Salon für Ästhetische Experimente:
A SONIFIED PORTRAIT OF A DISAPPEARING LANDSCAPE

12. 12 June 23, 7 pm

In English

Venue: KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Studio

Registration via reservation@kw-berlin.de

Artists: Adnan Softić und Nina Softić mit Thies Mynther

Moderation: Tirdad Zolghadr

in Kollaboration mit der Graduiertenschule der Universität der Künste Berlin

What to do with the gigantic scientific data archives?

– Play with them.

The work of artist duo Adnan Softić and Nina Softić addresses the pressing challenge of communicating scientific facts within a context of climate change. It questions the nature of doubt in the natural sciences and addresses the lack of a cultural approach to the earth as a holistic entity.

Their project klimaton ARCTIC≈2020 is based on a seminal event in scientific research: late 2020, the research expedition MOSAIC returned from the Arctic, where it had been collecting data for over a year. It remains the largest example of data collection within a single region, and one of the last comprehensive inventories of a disappearing landscape, one that is, according the scientific community, a “key witness to climate change”.

Large data archives are by no means a solution to the problem as long as their contents are not given a socially accepted meaning. Should such efforts be left to science alone? Or does a transfer of those digital archives into collective memory need to take place via detours that do not rely exclusively on reason and predefined scientific rules?

Together with a group of MOSAiC scientists, composer Thies Mynther and a technical team including Juan Duarte, Chris von Rautenkranz, Martin Edelmann and Jan Münther, the artist duo Adnan and Nina Softić developed a sound instrument that emits data from the Arctic as sound – creating a large-scale sonic portrait of a disappearing landscape. The instrument is a hybrid between a sonification device and a musical instrument – allowing an open approach to the data.

ADNAN SOFTIĆ AND NINA SOFTIĆ́ are artists working in Berlin, Hamburg and Sarajevo. Their collaborative practice explores the relationship between aesthetics and politics / ecology, focusing on phenomena such as invisibility, communicability, exile, extraterritoriality, culture and violence. Their work process is a hybrid of poetic and philosophico-scientific explorations, driven by an internal necessity to face a given subject matter with all available resources. They pursue research-based and interdisciplinary work that takes place in art-, film-, music- and theater venues, as well as academic contexts.

Recent exhibitions and screenings of collaborative works have taken place at n.b.k. Berlin, Johann Jacobs Museum Zurich, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo Rome, Berlinische Galerie, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg and many others. The essayistic film opera “Bigger Than Life” (2018) has received several awards, including the Grand Prix at the 22nd International Short Film Festival Winterthur, the 3Sat Award, and that of the 64th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. Softić was recently awarded the Rome Prize of the German Academy Rome Villa Massimo and the Working Scholarship of the Berlin Senate.

THIES MYNTHER is a composer, music producer and performer. As a composer, musician and musical director he has worked with directors such as Nicolas Stemann, Sebastian Baumgarten, Bastian Kraft, Brit Bartkowiak and Showcase Beat Le Mot. He has been a guest at the Schauspielhaus Hamburg, the Deutsches Theater Berlin, the Hebbel am Ufer and the Staatstheater Mainz. Inspired by these works, he continues to explore playful, form-bending hybrids of digital media and performative means as part of his conception of new, art-related forms of music theater. Since 1989, he has contributed to over a hundred album releases as a musician, writer, and producer. He has been a permanent member of many bands, including Phantom Ghost, Stella and Superpunk, and has also worked with Miss Kittin, Chicks On Speed and Dillon, playing well over a thousand concerts.

Sponsors:

E.ON Stiftung

Universität der Künste Berlin

Alfred Wegener Institut, Bremerhaven

University of Colorado, Boulder