SONGS TO YOU ABOUT YOU
ISLANDS SONGS

Songs To You About You, a project by Berlin-based artist duo Islands Songs (Nicolas Perret & Silvia Ploner), brings western and non-western understandings of the microbial world into dialogue and celebrates the social interactions between humans and microbial communities.

The nucleus of the project is the 7.1 channel sound installation The Forest Within – Within The Forest, a collaboration with Colombian anthropologist and biologist César Enrique Giraldo Herrera. Entangling a spoken fabulation with a polyphonic speculative score, the piece investigates indigenous narratives and knowledge of the natural world as well as sound and listening as methods for exploring the ‘non-tangible’. While the fabulation, co-written by Giraldo Herrera, sounds out animist understandings of reality by adopting various perspectives, the polyphonic score is inspired by shamanic conversations with the ‘forest within’ and delves into interspecies communications in the Amazon rainforest. All sounds are drifted from field recordings made by Islands Songs during a recent field trip to Colombia, non-human and human vocalisations, VLF recordings and modular synthesis.

With For Indigenous Yeasts and other Microbes, the second work presented at ar/ge kunst, Islands Songs have set the process of transforming grape juice into wine to a soundtrack consisting of three acts written for and dedicated to microorganisms active in the production of wine. The piece – both an experiment with South Tyrolian vintner Thomas Niedermayr (Hof Gandberg, Appiano) and a soundtrack realised in collaboration with American artist and composer Charlemagne Palestine – refers to the ancient tradition of humans and microbial communities collaborating to produce food and beverages.

Songs To You About You is Islands Songs’ first solo exhibition in Italy. It is the result of a one year dialogue with ar/ge kunst that began in 2017 with a live performance and exhibition at Transart Festival 17.

PUBLIC PROGRAMME

08.09.18, 11 am
MICROBES AND OTHER SHAMANIC BEINGS
^ar/ge kunst matinée with César Enrique Giraldo Herrera

29.09.18, 7 pm
FOR INDIGENOUS YEASTS AND OTHER MICROBES (ACT II)
Performance by Islands Songs and Charlemagne Palestine
at Hof Gandberg and Castel Gandegg, Appiano
In collaboration with Transart Festival
(Tickets)

handout for more information

In co-production with
Deutschlandfunk Kultur
Transart Festival 18
Thomas Niedermayr, Hof Gandberg, Appiano

With the kind support of
The Autonomous Province of South Tyrol, Department of Culture
Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio, Bolzano
City of Bolzano, Department of Culture