#PERFORMANCE #INSTALLATION #SOUND #PARTICIPATORY #CLIMATE #ENVIRONMENT #EMBODIMENT
The 20 channel video installation This Land is Not Mine will be exhibited as a solo show at the new gallery of Cinémathèque in Leipzig. A complementary programme of events is planned under the name Łuža throughout the month of November, starting with the This Land is Not Mine | Album performance on 3. Nov for the exhibition opening.
Entry to the exhibition is free of charge.
Kat will perform the full The Matter of the Soul | Symphony at this year’s Silbersalz Festival. The performance is realised in co-operation with Cinémathèque Leipzig, where Kat will perform and present the installation of This Land is Not Mine in November.
How to Touch a Dragonfly (2023)
New Media installation
Opening 19th October until 22nd October
S-Factory D, Seongdong-gu, Seoul
“When I was a child, there were dragonflies everywhere.” The summer heat is smothering us as the group of elders shelter in the shadow of the Wondumak gazebo next to the village hall. One person proffers a folded over toilet paper, which I unfold to reveal a petrified, decomposing stagbeetle. The wooden shelter, so necessary in these hot summer months, lies on a track out of the village. Almost immediately beyond, the buildings give way to an incline tracing the bank of a dry riverbed up to terraced rice fields; the Gudeuljang.
These Gudeuljang secured Korea the country’s first ever globally important agricultural heritage site. The rice here is formed without pesticides, using traditional method that date back to the 1600s. The terraces of the Gudeuljang contain a network of underground channels, which feed mountain rainwater to the crops. Farmers control the flow by moving stones to stem the water, allowing it to warm in the sun before letting it into the fields. Many of fields at higher altitudes are out of use now, the crucial channels collapsing into themselves. Farmers know what’s happening higher up the mountainside from the changing behaviour of water in the fields they tend. Compared to other landscapes, dragonflies thrive here in this pesticide-free rural idyll. Yet even here the dragonflies are fewer, and come at different times of year than before.
People notice the change from their childhood. “It used to be a game when we were kids, we would catch the dragonflies in our hands and hold them their wings feel like paper like the Hanji in my grandparents doors. Crinkly but strong. Now you just don’t see them so much anymore.”
This year I’ve seen none of the swarms I saw last year. I hear the hum of traffic from the top of the hill. The smoke turns the blue sky yellow. I reach out my hand into the open air, against the sunshine, and I return to a hillside where the trees have grown back; they were felled for survival in desperate times. Now what threatens the humans here is an exodus. I wouldn’t mind moving to Cheongsan-do for awhile. I’d even like the experience of farming but as a foreigner, I wasn’t permitted to hire a car. There are various things that make a landscape in hospitable. We didn’t have so many dragonflies where I grew up. Now I’m somewhere the way they belong but I’m in the wrong time. Which begs the question: how do you touch a dragonfly that isn’t there?
Artist: Kat Austen
Designer: Robin Andersson (RTA Studio)
Digital Artist: Daniel Hengst
Creative Technologist: Justus Erhas
Production Director: Frank Lohmoeller
Production Manager: Olive Okjoh Han
Production Assistance: Hyeonhwa Lee
Additional Filming: Sangwon Lee
Hanji Funding: Jeonju Millenium Hanji Museum (전주천년한지관)
Supported by: ZER01NE Creator’s Programme (Hyundai Motor Group)
Thanks to: UN FAO KR, GIAHS (Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Site) Cheongsan-do, R. Glowinski
When Plants Migrate
Sookyun Yang x Kat Austen
As part of Homo Migratio, Jeju Museum of Art in Jeju Stone Culture Park
19th September 2023 – 26th November 2023
When Plants Migrate Austen’s 4 channel sound installation will be presented in collaboration with Sookyun Yang’s immersive video work of the same name.
The compilation Solidarity Fund · Hydro is published!
We deeply hope with this compilation to receive donations to support the Volunteer Fire Fighting Society, Črna na Koroškem – from a part of Slovenia that was heavily damaged by recent floods.
https://kamizdat.bandcamp.com/album/solidarity-fund-hydro
Solidarity Fund · Hydro
In the wake of devastating floods that hit Slovenia in early August, many find themselves without homes and irreplaceable memories. In partnership with Kamizdat Label, we wish to lend a helping hand to these resilient people by curating an online audio compilation that features the generous contributions of artists who have donated their music to this cause. All financial contributions from the sale of the compilation will be sent to the flood relief fund of the Volunteer Fire Fighting Society, Črna na Koroškem. Our hearts go to those who depend on gestures of solidarity at the time of our planetary transformations.
—
Solidarnostni sklad · Hidro
Po uničujočih poplavah, ki so Slovenijo prizadele v začetku avgusta, so mnogi ostali brez domov in nenadomestljivih spominov. V sodelovanju z založbo Kamizdat želimo tem vztrajnim ljudem ponuditi pomoč s spletno zvočno kompilacijo, na kateri so zbrani prispevki umetnikov, ki so za ta namen darovali svojo glasbo. Vse finančne prispevke od prodaje kompilacije bomo nakazali v sklad Prostovoljnega gasilskega društva Črna na Koroškem. Naša srca so z vsemi, ki so odvisni od solidarnostnih gest v času naših planetarnih sprememb.
OR poiesis · Tsuki no jūryoku
Brandon LaBelle · Planetary Listening
Brane Zorman · The Tree Spirits I Touch (excerpt)
Bojana Šaljić P. · The Last Animal / Ujjayi *
Toni Dimitrov · A Night at Letea
Karmen Ponikvar · Look, the snowflakes are moving upwards (excerpt)
Mauricio Valdés San Emeterio · Ejarbe **
Dronišnica · It’s Time to Drink Water
Kikiriki · Drop
Brgs · Mushroom Therapy (remix)
Irena Pivka · EchoWalk
Kat Austen · Multifurcation (Movement 4 from The Matter of the Soul Symphony)
Hugo Lioret · Interchange [43.961436, 1.019804]
Lena Ortega · Dandelion
David Bilek · Intermezzo for a Confused Dragonfly
mʊdʌki · soft txt I
mʊdʌki · soft txt II
Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec · Lost Algoritmhs
Saša Spačal · Anatomy of a Symbiosis: Slicing 12
Miha Godec · Echoing Tides
Shekuza · Stay Strong
AGF · Elemental Slovenia
Zergon · Pralik
Sujevera · River Tensions
Manja Ristić · Schwarze Aist [Austrian––Czech Borderlands, July 2023]
Luka Prinčič ·coHydrogen
beepblip · Voluminous Movement of a Watery Earth (excerpt)
Robertina Šebjanič · hydro_Agitations
* Ocean breath
** Increase of the volume of water in rivers due to heavy rainfall.
credits
released September 1, 2023
Robertina Šebjanič, Ida Hiršenfelder · curators, graphic design
Luka Prinčič · mastering
Luka T. Zagoričnik, Luka Prinčič · executive production, promotion
City of Ljubljana · financial support
cat.no: KAM067
Produced by Emanat
Released by Kamizdat
kamizdat.si
created by
AGF — antyegreie.com
beepblip (Ida Hiršenfelder) — beepblip.org
Brandon LaBelle — brandonlabelle.net
Brane Zorman — www.branezorman.si
Brgs — jakaberger.com
Bojana Šaljić P. — www.facebook.com/bojana.saljic
David Bilek — soundcloud.com/davidbilek
Dronišnica — soundcloud.com/droni-nica
Hugo Lioret — hugolioret.com
Irena Pivka — www.irenapivka.si
Kat Austen — www.katausten.com
Karmen Ponikvar — soundcloud.com/karmen_p
Kikiriki — kikiriki.bandcamp.com
Lena Ortega — www.leenalee.net
Luka Prinčič — lukaprincic.si
Manja Ristić — manjaristic.bandcamp.com
Mauricio Valdés San Emeterio — soundcloud.com/mauricio-valdes-san-emeterio
Miha Godec — godec.art
mʊdʌki — www.works.io/polina-khatsenka
OR poiesis — orpoiesis.blogspot.com
Robertina Šebjanič — robertina.net
Saša Spačal — www.agapea.si/en/
Shekuza — soundcloud.com/shekuza
Sujevera — www.instagram.com/_sujevera_/
Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec — www.taogvs.org
Toni Dimitrov — elanvital.bandcamp.com
Zergon — zergon.org
In 2017 Kat went to Nunavut in the Arctic on a residency with Friends of Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, to carry out artistic research into the reaction of ice and water to the climate crisis through sound. It was for this residency that Kat developed circuit bent instruments from scientific equipment usually used to measure chemical and physical properties of water, like temperature and acidity. Kat used these to listen to the process of measurement, as a comment on not only the rapidly changing Arctic environment, but also the datafication of human relations to environmental catastrophe.
The resulting work, The Matter of the Soul, has been featured on the BBC and performed around the globe including at COP24 in 2018 as part of the Greenpeace ClimateHub in Katowice.
Kat has gone on to apply these instruments to many other environments and ecosystems, including Lausitz for This Land Is Not Mine and liminal landscapes as part of my compositions for Mapping Gender.
She will be presenting this work on 31st August as part of the Sounding Elements convened by Samuel Hertz, Sasha Englemann and Indira Lemouci at the Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference.
19th May 2023
8pm
dotolim, Mapo-gu, Seoul
Kat will perform her album This Land is Not Mine as part of the dotolim concert series.
dotolim is a longstanding experimental music venue and recording studio run by Jin Sangtae, which hosts performances and concerts with people with different perspectives in various fields, as well as film screenings and exhibitions.
The “This Land is Not Mine” LP combines 7 songs by musician and sound artist Kat Austen. Austenmelds acoustic and electronica with field recordings, in this homage to a landscape ravaged by open cast mining: Lusatia, at the German-Polish border. Realised over the course of 2 years, This Land is Not Mine is a modern-day protest album, telling the stories of villages lost to the past, rivers that harbour secrets and communities that rebuild in the wake of mine closures.
Austen’s musical roots hail back to classical piano, metal and folk. Since 2018, Austen has been releasing music that mixes field recordings and ambient electronic sounds with traditional instruments to create a unique and evocative sonic tapestry.
Some field recordings for the album were gathered through a crowdsourcing platform Lausitzklang that explores the sounds of Lusatia.
“Co-designing Infrastructures: Community collaboration for liveable cities” by Sarah Bell, Charlotte Johnson, Kat Austen, Gemma Moore, and Tse-Hui Teh
ISBN: 9781800082229
Publication: April 27, 2023
Series: Engaging Communities in City-making
Published by Open Access by UCL Press
DOWNLOAD From the UCL Press site
Co-designing Infrastructures tells the story of a research programme designed to bring the power of engineering and technology into the hands of grassroots community groups, to create bottom-up solutions to global crises. Four projects in London are described in detail, exemplifying community collaboration with engineers, designers and scientists to enact urban change. The projects co-designed solutions to air pollution, housing, the water-energy-food nexus, and water management. Rich case-study accounts are underpinned by theories of participation, environmental politics and socio-technical systems. The projects at the heart of the book are grounded in specific settings facing challenges familiar to urban communities throughout the world. This place-based approach to infrastructure is of international relevance as a foundation for urban resilience and sustainability. The authors document the tools used to deliver this work, providing guidance for others who are working to deliver local technical solutions to complex social and environmental problems around the world.This is a book for engineers, designers, community organisers and researchers. Co-authored by researchers, it includes voices of community collaborators, their experiences, frustrations and aspirations. It explores useful theories about infrastructure, engineering and resilience from international academic research, and situates them in community-based co-design experience, to explain why bottom-up approaches are needed and how they might succeed.
REVEIL 24+1 HOUR BROADCAST 2023
5AM London time (UTC+1) on Saturday 6 MAY to 6AM on Sunday 7 MAY 2023
I’m delighted to be hosting a stream from Seoul, South Korea, for Reveil 2023.
Reveil travels West on live audio feeds from streamers around the world at daybreak, making a loop over one earth day.
Reveil (2014—) is a collective production by streamers at listening points around the earth. Starting on the morning of Saturday 6 May in South London near the Greenwich Meridian, the broadcast will pick up feeds one by one, tracking the sunrise west from microphone to microphone, following the wave of intensified sound that loops the earth every 24 hours at first light.
Streams come from a variety of locations, at a time of day when human sounds are relatively low, even in dense urban areas. This tends to open the sound field to a more diverse ecology than usual. The Reveil broadcast makes room by largely avoiding speech and music, gravitating to places where human and non human communities meet and soundworlds overlap.
Each stream brings something different to the loop.
REVEIL 10 goes back to its starting point, giving attention to live sounds of places as first light reaches them.