Accompanied by her modular synthesiser, xenologist scholar and artist Adriana Knouf's presentation is proposed as a love letter. Eschewing the binary logic that pervades Western thinking, Knouf argues that all beings – trans*, cis, and xeno – are in a constant process of flux and transformation, always already more-than-human. From syringes of ​oes…

In Louisiana, artist, activist, writer, and architectural researcher Imani Jacqueline Brown uncovers Black antebellum cemeteries – portals to recover and remember Afro-diasporic ecological praxes.Between 1820 and 1865, enslaved people were forced to clear Louisiana’s primordial forests to make way for the expansion of cane. They preserved small sec…

Following lectures from scholars Astrida Neimanis and M Murphy at Sonic Acts Biennial 2024, both were joined on the Symposium stage by artist Sissel Marie Tonn for a conversation addressing many topics, from pollution and violence, to language, creative methods, and direct action. Guided by questions from the audience, they also address indigenous …

Author and researcher Astrida Neimanis gives the opening lecture at Sonic Acts Biennial 2024 Symposium. In a time of extinction and climate catastrophe, how are we to feel? Feeling intensifies, but also wavers. Feeling's temporal container pulses, its membrane now more porous: the past seeps in, the future jumps the gun. Feeling anything swims in t…

In this performative lecture, artist Juan Arturo García presents his research project about a nuclear reactor in Colombia. Radioactivity, earthquakes, and applications like geochronology are used as props to explore the paradoxes of trying to visualise inaccessible phenomena. García’s translation, or poetics of displacement, taps into the present c…

Filmmaker and researcher Solveig Qu Suess traces how water, infrastructure, and documentary film intertwine. Her lecture follows the flood pulse of Southeast Asia's main river – the Mekong – since the 1990s. Construction of hydroelectric dams has caused drastic changes, reconfiguring downstream landscapes to accommodate for the expansion of plantat…

Researcher, educator, and curator Margarida Mendes’ lecture asks how our understanding of the environment is shaped on different scales from the way we sense, to social protocols and intergovernmental infrastructures. For Mendes, a collective sense of our surroundings is formed by practices and policies that mould our ecological pedagogies and poli…

In 1978, in the Dutch towns of Veghel and Almelo, two groups of migrant women from Turkey were involved in simultaneous labour disputes. They asked their employers for collective agreements, regular work hours, higher pay, and holiday time. The labour-intensive work of plucking chicken feathers in Almelo and peeling onions in Veghel has been lost i…

Moving through extended material and research from the making of the video work 'Soot Breath // Corpus Infinitum', filmmaker Arjuna Neuman and philosopher Denise Ferreira da Silva explore their creative collaboration. The second instalment in the Elemental Cinema series, which takes up the elements to reimagine the world otherwise, 'Soot Breath // …

In her live multichannel performance ‘How to Love a Tree’, Hira Nabi weaves together whispered narratives from sylvan landscapes, misty mountain sides, ghosts of extraction and British imperialism, inviting us into forest time. Part of an ongoing artistic project, launched in 2019, ‘How to Love a Tree’ documents the former colonial hill stations in…

Starlings sing new songs when they grow-up in persistently polluted lands. Desires and sexualities shift. The relations of our bodies go far beyond the skin, stretching outwards to lands, waters, non-humans, ancestors, and those yet to come. We make one another in difficult conditions. What can we become? How can we dream of land-body desires when …

This conversation takes as its starting point Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner's most recent film, 'My Want of You Partakes of Me'. The film, which was on view as part of the Sonic Acts Biennial 2024 exhibition at W139, is the third instalment of a trilogy. It proposes that digestion is a fundamental condition for organisms to be in the world, a p…

Writer, musician, and xenologist, Adriana Knouf is the first (known) trans artist to send artwork into outer space. Her multidisciplinary practice is inspired by, amongst many other sources, queer/feminist science-fiction, trans-activist zines from the 1970s, and The Xenofeminist Manifesto (2015) by the international collective Laboria Cuboniks. Sh…

Hydrofeminist scholar Astrida Neimanis – author of the formative book 'Bodies of Water' (2017) – is interviewed by Sonic Acts curator and editor Hannah Pezzack in the context of Sonic Acts Biennial 2024.Ahead of the workshop Weathering Together, which took place at Zone2Source on 22 February, and their presentation, 'Holdfast (Learning Feeling)' at…

19 May 2023 – Ruigoord, AmsterdamFred Carter’s introductory talk at Maritime Frictions follows hydrological and logistical flows across transitional waters of the IJ estuary and the oil terminals of the Port of Amsterdam. Tracing the emergent turn to fieldwork across practice-based and environmental research, Carter asks: how might we develop pract…

19 May 2023 – Ruigoord, AmsterdamSpeculating on logistics as a project of time management, Liquid Time’s lecture performance at Maritime Frictions considers processes of distributing, expropriating and configuring planetary time.Based on field research carried out in the IJ estuary to the west of Amsterdam, the duo maps out three sites throughout t…

Embassy of the North Sea (Frank Bloem and Harpo 't Hart) – Fieldwork Presentation19 May 2023 – Ruigoord, AmsterdamDuring their fieldwork presentation for Maritime Frictions, Frank Bloem and Harpo 't Hart observed the port of Amsterdam from a chemical point of view, following their nose and ears to smell and listen to the stories of life in the harb…

Latent Amongst the Air by Mint Park27 October 2022 – OT301, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsIn her opening presentation and performance for Night Air: Breathing with Clouds, sound and new media artist Mint Park expands on her fascination with drift, noise and dissipation, discusses the making of her Sonic Acts commission 'Turbulence Studies: Latent Among…

The Right to Water by Daphina MisiedjanSONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 202216 October 2022 – Likeminds, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsFollowing that question of our (Western) attitude towards water, Daphina Misiedjan explores its being as a right. As researcher of environmental justice and human rights, she looks at drinkwater as a fundamental life source and its …

Maritime Imagination by Mikki StelderSONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 202216 October 2022 – Likeminds, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsThinking of the future imaginary of water invites a journey back into its unsettled past. In 1609, Dutch East India Company lawyer and state ideologue Hugo de Groot crafted the notion of ‘mare liberum’, or the free sea, turning the oc…

Five Stories on Heat by Kent ChanSONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 202216 October 2022 – Likeminds, Amsterdam, The Netherlands‘Five Stories on Heat’ is a storytelling performance by Kent Chan that ruminates upon art's shared histories and futures with heat. The performance blends narratives of artmaking during the Vietnam War, Malayan and Hopi myths, with potent…

Atlas Otherwise by Nishat AwanSONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 202216 October 2022 – Likeminds, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsWhile there have been many attempts to think and make maps differently, the atlas is usually understood as a compendium of maps rather than a form of knowledge production. How can we rethink and remake the atlas otherwise to tell stories tha…

Spatial Acts: Geographies of Absence and Waithood by Ola HassanainSONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 202216 October 2022 – Likeminds, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsArchitecture situates ‘building’ as an ecological ‘emptying’ of territories and an infrastructure for continuous cycles of ‘catastrophe’, such as forced migration. One thing that remains in the wake of cat…

Transient Marshlands, Permanent Progress – Geographies of Uncertainty by Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou & Agnès VilletteSONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 202216 October 2022 – Likeminds, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsOn the shores of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands lie three nuclear installations forming an eclectic nuclear geography. Gravelines, Doel and Borssele nuc…

Dirt, Debt, Death, Data by Maryam Monalisa GharaviSONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 202216 October 2022 – Likeminds, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsOil, the 20th century’s most important non-renewable resource, lies at the centre of discourses on ecological peril and financial oppression, though its colonialist history has faded from view. In a lecture performance en…

ISLAND by Thomas Lamers (Collectief Walden)SONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 202216 October 2022 – Likeminds, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsResisting or allowing, the sea floods the land sooner or later. Not more than 250 years from now, the drowning of Amsterdam is going to be a fact, performance collective Walden foretells. Their performative installation EILAND, …

The Future Waters of the Storm Surge by Aura SatzSONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 202216 October 2022 – Likeminds, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsFrom the perspective of the Oosterscheldekering – a protective barrier that connects the Zeeland islands and is designed to protect the Netherlands from flooding from the North Sea – water is a threat, a potential source o…

Performing the Sublime Sea of Co-Mattering by Mary MaggicSONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 202215 October 2022 – Likeminds, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsThrough years of research through public ‘workshopologies’ on the project Open Source Estrogen, biohacking methodologies have proven to serve far more than spreading didactic knowledge. These protocols, which produ…

Sunlight Doesn’t Need a Pipeline by Dani AdmissSONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 202215 October 2022 – Likeminds, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsDani Admiss looks at how a collaborative climate justice project Sunlight Doesn’t Need a Pipeline initiates a collective rethink about what forms of repair are needed in the art sector and beyond. The current solutions of cl…

Public Experiments in Chemical Regulation by Angeliki BalayannisSONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 202215 October 2022 – Likeminds, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsIndustrial chemicals form the infrastructure of modern life. The regulation of these chemicals – in particular the dominant permission-to-pollute regime – is built on logics that produce environmental and ep…

Sensing Polluted Airs by Nerea CalvilloSONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 202215 October 2022 – Likeminds, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsGeoengineering projects sustain a state of affairs. But how can we think about infrastructures designed to deal with polluted air in the world we all share? Maybe by testing other modes of paying attention, treating or engaging with…

‘Everywhere is a here, isn’t it?’ On Toxic Entanglements by Antonia AlampiSONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 202215 October 2022 – Likeminds, Amsterdam, The Netherlands‘Human actors strive to interpret, define, or contain the toxic, but how are they also acted upon? Or [...] what happens when the dump is in us? What is the duality of contamination that emerges wh…

when we image the earth, we imagine another by Sophie Dyer & Sash Engelmann (open-weather)SONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 202215 October 2022 – Likeminds, Amsterdam, The Netherlands‘As the weather image grew, Miel’s consciousness expanded, bending to the curvature of the Earth. Far from an out-of-body experience, the feeling was one of being profoundly situate…

Filtered Clouds_do not store in container by Hannah Mevis27 May 2022 – OT301, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsAlthough a vast body of water is present in the air at all times, clouds are only perceptible by a careful combination of distance, moisture density, and light. Mist and fog, despite causing low visibility, are a way for earth-bound critters to e…

NIGHT AIR: SHIFTING SANDSMichaela Büsse – Granular Grammar22 April 2022 – OT301, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsMichaela Büsse’s lecture and performative reading unearths how sand has become one of the Netherlands’ most important resources and focuses on the country’s centuries-long history of land reclamation. She will present clips from her new film t…

NIGHT AIR: SHIFTING SANDSJeff Diamanti – Phosphate Futures: Body, Territory, Mutiny22 April 2022 – OT301, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsIn his talk ‘Phosphate Futures: Body, Territory, Mutiny’, Jeff Diamanti unfolds the figurative force of elemental phosphorus across four fields on Earth: Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Port of Elizabeth, South Africa; Laâ…

NIGHT AIR: SHIFTING SANDSFélix Blume – Desierto22 April 2022 – OT301, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsFélix Blume’s talk and ‘Desierto’ (2021, 24’) listening session transported the audience to Altiplano Potosino in central Mexico, a major gold and silver mining hub. Commissioned by ARTE Radio, the piece is filled with recordings from these elevated plai…

Out of Focus: Down the Crimson Cliffs, past the Fjord of the Dead, over the Signal Mountain by Louis Braddock Clarke & Zuzanna Zgierska31 March 2022 – Ot301, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsIn a talk about their audiovisual project, ‘Out of Focus’, Louis Braddock Clarke and Zuzanna Zgierska track down the widely dispersed fragments of a meteorite that fe…

NIGHT AIR: SHOCK WAVESMaría Edurne Zuazu – Between Shouting and Shooting5 November 2021 – OT301, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsIn her talk ‘Between Shouting and Shooting’, María Edurne Zuazu introduces sonic weapons like the Long-Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), ‘roof knocking’, or ‘music torture', which rely on high-intensity and focused sound to suppres…

NIGHT AIR: SHOCK WAVESElena Cohen – Sonic Weapons and Policing: A New York City Case Study5 November 2021 – OT301, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsSonic weapons like the Long-Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), ‘roof knocking’, or ‘music torture’ are frequently used as part of the arsenal of state violence. During Night Air: Shock Waves, Elena Cohen presented …

NIGHT AIR: SHOCK WAVESTechnical Involution by Yann Leguay5 November 2021 – OT301, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsIn his lecture ‘Technical Involution’, artist Yann Leguay speaks to the dematerialisation of sound and the evolving effects of interfaces. He follows with a performance of ‘Volta’, based on an electrical arc produced by a plasma speaker so po…

NIGHT AIR: SOIL SAMPLES24 April 2021 - Online TransmissionSoil Samples gathers four artists and researchers for performances, presentations and discussions addressing the topic of soil and its geopolitical, colonial, and bodily entanglements. The panel is made up of sound artist Felicity Mangan, researcher and 'tiny miner' Martin Howse, biogeochemi…

EXHAUST – A ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION ON OIL AND DATA27 February 2021 - Online TransmissionCurated by Sonic Acts OVEREXPOSED artistic research resident, writer and theorist Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, Exhaust features political and environmental anthropologist Omolade Adunbi, media artist and programmer Ryan Kuo, artist and geographer Helen Pritchard and …

SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020Nadim Samman – As We Used to Float / Iroojrilik23 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsCurator Nadim Samman gives a performative lecture that takes to the psychology and aesthetic of the sea, drawing on his explorer’s path through art as co-founder of the Antarctic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015…

SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020Dehlia Hannah – Cloud Walking: Meditations on 'A Year Without a Winter'23 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Lauded curator and professor Dehlia Hannah delivers a lecture stemming from her environment-focussed publications and research projects. The meeting point of climate change and art – from the v…

SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020Lukáš Likavčan – Introduction to Comparative Planetology23 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsErrata: The lecturer would like to correct the crediting for Holly Herndon's 'Extreme Love’ track from her PROTO album and add co-authors Jenna Sutela and Lilly Anna Haynes.Theorist Lukáš Likavčan collaborates…

SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020DESIGN EARTH: Rania Ghosn – Geostories23 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsArchitects Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy co-founded DESIGN EARTH to engage with geography in addressing humanity’s relationship to the Earth through architecture. From Monaco to Mexico City, their research develops projects a…

SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020Underground Division: Helen Pritchard + Jara Rocha – Rock Damages22 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam The NetherlandsThe *Underground Division* is an action-research collective of different people based in London, Brussels and Barcelona. They are interested in technologies around subsurface rendering – a trans*femini…

SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020Daniel Mann – Healing and Killing in the Underground22 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsLondon-based filmmaker and writer Daniel Mann explores how image production shapes perceptions of armed conflict, colonisation and climate emergency. His films have screened internationally, including Motza el hay…

SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020Marjolijn Dijkman + Toril Johannessen – On 'Reclaiming Vision'22 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam The NetherlandsNote: Marjolijn Dijkman joined Toril Johannessen for the Q&A that followed the lecture On 'Reclaiming Vision'Bacteria, algae and other microbes are essential for the very being of life on earth. Marjolijn…