Benjamin Tomasi (AT) & Michael Mandl (AT):
NARCISSUS AND ECHO (2021)
Michael Mandl and Benjamin Tomasi reframe the ancient tale of self-absorption for the digitized era. Pairing the visual setting of Caravaggio’s Narcissus (1597–99) with luminous 3D animation and bubbling underwater acoustics, the duo transforms the figure’s solitary infatuation into a multiplied condition. Human shapes liquefy and mirror one another in an infinite synthetic pool, reflecting how our screens perpetuate the endless loop of anthropocentric hubris.
What happens when our fascination with our mirror image drowns out the voice of the living and loving? How do we dissolve our self-centred delusion, and re-enter shared experiences?
Yuzu (BG) & TE-R (AT) / DIGITAL.RELEASE (2021)
Sound artist and composer Milena Georgieva aka Yuzu pairs with visual duo TE-R (Louise Linsenbolz and Thomas Wagensommerer) to construct a post-digital interpretation of the sentiment océanique.
The artists chart the frictions and resonances vibrating between material reality and virtual space at that intersection where physical bodies dissolve into boundless streams of data.
Yuzu’s sonic world speculative balances cyber-mythology with ancient musical roots. Juxtaposing cybernetic references—from William Gibson’s Neuromancer to the nostalgic Yahoo! yodel — with the raw acoustic timbre of the Bulgarian kaba gaida bagpipe and clarinet (performer: Johannes Steinmann), this piece folds folklore and traditional instrumentation into synthetic cyberspace.
TE-R mirror this sonic hybridity in 3D animations, rendering our online existence as an uncanny, fluctuating matrix.
Is there an ancestral memory surviving inside the hyper-accelerated networks? How will the immaterial noise of the web connect with our physical nervous systems?
Sound: Yuzu (Milena Georgieva). Animation: TE-R (Louise Linsenbolz + Thomas Wagensommerer). Clarinet and Kaba gaida: Johannes Steinmann.
Angélica Castelló (MX) & Meritxell Colell Aparicio (SP): SENTIMIENTO OCEANICO (2021)
Cross-Atlantic filmmaker Meritxell Colell Aparicio created a visual poem in dialogue with a work by Austro-Mexican composer Angelica Castello Originally released as a piece for Paetzold flute and prepared tuba on Silvertone e il sentimento oceanico (Monotype Records, 2013), Castelló’s composition envisions a glistening vessel gliding across an ocean of passing sensations — neither fully emerging into form, nor dissolving unrecognized. Conceived as an ode to percolating memories and psychic landscapes, Colell Aparicio’s imagery complements these acoustic depths with visual impressions of what lies beneath the threshold of consciousness.
Is imagination ever exhausted?
Enrika Myskovskaja (LT) & Alexandra Maciá (ES): HYDRAMORPHOSIS (2021)
How do nutrient flows and subterranean currents sound when translated into sonic spacetime?
Audiovisual artists Enrika Myskovskaja and Alexandra Maciá transform the hidden supply chains of marine ecosystems into an acoustic landscape. By attuning to the metabolic exchanges between microorganisms, flora, and aquatic currents, the duo weaves the secret vitality of aquatic habitats into an intricate matrix.
Their work reveals an underwater realm teeming with both visible and imperceptible micro-agents whose cycles sustain the whole of planetary life. Rather than treating nature as a passive backdrop, Enrika and Alexandra map these circulations as continuous choreographies of matter and vibration. What emerges is a sonic architecture of livingness that renders the unseen underwater metabolic labour palpable to human senses.
Merja Kokkonen (FIN) & Felicity Mangan (AUS):
I FEEL MY HEAD IS UNDERWATER (2021)
Merja Kokkonen and Felicity Mangan uncovered archaic desires. Meandering through bioacoustic field recordings and elemental techno pulses, their video traces our deep entanglement with living environments. Created amid the isolation of the COVID-pandemic, their work draws on Rilke’s 1906 poem ‘Kindheit’ to revisit childhood’s suspended, liminal sense of time.
How might we reclaim this forgotten temporal rhythm?
Does it still linger, sedimented, deep within our psychic memory?
Curator: Lona Gaikis
Graphic Design: Milena Georgieva
Web Design: Alain Pitiot
This project is realized in cooperation with ISCM – International Association for Contemporary Music, Vienna.
Supported by the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport, the City Council of Vienna, AKM and Austro Mechana, LSG (Protection of Ancillary Copyrights) as well as the Head of District Franz Prokop (Ottakring).
