sound stories silent site

performative sonic laboratory / music ensemble

House of World Cultures (H.K.W.)
2017 – ongoing

Sound Stories Silent Site is a performative laboratory for improvised music and storytelling. The laboratory invites the audience to step into a sonic playground and set aside a formal understanding of sound, composition, performance, and writing. Sound Stories Silent Site wonders how a collective ethics of a place sounds, especially when inspired by difference and contradiction.

The structure of the laboratory revolves around a sequence of collaborative and interactive modules that invite experimentation with sound engines, synthesizers, storytelling, and orchestration. The improvising ensemble takes turns listening, tuning, fieldworking, playing, conducting, and weaving sounds and narratives. Embracing transmigration as a mode to dream and enact new semi-fictional identities, the laboratory collectively envisions narratives of the self, other, and the world.

Joining the ephemeral ensemble requires no previous knowledge or skills in sound or music making. There is no age limit.

Formally known as What is not music? the laboratory was initiated at House of World Cultures in 2017. Consequent vinyl releases and performances took place at the Festspielhaus, St. Pölten; Galarie Wedding, Archive of Belonging, Centre for Contemporary Arts in Berlin, The Institute for Endotic Research, University of Arts Berlin and Kunsthochschule Weissensee among many others.

Link:
Sound Stories Silent Site – H.K.W.

Credits:
Photos: Sound Stories Silent Site by Mathias Voelzke at the House of World Cultures Berlin
Vinyl I: Produced as a part of the exhibition Radiphonic Spaces, at House of World Cultures (H.K.W.) in 2017
Vinyl Volume II: Produced during the S.S.S.S. residency at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Berlin