Sound Portraits is a series of listening sessions, performances, discussions, and demonstrations that explore the work of composers who are paving the way for contemporary electronic music. Each session is dedicated to the work of a different artist/project, and together we’ll listen to their work, talk with the artist about ideas behind the work, and watch small performances or demonstrations from each artist. Join us at Berlin’s KM28 – due to Corona restrictions, capacity is limited. We suggest RSVPing in advance.
Made possible with funds from the Senatsverwaltung fur Kultur un Europa. The venue is not barrier-free as there are several steps at the entrance. However, assistants will be on location to help those who need assistance.
THOMAS ANKERSMIT
September 4th, 2021
Our Artist Sessions begins with guest artist Thomas Ankersmit. Ankersmit is a musician and sound artist based in Berlin and Amsterdam who plays the Serge Modular synthesizer, both live and in the studio, and collaborates with artists like Phill Niblock and Valerio Tricoli. His music combines intricate sonic detail and raw electric power, with a very physical and spatial experience of sound. Acoustic phenomena such as infrasound and otoacoustic emissions (sounds emanating from inside the head, generated by the ears themselves) play an important role in his work, as does a deliberate, creative misuse of the equipment. Join us as we listen to Ankersmit’s work, talk about technology, process, and psychoacoustics, and watch a small performance.
Our second night of Sound Portraits Artist Sessions brings in the artist duo Nguyễn + Transitory, composed of Nguyễn Baly and Tara Transitory. Their work crosses the disciplines of sound, performance, and installation. Working mainly with modular synthesizers and analog tape, they attempt to approach sound, synthesis, noise, rhythm and performance from a less colonial lens – looking into how frequencies, the physicality of producing sounds and its incidental vibrations relate to cognitive memories, stored emotions and catharsis. Their practice involves as well efforts to empirically learn more about various Southeast Asian + diaspora queer existences and lost histories. Besides their artistic practice, they also run their own mastering studio called Queer Ear Mastering.
The third month of Sound Portraits Artist Sessions invites pioneering music maker Kaffe Matthews who works live with space, data, things, and place to make new electroacoustic composition. The physical experience of music for the maker and listener has always been central to her approach and to this end she has also invented some unique interfaces, the sonic armchair, the sonic bed and the sonic bike that not only enable new approaches to composition for makers but give immediate ways in to unfamiliar sound and music for wide ranging audience.
Jasmine Guffondis an artist and composer working at the interface of social, political and technical infrastructures. Her practice spans live performance, recording, sound installation and custom made browser add-on. Through the sonification of data she addresses the potential of sound to engage with contemporary political questions and engages listening as a situated knowledge practice. Interested in providing an audible presence for phenomena that lies beyond human perception, via the sonification of facial recognition algorithms, global networks, or Internet tracking cookies she questions what it means for our personal habits to be traceable, and for our identities, choices and personalities to be reduced to streams of data.
Sound Portraits began in late 2015 as a listening event at Spektrum in Berlin. Originally started to create a focused group listening environment, it quickly developed to include context around each artist in order to create a deeper understanding and appreciation. Since the closure of Spektrum in 2018, Sound Portraits has continued online as a monthly radio show on Cashmere Radio. Sound Portraits is curated and hosted by Doron Sadja.
