Sonic Universes: bees, birds, ghosts | Sonics & Scenics

17:00–18:00, Auditorium
Kitchen Conversation #1

Historian and theorist of sound, Gascia Ouzounian, invites sound artist Nikki Sheth and artist, filmmaker and cultural activist Andrea Luka Zimmerman into a conversation on how we experience the human and more-than-human world through sound, and how sonic universes in sound installations and in films are woven together. The spark for this session is Nikki’s new 8-channel installation, commissioned for the festival, composed of nocturnal sounds recorded in and around the iconic summer house of the architects Oskar and Zofia Hansen in Szumin.  

18:30–20:30, Cinema
Film screening of Wayfaring Stranger (2024, 70 min) by Andrea Luka Zimmerman plus Q&A.

A screening of London-based filmmaker, artist and cultural activist Andrea Luka Zimmerman’s latest feature-length film – charting the life of an itinerant character, embodied by seven performers, across seven days, representing seven decades – followed by a Q&A lead by the MSN curator Sebastian Cichocki. 

Wayfaring Stranger, filmed in landscapes marked by centuries of ceaseless, often destructive, human interaction, asks what it takes to find a liveable life on one’s own terms and without conflict with others and the environment. With text written and performed by acclaimed writer and poet Eileen Myles and sound design by multi-award-winning sound recordist Chris Watson. The film premiered at the IFF Rotterdam in 2024.

21:00–22:00, Cinema
Live listening session with sound artist, curator and DJ Karolina Kobielusz (aka Hermeneia)

In this listening session, Karolina Kobielusz brings together field recordings from Szumin – the Hansens’ House, Open Form interactive visual games in the garden, the orchard, the river Bug’s oxbow lakes – pressed on vinyl in the form of sound postcards. The session also features an original noise box instrument, inspired by the architects Oskar and Zofia Hansen’s Open Form concept, contemporary experimental music, as well as Wingie MKII resonator allowing the artist to interact with the environment and enrich its sound in real time.

Nikki Sheth is a sound artist and composer. Her work aims to give voice to the environment and foster a deeper connection with the natural world through field recordings, soundscape composition and spatial audio installations. Her interests in environmental sound include interspecies communication, nocturnal soundscapes and acoustic ecology – the relationship between sound and humans. She was nominated for Ivor Novello Composer Award in 2021 and won the Leah Reid Award from the International Alliance for Women in Music in 2023. Her work has been played at Quench Gallery, Margate; Kings Place, London; and Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria; Sonic Territories, Germany; Pitea Performing Arts Biennial, Sweden; Spektra Festival, Columbia; Ecoacoustic Congress, Brisbane; as well as on BBC Radio 3.