Sonic Acts is an interdisciplinary arts organisation based in Amsterdam. 

Founded in 1994 to present new developments in electronic and digital art forms, Sonic Acts has gained prominence with its biennial international festival — an intensive art, theory and technology gathering motivated by changes in the ecological, political, technological and social landscape. Sonic Acts is also a leading platform for international projects, research and the commissioning and co-production of new artworks, often working together with local and international partner organisations such as independent and institutional cultural incubators, universities and kindred festivals.

In the course of its 30-year history, Sonic Acts has been a site for experimentation: a place to exchange, think, create, learn, and act. By presenting artistic investigations and research, Sonic Acts aims to advance experimentation and in turn provide a podium for dynamic perspectives that can be tools for discovery, growth, development, and emancipation – vital to understanding the complexities of our contemporary world.
 
With a focus on talent development, Sonic Acts supports a community of emerging artists through the residency and mentorship programmes [Overexposed](https://sonicacts.com/discover/overexposed) and [Underexposed](https://sonicacts.com/discover/underexposed), as well as through the commissioning and production of new artworks. The festival and year-round activities bring together artists, curators, critical thinkers and a curious, diverse audience. Next to its biennial festival, Sonic Acts organises [Workshops](https://sonicacts.com/archive/filter/Workshops), reading and listening groups focused on applied knowledge and addressing ecological concerns; and [Night Air](https://sonicacts.com/discover/night-air), a programme about pollution combining in-depth talks with films, live performances, and a club night. Sonic Acts publishes the magazine _[Ecoes](https://sonicacts.com/archive/ecoes )_ about art in the age of pollution, as well as books, music releases, and online publications in connection to its festival, commissioned works, and research projects.
 
Through this wide range of cross-disciplinary programmes, Sonic Acts explores the rapidly changing relationship between art, science, technology, and politics. The exhibitions, club nights, screenings, workshops, and symposia are grounds for radical audiovisual performances and installations, contemporary visual art, avant-garde film, progressive club music, and innovative new media, celebrating and fuelled by compelling artistic and critical perspectives.
 
Sonic Acts partners with a number of institutions across projects. As an ongoing member of both de [Zaak Nu](https://www.dezaaknu.nl/over-ons) and [MOKER](https://moker.amsterdam/), they join local forces to support the presentation and development of visual arts in Amsterdam and the Netherlands. Other completed collaborative projects have included the four-year art, research and commissioning project [Re-Imagine Europe](https://re-imagine-europe.eu/), initiated by Sonic Acts and organised in collaboration with ten cultural organisations across Europe; the [Progress Bar](https://sonicacts.com/discover/progress-bar) series, highlighting the latest tendencies in radical sound and club culture alongside urgent conversations about politics and society at large; the [Sonic Acts Academy](https://2020.sonicacts.com/about), a biannual forum dedicated to artistic research; and [Murmansk Prospekt](https://murmanskprospekt.net/), a collaboration exploring the impact of human beings on the planet. Earlier projects include the international research and commissioning project [Dark Ecology](https://sonicacts-frontend.vercel.app/discover/dark-ecology), as well as the programming of three editions of the [Kontraste Festival](https://sonicacts-frontend.vercel.app/discover/kontraste) in Krems, Austria.

History

The Sonic Acts Archive collects documentation about works, events, and people, including audio-visual material, essays, interviews and publications that have been presented across Sonic Acts’ multi-faced programming.

Having evolved from a niche event for enthusiasts, blending academic music with cutting-edge electronic sounds, into a thematic festival and commissioning body that foregrounds the cross-pollination of art, music, science and technology, the institutional archive generated as a result focuses on the production of new media art. It documents the processes of creating new media works and practitioners’ engagement with “new technologies”, the networks of people (artists, curators, producers, and technicians that attend to it) and the material histories of tools and procedures used by artists (across visual, sound and film media) to present and create such works. Finally, it illuminates the crucial role of the festival as a site of creation of artistic work, equivalent in importance to the artist's studio, the darkroom or the writer’s desk – a goal that echoes the intentions behind the very founding of Sonic Acts Festival back in 1994.

The Sonic Acts Archive advocates for social memory, for sensorial experiences and ‘hard to discipline’ artworks and performances that require specific presentational formats and participatory audiences of a festival setting to exist.

The physical archive is currently accessible by appointment. Access to material or assistance with research projects can be arranged by contacting us at [archive@sonicacts.com](mailto:archive@sonicacts.com).

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**Funders 2023–2024**\
[Creative Industries Fund NL](https://www.stimuleringsfonds.nl/en)\
[Amsterdam Fund for the Arts](https://www.amsterdamsfondsvoordekunst.nl/en/)\
[Cultuurloket DigitALL](https://cultuurloketdigitall.nl/)\
[Mondriaan Fund](https://www.mondriaanfonds.nl/en/homepage-2/)\
[Provincie Noord-Holland](https://www.noord-holland.nl/)\
[Netherlands Film Fund](https://www.filmfonds.nl/)\
[Fonds 21](https://www.fonds21.nl/)\
[Hartwig Art Foundation](https://www.hartwigartfoundation.nl/)\
[Het Cultuurfonds](https://www.cultuurfonds.nl/)\
[Cultural Participation Fund](https://cultuurparticipatie.nl/)\
[Performing Arts Fund NL](https://fondspodiumkunsten.nl/)\
[Stichting Zabawas](https://www.zabawas.nl/)\
[Gravin van Bylandt Stichting](https://www.bylandtstichting.nl/)\
[Re-Imagine Europe](https://re-imagine-europe.eu/), co-funded by the European Union\
[Erasmus+](https://erasmus-plus.ec.europa.eu/)

**Partners, Collaborators & Friends**\
A4, Academy of Motion Pictures Museum, All Rent, Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, Antenne Books, ArtScience Interfaculty, ArtEZ, Atheneum, BeamSystems, BEK – Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts, Berlin Art Book Fair and Festival, Bimhuis, Borealis Festival, Canal++, De Appel, de Bijloke, De Zaak Nu, Disruption Network Lab, Elevate Festival, Environmental Humanities UvA, Eye Filmmuseum, Field Station Friesland, FieldARTS, Forte Marghera, Garage Noord, Galerie Khoshbakht, Goethe-Institut Niederlande, Hackers & Designers, Het Hem, Het Lage Noorden, Hogeschool voor Kunsten Utrecht, Idea Books, INA GRM, Institut Français NL, Jacuzzi, JaJaJaNeeNeeNee, kanaal40, Kentalis, Kontejner, Kontrapunkt, La Biennale di Venezia, Ledlease, Looiersgracht 60, Michel Waisvisz Archief, MOKER PO_i, Muziekgebouw, NADD, Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis, Nieuwe Instituut, OT301, Oude Kerk, Paradiso, PAV – Parco Arte Vivente, Partyzaan, Radio Web MACBA, Radio Worm, Rijksakademie, Ruigoord, Rupert, SALWA, San Seriffe, Semibreve, Showcare, Singelkerk, SoundLAB, Spatial Media Laboratories, Stack Magazines, Stichting de Vrolijkheid Almere, Stichting Huygens-Fokker, Stichting IMC Weekendschool, Studio405, STUK, Subbacultcha, Teatro alle Tese, Tempel, Underbelly, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Universiteit Utrecht, University of Hong Kong, W139, We Are Public, WG Theatertechniek, Willem Twee Studios, Zone2Source


Funders

Stichting Sonic Acts is door de Belastingdienst aangewezen als culturele Algemeen Nut Beogende Instelling (ANBI). Deze status geeft donateurs de mogelijkheid een financiële gift fiscaal van de belasting af te trekken.

**Bank- en factuurgegevens**\
KvK: 34198520\
BTW NR: NL814129201B01\
RSIN: 814129201\
IBAN: NL31RABO0115136169\
BIC: RABONL2U\
Adres:

Stichting Sonic Acts\
Weteringschans 6-8\
1017SG\
Amsterdam

**Directeur**\
Lucas van der Velden

**Raad van Toezicht**\
Mariette Dölle\
Nduka Mntambo\
Joost Rekveld (Voorzitter)


Sonic Acts hanteert de salarisrichtlijn van De Zaak Nu. De raad van toezicht verricht haar werkzaamheden onbezoldigd.

**Doelstelling**\
De stichting heeft ten doel het bevorderen van activiteiten en onderzoek op het gebied van de electronische muziek, de nieuwe media, kunst en cultuur en voorts alles wat daarmee inde in de meest brede zin des woords verband houdt of daartoe bevorderlijk kan zijn.

[Annual Report 2021](https://portal.sonicacts.com/uploads/Sonic_Acts_Annual_Report_2021_38ba1ba1d3.pdf?updated_at=2022-10-12T08:18:44.351Z)\
[Annual Report 2022](https://portal.sonicacts.com/uploads/Sonic_Acts_Annual_Report2022_LR_81c55f78bd.pdf?updated_at=2023-09-14T14:58:52.187Z)\
[Annual Report 2023](https://portal.sonicacts.com/uploads/Sonic_Acts_Annual_Report_2023_10ca0867bc.pdf?updated_at=2024-11-27T16:47:31.474Z)

[Jaarrekening 2021](https://portal.sonicacts.com/uploads/Sonic_Acts_Jaarrekening_2021_c5c97ce666.pdf?updated_at=2023-04-11T11:23:29.806Z)\
[Jaarekening 2022](https://cms.sonicacts.com/uploads/Sonic_Acts_Jaarrekening_2022_79954f3f5c.pdf)\
[Jaarrekening 2023](https://portal.sonicacts.com/uploads/uploads/Sonic_Acts_Jaarrekening_2023_5cf5cd5027.pdf?updated_at=2024-10-15T13:22:57.836Z)

[Download het Standaardformulier publicatieplicht ANBI algemeen](https://cms.sonicacts.com/uploads/standaardform_pubplicht_anbi_algemeen_2023_900a94ce57.pdf?updated_at=2024-10-16T08:40:05.774Z).

[Hoofdlijnen beleidsplan](https://portal.sonicacts.com/uploads/25501789_f26cec10d2.pdf?updated_at=2023-04-11T11:25:54.092Z).


ANBI

We do not have any vacancies at this time.

Vacancies

Sonic Acts aims to provide a safe and open forum for everyone. We are committed to creating a positive experience for our audience and artists free of intimidation, harassment, discrimination, aggression, sexism, and threatening or disrespectful language or behaviour regardless of gender identity, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, race, ethnicity, or religion. 

We follow and uphold this Code of Conduct in everything we do and it applies to everyone involved – both working or visiting Sonic Acts events. We also communicate it to all participating artists, our employees, partners, and freelancers who work with us. 

Sonic Acts reserves the right to revoke access to events for those who engage in inappropriate behaviour. If someone reports a breach of this Code during our events or in our online spaces, we will work with the complainant to determine an appropriate response. Please notify our staff members or email us at [info@sonicacts.com](mailto:info@sonicacts.com).

Remember to…\
… encourage a safe environment free from harassment and discrimination\
… be actively inclusive and challenge all discriminatory behaviours\
… respect boundaries and be mindful that each person has different boundaries\
… be aware of and challenge your own prejudices and privileges\
… respect how people choose to identify\
… listen if someone challenges you about your own behaviour\
… take care of your health and safety\
… respect the privacy of others

Code of Conduct

These house rules apply to both Sonic Acts organisation and employees and the visitors of its events. When buying a ticket to our events you agree to the following conditions and instructions given by the (event) staff. For all cases and/or situations not provided for in the house rules, the organisation reserves the right to impose additional rules verbally and/or in writing to which the visitor is bound.
 
The regulations have been drawn up to ensure order and safety during events:
 
- If ticket irregularities are discovered, such as false and/or duplicate tickets, or an attempt to gain access without a valid ticket, access will be denied, and a report will be made to the police.
- Tickets purchased online are strictly personal and non-transferable. You may be asked to identify yourself with a valid ID.
- Entering the event site is entirely at the visitor's own risk. The organisation is not liable for any injuries or damage caused to visitors and/or visitors' goods. This also includes theft and loss.
- Bringing professional sound recording and video equipment is not permitted, unless accreditation has been agreed in writing with the organisation.
- It is not permitted to distribute flyers, undertake promotional activities or trade goods on or near the event site without consultation with the organisation.
- The judgment of the security staff is binding. If prohibited items are found, you will be handed over to the police. Confiscated items will not be returned.
- During Sonic Acts events photo and sound recordings are made. Upon arrival, visitors tacitly give the organisation permission to reproduce, make public and/or use these recordings for promotional purposes. Would you rather not have us use a photo of you? Please contact us at [info@sonicacts.com](mailto:info@sonicacts.com) and we will remove the photo(s) in question.
- The house rules of the location have priority over these rules. If there are no house rules, rules drafted here will apply.
- In the event of disruptive behaviour, Sonic Acts and/or the venue reserves the right to remove individuals, as well as deny further access to the site and/or to the Sonic Acts events for a specified or indefinite period of time on the basis of Article 138 of the Criminal Code and Sonic Acts Code of Conduct.

House Rules

If you have any questions for Sonic Acts, including press enquiries, booking proposals or shop-related queries, please contact us at the relevant email address:

info@sonicacts.com\
residency@sonicacts.com\
press@sonicacts.com\
shop@sonicacts.com\
bookings@sonicacts.com

Sonic Acts\
Weteringschans 6–8\
1017 SG Amsterdam\
The Netherlands

Contact

An interdisciplinary arts organisation based in Amsterdam.

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Sonic Acts

An interdisciplinary arts organisation based in Amsterdam. 

This spring and summer, Sonic Acts Press is revisiting its back catalogue, spotlighting earlier publications through a series of excerpts, articles, and interviews. The following is from _All Thoughts Fly_ (2021), an artist book on monsters, seeing, and science by filmmakers **Sasha Litvintseva** and **Beny Wagner**, edited by [**Elvia Wilk**](https://sonicacts.com/community/elvia-wilk) – author of _Death by Landscape_ (2022) and _Oval_ (2019). Developed in tandem with their acclaimed film _A Demonstration_ (2020), the book extends on its themes  in a striking assemblage of prose and image. It reflects on both the conceptual foundations and the process behind the film’s making, translating its layered, non-linear structure into a printed medium.

→ A vital work for readers engaged with experimental cinema, critical theory, and publishing as artistic practice, _All Thoughts Fly_ is available via the [Sonic Acts webshop](https://shop.sonicacts.com/product/book-all-thoughts-fly-monster-taxonomy-film-2). The excerpt was also published in the second iteration of [_Ecoes_](https://shop.sonicacts.com/product/ecoes2).

### 'The monsters and the monstrances in cinema are our own eyes.' – Ute Holl[1](#footnotes)

A few weeks before we started shooting, one of us asked the other: but what are we actually going to film? Our project had started a couple of months prior, sparked by a brief encounter with one phrase: _taxonomies of monsters_. This combination of words was attributed to a name neither of us knew: Ulisse Aldrovandi. Coming across this term, we wondered how monsters could possibly be subjected to taxonomical categorisation. Weren’t taxonomies those modes of classification that whittle down the excesses of imagination in order to produce quantifiable objects of knowledge? And aren’t monsters, conversely, the unruly forms that emerge when imagination spills over the bounds of reason? To insert a living being into a taxonomic logic is to conceptually arrest the fluidity that animates life. Yet monsters would seem to resist this, as they are amorphous, composite beings that somehow evade the restrictions by which the world of ordered appearances must abide. Taxonomies seem to explain the world as it exists, whereas monsters, as we understood them, were supposed to be outside the realm of empirical observation.

If Aldrovandi (1522–1605) is not a household name today, this is not an accident of history. The Early Modern European cosmology whose logic he devoted his life to building – and over which he reigned supreme – was forcefully dismantled by his scientific successors. But during his lifetime, in a period driven by ongoing efforts to produce a catalogue of the world in its entirety, Aldrovandi was perhaps Europe’s most influential naturalist. His studio at the University of Bologna, a template for the modern museum, was the largest of its kind and he frequently boasted that it housed 18,000 unique specimens of everything from plants and animals to rocks and fossils. Early Modern collectors such as Aldrovandi, Athanasius Kircher, and Ferrante Imperato viewed their own labours as a mirror of God’s work. While Eden was God’s museum, in the minds of the naturalists Noah’s Ark represented the elevated human attempt to collect nature into a comprehensive whole. The _Studio Aldrovandi_ was considered the most exquisite example of such arks and was described by the visiting papal legate as the work of another Noah.[2](#footnotes) In his later years, Aldrovandi turned to publishing as a means of consolidating his taxonomic systems. Thirteen volumes on natural history, most of which were published posthumously by members of his workshop, are the result of that labour. The _Monstrorum Historia_ (1642) is one of these volumes, rendered in the same style and with the same gravitas as its neighbouring taxonomies of insects, birds, and snakes, but consisting entirely of monsters. The volume includes 98 illustrations of figures that range from monstrous births such as two-headed lambs and conjoined twins to mythical beings such as centaurs and composite creatures like the monster of Krakow (a deformed child whose limbs are covered in barking dog heads). The difference that we today perceive between monster and monstrous, between morphological deviation and mythical being, was not present in the Early Modern cosmology from which this taxonomy emerged. 

Aldrovandi’s life’s work could be seen as the crescendo of a cosmology that would lose its stakes in reality shortly after his death, that is, four years before Galileo made his first telescope (1609) and fifteen years before the publication of Francis Bacon’s treatise on logic, _Novum Organon_ (1620). In the following century, Aldrovandi’s work was deliberately written out of the story of natural history by Enlightenment scientists and philosophers eager to concretise the scientific method as absolute. In Georges Canguilhem’s words, ‘back in the age of fables, monstrosity exposed the monstrous power of the imagination. In the age of experiments, the monster is taken to be a symptom of puerility or mental malady; it indicates debility or a breakdown of reason.’[3](#footnotes) From the eighteenth century onwards, Aldrovandi’s name could just as well have been shorthand for the preposterously naive minds capable of producing such things as taxonomies of monsters.[4](#footnotes)

We set out to make a film that would unfold through our own process of learning about the presence of monsters at the very centre of Early Modern European science, translating what we learned into our own idiosyncratic cinematic forms. From the beginning, this project was as much about _how to observe_ as it was about the actual objects of observation. The histories we consulted situated our subject matter in physical objects and spaces in Italy: the volumes kept in the Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, the first anatomical theatre in the Archiginnasio, the botanical garden designed by Aldrovandi that was eventually reconstructed in the Orto Botanico in Bologna. These spaces, many open to the public, were our material links to the figures, processes, and relics that first sparked our imagination. But our initial question – what are we actually going to film? – revealed that we were trying to describe something ineffable beyond observable objects. We wanted to make a film that expressed the interwoven existence of monstrosity and taxonomy inscribed in the deep subconscious of European science – but would we manage to register any of this by placing a camera in the kinds of spaces that have been preserved as historical relics? What kind of narrative could evoke the complexity of European science’s monstrous shadow, deeply felt but somewhere beyond articulation? The last thing we wanted was to treat our subjects through the lens of historical distance, or gaze with bemusement at the primitive characters who confused curiosity with hard science. Instead, we wanted our film to capture a persistent phantom-like presence of monstrosity that haunts every attempt to define and to standardise. Reappearing in new guises from within each new knowledge regime, the monstrous exists just outside the bounds of perception and articulation. 

We contacted one institution after the other and, to our surprise, almost everyone responded, saying they’d gladly allow us to film in their libraries, museums, gardens, and parks. The original first print of the _Monstrorum Historia_ is kept in a special vault in the Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna. When Giacomo, the director of the library, told us we’d be allowed to film the original edition in the flesh, we could barely believe our luck and the apparent ease with which we were granted access to this prized historical object. The shoot was planned for 9:00 on our first morning in Bologna. Giacomo picked us up in the foyer and took us up to the library where we met the three librarians: Giovanna, Martina, and Stefania. Everything had been prepared for our visit; several books were set up on the table, ready for us to film. Looking more closely, we saw that the three books were Aldrovandi’s taxonomies of birds. Slightly embarrassed, we asked Giacomo if there might have been some mistake. No, he responded, they would never take out the original _Monstrorum Historia_. Surely we understood that one of their most valuable artifacts couldn’t be moved around too much. Despite our disappointment, it seemed rude to remind him of the earlier correspondence that had so clearly implied otherwise. We began setting up shots of the librarians with the books. The taxonomies of birds were also original, and even older, from around 1594, and also very beautiful objects. 

As we were setting up, one of the librarians asked: you probably want us to wear white gloves when you film, right? Everyone laughed. They were used to handling these objects with their bare hands, but they understood that we had come for the value of authenticity and that the camera demanded the symbolic ritual of sterilised care. Yes, if you don’t mind, we responded. Having overheard our conversation with Giacomo, they were aware of the misunderstanding and realised that the birds represented a compromise, given that we had come for the monsters. As we filmed them flipping through the pages of the books, one of the librarians, Giovanna, took particular care to highlight any examples of birds that had been classified because of their abnormalities. There were many to be found, since Aldrovandi’s fixation on physical abnormalities deemed monstrous exceeded the _Monstrorum Historia_ and applied throughout his taxonomies. 

Giovanna delighted in finding examples of birds that deviated from the norm, emphatically pointing at them in what felt like a compassionate gesture of compensation for our loss: we couldn’t film the prized object, but there was no shortage of monsters. _Here’s a monster!_ she exclaimed after flipping a page to reveal a chicken with five legs. _Questo: uno, due, tre, quattro, cinque_, touching each one of the legs on the page with her gloved hand as the 20 or so bracelets adorned with heart amulets clinked with each movement of her forearm. Her determination to help us find the monsters that so animated the imaginations of Early Modern naturalists took on this dynamic rhythm. Here, _questo, uno, due, tre, mostro_. As this unprompted performance unfolded on camera, we sensed the sudden appearance of what we had come to film but could have never foreseen. We were watching the internalised persistence of the relentless drive to define standards inscribed over centuries and generations. It’s always right there in the cadences of our speech, inscribed in the movements of our eyes, frantically scanning the world in search of any deviation from the norm. 

### 'And all other marvels prized before by the world yield to the Sacred Wood that resembles only itself and nothing else.' – Inscription in the belvedere at Sacro Bosco

What does it mean to deliberately engage with the histories that pulse through the textures of experience? In our film we wanted to touch the multiplicity of temporalities, always fractured and cacophonous, that inform a given experience of space in the present. Histories presented in museums and texts tend to subdue the past in the attempt to solidify the meanings of events. An image of the past is shaped from a conceptual distance determined by the methodological principles of a given historiography. But the persistence of the past in the present erupts in the interstices between the concrete things we attempt to lock down. 

In order to spatialise the past in a way that could be inhabited by the camera, we chose to film in Sacro Bosco ‘Parco dei Mostri’. The park, on the outskirts of the Tuscan village of Bomarzo, was built by Pier Francesco ‘Vicino’ Orsini in the 1550s as a means of coping with grief following the death of his wife. Within minutes of being inside the grounds, we felt a sense of ease wash over us. The sound, smell, and quality of light seemed to heighten the almost indescribable atmosphere of this place. Since its rediscovery and restoration, it has become a tourist attraction, but its demarcation as an object of value hasn’t detracted from the potential for discovery. In contrast to the symmetry and order of traditional Italian Renaissance gardens popular in the mid sixteenth century, this garden emerges symbiotically. Most of the structures and sculptures of monstrous beings are built into the bedrock, appearing behind curves in the path when least expected. When walking through the park, we relinquished any predetermined control of our senses. Where we expected the marks of human intervention, we encountered moments of seemingly boundless wilderness, which would then be refracted in a crafted object, engendering a constant oscillation between formed and unformed. The cavity of the famous Orcus’ mouth had been carved out of the living rock. Inside the damp interior of the mouth, the positive shape of a round table had been left in the middle, which originally served as a dining table for guests to enact the experience of simultaneously eating and being eaten. Outside is folded into the inside folded into the outside. Inscribed on the upper lip of the mouth are the words _ogni pensiero vola_, which translates as ‘all thoughts fly’ or ‘all reason departs’. 

The otherworldly, the profane, the perverse are elevated to the sacred in this park, not as a provocation but as a fundamental acceptance of uncertainty in the world. The profound ease we experienced as we slowly filmed and lingered there for hours seemed to be a product of being in a space that was not built to deliberately deny these forces and their coexistence with the ordered appearances of power. Even more so than the sculptural renditions of mythical and monstrous beings, we felt this in our bodies as we moved through the slight aberrations and subtle asymmetries in the architectural layout: an off-kilter floor or a mismatch in the number of columns on either side of a promenade. Neither of us had ever encountered a monument to the complexity of experience rendered on this scale and with such grandiose means. Constructions on this magnitude tend to be testaments of the type of power that can’t afford the presence of uncertainty amidst the abstractions of order. But here, a certain mode of perceiving the natural world had been translated into a particular organisation of space. It felt like the paths we walked along had not been designed to clear the way between point A and point B but to guide us along the peripheries of knowing. These formal relations, through which the space was built 500 years ago, reverberated through us in the present, shaping the exchange between our bodies and the landscape. 


The relations inscribed in the park travel and pulsate across time and through us, defying any attempt to place history at a distance and transgressing any perceived divisions between our bodies and surroundings. This spatial and temporal cross-contamination is not unlike the relations present in the Biblioteca Universitaria, which reverberated through the librarian Giovanna’s body as her preconscious acceptance of standards guided her eyes and hands to eagerly count the extraneous feet on each monstrous chicken. That particular library, as perhaps most libraries, was conceived as a manifestation of the taxonomic drive to understand, a place where difference is catalogued, and metamorphosis arrested. These relations are not limited to intellectual tradition: they are physiological, inscribed over and over into the restlessness of our gaze, and the automation of our movements. 

Perhaps the greatest tension between the monster and taxonomy is the tension between the particular and the universal. Each monster is the most singular of things, resembling nothing but itself, while every taxonomy is designed to universalise the individual, where a chicken stands in for every chicken in the fictitious stability of species. We experience this tension between the particular and the universal in the medium of moving image over and over again, through all of its technological reconfigurations. Moving image is at once monster and taxonomy: a system that allows the world’s irregularities to flow through it while subjecting every point of difference to the universalising logic of its technical relations. The drive to taxonomize the world must produce monsters because any taxonomic logic is always incomplete. Those things that inevitably deviate from its norms will seem monstrous. It is in this sense that moving image is a monstrous medium. Once an impression passes through the medium, it is inscribed with the tension of the particular and the universal. But perhaps because moving image has been so central to shaping many of our prevalent perceptual paradigms, it is equally capable of rupturing and reconfiguring them. It is in this vein that we have sought to apply its particular powers. 

_A Demonstration_ (2020), the film that catalysed this project, was an attempt to inhabit a way of perceiving and organising the world that otherwise seems to have receded into the temporal distance that we call history. As we looked for traces, inscriptions, and reverberations in the spaces that have been preserved as relics of those ways of looking, we sought to put them in motion, translating them through the formal constraints of moving image. Our aim was not to document or provide evidence of the divergences between past ways of looking and our own; there are volumes of literature that do that very well. Rather, we wanted to summon the uncertain and unquantifiable spectres of previous knowledge regimes and the ways in which they continue to contaminate our own modes of looking. In the same vein, this book has not sought to explain or contextualise the film but rather to translate the intersection of our own experience and historical records into the formal parameters of text and still images on the page. Here, we draw from the film, just as we draw from the histories it engages with, as a means to perpetuate a process of transformation in each present, singular moment. 


Full text is available via the [Sonic Acts webshop](https://shop.sonicacts.com/product/book-all-thoughts-fly-monster-taxonomy-film-2).

All Thoughts Fly

This conversation is one of a three-part series documenting the [Underexposed 2024 mentorship programme](https://sonicacts.com/archive/underexposed), a Sonic Acts initiative that focuses on supporting artists at the beginning of their careers. Explore how each participant’s project has evolved throughout the programme by following up on interviews with [**Hanchen Zhang**](https://sonicacts.com/archive/reverberations-of-power) and [**Jurel Bakker**](https://sonicacts.com/archive/jurel-bakker-lichen-and-azolla) on our website.

Objects are never truly inert. They give shape to existence, holding histories and collecting imprints, responding to the touch of time. From the clothes we wear to the spaces we inhabit, materials interact with us – they absorb, become stained, and regenerate. This notion of object agency, or what theorist Jane Bennett calls ‘thing-power’, is central to **Joseph Rouhana**’s practice. Their work considers how non-human substances – fibres, dyes, and biological matter – participate in cycles of transformation, blurring the boundary between subject and object, human and environment.

A Lebanese filmmaker and media artist, Rouhana first explored these ideas in the digital realm, treating the internet as a ‘hyperobject’ – an omnipresent force that constructs and deconstructs identity. Their past installation performance, _All About Eva_ (2021), examined this fluidity, engaging with digital culture’s perpetual remixing. With the ongoing artistic project, developed during the Underexposed mentorship programme, _MKATLE_ (مكتلة) – meaning ‘clustered’ in Lebanese Arabic – Rouhana shifts into the physical realm, working primarily with fabric and embroidery. Yet their core inquiries remain the same: How do materials act upon us? What stories do they tell? How do breakdown and replenishment exist in constant flux?

At the centre of the multimedia installation of _MKATLE_ is a shroud – a traditional linen burial cloth – reimagined as a living entity, containing memories and narratives of metamorphosis within its very weave. Inspired by ancient textiles and crafted from fibres sourced from the human body, it blurs the line between decay and renewal. Drawing on the Lebanese practice of _mouneh_ (المونة) – the seasonal conserving of food through fermentation, pickling, and curing – this hybrid garment becomes a site of transition rather than finality. Accompanying the shroud, film and visual art elements expand on posthumanist themes, creating a space where materiality, myth, and storytelling converge. 

In this interview, Rouhana reflects on permanence, urging us to reconsider the boundaries between what is discarded and what is preserved, between what is alive and what lingers.


**Dominika Mikołajczyk: In _MKATLE_, cycles of decay and renewal are woven into biological, cultural, and crafted materials. What drew you to these themes, and how do they connect to your broader practice?**

**Joseph Rouhana**: I'm deeply interested in how decay, destruction, regeneration, and creation are forces in constant flux. These concepts permeate all of my research – the idea that existence itself is fluid, with every state of being in constant motion. In the past, I explored this through the virtual realm – a space of infinite modulation, which is being continually remade by online communities and pop culture. The digital world – where it is possible to project, distort, and reassemble oneself – became a reflection of how identity and materiality are never static. 

These ideas continue to shape my ongoing project, _MKATLE_. In my research for this work, I became fascinated by the breaking down and reassembling of matter. Just as digital entities can be remixed, so too can the physical. Where I once deconstructed and reassembled my body in virtual form, I now work with flesh, fibre, and organic matter, pushing my exploration of material impermanence into the tangible world.

**DM: Central to your installation is the shroud –  a traditional linen burial garment. Can you share more about its symbolism?**

**JR**: Western burial rituals have always felt foreign to me – the coffin, the open casket, the formal viewing of a body. In Lebanon, the deceased is wrapped in a shroud, and mourning is communal, centred on gathering rather than spectacle.

The first corpse I saw in real life was my grandfather’s. He wasn’t in a coffin but laid on a table, his head lying on a pillow, and his body covered with white cloth. Around him, my mother and her sisters wailed, their bodies rocking in rhythmic grief. But my earliest memory of death was neither familial nor domestic – I remember watching a news segment showing bodies wrapped in white fabric after an explosion in Beirut. These encounters were catalysts for me – I realised death was not just an abstract concept but something material, something that could happen suddenly.

As I grew older, I witnessed the same practice repeated in different contexts. My Muslim friends also wrapped their dead, reinforcing the shroud as more than fabric – it was an extension of the body, much like clothing, shaping presence even in death. This made me think of the function of fashion and dressing, which, to me, is intentional; it transforms, mediates, and carries meaning. The shroud does the same – it is a final gesture of care that acknowledges the body’s continued existence in another form.

In Lebanese culture, cremation is taboo. As a child, I saw it as a defilement of the body – an unnatural severance. But I now understand it as another form of evolution rather than erasure. Still, its abruptness unsettles me. Unlike laying a body in a shroud or mausoleum, which honours continuity, cremation feels like a rupture I struggle to reconcile with even today.

The body, even as it decays, retains agency – it decomposes, changes, and interacts with its surroundings. The shroud, more than just a garment, becomes a site of transition, where fabric, flesh, and the outside world engage in an intimate, chemical kinship – a concept explored by researcher Vanessa Agard-Jones.[1](#footnotes)


**DM: You incorporate materials like blood, nails, and food waste into the fabric of the shroud. What is the significance of these elements, and how do they contribute to the larger themes of the project?**

**JR**: I see these materials not just as extensions of myself but as independent agents with their own presence. My body isn’t a singular entity – it is shaped by and interacts with external forces. Skin, for example, isn’t just an organ; it’s a threshold, absorbing and imprinting on the fabrics I wear. Hair oxidises, changes with time, and reacts to chemicals. Blood carries microbial life. These substances, often discarded – hair, dried blood, dead skin – become central in my work, preserved rather than erased.

I’m drawn to the idea of objects as hybrids. Creation and decay aren’t opposites; they feed into each other. The organic materials I use in the installation stain, erode, and transform the fabric, turning it into a living record, a cyborg-like artefact inscribed with time. There’s also something ritualistic about using body parts in this way – it recalls ancient practices where blood was a dye. It was a sacred marker – a mythical substance.
When people engage with my installation, I want them to recognise these traces – the stains and stray hairs – and feel a moment of familiarity, but also unease. Something intimate has been displaced, transformed into something ritualistic and sacred.



**DM: Myth-making is a key thread in your work, particularly through the story of Adonis and the Ibrahim River. Can you explain what happens in this myth; what is it about it that resonates with you, and how does it unfold within your work?**

**JR**: Like all myths, this one has many versions. The story I know goes like this: Adonis (or Tammuz تَمّوز), god of vegetation, was so beautiful that Astarte (عشتروت), goddess of fertility, love, and war, fell in love with him. In some retellings, a jealous Ares – god of war and one of Aphrodite’s lovers – transforms into a boar and fatally wounds Adonis by the river. As his blood spilt, it stained the water red, giving birth to the anemone flower – a symbol of life emerging from death. (Today, of course, we know the Ibrahim River turns red when rain disturbs its iron-rich clay).[2](#footnotes) My mother told me this story whenever we passed the river or visited the nearby village named after Adonis, describing how Astarte wept over his blood until the flower appeared.

Another version tells of a dispute between Astarte and her sister, resulting in Adonis splitting his time between the underworld and the earth, mirroring the seasons. This cyclical framing of death and renewal fascinates me, especially how it is tied to tangible places – the river and a cave, the Afqa Grotto, that still exist today. The Ibrahim River is where I grew up, swimming, exploring, and making my own stories. Even the name ‘Tammuz’ survives in Lebanese Arabic as the word for July –  a linguistic thread lost in other dialects.

My work is deeply tied to storytelling – it considers how myths shape identity, how places hold narratives, and how rituals connect us to the past. In centuries past, the Ibrahim River was a sacred site, linked to the cult of Adonis, where his followers performed lamentations. My ancestors once gathered at the river to mourn and celebrate, just as people do now, though today it’s more about parties than grieving a dying god. Yet, echoes of ancient mourning persist in contemporary funeral rites and gestures of grief passed down through generations – such as wailing, rocking, and the tightening of clothes.

**DM: Can you talk a bit about the tradition of _mouneh_ (المونة)? How would you describe its significance, and what role does it play in the narrative you’re constructing?**

**JR**: _Mouneh_ is a traditional Lebanese practice of conserving seasonal produce and animal products. To me, _mouneh_ has always been synonymous with nature’s gifts – the care we take to preserve and transform what the land provides. It blends science and intuition, method and magic. Every year, my mother, aunts, and grandmother would take me to my grandparents’ house, where this ritual of preservation unfolded. My grandfather and I would gather grapes, figs, olives, cucumbers, herbs, and flowers, while inside, the real alchemy began – fermenting, drying, crushing, bottling, and sun-curing flavours to last throughout the year.

_Mouneh_ is both communal and deeply intuitive, shaped by superstition and ancestral knowledge. Within my work, I’m drawn to this interplay between ritual and preservation. _Mouneh_ is about extending life, shifting states, and breathing new meaning into what might otherwise be discarded. My practice continues this ancestral lineage, preserving not just materials but also knowledge and memory. 


**DM: You use techniques like solar dyeing, fermentation, and biohacking to create fabrics that grow, evolve, and decay. How do these experimental methods connect with the project’s themes?**

**JR**: My practice bridges the ancient and the futuristic, blending ancestral knowledge with experimental processes. Techniques like solar dyeing [which uses the heat of the sun], fermentation, and biohacking align with the ethos of _mouneh_ – they require patience, transformation, and working with organic elements rather than against them.
These methods challenge our perception of durability, embracing decay as part of an object’s lifecycle rather than something to resist. The textiles in my installation are not static; they shift, react, and decompose, mirroring natural ecosystems where nothing is truly discarded – only repurposed. This ties back to the myth of Adonis, where death and renewal flow cyclically.

Sustainability is central to this approach, but not in the way it’s often framed today. In many cultures, sustainability isn’t an effort – it’s simply how life is lived: saving, reusing, and transforming materials through inherited techniques. Contemporary discourse often treats sustainability as a challenge, shaped by corporate and political interests, but for my ancestors, it was an intuitive, natural way of being.

In my work, I reject the notion that sustainability has to be difficult. Instead, I embrace cyclical methods, treating materials not just as objects but as participants in a larger ecological and historical conversation. 

**DM: Can you expand on what you mean by ‘biohacking’ in this context?** 

**JR**: When I talk about biohacking, I’m referring to the experimental manipulation of biological materials within my garment – such as organic food waste, as well as my own hair, skin, and blood. At this stage of my research, it’s less about human augmentation in the transhumanist sense – where technology is used to extend human abilities – and more about transforming the garment itself into a hybrid entity – through dyeing, fermentation, and bacterial growth – which I connect to the practice of _mouneh_.


**DM: Beyond materials, you also plan to include audio-visual elements like ritualistic imagery, archival footage, and abstract visuals in your installation. Can you tell us more about these?**

**JR**: At heart, I’m a filmmaker and audiovisual artist, and these elements are crucial to the installation. I want to capture the essence of the cave, river, and ruins of a centuries-old temple – real, physical spaces that hold personal and cultural significance. I plan to record the sounds of the cave and the river, document my body moving through the water, and integrate clay from the site into the fabric. Alongside this, I want to archive my family’s _mouneh_ practices in a first-person, video-diary style, interwoven with speculative narration, footage of mourning rituals, and imagery of bloody rivers and burial rites. Rather than a linear narrative, these will form a fragmented glimpse into an ever-evolving myth.

These visuals will be directly embedded into the installation. The lower panels of the hybrid garment will act as floating screens, displaying projections with no visible source – giving the impression that the garment itself holds memory, history, and cultural imprint.


**DM: How has your experience in the Underexposed programme influenced the direction of _MKATLE_? Did any unexpected ideas or perspectives emerge? And looking ahead, are there any new themes or mediums you’re excited to explore in future work?**

**JR**: Underexposed shaped _MKATLE_ in ways I couldn’t have anticipated. Sonic Acts, especially curator Maud Seuntjens, provided crucial support – not just in terms of resources but as an engaged, thoughtful collaborator. Artistic practice can be isolating, and having Maud as someone who deeply understood my references and complexities helped me refine my ideas.

The project has evolved drastically from its initial concept, yet every iteration remained true to my core instincts. The programme allowed me to sharpen the connections between elements, making them more intentional and layered.

Beyond the creative process, this experience also gave me insight into the Dutch cultural scene – how my work is perceived and, importantly, how to navigate the logistical and financial realities of sustaining an artistic practice. Accessing resources requires strategic positioning, and Sonic Acts helped me understand how to frame my research and proposals effectively.

Looking ahead, I want to push my exploration of materiality even further – experimenting with new organic processes, expanding on sound and audiovisual storytelling, and deepening my engagement with speculative fiction as a means of cultural preservation.


 Mythical Cycles of Renewal and Decay

This conversation is one of a three-part series documenting the [Underexposed 2024 mentorship programme](https://sonicacts.com/archive/underexposed), a Sonic Acts initiative that focuses on supporting artists at the beginning of their career. Explore how each participant’s project has evolved throughout the programme by following up on interviews with [**Joseph Rouhana**](https://sonicacts.com/archive/Mythical-Cycles-of-Renewal-and-Decay) and [**Jurel Bakker**](https://sonicacts.com/archive/jurel-bakker-lichen-and-azolla) on our website.

Infrastructure is designed to be silent, functioning seamlessly in the background. Microprocessors, networks, cables, and circuits govern daily life, yet this heavy-duty hardware often goes unnoticed. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the digital sphere, where data is framed as weightless, instant, and immaterial. Designer **Hanchen Zhang** challenges this illusion in _[Cloud of Polyphony](https://vimeo.com/1062256859/aab566e26d?share=copy)_ – an ongoing multimedia installation and artistic research project that was showcased during the Geo—Design MA (led by [**Metahaven**](https://sonicacts.com/community/metahaven)) graduation exhibition at Design Academy Eindhoven, and was further developed through the Underexposed mentorship programme with Sonic Acts.

_Cloud of Polyphony_ unearths the hidden infrastructures of the digital realm. It features a projection wall displaying documentary footage of the aftermath of the first Big Data Expo in 2013, a sculpture of a dormant 5G cell tower reappropriated into a speaker, and an unfolding soundscape based on field recordings and data gathered by a Lidar sensor. Through this interplay of mediums, Zhang explores the paradox of the digital ‘cloud’ – an airy term that denotes something transient and untethered, yet in reality refers to a vast extractive, energy-hungry infrastructure and global industrial supply chains.

Zhang’s research took him to Guizhou, a province in southwest China, once defined by mining and hydropower, now also home to major cloud computing centres and data warehouses, which form the physical backbone of the internet, supporting everything from everyday communication to machine learning. Yet their largely invisible presence is far from neutral – it encodes the hierarchies, policies, and power structures that shape both virtual and ‘real’ worlds. _Cloud of Polyphony_ is an investigation into how power manifests in materials – how ideologies encoded in concrete influence data flows and AI decision-making.

By attuning to infrastructure rather than simply using it, Zhang repositions systems as sites of inquiry and intervention. His work urges us to reconsider digital space as a deeply material construct – one built on labour, geography, and embedded human biases.


**Dominika Mikołajczyk: We often think of the 'cloud’ as something intangible, almost as if it exists somewhere in the digital ether. But in your practice, you explore the physical and ecological systems that support it. Why is it important to rethink our understanding of the cloud, and what role do you hope art can play in shifting this perspective?**

**Hanchen Zhang**: The term 'cloud' has been abstracted, detached from its physical infrastructure, becoming synonymous with an invisible, weightless network. This abstraction is convenient for the market and technology platforms, allowing us to indulge in seamless connectivity without confronting the material costs behind it. As we integrate into this hyper-connected world, spanning different time zones and political borders, we unconsciously accept a narrative of efficiency, stripped of ecological, ethical, and geopolitical complexities.

I attempt to use art language and design to approach abstraction. Through sensory experiences – visual, auditory, spatial – my practice exposes the infrastructure underpinning technological systems. It reintroduces the ‘cloud’ as a material entity, entangled with resource extraction, energy consumption, and territorial politics. My work aims to unfold these systemic issues, using art not as a tool for answers but as a method of inquiry, challenging the neutrality of technology and highlighting the hidden costs embedded within it.

**DM: Your practice more generally involves transforming images, sounds, and data into new materialities. Can you offer some examples – how do you approach this process?** 

**HZ**: Materiality is not just about physical properties; it's about context, history, and agency. I approach images, sounds, and data not as fixed entities but as malleable agents for storytelling. A field recording isn't just ambient noise; it's an archive of place, memory, and politics. A piece of scrap metal isn't just debris; it carries traces of labour, industry, and decay.

Each material carries its own weight, temperature, and cultural associations, which I incorporate into my work as part of an expanded lexicon. By juxtaposing these materials through installation, moving image, or sonification, I explore how their unique qualities can come together to create new syntaxes. This process allows me to engage with the materials in dynamic ways, revealing how their individual characteristics interact and shape the narrative.

_Cloud of Polyphony_ evolved through continuous shifts in mediums. Initially conceived through 3D modelling and digital renders, the project expanded into moving image and later into a sound installation. Each phase introduced new questions – what does it mean to 'see' infrastructure? How can sound make hidden processes perceptible? These lines of inquiry guided the project's transition from static representation to dynamic, site-responsive interventions. 


**DM: You've described the cloud as an act of 'terraforming'. What does that mean in the context of your project?**

**HZ**: Originating from science fiction, 'terraforming' refers to engineering environments to support human life on other planets. In the context of _Cloud of Polyphony_, I use the term to describe how data infrastructure reshapes the Earth. This process isn't about making barren, alien landscapes livable; it’s about transforming territories to serve technological, economic, and political imperatives.
In Guizhou, for example, the construction of data centres didn’t just overlay existing environments – it reconfigured them. The region, once defined by its ecological and cultural diversity, has been reshaped to support resource extraction, urbanisation, and data storage. The 'cloud' becomes a force of planetary-scale engineering, driven not by the pursuit of sustainability but by the logic of optimisation and control. I want to examine these transformations, questioning what is lost – ecologically, socially, and spiritually – when environments are moulded to fit data-driven compulsions.

**DM: Can you say more about Guizhou? What drew you to this region?**

**HZ**: The province of Guizhou exists at the intersection of extraction, state infrastructure, and the speculative narrative of techno-urbanism. What drew me to this region was its contradiction – historically overlooked, it is now at the centre of the state's technological expansion. I was interested in how the flux of resource trading inscribes itself onto landscapes. Through research, I traced patterns of interregional distribution: how certain regions are designated as energy reserves for others, fulfilling economic demands dictated elsewhere. Guizhou’s emergence as a data hub follows the same logic that historically positioned it as a resource hinterland: it provides an operational foundation for larger urban centres while remaining peripheral in terms of decision-making power.

In _Cloud of Polyphony_, I approach Guizhou as a site of layered transformations, where the remnants of past extractive cycles coexist with speculative futures. The moving image component of the project follows a journey through this evolving terrain. It begins with a search for the latest Big Data Expo, an annual event showcasing advancements in AI and data strategies. Framed as a demonstration of economic growth, the gathering attracts tech giants and seeks to expand investment potential in the Big Data market. This excursion, however, led me to an unexpected discovery: the site of the very first iteration of the Expo. Now partially abandoned, this space marks the inception of China’s Big Data era, a period shaped by state policies, large-scale data collection, AI development, and digital governance. 

The footage also weaves together archival materials of local prayer rituals with images of cultural symbols that have been repurposed or erased by rapid urbanisation. For example, I incorporate the _Lu Sheng_, a traditional instrument used by the Miao minority group in their prayer rituals to communicate with God for blessings on their harvest. This instrument has since been adopted as a symbol – its visual form serving as a reference for the capital city of Guiyang's central landmark, which emerged during a decade of intense urbanisation driven by state policy investments. The company responsible for constructing the landmark was involved in the Big Data industry but reportedly declared bankruptcy last year, underscoring the volatility of the market. Through this, I seek to highlight how Guizhou's social and environmental landscape is being reshaped by large-scale development projects.

This theme is further expressed by the sound component, which blends recordings of hydraulic power engines, the mechanical hum of data centres, and the environmental cost of resource extraction. The sounds of crumbling rock formations making way for infrastructure, echoes of machines, and fragmented oral histories come together to form a polyphonic soundscape. Within _Cloud of Polyphony_, Guizhou is not just a backdrop – it is an active agent, a landscape shaped by cycles of extraction and resistance.

**DM: The sound component you mentioned is broadcast by an antenna from a 5G cell tower, a structure which you transformed into a speaker, and which stands at the heart of _Cloud of Polyphony_ as a symbol of surveillance and extraction. Can you walk us through how you arrived at this idea and the significance of the various elements of the composition?**

**HZ**: I was drawn to the conceptual and structural parallels between electromagnetic transmission and sound waves. Both rely on oscillatory motion, yet their materialities diverge. While sound requires a medium, electromagnetic waves can propagate through a vacuum. I found that the way electromagnetic waves move mirrors data-driven terraforming: it too operates invisibly, restructuring environments without leaving immediately perceptible traces. Sound, however, could make these processes tangible.

The antenna, a ubiquitous yet often unexamined instrument, became a central symbol of this project. Its conventional role is passive – receiving and transmitting signals as dictated by the market. I attempted to invert this relationship, transforming the instrument from a listening device into a speaking entity.

This led to a sculptural intervention inspired by public address (PA) systems. By reconfiguring the antenna tower with PA system projection sound characteristics, the work confronts the asymmetries of communication within centralised networks. The sound composition embedded within the structure is layered, evolving based on audience interactions. Field recordings of industrial landscapes, synthesised electromagnetic hums, and spoken fragments of speculative futures form dynamic soundscapes, shifting in response to movement. The result is an infrastructure that not only follows its programming but also continually redefines how it communicates. 


**DM: Could you share more about the role of field recordings in your practice?**

**HZ**: Field recordings are not just acoustic documents – they are sonic archives of place, memory, and affect. I collect a range of sounds – mechanical drones from data warehouses, ambient noise from urban debris, and hearsay from local communities. These recordings are both raw materials and conceptual anchors. They capture the residues of human and non-human activities, offering sensory insights into environments often overlooked. In my practice, field recordings are manipulated, layered, and juxtaposed with synthetic sounds to create compositions that destabilise the boundary between the natural and the artificial, the past and the present.

**DM: Your work weaves together theory, fiction, and ambient sound to create polyphonic narratives. What does storytelling mean in your research and how does polyphony shape your approach?**

**HZ**: Storytelling is a method of assembling fragments, a way to navigate the complexities of lived and speculative realities. Polyphony, in this context, is not just a compositional technique but a philosophical stance – an acknowledgement of multiplicity and contradiction. My narratives resist linearity; they unfold through overlapping voices, dissonant sounds, and fragmented visuals. This approach challenges dominant historiographies, creating spaces where marginalised perspectives can coexist without being subsumed into a singular narrative. In _Cloud of Polyphony_, the layering of field recordings, archival materials, and algorithmically generated sounds forms an auditory tapestry that reflects the entangled histories of technology, ecology, and culture. 


**DM: Looking back at your time during the Underexposed residency, how did it impact the direction of your project? Were there any new ideas or insights that emerged during that period?**

HZ: The Underexposed residency provided a critical space for reflection and experimentation. It encouraged me to interrogate the methodological frameworks underpinning my practice, particularly the role of machine learning in interactive installations. The residency emphasised the importance of process over product, allowing failures and unexpected outcomes to inform the work. One key insight was the potential of sound as a spatial agent, not just an auditory one. I also considered how to legitimise the adaptation of the offline language model [AI-powered processing systems that operate locally without requiring an internet connection or cloud-based servers]. This realisation led to the development of interactive soundscapes, where visitor movements modulate sonic environments, creating a dynamic dialogue between bodies and data.

**DM: The dynamic relationship between humans and machines seems central to your practice. How has this theme shaped your previous works, and where do you see it going in the future?**

**HZ**: Machines are extensions of human cognition and desire, but they also possess their own logic and agencies. In my work, I explore this reciprocity, where machines are not mere tools but co-authors of meaning. Previously, I engaged with analogue devices, examining their material aesthetics and embedded politics. As my practice evolved, I became interested in algorithmic systems, particularly how machine learning models reflect and reinforce societal biases. The future direction lies in examining decentralised technologies and the ethics of artificial intelligence. I am curious about how autonomy and agency are negotiated within human-machine collaborations and how these relationships can be reimagined beyond utilitarian paradigms.


**DM: How has studying Geo—Design shaped your artistic perspective?**

**HZ**: Geo—Design bridges the gap between design, natural science, technologies, human systems, and critical inquiry. It introduced me to systemic thinking, where design is not confined to objects but extends to infrastructures, policies, and ecologies. This has significantly influenced my approach, allowing me to focus not on isolated artefacts, but on the networks and processes that shape them. The programme also foregrounds ethics, encouraging practitioners to engage with social and environmental justice. It taught me to see design as a form of research, capable of generating knowledge and fostering critical discourse beyond aesthetic considerations.

**DM: What directions are you excited to explore in your research in the future? Are there any emerging themes, technologies, or methodologies you're eager to dive into?**

**HZ**: I am particularly interested in the intersection of sound, moving image, machine learning, and spatial practice, as well as in exploring offline language models such as GPT4ALL, which open possibilities for creating autonomous systems that evolve through interaction. I am curious about how algorithms develop ‘biases’ or ‘preferences’ based on user input, and what this reveals about agency within non-human entities. Additionally, I want to investigate the ethics of algorithmic memory – how data systems remember and forget, and the implications of these processes on collective memory. These inquiries will continue to shape my work, expanding what design can express in response to technological and ecological crises.

Reverberations of Power in a Silent Grid

This conversation is one of a three-part series documenting the [Underexposed 2024](https://sonicacts.com/archive/underexposed) mentorship programme, a Sonic Acts initiative that focuses on supporting artists at the beginning of their career. Explore how each participant’s project has evolved throughout the programme by following up on interviews with [**Joseph Rouhana**](https://sonicacts.com/archive/Mythical-Cycles-of-Renewal-and-Decay) and [**Hanchen Zhang**](https://sonicacts.com/archive/reverberations-of-power) on our website.

Agriculture is an industry built on control – of land, growth cycles, chemical inputs, and biological processes. Still, beneath its structured systems, organisms constantly resist, adapt, and signal distress in ways that often go unnoticed. Multimedia artist and researcher **Jurel Bakker** listens to these quieter modes of communication. Her practice traces the hidden exchanges between ecosystems and industry, focusing on bioindicators – organisms that reveal the impact of pollution, climate shifts, and human interference.

In past projects, such as the installation _The Milking Carousel_ (2023), Bakker has highlighted the entanglement of industrial farming and ecological imbalance through _Xanthoria parietina_, a lichen that thrives in nitrogen-heavy environments. By bringing attention to such subtle yet telling markers of toxicity, she makes visible the overlooked consequences of agricultural excess – transforming natural phenomena into data, and data into immersive, visual environments through video art, film, and photography. More recently, as part of the Underexposed mentorship programme with Sonic Acts, Bakker developed _The New Azolla Event_, an ongoing research project exploring the Azolla fern and its cyanobacterium partner _Anabaena azollae_. Fifty million years ago, this small aquatic plant triggered a planetary shift, pulling vast amounts of CO₂ from the atmosphere and cooling the Earth. Today, it spreads over polluted waters, thriving in toxicity – mirroring the paradoxes of modern industrial farming. 

Azolla’s rapid growth also results in dire environmental consequences: blocking oxygen and sunlight pathways, thus suffocating the aquatic life beneath. This dynamic between suffocation and respiration is central to Bakker’s interest in Azolla and its often-overlooked presence in rural waterways – streams, ditches, and ponds. In this conversation, she unpacks her fascination with bioindicators, the intersection of agriculture and art, and how artistic interventions can help us see – and reimagine – the systems we take for granted. Bakker’s work positions Azolla as both a historical witness and a potential key to understanding restoration and care in the face of ecological crisis. 

**Dominika Mikołajczyk: Agriculture is often discussed in terms of its large-scale, visible environmental impacts, like expansive land use and exhaustive irrigation. But the less perceptible effects often go unnoticed. What role can art play in bringing these ‘invisible’ consequences into focus?**

**Jurel Bakker**: Indeed, the more measurable impact of agriculture tends to dominate the conversation, while subtle changes, like shifts in biodiversity, soil depletion, or water contamination, often fade into the background. I think that art can make these dynamics tangible, creating a deeper, more personal understanding of these issues beyond raw data. Rather than overwhelming with statistics, it invites a more intimate engagement with the living world, fostering a sense of care and responsibility. By bringing these layers to the surface, art encourages us to look beyond the obvious and recognise the complex connections that sustain ecosystems.

**DM: Bioindicators are central to your practice. What are they and why are they so important to understanding environmental issues?**

**JB**: Bioindicators are organisms – such as plants, animals, microbes, and lichen – that respond to environmental changes, making them valuable tools for detecting pollutants and assessing ecosystem health. They help us understand the impact of human activities on the environment by revealing shifts that might otherwise go unnoticed. For example, the lichen _Xanthoria parietina_ is a useful bioindicator of ammonia pollution. When _Xanthoria parietina_ begins to grow on oak trees, it signals a shift in the landscape. Typically, the acidity of the oak’s bark is unsuitable, but increased ammonia levels from agriculture or pollution neutralise it, making it more alkaline and allowing the lichen to thrive. Through monitoring bioindicators, we can trace these changes, noticing a story of health and degradation.

Beyond its scientific function, I regard mapping bioindicators as a way to deeply engage with an ecosystem. It requires close observation, not just of the bioindicator itself but also of its surroundings – the place it grows in, the relationships it forms, and the larger environmental context. I believe that keeping track of bioindicators can foster a form of ‘passionate immersion’, where attentively mapping and understanding these organisms can lead to a deeper sense of care and connection. Therefore, by paying attention to bioindicators like lichen, we not only gain insight into ecological changes but also develop a more intimate and affective relationship with the living world.

**DM: Can you tell us more about 'passionate immersion’?**

**JB**: Passionate immersion is about developing a close, attentive relationship with the more-than-human world. It stems from multispecies studies, which emphasise the importance of observing and immersing ourselves in the lives of more-than-human beings. For me, creating art starts with noticing – with a deep curiosity about the ecosystems and species around me. It requires careful attention to what matters to other organisms and the forces that shape their existence.

I see tracking bioindicators as a form of passionate immersion because it compels us to look closely, to notice small but significant changes in the environment. In my artistic practice, I use tools like my camera and photogrammetry to deepen this engagement, capturing details that might otherwise go unnoticed. Through my work, I want to encourage viewers to experience immersion – to step into the world of non-human life and learn from it. When we engage in this manner, we open ourselves to new ways of relating to nature, not just as observers but as active participants in shared environments.



**DM: In _The Milking Carousel_ (2023), you highlight the relationship between ammonia pollution and _Xanthoria parietina_. Can you elaborate on how these particular entities appear in the work and what drew you to them?**

**JB**: This work began while I was visiting dairy farms for another research project, which developed into the multimedia installation _Honderdtonners_ (2023). Around various large, highly efficient Dutch dairy farms, I kept encountering the bright yellow lichen _Xanthoria parietina_, which was recently brought to my attention during an inspiring course by the artist, writer, and xenologist, [Adriana Knouf](https://sonicacts.com/community/adriana-knouf). Its role as a bioindicator fascinated me – the lichen thrives in nitrogen-rich environments, making it a living marker of ammonia pollution. When I started monitoring bioindicators in these areas, I became more aware of the entanglements between this lichen, ammonia emissions, and the wider web of human and non-human actors involved – cows, for example, are not only producers of milk but also nitrogen in the form of ammonia. Their forced reproduction to sustain milk production directly fuels the conditions in which _Xanthoria parietina_ flourishes. This realisation led me to explore how these two seemingly different entities – the dairy cow and the lichen – are deeply connected through the mechanisms of neoliberal farming. In _The Milking Carousel_, I use this connection to examine the efficiency-driven nature of intensive dairy farming and its consequences on biodiversity. The installation mirrors the circular movement of the milking carousel, showing the cows stuck within this loop. This circularity also reflects on the bioindication method, where I mapped out the growth of _Xanthoria parietina_ around the trunks of oak trees. As the carousel keeps rotating, the viewer is invited to wonder: how much longer does the cow need to endure this before the oak turns completely yellow? 

**DM: Why is it important to visualise environmental data? Can you explain this process within your artistic practice?**

**JB**: Scientific data on environmental loss is often communicated in abstract numbers, making it feel distant or difficult to grasp. In my work, I focus on bridging that gap by connecting data to living beings and their responses to environmental changes. By making these interactions visible, I aim to create a more tangible and affective understanding of less visible ecological issues. My methodology begins with data collection – often through mapping bioindicators, I then translate this data into a visual form by linking it to more-than-human entities that respond to shifts in their environment. From there, I establish parameters, manipulating the data to explore different scenarios of pollution and ecological change. This process allows me to speculate on possible futures, making environmental transformations perceptible and encouraging deeper engagement with the living world.


**DM: During your recent participation in the Underexposed programme, you developed the project _The New Azolla Event_, which explores the symbiotic relationship between the Azolla fern and its cyanobacterium partner. What sparked your interest in their connection?**

**JB**: My fascination with Azolla began when I encountered a flooded ditch, completely covered by a dense blanket of the plant, close to the town of Berghem in North Brabant. It was a remarkable sight, almost as if there was no body of water underneath. As I began researching the plant, I became even more intrigued to learn that Azolla exists in symbiosis with the cyanobacterium Anabaena azollae and a floating fern.

The cyanobacterium fixates phosphate and nitrogen, making these nutrients available to the fern while also helping to purify the water. However, agricultural runoff from fertilisers and manure can fuel this process to an uncontrollable extent, leading to overgrowth. The resulting thick layer of Azolla on the water’s surface blocks sunlight, halting underwater photosynthesis, resulting in depleted oxygen levels, and thus suffocating aquatic life. What once was a process of purification, ultimately leads to an ecological dead zone, reducing biodiversity and disrupting the entire connected ecosystem. This means that in areas polluted by agriculture, symbiosis exists on the threshold between suffocation and respiration. To me, this dynamic is a powerful lens through which to explore the tension between pollution and care, suffocation and respiration in a rural landscape. 


**DM: Can you talk a bit more about the dynamics of suffocation and respiration? How exactly do you explore these concepts?** 

**JB:** _The New Azolla Event_ explores how Azolla’s rapid growth – driven by agricultural pollution – simultaneously purifies and disrupts aquatic ecosystems. The research project considers how these opposing forces reveal hidden, often harmful relationships within agriculture and how artistic fieldwork can contribute to ecological restoration and reciprocity among farmers, plants, underwater creatures, and microorganisms.

Through site-specific fieldwork in and around the Berghem ditch – a location that became the epicentre of the project – I immersed myself in the world of Azolla using methods such as photogrammetry, audio recordings, data collection, and direct interventions. These techniques allowed me to map and visualise the complex interactions between phosphorus and nitrogen pollution and the suffocating effects it has on underwater life.

Beyond observation, I have also actively engaged with these dynamics as an artist. One approach is intervention – harvesting Azolla to create breathing space for organisms beneath. In collaboration with farmers, I have experimented with repurposing the harvested Azolla – not through the lens of efficiency and mass production, but as a mindful and responsible act within the phosphate cycle. With this approach I hope to shift the focus from extraction to reciprocity, offering alternative ways to engage with agricultural ecosystems.

**DM: You mentioned photogrammetry as a methodology throughout your artistic fieldwork. What is it and why is it relevant to the story of Azolla?**

**JB:** Photogrammetry is one of several methods I use in this project. It involves capturing hundreds of overlapping photographs and using algorithms to generate detailed 3D models, making it possible to map and visualise ecosystems that are otherwise difficult to perceive. In The New Azolla Event, I explore both underwater and microscopic photogrammetry.

Underwater photogrammetry helps reveal the hidden world beneath the surface, offering a detailed view of aquatic life affected by Azolla’s rapid spread. Meanwhile, microscopic photogrammetry focuses on the microorganisms that play a crucial role in the ditch’s ecosystem, highlighting how they maintain ecological balance. These techniques allow me to document how Azolla’s growth interacts with environmental shifts and incorporate these visualisations into the broader research. The photogrammetry models also form the basis for videos used in the final audio-visual installation.

By sharing these visualisations with farmers, I hope to give them insight into the ‘hidden’ life around them as well as the influence their activities have on Azolla’s growth, fostering a more informed relationship with the land.


**DM: Could you share some insights into your creative process during Underexposed and how it influenced the direction of your current work?**

**JB:** The Underexposed mentorship programme, which offered weekly discussions with members of the Sonic Acts team, Maud Seuntjens and Lucas van der Velden, allowed me to critically examine my project. Their thoughtful questions challenged me to articulate my intentions more clearly – why this project matters, where it’s headed, and how it fits into my broader practice.

This process led to a significant shift in my approach. My work has often been observational, but the programme has pushed me toward a more active role – engaging directly through interventions rather than just documenting. It made me reflect on my position as an artist, not only as an observer but as someone who actively participates in the ecosystems I study.

Another key takeaway was the potential of sound in my practice. The mentorship encouraged me to explore how audio could be integrated more deeply into my work, and I’m excited to carry that into future projects.

**DM: It sounds like your work is continuously evolving. How do you see these new directions shaping your future projects?**

**JB:** Absolutely! I am particularly excited about using and further developing my new methodology in which I take an active role as an artist within the ecosystem. This approach is central to _The New Azolla Event_ and will serve as a foundation for what lies ahead.

My research continues to raise new questions that push me forward. For example, I have been working with lichens for some time, yet I continue to uncover fascinating new connections. Currently, I am beginning to investigate their role in the metabolic cycle of minerals – a field of study that presents an exciting fresh direction for my work.

I’m also collaborating with visual artist Michelle Kanters on another project about agriculture, working with farmers and looking into abandoned stables to examine shifts within the dairy industry.

Beyond this, I’m looking forward to expanding my collaborations with scientists, biologists, ecologists, and fellow artists. Interdisciplinary exchange is key – it opens up perspectives I wouldn’t reach on my own and brings new possibilities.









Neon Lichen and Toxic Blooms of Azolla

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Magazines, books, music & more!

Sonic Acts is seeking a new Production intern for 4 days a week from October 2025 through to April 2026.


The production team of Sonic Acts is responsible for the practical realisation of all of Sonic Acts annual and Biennial activities. As production intern, you will be learning the ropes working alongside and assisting the experienced producers and their colleagues. The Sonic Acts Biennial will take place in February and March 2026, most of your activities will be geared towards the realisation of this large-scale and exciting programme which includes an exhibition, conference, performance and club nights as well as workshops and other programmes at venues like Paradiso, W139, Stedelijk, and other locations.

The ideal candidate has an affinity with Sonic Acts and its disciplines – art, music, science, and technology. They must be able to write and speak English, as Sonic Acts primarily communicates in English, and a strong grasp of Dutch is preferred. They should live in Amsterdam or the surrounding area or be prepared to travel when needed on-site or at the office.

For this internship we offer €350,- gross per month for 4 days per week, in accordance with the guidelines of De Zaak Nu.

For any questions, please contact us via vacancies[at]sonicacts.com. 

[→ Find out more and submit your application via Homerun by 23:59 on 18 May](https://sonicacts.homerun.co/production-intern/en) 


Internship: Production

A statement of support from Sonic Acts for Ukraine, its artistic community, and its people. 

Alongside 14 other partners, Sonic Acts is embarking on a Creative Europe application for the project Being Heard – an ambitious initiative exploring sound, transmission arts, and environmental awareness. One of the collaborators within this network is [Home of Sound](https://42at.org.ua/en/about-the-project/), an independent organisation based in Lviv, Ukraine, dedicated to experimental sound and media practices. Home of Sound hosts residencies, operates a recording studio, and presents a vibrant programme of exhibitions and performances that bring archival materials into conversation with contemporary, interdisciplinary creation.


In order to collaborate with Ukrainian organisations, Sonic Acts wishes to clearly acknowledge the full-scale war initiated by Russia – an invasion marked by the violent seizure of its territory and a persistent threat to civilians, who are direct targets of military attacks. These conditions demand international solidarity, care, and action. We firmly support Ukraine’s sovereignty and right to self-determination, and we unequivocally condemn the violence that threatens civilian lives and erodes cultural infrastructures.

Through our global partnerships, we remain committed to cultivating safe, inclusive, and accessible working environments. It is essential to name this situation for what it is: a war, with far-reaching consequences for freedom of expression, daily life, and the health of cultural ecosystems. We stand with Ukrainian artists and organisations, like Home of Sound, who endure as spaces of resistance and resilience. 

Being Heard is a partnership between Sonic Acts, Locus Sonus, CONA, HMU/TUC, Associazione Culturale Interzona, MoKS, BEK, A4, Rupert, Associació So, Archipel Stations/Radio Otherwise, Home of Sound, OSSO Associação Cultural, and Radiona. 


In Solidarity with Ukraine

Internationally renowned artist **Anthea Caddy** presents _Long Throw Whispers_ (2025) at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025. This new work is the latest iteration of Caddy’s ongoing _Long Throw_ series, in which custom-built parabolic speakers (commissioned by Sonic Acts) project beams of sound that transform and define space through focused listening. Be sure to visit the Luxembourg Pavilion’s sound-focused exhibition, _Sonic Investigations_, running from 10 May to 23 November 2025.

Curated as a radical shift from the image-dominated experience of contemporary space, the _Sonic Investigations_ exhibition at the Luxembourg Pavilion positions sound as a method for re-engaging with the built and ecological environments around us. Drawing inspiration from John Cage’s 4’33’’ and concepts such as acoustic ecology and sonic warfare, the pavilion explores listening as a critical and collective act.

Caddy’s new work, _Long Throw Whispers_, features a parabolic speaker suspended four metres above the ground, projecting a whispering beam of sound that can only be heard when a visitor moves into its narrow field. Developed in dialogue with philosopher **Peter Szendy**, who recorded the fragmented texts, the composition unfolds through a whispered voice that is delicate yet disarming, intimate yet architectural.

‘This work functions both as an apparatus for focused listening and as a conceptual catalyst,’ says Caddy. ‘It mobilises interdisciplinary discourse on how sound structures – and is structured by – ecological, technological, and social networks.’

The piece is the ninth iteration of Caddy’s [ongoing _Long Throw_ project](https://www.sonicacts.com/archive/anthea-caddy--long-throw-an-exploration-of-an-expanded-energetic-system-for-cello-and-loud-speaker) – a body of work that began as a live performance system for amplified cello and parabolic speakers, exploring the physical properties of projected sound energy. Using custom-built speakers designed in collaboration with media artist and engineer **Miodrag Gladović**, the project manipulates highly focused beams of sound – up to 3 km in length and 60 cm in diameter – to create immersive and site-specific acoustic experiences. The artwork is shaped not only by projection but by site-specific phenomena such as reflection, refraction, and architectural resonance.

The fifth iteration of _Long Throw_ was presented at Het HEM as part of the Sonic Acts Biennial 2022, transforming the building into a vast resonating body. Earlier performances and installations have been staged at the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Nikola Tesla Museum (Zagreb), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), and Contemporary Art Museum (Zagreb).

Anthea Caddy is known for her integration of acoustic performance, field recording, and digital spatialisation, drawing from her background in electroacoustic music to explore how sound behaves, moves, and interacts with space. Her practice is grounded in both conceptual and practical research, bridging theory, engineering, and embodied listening.

At Venice, _Long Throw Whispers_ continues this trajectory, extending Caddy’s investigation into how sound can reframe not only the way we perceive architecture, but how we participate in it through the act of listening. By positioning visitors around the speaker’s perimeter, the installation enacts collective intelligence: each person’s movement and proximity modulate the shared acoustic field, transforming individual perception into a networked encounter that resonates with the Biennale’s interdisciplinary, ecological, and social themes.

Anthea Caddy at Venice Architecture Biennale 2025

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Ecoes #7

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Ecoes #3

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Ecoes #5

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All Thoughts Fly: Monster, Taxonomy, Film

Are you an early-career artist, aged 32 or younger, based in the Netherlands, ready to develop a bold new project? Sonic Acts invites you to apply for SPRINGS – a new commissioning opportunity for the production of new artworks, to be presented at the 2026 Biennial in Amsterdam. 

# **ABOUT SPRINGS**

SPRINGS is a launchpad for creativity, designed to propel fresh voices within the local Dutch art scene. The initiative is intended for small-scale work that engages with urgent ecological, political, technological, and social concerns.

- **Sonic Acts commissioning fee**: €3,500 _(total including artist fee and artwork production budget; excluding presentation costs)_
- **Application deadline**: 1 June 2025 ([Homerun](https://sonicacts.homerun.co/springs/en) – the submission portal – will will close at 23:59)
- **Production deadline**: 1 December 2025
- **Presentation**: 5 February – 29 March 2026, Amsterdam

SPRINGS is intended as a commissioning opportunity to support the creation of new work, rather than a platform for showcasing pre-existing projects.  

Sonic Acts seeks artists whose practices engage with the pressing crises and complexities of our time. Topics may include – but are not limited to – climate grief; alliances between the human and non-human; practices of giving voice; spatial approaches to sound; making the invisible perceptible (such as nuclear radiation, obscured machinery, or hidden networks); and tracing colonial legacies embedded within our technological and environmental realities.
 
The commissioned work – developed with the guidance of the Sonic Acts curatorial team and supported by a grant of €3,500 – will premiere as part of one of the Biennial’s programmes, depending on the format and thematic focus of the piece. Proposals could take the form of, for example, sound works, field or sound walks, single-day workshops, performative lectures, audiovisual works, events, or printed matter.

# **ELIGIBILITY & APPLYING**
Artists up to 32 years of age based in the Netherlands can respond to this call.  
 
Applications from both individual artists and collectives are welcome, and in the case of a collective, the budget will be shared (all artists should be below the age of 32), and the collective should comprise up to 2 people. 
 
Currently enrolled students are not eligible for the programme, nor are students who are graduating in 2025.  
 
Application should be made in English and must include the following (in one PDF): 
- Summary of the project, including the current development stage of the work (maximum size: 1 page)  
- Project timeline  
- Project budget in a spreadsheet totalling €3,500 (IF you have received additional funding, to a total of that sum) 
- Portfolio with a short bio (maximum size: 10 MB and 5 pages) 
 
Priority will be given to artists who have not yet exhibited their work at any large-scale events.   
 
# **BUDGET**

Artists should either:

- Already have some funding secured for the production of the work
- Have a plan to apply for additional funding during 2025
- Or be able to produce the work within the €3,500 grant provided by Sonic Acts

The costs involved with presenting the artwork at the Biennial will be covered by Sonic Acts.

# **PARTICIPATION**

Following the announcement, the selected artist will sign an agreement with Sonic Acts, which will detail the conditions of their participation.  
 
# **DEADLINES & SELECTION**

Applications should be submitted [via Homerun](https://sonicacts.homerun.co/springs/en) before 23:59 on 1 June 2025. The selection committee comprises the curatorial team of Sonic Acts. 

Should you have any questions, please contact residency[@]sonicacts.com.

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Submit Your Proposal 

Sonic Acts and **[De Ateliers](https://www.de-ateliers.nl/)/[Woonhuis](https://woonhuis.de-ateliers.nl/nl)** present _**The Walls Have Ears**_ – a fully funded sound studies writing residency taking place in Amsterdam in February 2026. Open to one established artist, researcher, or scholar working in the field of sound studies, the residency offers time, space, and critical support to develop a focused writing project.

Submit [**your application**](https://sonicacts.homerun.co/the-walls-have-ears) before 14 June, 23:59.

# **Residency theme**

Before **Pauline Oliveros**’ seminal _Sonic Meditations_ (1974) taught us how to listen deeply, there was **Yoko Ono**’s _Grapefruit_ (1965). This small, magical publication, filled with drawings and poetic instructions, invites us to engage with sound in unexpected ways. Ono tells us to scream against a wall, capture the sound of an ageing stone, record falling snow, or to walk in another’s footsteps without making a sound. Many of these tasks suggest a beautiful, whimsical consideration of sound as a medium that allows us to know the world more deeply. Objects have unique resonances, which we should attune to closely and attentively – through listening or by using recording devices that, in turn, possess an alchemical ability to capture and preserve memories. 

Under the title _The Walls Have Ears_, this residency invites a dialogue on how we engage with the practice of close listening. Inspired by Yoko Ono’s conceptual approach to remixing and reimagining meaning, can we think about the acts of listening, hearing, and communicating from the perspective of the other – in this case, the wall? If listening is an act of connection, it should become a way of attuning to one another – of hearing voices unheard and _unlistened_ to. At its core, listening is an act of empathy – an offering of attention and care that acknowledges histories, emotions, and the lingering echoes of violence and silencing. We live in a noisy and disorienting moment: some are permitted to talk endlessly, while others are drowned out. This residency wishes to hear _otherwise_ – to consider listening as a disruptive force in the status quo; an act of slowing down, tuning in, and giving space. 

# **What we offer**
- Accommodation at De Ateliers’ [**Woonhuis**](https://woonhuis.de-ateliers.nl/nl) at Stadhouderskade 86 in Amsterdam, 2 February – 3 March 2026;
- Travel expenses within the EU (up to 500 euros);
- Artist fee of 3,000 euros (including artist fee, studio visits, and production budget; excluding presentation budget);
- Tickets to the [**Sonic Acts Biennial**](https://2024.sonicacts.com/) 2026 events.

# **What we expect**
- Joining scheduled studio visits with De Ateliers participants; 
- Public event at Woonhuis (listening session, workshop, conversation, e.g.);
- Lecture at the Sonic Acts Biennial 2026 Symposium at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; 
- Text for Ecoes magazine and/or the Sonic Acts online portal, later in 2026.

# **Eligibility and applications**
EU-based individual artists with at least one publication – such as a peer-reviewed article, book, or equivalent – in the field of sound studies are eligible to apply for this residency. Prospective residents are invited to present a project they will be working on during the residency. Applicants are required to submit:

- CV;
- A link or pdf to the applicant’s publication/article/book;
- Research proposal of up to 600 words.

Applications are accepted through Homerun until 14 June, 23:59: [**https://bit.ly/thewallshaveears**](https://bit.ly/thewallshaveears)

For further enquiries, please contact us at [**residency@sonicacts.com**](mailto:residency@sonicacts.com).
 
 
# **Jurying committee and results**
The jurying committee comprises members of Sonic Acts and Woonhuis’ curatorial teams. The resident will be notified by 15 July, and the results will also be published online on the Sonic Acts website.  

**About [De Ateliers](https://www.de-ateliers.nl/)/[Woonhuis](https://woonhuis.de-ateliers.nl/nl)**
De Ateliers is an artists’ residency and postgraduate programme based in Amsterdam, offering emerging artists two years of studio space, intensive mentorship from established artists, and a critical, supportive environment to develop their practice. Founded in 1963 as _Ateliers ’63_, it is the oldest artists’ workspace in the Netherlands and, since 1992, has been housed in a historic building on the Stadhouderskade in central Amsterdam. Situated within the former caretaker quarters of De Ateliers, Woonhuis hosts an exhibition space and a fellows programme. With its own separate entrance and approximately 200 m2 of project space, Woonhuis programmes exhibitions and events featuring (inter)national artists, all by invitation of De Ateliers participants.

* More information about De Ateliers (including accessibility) can be found [here](https://www.de-ateliers.nl/en/contact/).
* More information about Woonhuis can be found [here](https://woonhuis.de-ateliers.nl/nl).

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Apply Now: Sound Studies Writing Residency

Yara Said / Noise Diva

Performer & Multimedia Installation Practitioner

Ghenwa noiré

The event _Voice as Legacy: Archive Performance Lecture_ marks the culmination of the workshop _Voice as Legacy: Tracing the Unwritten_, about creating archives of unrecorded vocal traditions and sound art trajectories that re-shape the history of electronic sound. Participants will gather to re-activate a collectively created living archive through voice, sound, memory, and storytelling. Come experience a dynamic exploration of the intangible traces that shape(d) our shared histories and futures, and make a reservation.

[Admission is free, but please make a reservation.](https://eventix.shop/xbmn66kb)

Tracing back unrecorded voices within the history of electronic sound, this collective performance lecture, led by **Yara Said** and **ghenwa (noiré) abou fayad**, will take the form of improvisational storytelling shaped by a process of sonic exploration. Through mapping, deep listening, re-sampling, imitation, improvisation, and vocal technique, the piece listens forward while looking back. Rooted in the sonic legacies of the folk singer and improviser **Mounira El Mahdiyya** (1885–1965) – who cultivated vibrant, community-centered performance spaces in early 20th-century Egypt – and the Egyptian electronic music pioneer **Halim El-Dabh** (1921–2017) – who pioneered early wire recordings and electroacoustic compositions centering the transformative power of the human voice, participants will bring them into the present moment. Anchored by an analogue mixer and a tactile surface collecting daily notes, gestures, sketches, and impressions, participants will _perform the archive_; remixing personal memory with ancestral frequencies, responding to the overlooked, the erased, and the unwritten.

**Background**

The workshop [**_Voice as Legacy: Tracing the Unwritten_**](https://sonicacts.com/archive/voice-as-legacy-workshop), which takes place in the week leading up to the event, brings together young creatives from the Levantine region, who together try to trace voices across history to uncover forgotten traditions, resistance, and untold stories. Framed as a response to the limitations of traditional, often Eurocentric archival systems, the workshop shifts focus from convention to invention, inviting participants into a collective, fluid practice of re-archiving. Together, they ask: _What happens when we listen beyond the present?_ In doing so, they not only unearth forgotten traditions but also begin to reimagine what an archive can be – fluid, participatory, and rooted in community.

Also visit [**soundsweird.org**](https://soundsweird.org/) – an educational platform for non-formal music learning with examples for ‘teaching sound’ that emphasise listening, mutual sound research, and co-creation.

*Admission is free but we ask you kindly to make a free reservation: 
[**https://bit.ly/Voice-as-Legacy-event**](https://bit.ly/Voice-as-Legacy-event).

**If you have any questions about the programme or venue, please don't hesitate to email [irina@sonicacts.com](mailto:irina@sonicacts.com).


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Join us for the Performance Lecture

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Anthea Caddy

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Long Throw

Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner

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All Thoughts Fly: Monster, Taxonomy, Film 

Ecoes #2

Dominika Mikołajczyk

Joseph Rouhana

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Underexposed – Mentorship Programme

Hanchen Zhang

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Jurel Bakker

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**Ollie Paterson** (She/Them) is a cultural producer and filmmaker based in Rotterdam, where they are the producer for Spatial Sound Platform for Sonic Acts.

Ollie has worked as a producer in cultural institutions in Rotterdam, Utrecht and Amsterdam, where they have facilitated shows, symposia, workshops, educational programmes for various institutions.

In their personal film and video practice, Ollie conducts A/V experiments that often embrace mediums of sound work, 3D animation and live action footage to probe the uncanny and explore the relationships between artificial and indexical realities. They have worked collaboratively as a cinematographer for artist films and socially engaged documentaries in the Netherlands and the UK.

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Ollie Paterson

**Radina Aleksandrova** specialises in producing new media and digital art shows across Europe, specifically in Amsterdam. She currently focuses on event, exhibition and video production management.

With over five years of experience, Radina has worked both as a freelance producer at various music festivals and as a full-time producer at the Nxt Museum, contributing to a wide range of projects. She is currently working at Sonic Acts as Producer.

Alongside her production work, Radina is passionate about exploring the socio-political implications of the dance-floor as part of the videography team for Bogomir Doringer’s _Dance of Urgency_ research. Her work delves into the intersection of art, culture, and society, combining hands-on project management with in-depth cultural research.

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Radina Aleksandrova

**Irina Leifer** lives and works in Amsterdam. She is in charge of the educational program of Sonic Acts and curates exhibitions on the interface of heritage and contemporary art as an independent curator.  


Irina studied Museum Studies in Amsterdam and Digital Storytelling in Gent. She has been working in the field of education and creative production for various institutions such as Museum De Paviljoens, Reinwardt Academy, Huis Marseille Museum for Photography and Cinedans Festival. Irina is passionate about international collaboration and curated exhibitions and programs in most diverse places including Iran, China, Japan and Russia. Irina mediates between different cultures, heritage, art and the world outside museum walls. 

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Irina Leifer

**Kelly van Haastere** lives and works in Amsterdam. She is a part of Sonic Acts as Office Manager and teaches yin yoga on the side.

Born and raised in Amsterdam Oud-West, she went to the University of Amsterdam to study English Literature. She has worked as a writer for N8, an editorial intern for SSBA-Salon, and an office manager for the production company Bonkers BV. In 2016 she focussed on getting her degree in teaching yin yoga with Anat Geiger at the Yoga Garden, and spent the following 8 years teaching. Recently she started at Sonic Acts as an office manager, combining her love for arts and culture with teaching on the side. In her spare time, she loves to boulder, read, and take long walks with friends. She enjoys learning about herbs and alternative medicine and is slowly picking up playing the piano. 

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Kelly van Haastere

**Rik Dijkhuizen** lives and works in Amsterdam. He combines his artistic practice with working as a lecturer and writer, and as Marketing & Communications Manager at Sonic Acts. 

Rik studied Art History, English Literature and Aesthetics in Groningen and Amsterdam, and Fine Arts at Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam. He has been working in the field of communications, funding, writing and lecturing for various institutions such as Oude Kerk Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam and artist-in-residence Hotel Maria Kapel in Hoorn. His multidisciplinary artistic practice focuses around mental health, and often features water as a metaphor for collective embodiment. In his scenographic installations and imaginative narratives, he uses numerous references to create low-fi sanctuaries for well-being.

Rik recently started working for Sonic Acts, where he joined the Marketing & Communications team.


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Rik Dijkhuizen

**Sève I.V. Janssen** is an author and sound director, and a regular contributor to various magazines. 

As the Director of the BNA-BBOT (Bruxelles Nous Appartient-Brussel Behoort Ons Toe) since 2009, she is working on a sound archive, mainly vocal, of the city of Brussels through participatory and artistic methodologies.

[Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/s.i.v.janssen/?locale=bz-hans&hl=am-et)


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Apply Now: Sound Studies Writing Residency

Join us for the Performance Lecture

Internship: Production

In Solidarity with Ukraine

Anthea Caddy at Venice Architecture Biennale 2025

Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner

All Thoughts Fly

Joseph Rouhana

Mythical Cycles of Renewal and Decay

Hanchen Zhang

Reverberations of Power in a Silent Grid

Ecoes #7

Ecoes #3

Ecoes #5

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