Haan

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

NIGHT AIR: SHIFTING SANDS

Félix Blume – Desierto

22 April 2022 – OT301, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Félix Blume’s talk and ‘Desierto’ (2021, 24’) listening session transported the audience to Altiplano Potosino in central Mexico, a major gold and silver mining hub. Commissioned by ARTE Radio, the piece is filled with recordings from these elevated plains, emphasising that the desert, far from being hostile, is prolific with life. In the audiovisual work and installations of sound artist and engineer Félix Blume, listening emerges as a core tool, a means to encourage the awareness of the imperceptible, and as an act of encounter with others. Blume’s artistic practice is often collaborative, working with communities and using public space as a context within which to explore and present work. Intrigued by myths and their contemporary reinterpretations, he hones in on human dialogues with both inhabited natural and urban environments, tuning into what voices can say beyond words. Blume's pieces have been broadcasted by radio stations around the world. A recipient of the Paysage Sonore Prize for the video piece ‘Curupira, Creature of the Wood’ (2018), Blume was also presented with the Pierre Schaeffer prize for ‘Los Gritos de México’ (2015) at the Phonurgia Nova Awards. He has participated in festivals and exhibitions including LOOP Barcelona, Ex Teresa, Arts Santa Monica, CTM, Thailand Biennale, IFFR, etc. Blume resides between France, Mexico, and Brazil. Digging into the relationship between sand, the history of pollution, and economy, Shifting Sands featured an audiovisual work by Félix Blume, talks from scholars Jeff Diamanti and Michaela Büsse, as well as films from Enar de Dios Rodríguez, Maika Garnica, Ans Mertens and Yanjin Wu. In the latter part of the evening, artist Farzané delivered a performance of ‘LÖSS’, before DJs Femi, TAAHLIAH, Snufkin, and Europa took over for the night.

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

NIGHT AIR

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

CREDITS

Curation & production: Sonic Acts

Design: Toni Brell

Video editing: Marie Debarbieux

Sound mastering: Poul Sven de Haan

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

Out of Focus: Down the Crimson Cliffs, past the Fjord of the Dead, over the Signal Mountain by Louis Braddock Clarke & Zuzanna Zgierska

31 March 2022 – Ot301, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

In a talk about their audiovisual project, ‘Out of Focus’, Louis Braddock Clarke and Zuzanna Zgierska track down the widely dispersed fragments of a meteorite that fell thousands of years ago in Imnaminomen, Greenland. Previously hidden under the ice cap, the deposits have become an open invitation for explorative extraction. Their talk stems from field work in the region and brings forth stories that intersect geological events, mineral extraction and postcolonialism. On Thursday 31 March 2022, Sonic Acts continued the event series Night Air with Melting Cores at OT301 in Amsterdam. This gathering got to the heart of matter – a place of reaction and fusion, where insights are generated and imaginations proliferate. Featuring talks, films, performances and DJ sets, Melting Cores explored the politics of climate archiving, elemental collapse, and the (de)centralisation of cultural perspectives.

NIGHT AIR

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

CREDITS

Curation & production: Sonic Acts

Design: Toni Brell https://tonibrell.de

Video: Marie Debarbieux https://mariedebarbieux.wixsite.com

Sound mastering: Poul Sven de Haan faboem.nl

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