latest news
this website disappeared back in june, and is being slowly rebuilt
here are just some of the latest news
reach me: dianediane (at) gmx.net
follow me: @diane.isadora
next up
2026
02.10 (live) NOPA festival, Yerevan, AR
18.09 FEU FOU at SEANAPS festival, Leipzig, DE
11.09 (live) Hydrofeminism festival, 90mil Berlin, DE
22.05 (live) Superspectives Festival, Chapelle La Trinité, Lyon, FR
28.04 (live) Oscillations festival, Qo2, Brussels, BE
25.04 (live) les allusives premiere with Teres Bartunkova, SILO, FR
20.04 film premiere of Was das Wasser Erzählt, festival Visions du Réel, Nyons, CH
17.02 FEU FOU mini-tour (with l o h, slowfoam & mondlane), 90mil Berlin, DE
12.02 FEU FOU mini-tour (with l o h, slowfoam & mondlane), Grrrnd Zero Lyon, FR
07.02 FEU FOU mini-tour (with l o h, slowfoam & mondlane), Mafaldaz Marseille, FR
18.01 (acousm.) New Ear Gallery for Sound Art, New York, USA
‘Was das Wasser Erzählt’
soundtrack for the film ‘Was das Wasser Erzählt’
Maria Iorio & Raphaël Cuomo
Switzerland | 2026 | 80 min
World premiere
Languages : Tigrinya, Japanese
Subtitles : English, French
National Competition at Visions du Réel, International Film Festival Nyons (2026)
synopsis
“I am the heron”. In a monologue, a woman’s voice recounts the truths she overhears while listening near a stream. Through the language of birds, Was das Wasser erzählt explores the water cycle – raging torrents, mist, ice and bubbling streams. The film is the fruit of a transdisciplinary artistic project related to the transformation of the Leutschenbach neighbourhood in Zurich-Seebach. The meeting of the construction site for this new neighbourhood and the adjoining stream relegates humans to the background. This shift in focus invites a reflection on humanity’s colonisation of natural areas over the ages, polluting waters, warming glaciers and imposing an arbitrary classification of life on flora and fauna. The alliteration of the title sets the poetic tone for a song that fully listens to the voice and rhythm of nature, taking the form of a fable about a man who saw himself as more important than the heron.
– words by Raphaëlle Pireyre
credits
Photography – Raphaël Cuomo
Editing – Raphaël Cuomo, Maria Iorio
Sound – Maria Iorio, Gilles Aubry, Diane Barbé
Music – Diane Barbé
Voices – Faytinga, Minami Saeki
Production – Laura Romano
image by Peter Arun Pfaff, live at Favorit, Munich, 2024
‘musiques tourbes’
released on forms of minutiae, 2024
vinyl / digital
Words by Pablo Diserens
Sound artist, instrument builder and field recordist, Diane Barbé makes their return on forms of minutiae with “musiques tourbes”, a weaving of wetland soundscapes and biomimicking synthesis.
Concerned with interspecies conjunctions while nurturing the planet as a finite verdant space, Diane Barbé plays with experimental music, listening practices and activism to bring attention to delicate environmental phenomena, that, despite their minute size, translate profoundly the effects of the Anthropocene while celebrating the living. Over the last years, in search of sonic signs in the landscape, Barbé followed murmurs in Europe’s wetlands which lead them to the “musiques tourbes” (French for “bog musics”). Musics made of animal rhythms, blown hums, and electronic simulacra that transport us, listeners, with Barbé into the humid zones of the planetary garden.
« What these remarkable tracks share is Barbé’s deep and attentive listening. »
— Bandcamp Daily: Best Field Recordings
« the boundary between humanity and biosphere is blurred. »
— A Closer Listen
« It’s a call to recalibrate our senses, to attune ourselves to the murmurings of a world teetering on the edge of transformation. »
— Chain D.L.K.
more
The album begins and ends with two biomimicking pieces — “le grand jardin de coupigny” and “le petit jardin de coupigny” — both generated with the Coupigny synthesiser, a Serge system, and a Vermona Perfourmer during residencies at the INA-GRM studios in Paris (2022-2023). In the isolation of pandemic winters, Barbé’s ears ringed with the dense soundscape of Thailand’s forests. Memories of moist jungles emerged and formed, like mock gardens of wild voices, through the dance of electrons in the circuits of the Coupigny — an analog modular system built by François Coupigny and later reproduced by Philippe Dao with original components from the 1960s. Floating together in dronesque fashion these waveforms materialize in gentle yet sharp clouds of insectean simulations. Strange signals, perhaps musics of some sort, reach our ears, giving rise to a mirage of odd landscapes, as if we were encountering a blooming ecosystem that didn’t quite exist.
As a counterpoint, the album features two soundscape compositions both made of biophonic and hydrophonic sounds recorded in vulnerable European wetlands. Collected in Camargue’s river deltas during workshops with Phonurgia Nova, “les marécageuses” zooms in on the little-known underwater worlds of local ponds. Untouched and manipulated recordings intertwine to share a window onto the boggy existence of diving beetles, whirligigs, backswimmers, and many kinds of stridulating insects on windy afternoons. In resonance, “les enlisées” transports us northward into the orange waters of the Kahnsdorfer water treatment reservoir in Spreewald. There, under the surface, algae sing sunlit songs of photosynthesis amid rust-reddened wetlands and artificial lakes heavily contaminated with iron oxide due to the region’s coal mining past.
Nested at the heart of this interplay of the tangible and the intangible, “les hululées” lures and suspends us in the in-between. A hum, made of earthy tones, rises amid the buzz of wetland critters, and the pattering rain and rustling leaves of an incoming storm. Music has escaped circuitries and now manifests in the breaths of a small group of human sounders. These mouths play ceramic globular flutes gifted with nonstandard microtonal tunings, which are part of the Alien Kin ensemble — Barbé’s wider and communal sound project which explores collective music, nonverbal communication, biomimicry and synchronicity through group workshops and performances.
With “musiques tourbes” Diane Barbé offers a peculiar map into the bog. A sonic cartography that matches the tentacular sprawl of drifting algae. As listeners, caught between the organic and the electronic, the real and the imagined, we are left with little choice but to forgo our contours and melt into the surprises of these humid zones. Gifted with new planetary garden perspectives, we may begin to sense a possible world. One where listening practices and technology come together to nurture the collective imaginary in an attempt at resetting our environmental norms and reversing the shifting baseline. Field recording is at the core of “musiques tourbes”, yet what ultimately seeps through is an act of field remembering.
~
The album’s artwork features a mixture of photography and drawings, proposed by two of Barbé’s long term collaborators, Teresa Bartůňková and Pablo Diserens.
credits
released November 22, 2024
12” LP 45rpm— limited edition of 200
recorded and composed by diane barbé
“Les hululées” was recorded in a meadow in Brandenburg during the Grabowsee residency (2023) with Alien Kin instruments played by Ebb Bailey, Jonathan Batomene Braun, Liav Gabay, Lisa Violetta Gass, Mia Oak, Joseph Summers, Çağdaş Sarı, Maria Sécio and Diane Barbé.
“les enlisées” was recorded during a field trip with researcher Jonas Dahm in Spreewald, DE
– mastered by mathieu bonnafous — design by pablo diserens
– cut by dubplates and mastering + pressed by object (manufacturing)
– drawings by teresa bartůňková
— cover picture by pablo diserens
— picture of diane barbé at GRM by didier allard © INA
published by forms of minutiae — fom13 — 2024
‘aboyer au mauvais arbre’
as ARBORE, duo with Laure Boer
released on somewhere press, 2025
cassette / digital
ARBORE is the collaborative project of French-born, Berlin-based artists Diane Barbé and Laure Boer, navigating the wide spectrum of electroacoustics, instrument building and radical improvisation.
« Genuinely loose-limbed and exquisitely zonked, Diane Barbé and Laure Boer’s ARBORE debut marries electroacoustic sound design to basement psych-folk, where homemade Vietnamese zither, flutes and whistles float around gloopy analog synths like some lost Nate Young plays Folkways record, or the deepest end of ssabæ, Oï les Ox and Catherine Ribeiro.
Instrument builder, field recordist and researcher Diane Barbé has already impressed with deeper-than-deep solo jaunts like last year’s ‘musiques tourbes’, an imaginary wetland cartography that was recorded at the INA-GRM studios, and as part of Somewhere Press supergroup FEU FOU alongside slowfoam, Mondlane and LOH. Multi-instrumentalist Laure Boer, meantime, has been developing her noise and folk-inspired improvisations for over a decade, releasing the deadly no-input mixer freakout ‘Chicanes’ in 2023, and finding her free jazz footing on February’s ‘FOUR LTTR WRDS’. The duo’s ARBORE project finds both artists taking a step back from their expected zones and connecting in real time.
« Barbé and Boer conduct a psychedelic ritual that transports us beyond the corporeal realm. » – Boomkat
more…
On the first side’s long centrepiece ‘Chemin de montagne’, feral homemade flutes call out over collapsing percussive wrinkles and cryptic chimes. Scraped string improvisations shepherd us in the direction of trad folk, but then a fudgy, sub-heavy kick takes us into a half-speed dub. Boer’s Vietnamese zither is the star of the show, with Barbé’s xenharmonic whistles floating like bird calls over the top. When Aldous Huxley’s voice flutters and saturates over rickety drums and horn blasts on the ritualistic life march ‘Pas une trompette’, their psychedelic intentions are made clear.
On the flip, the duo warp a gentle French lullaby, singing to each other before the words stretch out into ‘Lost Highway’-level reality distortions. It sets the mood for the album’s eldritch second half which kicks into a different pace on the electro-plated ‘Petit crabe’, a drum machine & oscillator jam that gets snagged on its ruff edges. Then, on ‘La main sur la corde’, they gently pluck the zither, before the grand finale ‘Son Long’ stretches a vocal drone that pits Barbé and Boer’s voices against each other, picking out tonal variations and ferric ghost notes.
Barbé and Boer conduct a psychedelic ritual that transports us beyond the corporeal realm. » – Boomkat
credits
released June 6, 2025
ARBORE is Laure Boer & Diane Isadora
Recorded in Berlin in 2023–2024
Instruments: appeaux, circuit-bent telephone, dan bau, flutes, light-sensitive stones, lyra-8 polyphonic synth, percussions, samplers, voices, whistles
Pas une trompette, voice Aldous Huxley (extracts from the Visionary Experience conference, 14th annual congress of applied psychology, Copenhagen, 1961)
Mixed by Diane Isadora in Berlin
Mastered by Miles
Distributed by Boomkat
Photography by Somewhere Press
Design by Musheto Fernandez
compilations
image by Didier Allard © INA, 2023
short bio [last updated 02.2026]
Diane Barbé (she/they) works at the intersection of experimental music and anthropology, delving into multiple practices of sound from instrument building, electroacoustic composition, field recording, teaching and writing. Her ongoing project The Alien Kin develops collective music workshops with handmade wind and percussion instruments, exploring imitation and sonic mimicry as possibilities for accessing more-than-human modes of representation. Her last album, Musiques Tourbes, comes out on Forms of Minutiae in the autumn 2024, unravelling a mixture of field recordings and additive analog synthesis, building together a swampy universe of small critters. Diane collaborates with Laure Boer on the radical improvisation duo Arbore and is part of the recent quatuor Feu Fou with loh, slowfoam and mondlane. She also performs solo in experimental music festivals and venues across Europe, builds sound installations and instruments, produces for films and documentaries, and recently composed Signe Singe, an electroacoustic piece composed for the multichannel acousmonium of GRM-Paris. She created the music composition for the docu-fiction Was das Wasser Erzählt, directed by Raphäel Cuomo and Maria Ioro, which premiered at Visions du Réel 2026.
past shows
2025
01.11 (acousm.) GRM, Maison de la Radio, Paris, FR
15.08 (live) STRUER TRACKS, Sound Art Lab, Struer, DK
23.05 (live with FEU FOU) Somewhere Press release party @90mil Berlin, DE
22.05 (live) tbc, Berlin, DE
16.04 (live) Campos de Marte @Casa Baranchel, Madrid, ES
08-12.04 (workshop) Semaine du Son @ENSA Bourges, FR
2024
06.12 (live) f-o-m release party, 90mil, Berlin
04.12 (live) LOM Space, Bratislava, Slovakia
01.12 (live duo ARBORE) Noiseberg, Berlin
23.11 (live) Grnd Zero, Lyon
11.11 (live) Favorit Bar, München
25.10 (live) RAUSCH, Drone Night, Backsteinboot, Berlin
05.10 (live) Hayfilm, NOPA festival, Yerevan, Armenia
4-12.10 (install) HayArt Cultural Center, NOPA festival Yerevan, Armenia
21.09 (live) Seanaps festival, Leipzig
01.09 (live) Holsek Contemporary, Berlin
22.08 (live) FRANK with Kim Khan, OFFSITE Wehrmuehle Berlin
16+17.08 (live) Countdown Grabowsee, Brandenburg
18-22.07 (live) “Canicular” performance with Rebecca Journo, Festival d’Avignon, France
22.06 (live) ROTA festival, Blanca, Spain
08.06 (wshop) Field Recording workshop with Landscape, Refuge Worldwide, Berlin
25.05 (live) Les Yeux Fermés, Filature Levasseur, Evreux, France
03.05 (live) “The Alien Kin” collective performance, Instituto Sacatar, Bahía, Brasil
02.02 (live) “Tartamudeos” with Selu Herraiz, B.A.S.E Tsonami, Valparaíso, Chile
2023
26.12.23 (live) Collective Session on Cashmere Radio, live from Rota Festival, Blanca, Spain
16.12.23 (live) ROTA festival, Blanca, Spain
17.11.23 (live) The Alien Kin collective performance, Cala Project Space, Berlin, Germany
31.10.23 (live) The Alien Kin collective performance, 90mil, Berlin, Germany
14.10.23 (live) with the True Badours, Grnd Zero, Lyon, France
08.10.23 (live) L’Embobineuse, Marseille, France
04.10.23 (live) The Alien Kin collective performance, Couvent Levat, Marseille, France
27.09.23 (pres) The Schwarzwald Tapes avant-première, Videodrome 2, Marseille, France
15.09.23 (live) Resonate! w/ Laure Boer, Miki Yui, Echo Ho, FFT Düsseldorf, Germany
01.09.23 (live) duo Arbore w/ Laure Boer, Conscious Madness Festival, Germany
11.08.23 (live) Guyenne Festival, France
22.07.23 (live) Strómy Festival w/ Selu Herraiz, Czech Republic
15.07.23 (live) Codex Club, Arkaoda, Berlin
15.07.2023 (live) duo Arbore w/ Laure Boer, Morphine Raum, Berlin
16.06.23 (live) in-animate matters w/ Pablo Diserens, ssabae, Galleria Akusmata, Helsinki, Finland
27.05.23 (live) VESSEL, 90mil, Berlin
19.05.23 (live) CÚKR, warehouse, Prague, Czech Republic
29.04.23 (live) Bruit de Fond dérive w/ collectif Nuit Noire, marseille
09.03.23 (dj) ‘Eternally Frozen’ release w/ Andrea Belfi & Zinc & Copper, arkaoda berlin
28.01.23 (live) CODEX club, studio dB, berlin
26.01.23 (live) with equations collective, OHM, berlin
06.01.23 (live) the alien kin, spatial performance, acousmonium INA-GRM 104 paris
2022
09.12.22 (live) ROTA festival, murcia, spain
24.11.22 (live) not a festival, rathaus neukölln, berlin
27.10.22 (live) the alien kin, morphine raum berlin
15.09.22 (live) jungle gym records, kwia berlin
10.09.22 (live) shifting conversations, documenta, kassel, germany
02.09.22 (live) sounds of rest, weisser elefant gallerie, berlin
20.08.22 (live) grabowsee festival, brandenburg, germany
23.07.22 (live) strómy festival, czech republic
14.07.22 (live) f-o-m release party, kwia Berlin
02.07.22 (live) ssabae ensemble, TBA, France
24.06.22 (live) shifting conversations, moos Berlin
04.06.22 (live) WEICH, studio dB, Berlin
29.05.22 (live) climate care festival, floating university Berlin
30.04.22 (live) vogelklang festival, soundtent, Schwarzwald
26.03.22 (live) garden of forking paths, Cashmere Radio Berlin
16.03.22 (dj) Return of the Living Wine Berlin
22.02.22 (dj) Arkaoda Berlin
19.02.22 (live) sentient lands, Arkaoda Berlin
11.02.22 (live) RAUSCH, Backsteinboot Berlin
28.01.22 (live) unfinished fridays, Lake Studios Berlin
07.01.22 (cancelled) INA GRM, Paris
2021
03.02.21 (dj) HOER Radio, Berlin
10.02.21 (live) Oneironautics VI. Cashmere Radio, Berlin
23-25.04.21 (performance) The Enclosed Garden, Bangkok
28.05.21 (live) Cosmic Playgrounds, Esslingen
01.07.21 (live) Zenner Open Air, Berlin
22-25.07.21 (installation) STROMY Treehouse Festival, Czechia
04-12.09.21 (installation) Climate Care Festival, Floating University Berlin
23.10.21 (live) Borsig Amp Fest. Kesselhaus Herzberge Berlin
2020
19.12.20 (live) Q3Ambientfest, online
16.12.20 (live) Oneironautics V. Cashmere Radio, Berlin
19.09.20 (live) Oneironautics IV. Cashmere Radio, Berlin
23.08.20 (live) Akousmatik Bush, Berlin
29.07.20 (live) Heads radio. Sameheads Berlin
24-26.07 (live) STROMY Treehouse festival, Czechia
23.07.20 (installation) TREES with Salomé Jashi, DAAD Gallery Berlin
17.07.20 (dj) CÚKR ambient stage, secret location
10.07.20 (virtual installation) Passing one loop into another, NBK Berlin
02.07.20 (live) Rising Whisper. ACUD Macht Neu Berlin
27.06.20 Oneironautics III. live collective on Cashmere Radio
07.06.20 (cancelled) PhOEMina festival, Acqui Terme
30.05.20 Oneironautics II. live collective on Cashmere Radio
21.04.20 (cancelled) Music for Cinemas, Rauschpalast Berlin
19.04.20 (cancelled) Anthropocene party, Prague
05.04.20 (cancelled) Q3A Ambientfest, Fabrik Potsdam
28.03.20 (cancelled) Borsig Amp Fest, Kesselhaus Herzberge Berlin
08.03.20 (live AV) Vaguement Ensemble @ Oneironautics I. Arkaoda Berlin
16.02.20 (live) Furry Casino, Berlin
25.01.20 (live) Punktum, Prague
2019
06.12.19 (live) Mensch Meier, Berlin
05.12.19 (live AV) Wassertanz preview
with Teres Bartunkova, West Germany Berlin
29.11 – 01.12. (installation) Permanent Wave Machine @ Zwitscher Gallery Berlin
22.11.19 (radio) Cashmere Radio
17.10.19 (live) ADE Dreamland, Klaproos Amsterdam
03-05.10 (installation) Enclosed Garden, Heroines Tbilisi
22.09.19 (live) Amplify, ACUD Berlin
07.09.19 (live) Sononami, LOFFT Leipzig
30.08.19 (live) Sonic Curiosities, Villa Kuriosum Berlin
29.08.19 (live) Tati goes experimental, Berlin
17.08.19 (dj) Mala Junta x MESS afterhours, Berlin
03.08.19 (live) Nachtdigital MINT ambient stage
20.07.19 (live) Summer of Doom, Open air Prague
05.07.19 (dj) UY ZONE afterparty, Kantine am Berghain Berlin
20.06.19 (live) w/ Orquesta Narval, MAZE Berlin
19.06.19 (live) w/ Orquesta Narval, Noizefabrik Berlin
26.05.19 (live) ALERTA secret location
25.05.19 (live) Drone Day, Berlin
14.04.19 (live) Q3A festival, Fabrik Potsdam
28.04.19 (dj) Punktum / Luft, Prague
05.05.19 (live) Noiseberg, Berlin
18.02.19 (installation) Planète Pacifique, UDK Berlin
2018
24.11.18 (live) DIETL Archiv, Polygon, Prague
04.09.18 (live) Hystereo, Berlin Community Radio
02.09.18 (live) Tchnienia festival, Poland
26.08.18 (dj) Wildt, Prague
25.08.18 (dj) Polygon Tag 3, Prague
03.08.18 (live) The Lodge, USA
06.07.18 (live) Drone sleepover, Berlin
27.05.18 (live) Seaweed Sonntags, Berlin
19.05.18 (live) Nowhere in particular, Prague
15.04.18 (live) Q3A festival, Fabrik Potsdam
19.03.18 (dj) Liquidation totale, LYL radio
02.03.18 (dj) Blue Panther show, Rinse FM France
15.02.18 (live) Madame Claude Berlin
17.01.18 (dj) Loophole, Berlin
11.08.17 (live) The Lodge, USA