A conversation with Lisette Smits (Curator, Researcher, Educator), Rosanna Lovell (Musician, Educator) and Jürg Andreas Meister (radio host, media composer)

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Hosted by RadioKiosk at Haus der Statistik Broadcasted on Studio Ansage, on Freies Radio Berlin-Brandenburg

A conversation with Lisette Smits (Curator, Researcher, Educator), Rosanna Lovell (Musician, Educator) and Jürg Andreas Meister (radio host, media composer)

Moderation: Beatrijs Dikker and Julia Herfurth

During the two hour radio salon we will go into the practices of our guests, each working in their own way as programmer/curator/artist/collaborator/educator. We hope to connect different positions, find similarities and differences and learn from each others experience. We will talk about voice as an artistic medium, the practice of creating and giving a platform or space for particular voices as well as speaking vs listening. Alternately we will listen to short audio-fragments connected to the practices of our guests. We will listen and review them together during this two hour radio show.

Our Guests are:

Lisette Smits is a curator and educator working in Amsterdam (Netherlands) and Sofia (Bulgaria). Her work stems from a set of interrelated concerns and interests, that include the (agency of) voice in and outside of art; what constitutes an artistic condition; the potential of radical pedagogy; and art as social practice. She was artistic director of Casco, Office for Art, Design and Theory in Utrecht (NL) from 1997 - 2005, where she realized projects in and outside of the confines of the exhibition format, working together with numerous artists from different backgrounds. In 2013, as associate curator of Marres, Maastricht (Netherlands), she curated a number of large scale group exhibitions around outspoken themes, such as “Depression” which presented psychological and economical states of loss; and the group show “Deep Cuts”, which investigated the political potential of sound. Lisette Smits has lectured at various courses and art academies, both in the Netherlands and abroad. In 2016 she developed and directed the MA course Master of Voice (Sandberg Institute Amsterdam, 2016 – 2018), a one-off, two-year course exploring the human and nonhuman voice within artistic practices, with a special focus on the voice in relation to technology and gender. Her recent project “Migrating Voices” (since 2019) aims to further engage with the agency of voice, both inside and outside of art, in a wider geographical context and cultural field. The research unpacks different manifestations of the voice, explored through real, virtual, digital, juridical, as well as fictitious bodies; and transgressing both temporal and material borders, disclosed in different performative/educational and discursive programs. The most recent program that was realized in this framework is the “School of Kindness”, which took place in Sofia (Bulgaria) last month.

Rosanna Lovell is a musician, educator, performer and radio maker from Australia who has been living and working in Berlin since 2009. Her practice focuses on feminist and postcolonial perspectives in classical and new music which she explores through performance, intervention, sound and research. She develops workshops and projects and teaches music. She is on the board and makes radio for Freie Radios Berlin-Brandenburg, where she focuses on topics such as music, gender and accessibility in and through radio. Her regular shows there are “Tuning In / Tuning Out - new paths to classical music” and “elle dit hosts Berliner Runde”, a platform for amplifying women's voices heard on the radio, speaking with women* artists and creatives working in Berlin. She is part of the collectives Gender Relations in New Music (GRiNM) and Fem*_Music*_ which both deal with questions of gender and diversity in music. In 2020, together with Annika Niemann, Rosanna curated the listening sessions “Ecologies of Listening” for the ifa gallery exhibition “The Listening and The Winds”. It explored listening as a practice of actively and consciously relating to our environment. Through experimentation, listening exercises and sound walks from the fields of radio art, composition and somatic practice, three listening sessions in different urban locations invited participants to challenge their aural senses and practice active listening. It culminated in a radio show presenting the listening sessions and the exhibition for a broader audience.

Jürg Andreas Meister was born in 1992 in Siegen, Germany. He was drawn to theater after school and worked in dramaturgy and publicity for one season at the Theater Bonn and later at the Deutsches Theater Berlin. He has worked on independent theater and performance projects in Berlin and the Ukraine. From 2011 – 2015 he studied German literature, history and art history first in Berlin and later in Moscow, Russia. Upon return to Germany he turned to the acoustic: from 2015 – 2018 he was assistant editor and director for radio drama and radio art at the radio station DLF Kultur. Since 2015 he has been a presenter and producer for programs at Freie Radios Berlin-Brandenburg and has been a board member of the organization Freies Radio Berlin e.V. since 2019. He also studied a Masters in Audio Communication and Technology at the TU Berlin and since then has worked on many semi-digital projects at the threshold of technology and art.

The first edition of ABA Air Salon “Sounds of Breaking Windows” was broadcasted on 13. October 2020 via Freies Radio Berlin-Brandenburg. It is available online via mixcloud:

• https://www.mixcloud.com/AirBerlin/sounds-of-breaking-windows/

“Sounds of Breaking Windows” – A radio salon on the human voice as an artistic means Participating artists: Magali Dougoud, Nickel van Duijvenboden, Wendelien van Oldenborgh. Moderation: Beatrijs Dikker and Julia Herfurth

This radio salon brought artists together who are using the human voice as an artistic means.The use of voice as an instrument for expressing, exchanging, debating or negotiating observations and thoughts, has been a common thread through out the Salons organized by ABA over the past 10 years. Whether imposing a monologue, embroiled in dialog or bursting out in polyphony: voices often not only serve as a means of presentation, but also an artistic material within itself.Together with three of ABA’s alumni residents, we will connect different understandings and artistic approaches of the use of the voice, aiming to grasp ways in which they overlap, bouncing between the idea of the human voice as being a vehicle of thought, a source of aesthetic adoration.