Listening walk – four pieces exploring gardens

Immersive Sound Listening | Language: English & Romanian, Open to the public, with admission fee

Through four sound pieces by Romanian, British, and Croatian artists, the audience is invited to wander through imaginary or real gardens in a poetic reinterpretation of the Botanical Garden’s spaces.

An immersive sound installation presenting portraits, memories, and impressions related to gardens, nature, and plants. Presented in the greenhouses of the Botanical Garden, this series of compositions created by artists from the SEMI SILENT portfolio invites the audience on a sensitive and poetic journey through nature, memory, and sound art.

SEMI SILENT production by Maria Balabaș (Romania), Cosmin Nicolae (Romania), Pheobe law Riley (United Kingdom), Anamaria Pravicencu (Romania) with Manja Ristić (Croatia).

Maria Balabaș

Maria Balabaș is a journalist and musician. She is the host of the Dimineața crossover show (Morning Crossover) from Radio România Cultural and has created projects devoted to new forms of radio creation (Generația sonoră/Sound Generation). In 2014 she was nominated for Prix Europa (Berlin) for the documentary Maria Tănase – Urban Soundtrack for a Diva. She initiated musical groups such as Avant’n’Gard and Soare Staniol, inspired by improvisational techniques, electronic music, acoustic music. Creates installations generated by the artistic interest in the form of field-specific auditory memory.

Pheobe riley Law

Pheobe riley Law (1997) is an installation artist with a focus in sound, performance, photography, and sculptural activation. Using a symbiotic approach, she builds dialogues between different bodies, borders and devices, activating, flexible new relationships.

Prevailing interests include sonic mapping, exploring the life of non-human actors / inanimate objects & thinking about aspects of human activity through the lens of division and borders. She sometimes playfully reverses the roles of humans & non-humans, revealing the object-hood of the human essence, and an animate character of the ‘inanimate’ being. In one of her recent installations and performances Machine Equities she explores the sonic landscape of machines as actors and singing collaborators. Previous and ongoing explorations focus on: the relationship we have to the natural world; machine technologies as our collaborators; the role salt has on aquatic life and the activation of micro-worlds such as moss, soil and motorised machines.

Cosmin Nicolae

Cosmin Nicolae is an anti-disciplinary artist working with image, sound, text to produce works of intimate reflection at the intersection of autoethnography, psychogeography and possible futures. Opening the door on Hessle Audio over a decade ago – an outlet that has gone on to become a defining voice within electronic music in the 21st Century, Nicolae’s list of affiliations reads like a who’s who of top tier contemporary music record labels. Cosmin Nicolae’s work glides between music, film, hyperstitional theory fiction and a mix of media that formulate peripheral points of view. Lives and works in Berlin.
cosminnicolae.com

Anamaria Pravicencu

Anamaria Pravicencu is a sound artist based in Bucharest and founder of the platform SEMI SILENT (2016), dedicated to podcasting, sound art, radio art, and field recording. She also developed the SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES program (2018, 5 editions) to support mobility in contemporary sound art. In 2022–2024, she co-curated Sonic Narratives (Simultan) in Timișoara as part of the European Capital of Culture.

https://semisilent.ro/

Manja Ristić

Manja Ristić, is a violinist, sound artist, published poet, curator, and researcher. Ristić’s sound-related research besides contemporary performance in the field of instrumental electro–acoustics, is focused on interdisciplinary approaches to sound and field recording as well as experimental radio arts. Ristić has created commissions for Kunstradio – Radiokunst, Radio Cona, SEMI SILENT, Radiophrenia, Radio Art Zone, Radia.FM, Framework Radio, and all national broadcasting agencies across SE Europe. The winner of several distinctive awards for solo and chamber classical music, holds an honourable mention from the Phonurgia Nova Awards, and a Golden Award for the extended media from the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia. She is a founding member of CENSE – Central European Network for Sonic Ecologies.

RADIO AND SOUND ART FESTIVAL, 2nd edition