Sonic Meditations

‘Kamer I - Oesters’ is een kort verhaal geschreven in het kader van het kunstproject Beste Anna,. Hierin fungeert de figuur van de openlijk lesbische Rotterdamse schrijfster Anna Blaman als motor voor vragen, gesprekken en correspondenties rondom feminisme, schrijvende vrouwen en de canon, anders zijn, eenzaamheid en vriendschap.

Ook verkent Katinka met dit onderzoek Anna Blaman als personage voor een toekomstige roman. In ‘Kamer I - Oesters’ betreedt de hoofdpersoon Anna’s met een rolkoffer vol boeken van andere schrijvers, fluistert ze hun woorden in de kieren in Anna’s muren en verleidt ze Anna met een pauwendans.

Anna Blaman (1905-1960) was openlijk lesbisch, in die tijd een groot taboe, maar zag zichzelf niet als voorvechter van een beweging. Een belangrijk thema in haar werk is de vraag of we een ander werkelijk kunnen kennen. De personages in haar romans zijn vaak alleen en verlangen naar een ander, die altijd onbereikbaar blijft. In 1948 publiceerde Blaman de roman Eenzaam Avontuur, die erg veel stof op deed waaien vanwege enkele (homo-)erotische personages die in het boek voorkomen. 

TYPP is the community journal of Sint Lucas School of Arts in Antwerp. TYPP is partly a generator for the shared research of our advanced master students, and partly a platform for carefully selected contributions by tutors, students, alumni, guest lecturers and friends of SLA. TYPP is a stage where art and research from this community is shared with you, to enjoy, read, look, learn and get inspired. 

Each edition is carefully and freely designed by Ward Heirwegh. 

A children’s book without a specific age category, offering a glimpse into the small rituals and shared moments that shape a day with Fifi Paris.

Fifi, a Pomeranian-Chihuahua mix, came into the lives of Angelica and Kris a few years ago. Taking care of a puppy is taking responsibility for building their world and letting the small animal transform yours. As her human caretakers, the authors created Fifi’s world with toys, cuddles, rules, snacks and walks in the park. In return, she transforms our world by bringing our community together and reminding us of the importance of caring for one another. In this book, Kris and Angelica narrate a day in the life of Fifi, from the moment she wakes up to when she falls asleep at night. Along the way, they share how they connect with her, how they see her understanding her surroundings and what she has taught them about companionship.

Design by Amy Suo Wu
Copy-editing by Clem Edwards
Photography by Lili Huston-Hertreich

Revue du Master de Textes et de Création Littéraire de la Cambre*

Avec les textes de: Sam Bouffandeau, Chloé Clemens, Chloé Delchini, Perrine Estienne, Robin Faymonville, Gabriel René Franjou, Justine Gensse, Adèle Goardet, Bastien Hauser, Giulia Lazzara, Cyprien Muth, Sephora Shebabo.

* Le Master en Textes et Création Littéraire de l’École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels de La Cambre propose un programme de formation aux étudiants qui visent à faire des métiers du texte et de la création littéraire leur avenir professionnel. Il s’adresse principalement aux jeunes écrivains et, plus généralement, à l’étudiant qui souhaite professionnaliser sa démarche artistique en lien avec la pratique de l’écrit en la confrontant à d’autres écrivains, à des éditeurs et à des professionnels reconnus de la littérature, l’informer et l’enrichir de nouveaux savoirs et de nouvelles compétences. Considérant le travail du texte et ses différentes formes comme des expressions majeures de l’homme à travers l’histoire, et les littératures des différents continents comme un art à part entière dans le champ des pratiques artistiques contemporaines, ce Master s’inscrit dans une démarche ouverte de production, de réflexion et d’instruction de l’écrit dans un monde en devenir.

This publication is based on a project by Despina Vassiliadou that ran from 2015-16. It presents a collection of photographs taken during the period, accompanied by fictional short stories.

‘I am concerned with the power of sound! and what it can do to the body and the mind,’ wrote composer Pauline Oliveros. In the body, histories and politics come together with sound and listening, memory and feeling. Bodies of Sound offers a resonant exploration of feminist sonic cultures and radical listening in over fifty contributions. In this book of echoes, a variety of forms – from essays to text scores to art, fiction and memoir – speak across gender, ways of knowing, witnessing, sounding and voicing, translation, displacement, violence and peace.

With contributions from: 

Sara Ahmed, Ximena Alarcón, Svetlana Alexievich, Ain Bailey & Frances Morgan, Anna Barham, Xenia Benivolski, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson & Kite, Elena Biserna, Karen Barad & Black Quantum Futurism, Anne Bourne, Daniela Cascella, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Maria Chávez, Don Mee Choi, Carson Cole Arthur, Petero Kalulé & AM Kanngieser, Lindsay Cooper, Julia Eckhardt, Lucia Farinati & Claudia Firth, Ella Finer, Annie Goh, Louise Gray, Christina Hazboun, Johanna Hedva, Sarah Hennies, Tomoko Hojo, IONE, Lee Ingleton, Hannah Catherine Jones, Christine Sun Kim, Nat Lall, Cathy Lane, Jeanne Lee & Lona Foote, Marysia Lewandowska, Annea Lockwood & Jennifer Lucy Allan, Cannach MacBride, Elaine Mitchener & Hannah Kendall, Alison O'Daniel, Naomi Okabe, Pauline Oliveros, Daphne Oram, Gascia Ouzounian, Holly Pester, Roy Claire Potter, Anna Raimondo, Tara Rodgers, Aura Satz & Barbara London, Shortwave Collective, Sisters of the Order of Celestial Nephology, Sop, Syma Tariq, Marie Thompson, Trinh T. Minh-ha & Stoffel Debuysere, Salomé Voegelin

Deep Listening is a practice created by composer Pauline Oliveros in order to enhance her own as well as other's listening skills. She teaches this practice worldwide in workshops, retreats and in her ground breaking Deep Listening classes at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Mills College. Deep Listening practice is accessible to anyone with an interest in listening. Undergraduates with no musical training benefit from the practices and successfully engage in creative sound projects. Many report life changing effects from participating in the Deep Listening classes and retreats.

An anthology of text and graphic scores to be used while walking, from Fluxus to the critical works of current artists, through the tradition of experimental musicand performance, gathered and presented by Elena Biserna.

Walking from Scores is a hundred or so collection of non site-specific protocols, instructions and textual and graphic scores centred on walking, listening and playing sound in urban environment. It explores the relationship between art and the everyday, the dynamics of sound and listening in various environments and the (porous) frontiers between artists and audiences. It starts with two premises: an interest in walking envisaged as a relational practice and tactic enabling us to read and rewrite space; an interpretation of scores understood as open invitations and catalysers of action in the tradition of Fluxus event scores.

With scores and texts by Peter Ablinger, Milan Adamčiak, G. Douglas Barrett, Elena Biserna, Blank Noise, George Brecht, Cornelius Cardew, Stephen Chase, Giuseppe Chiari, Seth Cluett, Philip Corner, Viv Corringham, Bill Dietz, Amy Dignam, David Dunn, Haytham El-Wardany, Esther Ferrer, Simone Forti, Francesco Gagliardi, Jérôme Giller, Oliver Ginger, Anna & Lawrence Halprin, David Helbich, Dick Higgins, Christopher Hobbs, Jérôme Joy, katrinem, Debbie Kent, Bengt af Klintberg, James Klopfleisch, Milan Knížák, Alison Knowles, Takehisa Kosugi, Jirí Kovanda, Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti, Bob Lens, Ligia Lewis, Alvin Lucier, Walter Marchetti, Larry Miller, iLAND/Jennifer Monson, Max Neuhaus, Alisa Oleva, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, Open City & Emma Cocker, Nam June Paik, Michael Parsons, Ben Patterson, Cesare Pietroiusti, Mathias Poisson, Anna Raimondo, Pheobe riley Law, Jez riley French, Paul Sharits, Mieko Shiomi, Mark So, Standards, Nicolas Tardy, Davide Tidoni, Ultra-red, Isolde Venrooy, Carole Weber, Manfred Werder, Franziska Windisch, Ben Vautier, La Monte Young.

Elena Biserna is a scholar and independent curator based in Marseille, France. She is associate researcher at PRI SM (AMU / CNRS) and TEAMeD (Université Paris 8). Her interests are focused on listening and on contextual, "situated" art practices in relationship with urban dynamics, sociocultural processes, the public and political sphere. Her writings have appeared in several publications. As a curator, she has collaborated with different organisations and presented her projects internationally.

The fifth issue of the annual publication dedicated to sound and music experimentation, co-published by Shelter Press and Ina GRM – Groupe de Recherches Musicales, on the theme of diffusion and dissemination.

In a 1955 pamphlet entitled Seven Years of Musique Concrète, Jacques Poullin wrote:
"[...] sound projection in a concert hall is a logical extension of the concerns of the Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète and requires its technicians to properly study multiple aspects of the problems of sonorisation that are often neglected and to date have been almost exclusively the preserve of 'public address' technicians".

From the very beginning, fixed media electroacoustic music in its various guises faced a significant challenge: that of how it could be shared with the public. Even before it was distributed in the form of records, musique concrète, having first been transmitted on radio, soon turned to the concert stage. From the time of its birth, a twofold question was posed: What strategy of diffusion could be used for this music which involves no live performers? But also, how could it make use of existing systems of sound amplification without losing its singular nature, making sure to preserve its own particularities? Identified very early on, these questions have lost none of their pertinence some seventy years later.

Under pressure from the cultural industries and faced with a largely commercially-driven standardisation of formats, it is important today to reaffirm both the singular nature of experimental electroacoustic practices, and the possibilities these practices open up beyond standards and rules.

This calls for an exploration of the vast domain of sound creation in which, here and there, ideas, concepts, and sometimes new works appear that fully embrace the question of the deployment of sound, its dissemination and its expansion. An exploration focussed on the listening experience—a fundamentally musical experience—but adopting a critical approach which may sometimes call into question traditional ways of sharing and listening to sound, the status of listener and creator, and which may even challenge the acoustic integrity of venues and the legitimacy of diffusion systems.

Such are the questions to be addressed here. Sketching out the contours of what is quite obviously a huge subject, this volume, drawing upon a wide variety of points of view, experiences, and ideas, hints at an entire critical apparatus that remains to be developed and consolidated, but is crucial given the primordial importance of the theme of dissemination. For dissemination is the transitional stage par excellence, the uncertain stage that sits between creation and reception while at the same time determining both. It is a critical stage, yet one that is often neglected or, as Poullin says, left to a technical intermediary who may impose conditions entirely exogenous to questions of music and listening.

For these reasons, it seems more necessary than ever to return to the experience of sounds, to once again listen attentively to their trajectories, their diffraction in space, their emergence and their disappearance. To get to grips with the mysteries of their deployment so as to reaffirm that this deployment is essential to them.

Edited by François J. Bonnet and Bartolomé Sanson.
Contributions by Marja Ahti, Scott Arford, Nicolas Debade, Michael Gatt, Tim Ingold, Rolf Julius, Jules Négrier, John Richards, Marina Rosenfeld, Hildegard Westerkamp, Randy Yau.

Spectres is an annual publication dedicated to sound and music experimentation, co-published by Shelter Press and Ina GRM – Groupe de Recherches Musicales.

Livre d’images sans images by Mette Edvardsen & Iben Edvardsen borrows its title from a book by H.C. Andersen, also referred to as The Moon Chronicler. The book follows a conversation between a painter and the Moon, where the Moon describes to the painter what she sees on her journey around the world every evening, telling the painter to paint what she describes. “This conversation, as in the now obsolete meaning of the word (‘a place where one lives or dwells’), was the starting point for our work. Using the weather report as dramaturgy, (‘the moon did not show up every evening, sometimes a cloud came in between’), we have created and collected materials from our conversations in the form of recordings, text, voice, drawings, references, found images, loose connections, inspirations and imaginations, in the order they came to us. They are at the same time sources and traces, material and support for new imaginations or events to come.” The work consists of three different media: vinyl, paper and live performance. 

Mette Edvardsen is a choreographer and performer eager to explore the performing arts as a practice and situation, also in relation to other media such as books and writing. This work is in collaboration with her daughter, Iben Edvardsen.

Published by Xing & Varamo Press
XONG collection – artist records XX10 (2023)
First edition, September 2023
Recorded and edited by Mette Edvardsen & Iben Edvardsen
Format white 12’ vinyl LP in cardboard sleeve
Released in a numbered edition of 300 copies, including collector’s edition of 25 copies, each accompanied by a unique poster hand drawn with black marker by Mette Edvardsen & Iben Edvardsen, 59,4 x 84 cm, folded, signed by the artists

Comprehensive and previously unpublished documentation on the American composer's unproduced magnum opus.

Had it been produced, Maryanne Amacher's media opera Intelligent Life would have represented the summation of the composer's concept to date. As she wrote to John Cage in the autumn of 1983, following the untimely deaths of the opera's patrons—Wies Smals, founder of De Appel, and curator Josine van Droffelaar, in a plane crash in the Swiss Alps—she would have at last had the support to "communicate the finest of my thought to others." Amacher's serial, intended for broadcast, sought to transmit her evolving ideas about perception, listening, and composition to a broader public—shifting music away from "nod and tap recognition" toward a transformative practice that could awaken intelligence to "unrecognized and new perceptual modes."

Set in the year 2021, Intelligent Life follows the employees of Supreme Connections LLC, a music entertainment corporation navigating a future in which artificial intelligence generates music faster than composers can. Anticipating an industry-wide downturn, Supreme Connections president Aplisa Kandel seeks advanced technologies that will revolutionize the act of listening and the future of music, including a bio-music script that lets the user hear Bach from the aural perspective of a reindeer and a wearable device that goes beyond replicating the mechanical tympanic resonances of the listening subject to produce the "listening mind" or the "sophisticated perceiver"—capturing and reproducing all the emotional and psychological associations unique to each individual.
Though Amacher could not realize Intelligent Life in any of its intended forms—she theorized its publication as a serialized radio broadcast and television simulcast, among other configurations—she continued designing "treatments" for the opera for much of her career. This volume makes the most complete of these working documents—including episodic scripts, notes on the use of LaserDisc, and an illustrated storyboard for the pilot—available to the public for the first time.

Maryanne Amacher (1938-2009) was a composer of large-scale fixed-duration sound installations and a highly original thinker in the areas of perception, sound spatialization, creative intelligence, and aural architecture. She is frequently cited as a pioneer of what has come to be called “sound art,” although her thought and creative practice consistently challenges key assumptions about the capacities and limitations of that genre. Often considered to be a part of a post-Cagean lineage, her work anticipates some of the most important developments in network culture, media arts, acoustic ecology, and sound studies.

Handmade artist's book combining drawings, photographs, and archival materials. This publication reflects on the YouYou Group's ten-year journey and its evolving relationship with space. It marks a transitional moment from the group's long-term engagement with public space toward a growing understanding of spatiality and collective presence.

YouYou Group is a Belgian choir that specializes in what is known in Arabic as zaghareed. This trilling cry is used by women at weddings and festive occasions, but also at funerals. Youyou is the French name for zaghareed. Depending on the regional origin, it is also called kululu, tsahalulim, or irrintzi. It is a long, shrill tone that is modulated (by the throat, glottis, or rapid tongue movements) and can be heard from far away. Brussels artist Myriam Van Imschoot was one of the founders of this singing group.