with Andrius Arutiuanian (Fellow 2023-24), Alchemyverse (Bicheng Liang + Yixuan Shao), Merche Blasco (Fellow 2022-23), Gerard Gormley, Katarzyna Krakowiak, Signe Lidén, Nicole L’Huillier, Yara Mekawei (Fellow 2021-22), Brett Mommersteeg, Mendi+Keith Obadike, Samuel Perea-Díaz, Marina Peterson, Charles Richards, Jonathan Tyrrell, Jan St. Werner, Jona Wolf

DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program and Sonorous Cities (SONCITIES) are proud to present Concrete Dreams of Sound: Experiments in Sonic Materiality. This two-week programme brings together sonic artists, theorists, and architects in exploring ideas of sound and materiality in the context of talks, conversations, workshops, listening sessions, performances, and installations. 

An invisible phenomenon that is typically understood as immaterial, sound nevertheless shapes, and is shaped by, the material world in numerous ways. Sound interacts with architecture and the built environment; it affects air and atmosphere, both in ways that can cause harm–as in noise pollution or sonic warfare–and in ways that can produce affinities and solidarities, as in the soundscapes of protest and resistance. Sound passes from, between, and through bodies, shaping social and political relations; it defines the shared spaces of the acoustic commons as well as the fractured spaces of the sonic undercommons.

Indeed, if we think of sound in relation to its material entanglements, sound’s status as immaterial is in doubt. Is sound energy or matter, or does it occupy a different category, vacillating between energetic and material states? How does sound materialize or become material? What are the qualities of sonic matter, and what distinguishes sonic matter from other kinds of matter?

Concrete Dreams of Sound has several components. It includes a four-day gathering of invited artists and theorists; a pedagogical programme for students in architecture, urban design, and sound studies; and a public programme that features listening sessions, a symposium, and an Open Lab. The Open Lab space is conceived not as an exhibition in the classical sense, but rather as a testing-grounds: a space that will evolve over the course of the programme, and a way to invite the public into the processes, research, and thinking behind various projects and experiments.

Concrete Dreams of Sound is the first of three such programmes proposed by the Sonorous Cities (SONCITIES) research project based at the University of Oxford. These programmes, on the themes of ‘materialities,’ ‘ecologies,’ and ‘energies,’ are oriented toward expanding the language and tools that spatial practitioners have in contending with sound and the built environment.

With funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program as part of the project Sonorous Cities (grant agreement no. 865032). Supported and co-produced by the Artists-in-Berlin Program.

curated by Dahlia Borsche & Gascia Ouzounian

Program Overview

Open Lab: daily 12 to 7 pm (except April 25 during the symposium)
with Alchemyverse (Bicheng Liang + Yixuan Shao), Gerard Gormley, Katarzyna Krakowiak, Signe Lidén, Nicole L’Huillier, Yara Mekawei, Brett Mommersteeg, Mendi+Keith Obadike, Samuel Perea-Díaz, Marina Peterson, Charles Richards, Jonathan Tyrrell, Jan St. Werner, Jona Wolf

Public Symposium:
Materializing Sonic Architecture
25th of April 9.30 am – 7 pm
with presentations by Jonathan Tyrell, Katarzyna Krakowiak, Jan St. Werner, Mendi+Keith Obadike, Marina Peterson & Merche Blasco

Public Workshop with Alchemyverse (Bicheng Liang + Yixuan Shao):
WEND
26th of April, 4 – 5.30 pm

Workshop for students in the field of architecture:
Sound Space Sense
29th of April, 10.30 am – 4.30 pm
with Jan St. Werner, Gascia Ouzounian & Dahlia Borsche
participation upon registration only
Call for Participants

Workshop for students in the field of sound studies / (electro-acoustic) composition: Form(ing) Matter (of) Sound
30th of April, 10 am – 6 pm
with Samuel Perea-Díaz & Jona Wolf
participation upon registration only
Call for Participants

daadgalerie (both floors)
Oranienstr. 161
10969 Berlin

Free admission to all events

Picture credit: “Transitory Sonic Bodies” by Samuel Perea-Díaz & Jona Wolf (2022)