Denise
Onen

Denise Onen, a cultural practitioner and audio alchemist, channels the richness of her diverse experience into sonic artistry for film, documentaries, theatre, and performances. With unwavering dedication both in practice and academia, she has flourished as a composer, mixing engineer, recordist, and notably: sound designer.

Most recently, her skill shines through featured collaborative sonic installations and films at the likes the World Expression Forum (2023), National Arts Festival (2023, 2022), Sundance International Film Festival (2022), Biennale de Dakar (2022), and Un(Infecting) the City Public Arts Festival (2021).

Her contributions have garnered recognition, including the prestigious Best South African Short award at the Durban International Film Festival (2022), Best Southern African Documentary at Cairo International Film Festival (2021) and she was a shortlisted nominee for the 2022 International Oram Award for feminine-bodied innovators in sound, music, and associated technology.

Denise Onen was selected as part of “Oscillations”, a project by Akademie der Künste (Berlin) Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape (Cape Town) and Deutschlandfunk Kultur / Klangkunst (Berlin). She will be in Berlin in October and November 2023 with a scholarship from the DAAD Arts and Media Program.

Oscillations is funded by the TURN2 Fund of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation).
Funded by the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media). Supported by the DAAD Arts and Media Program, Kulturstiftung Schloss Wiepersdorf, and the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS).