‘Everywhere is a here, isn’t it?’ On Toxic Entanglements by Antonia Alampi SONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 2022 15 October 2022 Likeminds, Amsterdam, The Netherlands ‘Human actors strive to interpret, define, or contain the toxic, but how are they also acted upon? Or [...] what happens when the dump is in us? What is the duality of contamination that emerges when we think of toxicity as an ongoing and morphing process?’ (Chloe Taft, ‘What is TOXIC?’, TOXIC: A Symposium on Exposure, Entanglement, and Enduran...
Oct 15, 2022•35 min
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 te...
Oct 15, 2022•33 min
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 inste...
Oct 15, 2022•30 min
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...
Oct 15, 2022•30 min
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...
Oct 15, 2022•26 min
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 i...
Oct 15, 2022•31 min
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 intim...
May 27, 2022•24 min
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 engin...
Apr 22, 2022•19 min
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 Huma...
Apr 22, 2022•39 min
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...
Apr 22, 2022•37 min
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 explor...
Mar 31, 2022•44 min
NIGHT AIR: SHOCK WAVES Technical Involution by Yann Leguay 5 November 2021 – OT301, Amsterdam, The Netherlands In his lecture ‘Technical Involution’, artist Yann Leguay speaks to the dematerialisation of sound and the evolving effects of interfaces. He follows with a performance of ‘Volta’, based on an electrical arc produced by a plasma speaker so powerful that it emanates magnetic disturbance. Yann Leguay’s work focuses on the notions of dematerialisation, the use of interfaces and the materia...
Nov 05, 2021•37 min
NIGHT AIR: SHOCK WAVES Elena Cohen – Sonic Weapons and Policing: A New York City Case Study 5 November 2021 – OT301, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Sonic weapons like the Long-Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), ‘roof knocking’, or ‘music torture’ are frequently used as part of the arsenal of state violence. During Night Air: Shock Waves, Elena Cohen presented a series of case studies demonstrating how these tools are deployed in protest, detention, and warfare, causing a range of harm from disorientation...
Nov 05, 2021•19 min
NIGHT AIR: SHOCK WAVES María Edurne Zuazu – Between Shouting and Shooting 5 November 2021 – OT301, Amsterdam, The Netherlands In her talk ‘Between Shouting and Shooting’, María Edurne Zuazu introduces sonic weapons like the Long-Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), ‘roof knocking’, or ‘music torture', which rely on high-intensity and focused sound to suppress individuals by impairing their auditory systems. María Edurne Zuazu works in music, sound, and media studies, researching the intersections of ma...
Nov 05, 2021•15 min
NIGHT AIR: SOIL SAMPLES 24 April 2021 - Online Transmission Soil Samples gathers four artists and researchers for performances, presentations and discussions addressing the topic of soil and its geopolitical, colonial, and bodily entanglements. The panel is made up of sound artist Felicity Mangan, researcher and 'tiny miner' Martin Howse, biogeochemist and critical ecologist Kunal Palawat working in tandem with visual artist Dorsey Kaufmann. The event was transmitted online from Rotterdam on Sat...
Apr 21, 2021•2 hr 18 min
EXHAUST – A ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION ON OIL AND DATA 27 February 2021 - Online Transmission Curated by Sonic Acts OVEREXPOSED artistic research resident, writer and theorist Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, Exhaust features political and environmental anthropologist Omolade Adunbi, media artist and programmer Ryan Kuo, artist and geographer Helen Pritchard and interdisciplinary researcher Andrea Sempértegui, as well as moderation by critic, curator and art historian Murtaza Vali. The event was transmitted ...
Feb 27, 2021•1 hr 34 min
SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020 Nadim Samman – As We Used to Float / Iroojrilik 23 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Curator Nadim Samman gives a performative lecture that takes to the psychology and aesthetic of the sea, drawing on his explorer’s path through art as co-founder of the Antarctic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015 and 1st Antarctic Biennale in 2017. His work has carried him from Moscow to Marrakech to Lima, uncovering the secrets of remote art and the mutual...
Jun 18, 2020•38 min
SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020 Dehlia Hannah – Cloud Walking: Meditations on 'A Year Without a Winter' 23 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Lauded curator and professor Dehlia Hannah delivers a lecture stemming from her environment-focussed publications and research projects. The meeting point of climate change and art – from the volcanic eruption that led to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Paolo Soleri’s utopian architecture in experimental town Arcosanti – is an estuary that ...
Jun 15, 2020•45 min
SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020 Lukáš Likavčan – Introduction to Comparative Planetology 23 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Errata: The lecturer would like to correct the crediting for Holly Herndon's 'Extreme Love’ track from her PROTO album and add co-authors Jenna Sutela and Lilly Anna Haynes. Theorist Lukáš Likavčan collaborates on art projects, including the simulation alt’ai, questioning machine protocols in communicating with environments. Exploring imaginations of Ear...
Jun 11, 2020•40 min
SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020 DESIGN EARTH: Rania Ghosn – Geostories 23 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Architects Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy co-founded DESIGN EARTH to engage with geography in addressing humanity’s relationship to the Earth through architecture. From Monaco to Mexico City, their research develops projects around concepts such as hypothetical volcanos, the ‘Pacific Cemetery’ where satellites go to die and a methane aviary as waste disposal unit render...
Jun 08, 2020•41 min
SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020 Underground Division: Helen Pritchard + Jara Rocha – Rock Damages 22 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam The Netherlands The *Underground Division* is an action-research collective of different people based in London, Brussels and Barcelona. They are interested in technologies around subsurface rendering – a trans*feminist undercurrent exists in all of their projects intelligently engaging with the environment. Their lecture at Sonic Acts on this intuitive and cutt...
Jun 04, 2020•49 min
SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020 Daniel Mann – Healing and Killing in the Underground 22 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands London-based filmmaker and writer Daniel Mann explores how image production shapes perceptions of armed conflict, colonisation and climate emergency. His films have screened internationally, including Motza el hayam (Low Tide) (2017) which premiered at the Berlinale’s Forum, and Salarium which was presented at the Sonic Acts Academy in 2018. Daniel Mann’s ta...
Jun 01, 2020•21 min
SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020 Marjolijn Dijkman + Toril Johannessen – On 'Reclaiming Vision' 22 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Note: Marjolijn Dijkman joined Toril Johannessen for the Q&A that followed the lecture On 'Reclaiming Vision' Bacteria, algae and other microbes are essential for the very being of life on earth. Marjolijn Dijkman and Toril Johannessen warn us that every second breath we take is produced by algae in the oceans. Those ideas are beautifully visua...
May 28, 2020•23 min
SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020 Anja Kanngieser – Listening to Ecocide 22 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands For political geographer and sound artist Anja Kanngieser, sound is the sense mechanism that drives their work – from a documentary interlacing stories on resisting deep sea mining in Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu to an audio walk on rising sea levels. As an academic, their work creatively amplifies social justice claims around politics and climate change. Anja Kanngieser’...
May 25, 2020•48 min
SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020 Nabil Ahmed – Ecocide Forensics 22 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands As founder of the project INTERPRT, artist, writer, researcher and musician Nabil Ahmed makes a clarion call for international criminal law to protect against ecological impunity. The environmental justice project that has worked with Princeton and renowned art institutions leans on spatial design to consider ecological visual culture, investigating at-risk regions like bio-dive...
May 21, 2020•54 min
SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020 Terike Haapoja – Vulnerability, Community, Animality – The Art of Being Here with Others 22 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands New York-based artist Terike Haapoja represented Finland at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013). Her projects and collaborations, including those in collaboration with Laura Gustafsson, challenge human-centric perspectives. Gustafsson&Haapoja enacted a trial in which eight-year prison sentences were given for killing wolve...
May 18, 2020•47 min
SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020 T. J. Demos – Beyond the End of the World 22 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Celebrated writer T. J. Demos rarely leaves a seat empty at his talks on politics, ecology and art, often attending to decoloniality within nature. His most recent book addresses the occlusions embedded in the academic use of the term ‘Anthropocene’ (human-caused planetary change) in shielding problems as opposed to opening inroads for change made accessible by artist...
May 14, 2020•38 min
@speakermusic speaks to @arifonline about the origins of techno, un/available historical nostalgia and a HECHA hat he is wearing that says: Make Techno Black Again. This is the third episode of the Sonic Acts x Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee podcast series on the occasion of Sonic Acts Academy 2020, taking place in Amsterdam 21 - 23 February. MUSIC Speaker Music - with empathy The Other People Place - Let Me Be Me Speaker Music - without excess Young Paint & Actress - Travel Paint Zadie Smith on NPR D...
Feb 17, 2020•48 min
Lukáš Likavčan and Leonardo Dellanoce speak about extinction, spectres and the game Death Stranding. They discuss how the future influences the present and how computer modelling fails to predict the Australian forest fires. This is the second episode of the Sonic Acts x Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee podcast series on the occasion of Sonic Acts Academy 2020, taking place in Amsterdam 21 - 23 February. Read more at 2020.sonicacts.com Theorist Lukáš Likavčan collaborates on art projects, including the simu...
Jan 23, 2020•45 min
Sadaf speaks to Ivan Cheng in this first episode of the Sonic Acts x Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee podcast series on the occasion of Sonic Acts Academy 2020, taking place in Amsterdam 21 - 23 February. Read more about both artists below. 2020.sonicacts.com Sadaf H Nava (Sadaf) is an Iranian-born, New York City-based composer and visual artist whose multidisciplinary interventions include sound, film, painting, performance and text. Sadaf’s layered and cinematic visuals, sonics and confrontational perform...
Jan 14, 2020•33 min
