Women, non-binary, and transgender artists are not only active as composers and musicians in electronic music. As curators, concert organizers, and blog activists they are also constantly developing new projects, initiatives, and concepts and ultimately contribute significantly to the great diversity of the current music scene. For this panel, several artists participating in this year’s festival as well as researchers and organizers have been invited to discuss current feminist ideas, strategies, and experiences in the field of progressive pop and the contemporary avant-garde. The objective is to provide a cross-genre platform for displaying the scenes’ diversity and strengthening networks between participants on national and international levels.

Florencia Curci is a sound artist and curator based in Buenos Aires. Her work focuses on noise and rhythms as relative concepts that can configure perception, communication, and subjectivity. In her installations, sound pieces, and performances she proposes alliances with technological, animal, and environmental beings to explore collective sonorities. Her musical career began in 2009 playing drums in the experimental noise trio COSO (Argentina). Since 2017 she has been the director of CASo (Centro de Arte Sonoro) in Argentina.

Tatiana Heuman works in the fields of sound, movement, and media arts. Her current interests are constructing and maintaining spaces for the exchange of narratives and rituals that favor presence and care. From this perspective, she actively develops workshops that combine Deep Listening, sound creation, dream sharing, and somatics. Her musical career began playing trumpet and drums with the free improvisation band Ricarda Cometa around 2009. In 2014 Tatiana Heuman started her solo electronic music project. She lives and works in Berlin.

Lenka Kočišová aka Akkamiau is a sound artist and composer. She plays live on semi-modular synths, from experimental jams to techno sets, releasing on the label DETUND. In 2022, she obtained funding and art directed the a/v movement performance »VOLTAGE 2.0«, and consequently released the soundtrack as the album »Xiao« in 2024. She runs »Impromptu Impulses«, a radio show on Freie Radios Berlin 88.4 FM that is focused on improvisation.

Katharina Ott-Alavi is a musician, freelance event manager, project manager, and initiator of the FLINTA music collective GRRRL-NOISY and musicBwomen*, among others. She plays guitar and sings in the band 24/7 DIVA HEAVEN and works as a freelance writer. She lives in Brandenburg.

Eugenia Seriakov is a visual anthropologist and radio host, and DJs under the name Cate Hops. With an academic background in visual and media anthropology, her ideas revolve around the concept of space as a social practice. Musically, she embeds herself in the Berlin bass scene and fuses ambient, early roots reggae and futuristic sound patterns from all areas. With the ongoing project »Sound System Culture: On the Radical Roots of Rave«, she initiates events in which the audience is actively involved. As a researcher, Eugenia Seriakov also gives lectures.

Lola Tseytlin is a passionate sound engineer. During the last decade she dedicated her life to empower and educate other FLINTA* to change together the male-dominated sound industry. Lola Tseytlin is a founding member of Soundsysters, a FLINTA* sound collective which is active since 2013. Soundsysters give workshops about setting-up PAs, DJing and recording. During the last decade there were hundreds of workshops throughout the world with the main focus on technology empowerment and feminist teaching methods.

* German abbreviation that stands for »Frauen, Lesben, Intergeschlechtliche, nichtbinäre, trans und agender Personen«, meaning women/females, lesbians, intersex, non-binary, trans and agender people.

Stellan Veloce is a Sardinian multi-instrumentalist and composer. Their music focuses on timbral research, iteration, and modulations of sound densities. Their background in traditional Sardinian music provides an important subliminal inspiration in their work. In addition to performing live, they compose music for ensembles and for dance performances. Since 2018, they have collaborated regularly with Sheena McGrandles and Neo Hülcker. They occasionally work in the pop music sphere, most recently with pop icon Peaches. They live in Berlin.

The supposedly disembodied sound of electronic music is a legend that many current musical positions find easy to refute. This year’s focus on music with percussion and electronics presents an excellent opportunity to shed light on the sensorial and physically tangible moments in current electronic music. In shaping this festival focus, percussionists and composers are equally important and the conversation between them is central to this debate. The topics include the merging of instrumental and electronically-generated sound as well as the particular challenges that percussion presents for composers, musicians, and audiences alike.

Keynote: Physicality, persons and personae in the creative process of sound-based-art
by Laura Zattra (IRCAM Paris)
Laura Zattra Sound-based-art is mostly made of electronic sounds but how are these sounds made? How do their creators physically operate? This question has always guided my research: the reconstruction of the ›behind the scenes‹, the making-of, the actual (material or dematerialized) creative process. As Jo Hutton (BBC) has shown in her research on the work of Delia Derbyshire, Éliane Radigue and Beatriz Ferreyra the practical, sensual relationship with studio equipments seems not to be relevant for these composers. To broaden the perspective I will expand the discussion to other figures such as Teresa Rampazzi, creators Maura Capuzzo and Svetlana Maraš, and musical assistants Sylviane Sapir, Monica Gil Giraldo and Sandrine Pages.
Topics arising from the above are self-evaluation and self-archiving. Self-archiving can be considered a mirror, a way for creators to show themselves in the distinction between ›person‹ and ›character‹, their self, their practice (material or virtual), and the emanation to the outside world. How they organize their materials shows how they perceive themselves and their practice.

Greta Eacott is a British/Swedish composer based in Copenhagen, Denmark. She is primarily known for her boundary-pushing percussion works, which incorporate spatial aesthetics, design theory, and physical movement as integral elements. She studied music composition at the University of Leeds, and percussion with the marimba virtuoso Keiko Abe at the Toho Gakuen School of Music, Tokyo. She completed a Nordic Master Course in Music Composition at Gothenburg Academy of Music in Sweden. As a percussionist, Greta Eacott has performed extensively across Europe.

Katharina Ernst is a percussionist with a particular interest in polymetric and chaotic structures. She studied abstract painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, at which time she began performing with experimental music projects. Her interdisciplinary works and ›compositions‹ engage with various forms of expression and translation. Katharina Ernst most recently received the Austrian Federal Ministry’s State Scholarship for Composition. She currently lives in Berlin.

Anna Murray is a mixed-media composer and artist from Ireland. She has a particular interest in language, meaning and text-based composition, the creation of sound spaces, as well as graphic artwork-scores combined with live electronics. In 2019 she was awarded the Japanese Government MEXT Scholarship to attend Tokyo University of the Arts as a research scholar, where she studied Noh with Takeda Takashi. Anna Murray is also a regular performer of live improvised electronics. She curates and hosts the experimental music concert series and monthly digital radio show »Kontakt«.

Karen Power’s compositions utilize two primary sources: acoustic instruments and everyday sounds, spaces, and soundscapes. She is an active improviser, who specializes in using environmental and everyday sounds/places as catalysts for constructing new sonic spaces. She performs as both a soloist and as ensemble member. She is a former DAAD scholarship holder of the Berlin Artist Program. In 2017, Karen Power became chair of Sounding the Feminists, a collective seeking equality in music across Ireland.

Teresa Riemann has lived and worked as a performance-artist, musician, and writer in Berlin since 2012. Through her creative output, she explores the darkness and, even more, the light that can be found in the spaces we like to keep locked up far away from where anybody can see them. Since 2010, she has organized and staged numerous concerts, readings, and performances from Poland to Tunisia. In 2010, she co-founded the cultural space Café Decentral in Innsbruck, Austria.

Sabine Sanio is head of the theory department at the master’s program Sound Studies and Sonic Arts at the Berlin University of the Arts. She studied German literature and philosophy. Her numerous publications focus on current aesthetics, media aesthetics and media history, sonic arts, new and experimental music, as well as interrelationships within the arts. She has been on the curatorial team of the Heroines of Sound festival since 2015.

Robyn Schulkowsky is a percussionist from the USA. Her continuous exploration of new sonic dimensions has led to the development of new and unusual musical instruments. She has premiered and recorded some of the most important solo percussion works of the 20th and 21st centuries. She has led percussion workshops in countless cities. Robyn Schulkowsky’s curiosity and versatility as a musician and composer has connected her with exceptional duo partners, including collaborations with Drummer Kofi Ghanaba and choreographers such as Merce Cunningham.

Laura Zattra is a scholar of sound-based-art, creative/collaborative practices, archival research, underrepresented figures. She holds a Ph.D. (2003) in Music Science (Univ. of Trento) and Musicology of the 20th century (Sorbonne-ParisIV), and is since 2012 research associate at Ircam in Paris. Her method incorporates philology, oral history, and reconstruction of the creative process. With Giacomo Albert she founded the research group Risme Digitali (hosted by the Italian Society of Musicology). She is founder and author of www.teresarampazzi.it and lecturer in bachelor and master programs in Italy.

The voice transforms the human body itself into an instrument; in electronic music, the human body turns into a sound generator that brings the vocal chords into extreme situations and causes the musical space to resonate. As a foreign entity, electronics determine how the voice and body interact with each other. In any combination of voice and electronics, electronic sound synthesis and musical performance represent important dimensions. This panel offers an opportunity to talk with composers and performers about the latest developments in this long-established genre.

Keynote: Re-envisioning the Canon: Electronics and Voice
Rahma Khazam 
Karlheinz Stockhausen and Alvin Lucier are among the names that first spring to mind when looking at the history of electronic music and voice. Yet beyond the canon lies another, completely different list of names, ranging from Laurie Anderson, Cathy Berberian, and Joan La Barbara, to Meredith Monk and Pauline Oliveros. In my presentation, I will outline the contribution of these pioneers to the history of electronic music and voice, and explore their influence on women composers today.

Marisol Jiménez is a composer, performer, and multi-disciplinary artist from Guadalajara, Mexico. Her work is characterized by an intense fascination with the tactile dimension of processes of sound creation. She seeks to express the thermodynamic phenomenon of entropy within musical structures, bringing the primeval into collision with the technological. Most of her acoustic, electronic, and mixed media works involve her own sound sculptures. She completed her doctoral degree in composition at Stanford University in 2011. She currently lives in Berlin.

Julia Mihály works as a composer at the interface of new music, performance art, and electronic music. She develops multi-layered compositions consisting of sound, video, and performative elements, often in combination with electronic media and with a strong thematic reference to performance venues. She studied classical singing and electronic composition at the Hanover University of Music, Drama, and Media and supplemented her studies with courses at the ZKM Karlsruhe, STEIM Amsterdam and the Stockhausen Courses in Kürten. Julia Mihály lives in Frankfurt am Main.

Rahma Khazam is a researcher affiliated with Institut ACTE, Sorbonne Paris 1 and EnsadLab, Paris. She studied philosophy and art history and received her Ph.D from the Sorbonne University in aesthetics and art theory. Her research ranges from sound art and its history to contemporary aesthetics and has been published in edited volumes, academic journals, and exhibition catalogues. Recent publications include »Objets vivants«, ed. Rahma Khazam, Mimesis 2023 and ›Reenvisioning the Technological Sublime‹ in »Christina Kubisch: Inaudible, Invisible«, Presses du réel, 2023.

Martina Seeber is a journalist, musicologist, author, and radio presenter. After living in Paris and completing a master’s degree in Cologne (musicology, Romance studies, philosophy), she trained as a journalist at the German Radio Academy in Dortmund. Since then, she has presented radio shows, talks, and live concerts, produced features and articles, worked as an editor, and written for magazines and concert organizers such as WDR, SWR, and Deutschlandfunk Kultur. After having spent over ten years in Berlin, she currently lives and works in Stuttgart.

Ute Wassermann is a vocal artist, composer-performer, and improviser. She tours internationally as a vocal performer, realizes audiovisual performances, and composes for soloists and ensembles. Her multidimensional singing makes her voice oscillate between electronic, animalistic, inorganic, and human qualities. In addition, she modifies and expands her voice with bird whistles, objects, acoustic costumes, and a variety of microphones. 

To this day, acoustic poetry is regarded by many as a purely literary genre. However, the musical and performative strategies that are used to draw attention to the sound of the voice and its performance are just as central as language. Acoustic poetry combines literary, musical, and performative moments, transforming the body and voice into instruments and media for speech that may be indistinguishable from singing. It is an artistic movement that can be located between literature, music, and performance art, and for many years, has also been known for its play with gender roles and identities. The panel encourages an in-depth examination of these diverse aspects of acoustic poetry.

Keynote: Sexing & Silencing.
Swantje Lichtenstein
Acoustic Poetics, Language and Music Language and poetry are often understood as an anagogic process, which is the idea that the meaning of a text would lead to something else, instead of being first of all process in itself, as in music. Sound stands above the allegorical, tropological or anagogical sense, it can be understood as a sensation. When language and sound come together as a collision of relations it opens spaces and possibilities for intimacy and connection. Acoustic poetry takes the freedom to be not necessarily bound to words than to show the process of materialization and its use. A feminist approach to acoustic poetry, language and music also asks questions about the connection of voice gender, othering and alienation, muted sirens, pitched demons, moo cows and she-goats etc.

Ira Hadžić is a sound artist, writer, and cultural anthropologist. In her radiophonic works, she explores how the practice of listening can be perceived as an autonomous language and an instrument of expression. In 2022, her sound piece »Heimatgefühle« (DLF 2021) was awarded the Karl-Sczuka-Preis for radio art. Ira Hadžić lives in Berlin.

Katalin Ladik is a poet, performer, and actress. Influenced by a multi-ethnic, multilingual environment, she works with lyrical texts as well as sound poems, visual poetry, experimental music, and radio plays. As a performer, her range also extends to happenings and theater plays. The astonishingly rich frequency spectrum in her vocal performances has earned Ladik the reputation of a »Yoko Ono of the Balkans«. She is a regular guest at international festivals and took part in documenta 14 in 2017. She lives alternately in Novi Sad, Budapest and on the island of Hvar (Croatia).

Swantje Lichtenstein works as a musician, performance artist, and poet. Her sonic work investigates the ties of language and music in a mode that is trans-artistic, and improvised as well as conceptualized and composed. Swantje Lichtenstein completed her doctorate on poetological, performative poetry in Cologne and is a professor for aesthetic practice and text at the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences. Her wide range of publication work includes poetry, essay, theory, translations and sound works.

Monika Pasiecznik is a music writer, researcher and curator living in Warsaw. She is the author (or translator) of several books and hundreds of articles published in Polish and international journals on new music. As a music curator, she has collaborated with Polish and international festivals and institutions such as Warsaw Autumn, Darmstadt Summer Course, Philharmonie de Paris, and others.

Natalia Pschenitschnikova is a multi-talented singer, flutist, performer, and composer. Alongside her solo and chamber music projects, she also works in various theater and dance projects. Her experimental work focuses on the correlation of sound and space, the ecology of sound, and the energetic qualities of sound and voice. Since graduating from the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, she has performed numerous works written for her as a soloist and has been a guest at international festivals such as the Venice Biennale. She is a co-founder of Festival Alternativa for new music in Moscow and lives in Berlin.