h y d r o c l i n e s
Sound installation at the Universtät der Künste Berlin (2019)
H Y D R O C L I N E S is an immersive sound installation for staircases, water reservoirs, or high vertical spaces. Starting from the surface of the ocean, the pedestrian-listener is able to float up and down a fully fledged aquatic world, distributed over three omnidirectional loudspeakers and a subwoofer.
Recordings of underwater environments were studied using spectral analysis and re-created using analog and granular synthesis. Biophonic and geophonic information was collected in the archives of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), and the Canada Ocean Network (CAN).
The composition has three distinct layers (clines) which can be played separately or together. Each cline was assembled keeping in mind Krause’s niche hypothesis, in which species occupy unique available frequency bandwidths, eventually sounding together like a well-tuned orchestra (Bernie Krause, The Niche Hypothesis, 1987).
Presented as a semester solo project under Daisuke Ishida at the Sound Studies program, UdK Berlin, February 2019. Many thanks for Rick Burns for the video, and to my classmates for their continued support.
Three layers of dense water
Carry voices of a world unknown
The cold Pacific island listens.
Sand and rock, an iceberg adrift
Wide-eyed seals slip into the blue
Diving through the kelp and the krill.
Hydroclines • February 2019.
installation at the Universität der Künste Berlin
d r o n e d a y
Drone sleepovers and Drone Day (2018-2019)
We organised events dedicated to sustained tone music (also known as Drone) on the 8th floor gallery space of Greenhouse Berlin. Every 3 months, for two years, we invited an audience to come and share their most intimate space –sleep– while musicians would play live dedicated to dreams and relaxation. Careful attention was placed on the soundsystem, lighting and atmosphere to bring together a different way of experiencing music. Read a review by Sophie Harkins on Electronic Beats.
On Drone Day, May 25th, 2019, eight female Berlin-based artists droned together in a live studio broadcast. Drone Day is a Canadian-based platform for artists working in drone, ambient and experimental music to come together in appreciation of these mediums. The artists worked with field recordings, tape-loops, electro-acoustics, musique concrète, unconventional electronics, modulated voice, literature and poetics.
Drone Day • May 2019.
long-duration event at Greenhouse Berlin with live radio broadcast on Cashmere Radio and Radio Nunc.
with sn(50), -akis, Diane Barbé, Auguste Vickunaite and Nina Guo, Black Acid, Vida Vojic, Interlíneas.
s a n s o u ï r e
Sound installation at Fondation LUMA Arles (2018)
After a week immersed in the wetlands of Camargue, near Arles, France, I created this soundscape for an exhibition at the LUMA foundation Ateliers, where artists re-invented ways of using local materials and resources –salt, sand, stones, plants all harvested from less than five kilometers away. Their work was presented in a 5-day festival, which started with an edible installation based on forgotten edible weeds like salicorne and wild mustard.
The atmospheric piece provided visitors with a subtle experience of life cycles in the sansouïre wetlands: dawn choruses, afternoon siestas, and evening frenzies. The recordings were made during an ornithology workshop led by the audio naturalist Bernard Fort (also known as the hermit thrush), and organised by Phonurgia Nova.
“Bruits blancs, bruits roses sur le sol salé de la sansouïre.”
Sansouïre • May 2018.
installation at the LUMA Ateliers, Arles
in collaboration with Fanny Pelegrin
s i m u l i z i
Sound installation at DARCH Dar es Salaam (2018)
‘Simulizi Mijini (urban narratives)’ is a 20-minute audio piece based on field recordings taken in Dar es Salaam in 2016-2017, and featuring the voices of Aileen Runyoro, Arnold Mkony, Dorothea Lawasi, Gift Mushi, Hilbert Shirima, Mike Minja. See the project website here.
While the other rooms of the exhibition at the Old Bom explore the facts of Bantu, Omani, German, British and Indian actors in the city, Simulizi Mijini presents a multimedia exhibition of some of the many voices of Dar es Salaam. They tell us stories about a house, an open space, a neighbourhood; and together they weave familiar but unofficial narratives about the city. These stories were collected in a bilingual book called Talking Cities. And yet, do these also get to be part of the history we celebrate as a society?
SIMULIZI MIJINI: URITHI M’JINI • June – September 2017
temporary exhibition at DARCH Dar es Salaam Centre for Architectural Heritage. curated by the Habitat Unit (Diane Barbé, Anne Katrin Fenk, Rachel Lee, Philipp Misselwitz).
b a g a m o y o
Research residency in Tanzania (2017)
Bagamoyo is a small town on the Indian ocean, sixty kilometres north of Dar es Salaam, the main city of Tanzania. During a research residency, I attempted to translate the distressing experience of that town…
My notes from March 2016 read:
The atmosphere is thick, and the hard sun presses the sound and the smell of the ocean onto the ground. On the whitewashed buildings, the dust has left dark stains, sliding down the walls like stale tears. The silence is uneasy. In Kiswahili, ‘baga mojo’ means ‘the place where you lay down your heart’. Bagamoyo used to be the Prison of Africa, the last place captured slaves would see before being deported away from Africa, to Zanzibar, and then to the Arabic peninsula, Europe, and Asia. In the historic core, built by Omani sultans and taken over by the Germans, the coral stone edifices still stand, empty and silent, in the humid glow of the tropics. There are spectres around here; cemeteries, black magic statuettes and a hangman’s tree. But the history of man, now, is reclaimed by the trees. From around the Indian ocean, coconut palms, musa (banana) trees and sacred ficus were brought on the dhow boats of Arab and Indian traders. After decades, they have started to take over, growing from the sand and the stones, upwards, transforming the trauma into slow melancholia.
This travel was part of a transnational exchange program between Germany and Tanzania, focusing on historical counter-narratives and urban heritage from below.
‘Mending Trees’, article published on The Earth Issue in 2017.
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Field recording workshop with Felix Blume (2017)
Phonurgia Nova has, for 30 years, supported multiform sound creation. Based in Arles, on the Rhône, they offer instensive workshops for radio art, sound documentary, and field recording. Along with four other artists, I participated in a training organised by Felix Blume, who has made a name for himself through his open library of fantastic recordings.
Over five intensive days, we experimented with diverse stereo recording techniques to grasp the poetics of this mineral city. We also had a two-day workshop on editing and mixing practices, and collectively created a 10 minute piece exploring the sonic aspects of this windy city, when its famous wind (le mistral) is not wuthering over the river…
Arles, un printemps sans vent. L’air est dense, il reste dans le sol, tourne dans les ventilations… Fuite, élévation, stagnation, circulation.
Zephyr • 2017
recorded and mixed collectively by Diane Barbé, Laurence Cuny, Hugo Fauquert and Christophe Ratier.
many thanks to Felix for his guidance.
f o r m f o l l o w s
Form Follows Aktion (2017)
Form Follows Aktion was a cooperation project geared to the creation of an experimental architecture festival at the Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik in Berlin, organised by the Bellatock team (Paris) in cooperation with a French-German transnational network of architects, urban activists and artists.
Throughout the spring and summer 2017, a network of artists, architects, builders and urban planners were mobilised between Paris and Berlin to reflect on key issues: building interventions as civic empowerment, construction materials as cyclical resources, collective action as learning experience. During a 5-day intensive workshop, French and German participants worked together to design, build and animate their constructions in the public spaces surrounding the ZK/U, Berlin.
These debates, held at local universities, contributed to the organisation of a workshop and public festival in Berlin, at the end of July 2017. During this week I hosted a pirate radio station broadcasting news, comedy shows and music on site.
Partners: Force Pure (FR), Collectif Parenthèse (FR), Serge (FR), Superfluides (FR), Refunc (DE), ONOFF (DE)
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Ensemble: the shared city (2017)
In the summer of 2017, Bellastock invited ON/OFF to collaborate on a summer festival held at the Cité de la Mode et du Design in Paris. That exhibition was run in an experimental fashion bringing together French and German architecture collectives to research, exchange ideas, explore new approaches to construction and ephemeral installations.
The group was commissioned to design and build the summer installation of the Cité de la Mode & Design in Paris, called #festivalensemble, which was an immersive experience around the themes of DIY architecture, food, design, and shared spaces. Five different types of constructions were realized: a playground for adults (ON/OFF in collaboration with Diane Barbé), a workshop/co-working area (Bellastock with Force Pure), a playground for children (Serge collectif), a library (Collectif Parenthèse), and a multi-purpose space for dance, performance and other activities (Refunc).
Tracks: an adult playground project by Berk Asal, Dan Dorocic, Diane Barbé and Michael Maginness.
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Le Lieu Dit temporary art centre (2015)
From June to August 2015, a temporary space for exhibitions, performances and artistic practice was opened in a fabrik loft on the Urbanstr. in Berlin-Kreuzberg. The curators Lena Petit and Adèle Levy sought to cross-examine countercultures from different cities and bring them together in a place that is often thought to be the forefront of cultural progress and social tolerance.
Photographers, visual artists and videographers from 3 different cities were exhibited, and for each city one musical performance was organised
[PARIS]
Irwin Barbé & Louise Ernandez, CYP, Celine Moses.
[NEW YORK]
Brandon Johnson, Chad Moore.
[BOGOTÁ]
Camography, Carmen Triana
Le Lieu Dit is now an online gallery and shop. Co-curated with Lena Petit and Adèle Levy.