Interventions

Performance h 5.30 pm
Central portico, Zeughausareal, Zurich
Access from Kanonengasse 20 CH-8004 Zurich 

"In certain environments, our behaviors and movements are clearly defined. I know how to act in a shopping mall, at the beach, or in a train station. It would seem quite strange if I deviated from these expected norms. However, some places fall into a grey area without many predefined patterns of behavior. In these spaces, I feel to have the freedom to move and act as I choose, without feeling awkward.”

Cathy van Eck

In this work, Cathy van Eck introduces a specific action in the passage to the centre of the Kasernenareal and explores how this influences and transforms the space. Amplified by a sound system, the artist performs an almost ritualistic action that one might commonly see elsewhere. Her body works with the space in a dialogical dimension of correspondence through an interactive sound system that becomes a prosthesis of the body itself. In search for another place is a performance conceived as an archeological exercise in searching for the unseen aspects of places, hidden traces that exist wherever we are. 

The intervention is curated by Zaira Oram [Francesca Ceccherini]

bio

Cathy van Eck (1979, Netherlands) composes relationships between everyday objects, human performers, and sound. She is interested in setting her gestures into unusual, surprising or poetic relationships with sounds, mainly by electronic means. The result could be called performative sound art, since it combines elements from performance art, electronic music, and visual art. She has a teaching position at the Academy of the Arts in Bern, Switzerland. Her book Between Air and Electricity – Microphones and Loudspeakers as Musical Instruments was published in 2017. She is a member of iii (instruments inventors initiative) and lives and works in Zurich.

Protest Engraving, performance by Christophe Fellay
SUPERIMPOSITION, video-installation by Polisonum
Meeting point at Walcheturm Kunstraum, Kasernenareal, Zurich 

PROGRAM
6.30 pm: Performance Protest Engraving by Christophe Fellay (meeting at Walcheturm)
7.00 pm: Temporary video-installation SUPERIMPOSITION by Polisonum 
7.20 pm: Round table and discussion with the artists Polisonum and Christopher Fellay, and curators 
8.00 pm: Drink at Walcheturm! 

Protest Engraving is an artistic performance which fluctuates between the scientific discipline of sound archaeology and fiction. Starting from the idea that sound leaves traces of its interaction with the material, Christophe Fellay proposes to overwrite the sonic memory of the Zeughausareal military past with messages of peace. Using the natural phenomenon of sound erosion, an amplified drum set will echo the slogans chanted by peace activists during a protest gathering Israeli Jews and Palestinian Israelis calling for an end to the war in Gaza in January 2024. The use of such a hybrid instrument mixing cultural and musical elements from four continents raises the question of togetherness, chosen and forced migrations, and a reflection on our status of perpetual migrants. Inspired by the common use of drums in the struggle for social change to attract attention and punctuate messages, Christophe will “hijack” military drum calls – the music signals played to transmit orders to the soldiers – to create signals for change. Using microphone and amplification, he will engrave the result on the armoury. During the performance, existing military sounds on the surfaces of the architecture will be overwrote by sonic and rhythmic punctuation of anti-war messages engraved in situ and left behind as permanent traces in what must be understood as a screaming silent sound installation calling for necessary transformation.

SUPERIMPOSITION is an artistic project by Polisonum that investigates the theme of listening and takes shape through the encounter of multiple disciplinary fields including sound, data analysis, fashion and visual arts. SUPERIMPOSITION explores the concept of earworms, namely all those sound agents that coercively graft themselves into the brain to become parasites and provoke cognitive control mechanisms. The project consists of a performative act, a video work and a sound piece which will be presented through a temporary installation at Kunstraum Walcheturm (Zurich) in cooperation with OTO SOUND MUSEUM. This will be followed by a round table and discussion with the artists, curators Francesca Ceccherini, Anastasia Chaguidouline, Irene Grillo (Alte Fabrik, Rapperswil) and Patrick Huber. SUPERIMPOSITION is supported by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (2023).

The interventions are curated by Zaira Oram [Francesca Ceccherini]

bio

Christophe Fellay is sound artist, musician, composer, performer and improviser. He has presented interdisciplinary works, sound installations and performances on several continents, and has composed sound works and music for ensembles, solo instruments, radio, theatre, film, video, choreography and performance art. His work has been presented internationally in London (ICA, Kings Place, London Jazz Festival), Edinburgh (Fringe Festival, University of Edinburgh), Cambridge University, Paris (CCS, St Merry), Montreux Jazz Festival (Miles Davis Hall), Copenhagen (Christians Kirke), Zurich (Kunstmuseum), Geneva, Bern (Dampfzentrale), New York (601 Artspace), San Francisco (Exploratorium, Swissnex), Seattle (1412), Atlanta Music Festival, Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Johannesburg (JAG, Center For The Less Good Idea), Pretoria university, Cape Town (Mahogani Room) and Windhoek. Christophe Fellay holds a PhD in Art, Music and Performance from the Brunel University, London, and is associate professor, researcher and head of the Bachelor's degree in Sound at EDHEA (university of the arts) within the HES-SO in Switzerland. His research and artistic interests focus on indisciplinarity, improvisation, active listening, acoustic phenomena, space, sound and architecture, documentation and archiving, soundscape ecology, digital art and participatory art. In his performance research, he is particularly interested in the interaction between gesture, movement and sound. 

Polisonum (Filippo Lilli, Donato Loforese) is an artistic collective using sound as a method and device of investigation to explore processes and metamorphoses linked to the present time. It is characterized by a research-based approach directed at listening to and interpreting the spaces in which it operates through sound installations and performative acts in strong dialogue with visual languages. Thanks to its hybrid identity, Polisonum realizes projects that feed on a practice of study and analysis in relation to other fields of knowledge. Polisonum's work has been shown in several institutions and festivals, among others: Una boccata d'arte (AV), Fondazione Volume (RM), Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (CH), Palazzo Altemps (RM), Palazzo Pallavicini (BO), Romaeuropa Festival (RM), OTO Sound Museum Zurich (CH), The Others (TO). The collective collaborates with La Sapienza University of Rome Faculty of Civil and Industrial Engineering on the Green Network project for the Public Space Biennial. In 2018 Polisonum received the Special "Utopia" Award of the Talent Prize and in 2016 the Best Unpublished Work Award during The Others. Over time the collective has released several vinyls, among the latest Passi 13'36'' in collaboration with the artist Alfredo Pirri.

Performance and temporary sound installation
Zeughausareal Zurich (Kasernenareal)
4 pm: performance / 11 am – 5 pm: sound installation

Changing of the Guard     
[to change: to pass from one state or form into another]
[guard: a group of people, who protect somebody/something]

OTO SOUND MUSEUM presents the first performative intervention at the Zeughausareal, one of the largest military areas built on Swiss territory in the second half of the 19th century, now awaiting re-functionalisation. Acting in the longitudinal space of the barracks lawn (Kasernenwiese) is the artist Rahel Kraft through the intervention Changing of the Guard, realised for the first time in direct relationship with the architecture and its history.
Changing of the Guard reflects themes of transformation, protection and care in the context of the historical elements of the barracks area in Zurich. Over the decades, hundreds of young men have passed through the armouries to become soldiers for a neutral state. The work takes as a point of departure a few intimate photographs taken in 1960 by the Zurich photographer Heinz Baumann, who captured the process of dressing up, and thus the transition to another function. These images reveal something caring, quite un-military, which did not take place in rank and file, but in the wood-panelled upper floors of the Arsenal.
This attitude of care, which is at odds with both the strict marching and drill routine, as well as the rigid, symmetrical architecture of the armoury, inspired the process of creating a site-reflective piece for two runners/drummers. The performative work combines physical intensity with rhythmic precision, training and sound to create a hyperactive physical drumbeat. At the same time, Changing of the Guard attempts to interrogate the dialectic played out between the search for and loss of control. Embodied physically and metaphorically in the corporal movement, this relationship of control raises a specific question about the future: What social changes of guard do we need today?
The sound installation accompanying the performance consists of two original guardhouses probably belonging to the previous century, found by the artist in an inaccessible part of the barracks during her research time in the area. These are temporarily and exceptionally transported outside and installed to resonate like bodies from 11 am to 5 pm on the day of the performance.

The intervention is curated by Zaira Oram [Francesca Ceccherini]

Performers: Alon Ben, Silvan Schmid (drumming/running)

bio

Born on Lake Constance in 1984, Rahel Kraft is a composer, artist and director who creates environments meticulously designed to provoke interactions, intersections and unexpected revelations within the realm of auditory encounters. At the crossroads of performance and participatory events, Kraft's work embraces interspecies kinship, anthropological inquiry and inner perception in relation to collectivity. Kraft regularly collaborates with numerous artists, designers and researchers, including Japanese artist Tomoko Hojo, German director Sylvie Kretschmar, Swiss designers Ortreport, and Italian based writer Sibylle Ciarloni. Her work has been shown most recently at Ocean Space Venice (2023), Komaki City Library (2022), Deutschlandfunk Kultur (2021), and Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid (2020). Numerous grants and residencies also brought her to institutions like ZKM Karlsruhe, Cité des Arts Paris, Electronic Music Studio Stockholm, and Palazzo Trevisan Venice. Her compositions are published by platforms such as BBC Radio 3, Nonclassical UK, Dasa Tapes Greece, and Line Sound Art Editions L.A. Kraft lives and works in Basel after seven years of nomadic existence.

Alon Ben (*1998) is a musician and producer currently based in Elsass France. His musical Career started at age 11 where he joined Bands as a drummer and bassplayer. Between the age of 14 and 19 he was invited to join different youth programs at the local Musicschool, was accepted in Christian Muthspiels Youth Jazz orchestra and performed at Neue Musik Festival Rümlingen. Over the years he performed live with Adrian Sieber (Lovebugs), Benjamin Amaru, North Naim, Malummi, David Caspar, Haesin, Mastergrief, Iuri a.o. In 2023 Alon joined the Band Black Sea Dahu on Drums. 

Silvan Schmid is a drummer and mixing engineer from Lucerne, living in Basel. He is currently studying in the master's program „Producing/Performance“ at Jazzcampus Basel. As a drummer, he works with artists such as "Black Sea Dahu", "Solong", "STRUKTURSTRUKTUR". He also creates pieces for theatre, performance art and sound installations and works as a freelance live and studio engineer.

Sound installation
Wasserturm, Zurich
Address: Badweg 10, 8001-CH

From 6 October to 17 November 2023, the installation When Times Ring resonates daily from the Wasserturm in Zurich. Oriented towards the sonification of time and the use of sound as a vehicle of information, the artist Hannah Weinberger transforms the Wasserturm into a temporary bell tower. At every hour – from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. – the sound announces the passing of time through the song of birds that might be rooted in the global south and never heard in our forests. Like a cuocou, the sound is spread through megaphones and merged with the public space, even reaching the nearby Old Botanical Garden, behind whose beauty lies one of man's symbolically colonialist actions.
While the work naturally integrated itself into the location, a closer examination reveals that the experienced sounds are, at best, entirely displaced. This piece served as an invitation, encouraging not only the absorption of auditory stimuli and diverse temporal perspectives but also the interrogation of our approach to time. It beckons us to enter a dialogue, continually reassessing and negotiating the fundamental themes and democratic values that underscore our society.

The sound installation is curated by Zaira Oram [Francesca Ceccherini, Eleonora Stassi]

bio

Hannah Weinberger's artistic journey has been marked by a continuous exploration of immersive experiential realms. Graduating from the Zurich University of the Arts in 2013 with a Master of Fine Arts, specializing in Media Arts, Weinberger's practice spans various forms, from associatively enriched sound and video installations that blend across multiple channels to orchestrated live musical performances aimed at collaborative, process-oriented, and open-ended art production. Drawing from an ever-expanding archive of sound and visual materials, Weinberger crafts intricate sound and video collages. Her repository comprises pre-fabricated sound elements from online databases, digital audio programs, studio recordings, and personal field recordings—a visual diary of her journeys captured through a digital lens. The artist adeptly translates the moods evoked by her works into scores, guiding musicians in free improvisation, which seamlessly merge with site-specific live performances featuring her bespoke soundtracks. A constant underpinning of Hannah Weinberger's practice is her resonance with the environment, fostering a subtle yet resonating rupture with the familiar modes of perception. From 2011 to 2013, Weinberger co-organized the Elaine project space in the courtyard of the Museum of Contemporary Art Basel. She initiated the Hidden Bar at Art Basel (2018,2019) and the Basel Social Club that just held its second Edition in Basel last June. Early in her artistic trajectory, she presented her works extensively in solo and group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally.

Temporary sound installation
Wasserturm, Zurich
Address: Badweg 10, 8001-CH

For the latest project at the Wasserturm in Zurich, OTO SOUND MUSEUM presents an experimental intervention entitled Gravity sounds by artists Pe Lang & Marianthi Papalexandri Alexandri. As peculiar to their practices – intersected for a long time – the artists construct a site-specific mechanism that expands on a large scale along the verticality of the tower, transforming it into an enormous musical instrument. Interested in the theme of gravity and the laws of physics, the artists here convert the tower into a sound object that had never existed before, inventing a musical tuning system from the spatial features of the building which soars four floors into the sky. Thanks to the imagined mechanism and the activation of a complex behavior, Gravity sounds offered a sonic experience that could return different harmonies and stages of vibration evoking the sound of water. The intervention Gravity sounds takes the form of an ephemeral installation offering a collective listening diffused in the urban space.

The sound installation is curated by Zaira Oram [Francesca Ceccherini]

bios

Sound artist Marianthi Papalexandri Alexandri (*1974, Greece) and kinetic artist Pe Lang (*1974, Switzerland) have worked together since 2008 after realizing their shared interest in combining sound, kinetics, and visual arts. Their collaborative works oscillate between sound art and the designing of new musical instruments. New ways of thinking about materiality and cybernetics strongly influence their work. They are particularly interested in creating mechanical and autonomous lifelike sculptures and installations without software and digital means. Instead, they combine controlled and uncontrolled mechanical and organic parts into a lifelike organism that forms and interacts with itself and the space around it. They create kinetic systems out of deconstructed, repurposed, and reprogrammed analog physical materials and objects and place them in a way that causes them to move and behave in a way that causes random and unpredictable behavior and sounds. Their work achieves a delicate balance between control and surprise, precision and randomness, which is evident in every creation.
By embracing this delicate equilibrium, they immerse viewers and listeners in mesmerizing artistic experiences that challenge conventional boundaries and preconceived notions. In 2021, Papalexandri and Lang received the Aurelie Nemours Prize in recognition of their outstanding work and accomplishments on an international level, both individually and as a duo, for their collaborative works and overall contribution to the visual and sound art field.

Performance
Wasserturm, Zurich
Address: Badweg 10, 8001-CH

Interdisciplinary artist IPek shapes a collective experience combining her traditional singing practice with reflections on the symbolic meaning of water and its role in our society. As a singer, the artist works with the healing traditions of water in folk music from different geographies. On the other hand, as an activist, she constantly questions the growing ecological crises that we partly cause with our consumption habits. IPek accompanies the listeners on this empirical as well as sonic journey as if they were all together on a boat: sometimes listening to a sinister song while sailing down the river of the underworld and at other times pouring water to say goodbye to our beloved in a village in Anatolia.

The performance is curated by Zaira Oram [Eleonora Stassi]

bio

IPek is an activist who expresses her thoughts through performance, design, writing, music and artwork. IPek draws attention to various social phenomena, combining issues she finds problematic with familiar but unexpected elements. Its themes are: Queer feminism, environment, system change, migration and displacement.
Born in Istanbul (1980) and raised in Hungary, IPek earned two degrees in Film Theory and History and Art Theory in Budapest. IPek completed her first master's degree as a philologist of aesthetics in Budapest and her second master's degree as a Master of Fine Arts at Zhdk. For many years she has been staging her socio-theoretical texts and popular songs in various Swiss theaters, such as Dampfzentrale, Roxy-Basel and Kaserne.

Performance
Wasserturm, Zurich
Address: Badweg 10, 8001-CH

In 2023, the artist and musician Yanik Soland is invited to perform live inside the Wasserturm (water tower), in order to create a 'heartbeat' that can contribute to make it a living organism emerging from a centuries-old silence. Soliloquy is inspired by meditation practices and local siren tests. Inside the tower, the artist plays an acoustic narrative using his self-build instrument ASMR KOTO, a transformed table-zengarden from his Japanese grandmother, distorted voice and a modular synthesiser. Through the windows and the door of the tower he amplifies and enlarges his small gestures on the instruments using speakers facing the environment nearby, developing a new relationship between the imperceptible and the perceived. The public is invited to meditate in the urban space by lying on mats placed around the tower.

The performance is curated by Zaira Oram [Francesca Ceccherini, Eleonora Stassi]

bio

(b. 1990, CH) Yanik Soland works as a musician and artist in Basel, CH.
As a bass player he was touring with bands like MIR and Zaperlipopette! all over Europe and Japan. In the last few years his focus turned to modular synthesis, self build instruments and composing music for theater and radio. His debut LP YUKI has been released in Summer 2021 with Futura Resistenza Records, NL. YUKI—the name Soland’s parents had planned to give him, if he were a girl—is Japanese for snow, snow-princess or luck, and is here used as an alter ego within Soland's practice. YUKI’s touchstones include Laurie Spiegel, Mark Fisher, Ruins, Dean Blunt, Maryanne Amacher, Tyler The Creator, Heather Leigh and Györgi Ligeti.

Sound performance
In the context of Sonic Matter Festival
Kunstraum Walcheturm, Zurich

A Symphony of Archives is a musical composition and sound performance by the Moroccan artist Abdellah M. Hassak presented in the context of the festival Sonic Matter (2022). With an investigative and experimental approach, the artist explores the audiovisual archives, diaries and sounds of certain territories in order to reactivate their memory and read it in the light of the actions of colonialism to which they have been subjected. The performance is an invitation for visitors to a suspended listening that simultaneously questions the meaning of re-writing process and practices of de-colonisation. The act is realized in collaboration with the pianist Tamriko Kordzaia through a live execution of a data score elaborated by a software from old archives of colonial French newspaper disseminated in Morocco.

The performance is curated by Zaira Oram [Francesca Ceccherini, Eleonora Stassi]

bio

Abdellah M. Hassak (1984, MA) is a sound artist, new media and music producer as well as art director. His research explores processes of participative sonic mapping at the urban level, integrating sound, daily technologies and radio as tools to foster agency in inhabitants' narrations of their environment. His work takes the form of performances and installations that include sound objects. This approach often involves transformative aspects of sound that are linked to concepts such as soundscape, resonance, frequency and noise, and new technologies. Abdellah has been collaborating with many institutions and cultural spaces in Morocco and abroad in radiophonic and sound practice, such as Esad Grenoble / Esav Marrakech / Mudawanat - Culture Resource / Qanat Collective / Dar Bellarj / Think Tanger / e-Joussour - Radio impact. He launched the Radio and Archive sound platform Mahattat Radio and develops a musical syncretic Afrofuturism music with field recordings practice as a Producer/DJ. He is co-founder of 4S', a Moroccan NGO which carries the FeMENA project, dedicated to the professionalization of women in the electronic music sector.

Sound installation
Wasserturm, Zurich
Address: Badweg 10, 8001-CH

Like an architectural flute hiding in the urban fabric of the city, the ancient water tower of Zurich comes alive with the sound installation The Whistle. The work is a site-specific intervention by the VACUT collective (Voices Against Corruption and Ugly Trading), initiated by Gilles Aubry in collaboration with Ale Hop, Aya Metwalli, Gabi Motuba and Sabina Leone.
The installation The Whistle features voice recordings presented inside the Wasserturm, audible from the surrounding public space. Informed by data leaks and NGO reports highlighting Switzerland's involvement in international money laundering, tax evasion, and predatory extraction of raw materials, the work seeks to address the affective cost of racial capitalism from a situated perspective. The VACUT Group (Voices Against Corruption and Ugly Trading) was formed to this end, gathering sound artists and musicians from countries involved in dubious business activities with the alpine nation.
The work relies on voice as an embodied manifestation of perceived social and environmental injustice. Each performer engages with a number of sources documenting corruption, land grabbing, human exploitation and environmental devastation in their home countries, along with their own perception of such phenomena. They respond to this experience through vocal improvisations in the course of recorded sessions. Assembled into a composition, the voices blend with the local ambient sound in Zürich. For the visitors, listening becomes a matter of participation, empathy and accountability, an invitation to attend to one's boundedness to near and distant realities.
The project further interrogates existing acoustic representations of Swissness, a term rebranded in the 1990s for marketing purposes, largely associated with attributes of fairness, precision, reliability, political stability, naturalness and cleanliness. An early example of Sonic Swissness can be found in the composition “Symphonie Les Echanges” by Rolf Liebermann, created for the 1964 Swiss national exhibition in order to introduce the visitor to the interaction of the economy in a novel way. Another instance can be found in the Sound Tower installed in Bienne by Andres Bosshard for Expo.02. Essentially a streaming dispositive for immersive aural experience, Bosshard's 
Klangturm offers a perfect metaphor for neoliberal soundscaping—smooth, consumption-oriented, and depoliticized. Following the rejection of the Responsible Business Initiative by a majority of Swiss voters in 2020, conversations on Sonic Swissness certainly deserve an update. This imperatively should include voices from Switzerland's partner countries, who can attest of the actual human and environmental cost of Swiss wellbeing.
VACUT Group members: Ale Hop (voice artist); Aya Metwalli (voice artist); Gabi Motuba (voice artist); Gilles Aubry (composer and project initiator); Sabina Leone (voice artist).

The sound installation is curated by Zaira Oram [Francesca Ceccherini, Eleonora Stassi]

bios

Alejandra Cárdenas Pacheco (also known as Ale Hop) is a Peruvian-born artist, researcher, and experimental musician based in Berlin. She began her career in the 2000s in Lima’s experimental and underground scene. In 2012, following several years of taking part in different pop and electronic bands, she finally started her solo project, in which she builds layers of sounds by blending a complex repertoire of electric guitar techniques processed by synthesis devices, to create a music of deep physical intensity. Furthermore, she co-founded the Berlin-based festival Radical Sounds Latin America (of which she was co-curator from 2019-21) and, nowadays, directs the publication Border-Listening/Escucha-liminal and the editorial platform Contingent Sounds, which facilitate critical discourses, and artistic research on listening.

Aya Metwalli is an Egyptian singer, composer and music producer. She started singing at the age of five, learned the piano in her early childhood and started writing songs on a self-taught acoustic guitar in her early adulthood. She studied music production in 2014 and has been experimenting with voice and synthesizers since.

Gabi Motuba is a South African award-winning jazz vocalist and composer. She studied jazz music at Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) and received her diploma in 2013. In 2019, Gabi Motuba returned to TUT to complete her B Tech in jazz music majoring in Jazz Improvisation.

Gilles Aubry is a Swiss artist, musician and researcher based in Lausanne and Berlin. He holds an MA in Sound Art from the Berlin University of the Arts (UDK) and a PhD in social anthropology from the Bern University. His work engages with sound, technology and environmental voices in relation to power and coloniality in various contexts.

Sabina Leone is a Swiss vocalist and musician based in Zürich. In her new project Héloïse Sabina Leone acts as a solo performer and creates musical images with expressive voice, drums and various percussion instruments. Sabina Leone builds on her long experience as a singer songwriter (solo album Mancare, 2007), with theater productions (Eusi chlii Stadt with Big Zis, Theater am Hechtplatz 2009 and Soirée, created by Alexandra Bachzetsis et al., Theaterhaus Gessnerallee 2008) and with bands such as Sabina Leone & Teké Ensemble, the duo Sorelle Leone and the female band Wemean, a snotty girl band that released an album in 1996 and toured throughout Europe and Cuba.

WASSERTURM – historical traces
Among the few places that survived the new Zurich urban plan - whose history remains unknown to most citizens and tourists - the Wasserturm was built in 1724 in the Talacker district with the aim of bringing water to the houses, local businesses but also to the fountains placed in the surrounding baroque gardens. Indeed, the district was lacking of independent public water supply. Hence, a group of citizens decided to join forces for a common mission: build a water tower that would distribute this primary good to people and activities in the area. For nearly 200 years, the water tower fulfilled its function, first through a water wheel and then through its transformation into a steam technology. Acquired by the city of Zurich, it later fell into disuse. Today it houses a center for sports activities.
The tower still stands with its white-green verticalism above the waters of the Sihl looking at the Old Botanical Garden. It is characterized by an octagonal plan rising four floors and a curved copper helmet roof that resembles the shape of an onion. Its symbolic presence and its silent memory, hidden between new contemporary buildings, make this place of significant historiographic, anthropological, social and even artistic interest

Sound installation
In the context of the exhibition Sound without music
Casino Luxemburg – Forum pour l’Art Contemporain, Luxembourg

Derrière la mer is a sound installation by the artist Anna Raimondo, result of research that sees the texts of the Bible and the Koran meet on a common ground: the sea. The sound piece interweaves voices that compare different cultures, languages and geographies, suggesting how the two sacred texts have numerous shared references traceable in the vastness of the sea. Indeed, the sea becomes the lowest common denominator, synonymous with cultural contact and mutual reflection. Invited to imagine and move between different idioms, the listener is called upon to take the time to traverse the piece, in an intimate encounter with the sound that simultaneously embraces the sacred and the profane, beliefs and visions that belong to human beings regardless of any creed. Like a contemporary opera, Derrière la mer is installed in a half-blue painted room that cuts through the space and is accompanied by a 'booklet' available in both a printed version and a video projection. Performed by Edyta Jerząb and Jérôme Porsperger, written and composed by Anna Raimondo, the work can be listened to in the mere flow of its words, which recall both a historical geography and a geographical history – the Mediterranean —recognized in the beauty of an encounter.
Derrière la mer is presented at Casino Luxemburg – Forum pour l’Art Contemporain as part of the exhibition Sound without music (30.09 - 27.11.2022) curated by Anastasia Chaguidouline, who invited OTO SOUND MUSEUM to contribute with a curatorial intervention.

The sound installation is curated by Zaira Oram [Francesca Ceccherini, Eleonora Stassi]

bio

Anna Raimondo (born in Italy in 1981, she lives in Brussels and works internationally) Raimondo uses voice and listening as a platform for encounter, collaboration and exchange, as tools for the diffraction of identity. Questioning the limits between private and public, between genders and their connotations, she activates or deconstructs cultural practices to encourage and reveal the inherent potentials of fluidity in identity. She completed an MA in Sound Arts at the London College of Communication (UAL, London, UK) and runs a practice-based Phd between Arba (Royale Académie de Beaux Arts) and ULB University in Brussels (BE) “New genders of listening: voices, silences, bodies and territories”. She has participated in several international solo and collective exhibitions.

Sound performance
Wasserturm, Zurich
Address: Badweg 10, 8001-CH

The sound performance Calma Apparente is a sonic investigation into the possible futures of the water tower and its surroundings. Including its present and past, the artist Magda Drozd seeks connections between speculative resonances, history and recent activities within the tower. Through this sonic incursion into the urban space, the tower becomes a symbol of possible transformations and of the multiple natures that places can embody. Through the experimental performance that Drozd realizes with the violin and the synthesizer, nourished by the collaboration between the artist and some members of Kanupolo Zürich – who train inside the tower on a daily basis –, the building becomes a living musical instrument that lights up in the city and returns new stories. Here, where everything is apparently calm, something has been, something else happens and more will come. As Magda Drozd herself states: “The title Calma Apparente refers to the exact moment before the storm. A state where you can perceive the potential of something coming but everything around you is still calm. I am interested in the suspended time of a momentum, where we perceive the omen of a drastic change, the still hidden and invisible while contemplating in front of an old building or while having a walk along the water. While examining and including sounds that are part of the tower right now, a new landscape opens in front of us – telling a story of strength and fragility at the same time. Something will happen.”

The sound performance is curated by Zaira Oram [Francesca Ceccherini, Eleonora Stassi]

bio

Magda Drozd (1987, Poland) is a composer, musician, and artist working in the field of electronic, ambient and experimental music and sound art. She uses field recordings, digital and analog instruments like a synthesizer, e-guitar, violin, and her voice to create unique soundscapes and music that open imaginative and speculative atmospheres and works underneath the rational. Her LPs «Songs for Plants» and «18 Floors», both released on the Swiss label Präsens Editionen, were acclaimed internationally. Magda worked together with artists, film- and theater-makers to create sound and music for their audiovisual productions and art pieces. As an artist, she creates sound installations that were shown mostly in Switzerland in institutions like Helmhaus, Shedhalle Zürich and Oto Sound Museum. She lives and works between Zürich and Turin.

Collective listening and installation
Wasserturm, Zurich
Address: Badweg 10, 8001-CH

Often invisible to most people, the Wasserturm is a symbolic place that resists the waves of modernization, hiding in the urban fabric of the city. It is from the history of this profane place that Stirnimann-Stojanovic and mfj rulla have found inspiration to develop their collaborative work. Indeed, the Wasserturm was born out of the need for water distribution, which saw some citizens sharing a common mission and becoming active participants in the construction of the tower in the early 18th century. This social story led the artists to investigate the literature that relates to actions of self-organization and redistribution of resources in the present time, also one of the central subjects of their own artistic research. They are practices of resistance that belong to a radical imagination capable of activating processes of awareness, survival and procreation in relation to our behavior with the environment, human and non-human beings. The audio piece Resist! Persist! Maintain! (2022) is a collage of existing texts with the intertwining of voice and sound – a fuse that wants to light up and urge action in connection to some questions such as "What are possible ways to (re)claim the public space? What are possible ways to care for resources in a non-exploitative manner? What are possible ways to maintain collective structures in a rootless capitalist world?". Composed by mfj rulla, the soundscape accompanies the contents contributing to the transmission of the words’ meaning, and creating a space for the imagination to travel.
The audio work is presented on 6th May in the form of a collective listening that starts from the Wasserturm and moves to the Old Botanical Garden via wireless headphones. It is accompanied by the installation of a 9-metre-long banner distributed along the verticality of the tower. Visible from the Old Botanical Garden for two months, it bears the title of the sound work Resist! Persist! Maintain! as a message addressed to the community. During this time, the sound work is available to listen to free of charge via a qr code.

The intervention is curated by Zaira Oram [Francesca Ceccherini, Eleonora Stassi]

bio

Stirnimann-Stojanovic is a Zurich-based artist duo composed of Nathalie Stirnimann (*1990 in Fribourg) and Stefan Stojanovic (*1993 in Vranje, Serbia) who have been working together since 2015. Holding separate Bachelor’s in Fine Arts, they completed their Master’s degree at the Zurich University of the Arts as a duo.
Stirnimann-Stojanovic's concepts manifest in situations, performances, words and objects. Central themes in their practice are the social and structural issues of the art system seen from the viewpoint of aspiring artists. They are interested in exploring the boundaries between art, activism and society using transdisciplinary approaches. By involving the public, spectators become actors, permitting new types of dialogue. Their aim is to probe and call into question the reality of the art field and, using collective approaches, to thematize fairer and more sustainable working conditions.
Stirnimann-Stojanovic's works were shown in Switzerland and internationally. In 2021 they were awarded with the “Art grant of the city of Zurich 2021”, the “JKON Prize 2021”, a studio residency in Shanghai by Pro Helvetia (for 2023) and were nominated for the “Werkschau Zurich 2021”. They were recently artists in residence at Forum Schlossplatz in Aarau (2022), at Theater Neumarkt in Zurich (2021) and are artist partners of the research “Collecting the Ephemeral” (HSLU/SNF, 2020-2023).

Rulla Sutter (1992 in CH) is a sound artist/composer aka mfj rulla.
Since ever, mfj rulla aims to diffuse the frontier of our cosmic perception, combining the known with the unknown, nature with culture, slowly building a cooperative intelligence, harmonised by a rhythm that we share – surrounded by like minded decentralized dedication.
mfj rulla is co-building spaces for collective experiments – since 2015 additionally in the form of musical research gatherings. Combining experiences from interactive ableton live-set tours with previous degree work in sociology and data science.
https://mfjrulla.tumblr.com/

Exhibition
la rada, Locarno

Migrating to the Italian part of Switzerland, OTO SOUND MUSEUM presents the show SOUNDATA inviting the artists Axel Crettenand, Mayar El Bakry and Joanna Selinger at la rada (Locarno, CH). SOUNDATA is conceived to open up a space for reflection between different disciplinary areas including sound and image, sound and technology, and also to shake up an old dichotomy involving humans and machines. It focuses on the researches initiated by Crettenand, El Bakry and Selinger on the processing and interpretation of data related to certain existing conditions or environmental frame. Through different approaches, the artists developed artistic displays and technological strategies to translate specific information into sound, creating new paths of listening and landscapes of meaning.

Chaotic arrangement for 66 voices (2021) by Axel Crettenand is an installation designed to translate the chaotic behavior of heat in a fluid into a choir of voices. It consists of an apparatus composed of a tank of warmed water monitored by thermometers, a software and a sound system. Data are collected through twelve thermometers spread in the volume of water and sent to a program specifically designed to translate the temperature information into MIDI notes in real time, which are ultimately synthesized into human voices. Through these anthropomorphic sounds, previously recorded and orchestrated by the random behavior of heat, the invisibility of chaos manifests itself in an ephemeral and unpredictable chorus. The sound of Chaotic arrangement for 66 voices traduces a scientific methodology in an artistic practice capable of revealing a spiritual dimension that plays with boundaries between visible and invisible, absence and presence, natural and technological elements.
Experimenting among the different possibilities of visualization of natural phenomena, Mayar El Bakry and Joanna Selinger have focused their research in the representation of natural events through unconventional methods able to return the data in an aesthetic and sound form of great impact. After an initial phase of orientation, they chose to devote their efforts toward studying the phenomenon of tsunamis starting with some of the major events of the last two decades: the tsunamis of the coast of Indonesia (2004), the coast of Samoa (2009), near Tohaku, Japan (2009), and the coast of Chile (2015). The result of this path is the audiovisual installation wave/forms (2016), elaborated on the basis of seismic data from IRIS (Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology) and developed with the help of the software "Sonifyer" that allowed to translate seismographic data into audible frequencies. This sound track is accompanied by a dynamic visualization obtained through the use of an audio-reactive script. By showing the epicenter of the tsunamis, the image reveals the behavior of the audio waves that encounter the profile of the continents of a hidden geography, but also with the real boundaries of the room in which the work is presented.

The data come to life, shape and sound, take possession of the exhibition space migrating in the perception of the visitor, who is invited to re-evaluate and rediscover the fascination and vertigo of the data hidden in everything that surrounds us, in every law that regulates human life on our planet.

The exhibition is curated by Zaira Oram [Francesca Ceccherini, Eleonora Stassi]

bios

Axel Crettenand lives and works between Switzerland and Italy. His practice takes the form of installations, sounds, texts, videos and images. A central theme of his work is the observation and representation of the invisible forces that give shape to the material world. He is specifically interested in exploring and producing intersections between ritual and scientific practices and experimenting with transdisciplinary approaches. Seeking collaborations with authors and professionals from  other fields of research, he generates contaminations between different perspectives and hybridations within the processes of proof making in order to imagine alternative ways of reading and understanding reality. In recent years he started a new research focused on the narratives of the collapse of civilization.

Mayar El Bakry is a Swiss-Egyptian graphic designer and researcher based in Zurich. She works in and around the peripheries of design, merging diverse practices in her work. Currently, she’s focusing on food and cooking as a means to create spaces of discourses, exchange and dialogue and communal reflection. Within her research, she emphasizes the importance of cross-cultural exchange, cross-disciplinary collaboration, decolonial and intersectional feminist pedagogies. In her two-part project “Food for Radical Thought” she is investigating the kitchen as a creative space and a place for communing and resistance. The research draws on the premise that communal cooking and eating can operate as an interface to facilitate dialogue and bridge non-invasive discussions around difficult topic such as power, privilege, racism, white supremacy, and discrimination. She understands cooking and eating together as practices of making and reclaiming space for marginalized voices. In her research she specifically looks at decolonial practices focusing on making and reclaiming space through/with and by food and cooking while applying these learnings in a self-reflective dialogue with her own(design) practice. Next to her studies and research, she coordinates the Swiss Design Network and co-curates “Educating Otherwise” a continued education program at the FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Basel focusing on intersectional feminist pedagogies within design.

Joanna Selinger, born in Basel in 1992, devotes herself to art at a young age. After her compulsory schooling in Allschwil, she attended the Leonhard Gymnasium in Basel at the age of seventeen, majoring in visual arts. In 2014, she was admitted to the Basel School of Art and Design. Among many projects during her education, she created the installation Wave Forms* in collaboration with Mayar El Bakry. In September 2017, she successfully completed her Bachelor of Arts degree in Visual Communication. Since 2018, Joanna Selinger has increasingly dedicated herself to projects in independent work; in addition to music video clips, short films, vinyl covers, photographs, logos, poster and flyer designs and textile design, she was thus able to further her education in various areas. In 2019, she was also able to gain experience as a freelance graphic designer in the area of editorial and corporate design at Vitra International AG. She is currently still working on many different projects.

Sound performance
Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen

In collaboration with Sinfonieorchester St.Gallen, OTO SOUND MUSEUM presents the performance Mouvement by the artistic collective POLISONUM who realises the utopian live version of the piece for the first time at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (CH).
In 2018 the artists composed the sound piece Mouvement reworking the minuet k94 written and performed by W. A. Mozart in 1770 in Bologna during his first trip to Italy, when he was only fourteen. The piece Mouvement is characterized by a process of time-stretching, which has subjected the original minuet to an expansion of 248 years, the time that separates us from the day of the first run to the present time. The result has a diaphanous character offered by notes elongated in ethereal sonority, containing a memory that asks our hearing to listen far in time.
In 2021 Polisonum experiments by proposing the live execution of the score Mouvement obtained from the utopian writing of the time-stretched minuet. The sound performance includes the participation of eight string instrument musicians from the Sinfonieorchester St.Gallen (double basses, cellists, violists, violinists), who are asked to play keeping the deformed notes in a prolonged sound, challenging the limits of musical instruments and the conventional rules through which they are normally played, as well as the capabilities of the human body’s resistance.
The performance is presented in the frame of part of the Neustart-Festival, St.Gallen.

Performers from Sinfonieorchester St.Gallen – Violins: Oriana Kriszten, Gwendoline Rouiller Steiger / Violas: Igor Keller, Piotr Baik / Cellos: Ning Liang, Maria-Christina Flüge / Doublebass: Simon Hartmann, Grigori Katz / Thanks to: Karl Schimke

The sound performance is curated by Zaira Oram [Francesca Ceccherini, Eleonora Stassi]

bio

Polisonum (Filippo Lilli, Donato Loforese) is an artistic collective using sound as a method and device of investigation to explore processes and metamorphoses linked to the present time. It is characterized by a research-based approach directed at listening to and interpreting the spaces in which it operates through sound installations and performative acts in strong dialogue with visual languages. Thanks to its hybrid identity, Polisonum realizes projects that feed on a practice of study and analysis in relation to other fields of knowledge. Polisonum's work has been shown in several institutions and festivals, among others: Una boccata d'arte (AV), Fondazione Volume (RM), Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (CH), Palazzo Altemps (RM), Palazzo Pallavicini (BO), Romaeuropa Festival (RM), OTO Sound Museum Zurich (CH), The Others (TO). The collective collaborates with La Sapienza University of Rome Faculty of Civil and Industrial Engineering on the Green Network project for the Public Space Biennial. In 2018 Polisonum received the Special "Utopia" Award of the Talent Prize and in 2016 the Best Unpublished Work Award during The Others. Over time the collective has released several vinyls, among the latest Passi 13'36'' in collaboration with the artist Alfredo Pirri.

Sound performance
La Voirie, Biel/Bienne

As part of the OTO SOUND MUSEUM live program 2021, the performance with Jurczok 1001 takes place at La Voirie in Biel/Bienne (CH) on 11th June. The artist is among Switzerland's spoken word pioneers and presents a performance from his Spoken Beats series. The performance opens a new artistic season "Post Lockdown", which led to a reflection on the narrative and evocative capacities of voice and gestures. Sound experimentation meets migration and digital nomadism: this encounter takes shape in the artistic perspective of Jurczok 1001. The encounter in Biel is dedicated to the limits of language.

The sound performance is curated by Zaira Oram [Eleonora Stassi]

bio

Jurczok 1001 (b. 1974, CH) lives and works in Zurich.
Jurczok 1001 is a spoken word artist, singer, human beatbox and performer. He has performed under this name since 1996 and is among Switzerland’s spoken word pioneers. He is best known for his Spoken Beats format, a virtuoso mix of spoken word, vocals and live looping that he has performed in a variety of international venues. He has appeared among other places at the Tata literature live! Festival in Mumbai, at the Berlin Poetry Festival, at the woerdz Festival in Lucerne, at Moscow’s Electrotheatre, at the Street Art Museum St. Petersburg, at the Kimmel Center for Performing Arts in Philadelphia, at the Elevate Festival Graz, at Deutsches Haus New York and at the Solothurner Literaturtage. He has released two EPs and three singles. His most recent publications are Spoken Beats (Edition Patrick Frey, 2018), a collection of his spoken word texts from the last ten years, and the single Chumm, mi schlafed (Masterplanet, 2017). In 2020 he received an artist’s grant from the Landis & Gyr Foundation.

Sound performance
Artist's garden, Zurich

"Capturing and preserving living sound is as much an ancient ambition, as protecting what makes us survive. In archiving sound as an act of preservation, the captor of sound is taking care of those who listen." Paloma Ayala

LOUDREADING in the situated kitchen is the first intervention by OTO SOUND MUSEUM taking place with the Mexican artist Paloma Ayala as participative action and ritual. LOUDREADING in the situated kitchen is a reclamation of that mystical moment of carrying sound in a box, in a 'Zongzi' (a special dish made of rice, home-made ingredients, wrapped in bamboo) meaning that each person who interacted, contributed to the power of this practice as an ingredient and instigator of a collective voice. The sound performance has its first experimental reading session through a shared lunch in which everyone is invited to participate while eating.

The sound performance is curated by Zaira Oram [Francesca Ceccherini, Eleonora Stassi]

bio

Paloma Ayala (b. 1980, Matamoros, Mexico) is a visual artist interested in empowering the relationship between domestic living strategies and political contexts. She is a diaspora mother and a mestiza daughter whose work fictionalizes historical, ecological or social problematics as means of analysis and critique. Paloma´s projects nourish visions of connection and dreams of emancipation. Her favorite spaces to work range from kitchen to river shore, from international crossing bridge to agricultural land, from community meeting to aquelarre. Paloma’s work is rooted in her home, the eastern US/MX border landscapes, simultaneously blooming in her current base in Zurich.