Threads – Sounds Like a Book

Threads Exhibition

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐩 𝐞𝐱𝐡𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 ”𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐬” presents the artistic projects developed by 10 artists during 𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐚 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐕 an artistic residency program in Șona Village, Brașov County, Romania. The artistic residency encouraged experimentation with two alternative mediums of expression – sound and book. Hijacking the sensorial hierarchy, listening had preceded seeing. Both senses were engaged in exploring how we relate to peculiar places. The walking and storytelling became tools in acquiring knowledge and means of reflection upon how we inhabit a place and how we reside in a space together with human and nonhuman agents. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐬 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲 consisted of three complementary parts: a series of walks, a sound art workshop and a book design workshop. The workshops’ main aim was the production of creative projects, both based on research and dialogue with the community of Șona. Together with Oana Tudoran, the artists examined the physical and affective relationship between bodies and various species of spaces encountered in Șona. The walks were extended through sharing stories, knowledge and through delving into the emotional impact of the ambiances traveled across. The Sound-Art Workshop (coordinated by Lukas Jakob Loecker) introduced key sound-art concepts and tools useful in the working process itself, based mostly on field recording. During the Self-Publishing Design Workshop, held by the Grapho-mat Team (Andreea Mihaiu, Mihai Popescu, Andra Pavel), the artists in residency assembled the visual aspect and the sound material, while also employing the latest concepts and working tools in the fields of book design and self-publishing. The residency program was conceived together with a thrilling sessions of talks and performances held by the following amazing artists: Ingrid Ene and Gheorghe Iosif (dyslex), Lia and Dan Perjovschi, conceptual artists based in Sibiu, Romania, Costin Duțu, multimedia artist and experimental musician, Josephine Jatzlau, artist working with photography and book as artistic mediums of expression, based in Leipzig, Germany.

Books & Concepts

Edén Barrena

Edén Barrena (she/her)

edenbarrena.com

Some Notes on the Use of Textiles in Șona

“Some Notes on the Use of Textiles in Șona” is a book with twenty drawings that represent details of traditional textiles found in Șona. Before, people from rural areas used to spend most of their winter months inside the house. This was a perfect occasion to work on the textiles the family needed for daily life.

In villages like Șona it is still possible to see some of these textile pieces being used or displayed at people’s homes. One of the neighbors showed me her collection, from which I did the drawings of this book.

BIO

Edén Barrena (Badajoz, Spain, 1991) is a visual artist working with drawing. She graduated at the Royal College of Art with a MFA in Printmaking.

She has been recipient of the Villiers Travel Award (2014) and the artist-in-residence fellowships from the Fundación Antonio Gala (Spain) and the Swatch Art Peace Hotel (China). In 2018, Bananafish Books (Shanghai) published her artist book The Promise of Blooming, reedited by the Pearl Art Museum of Shanghai. After two years in China, Edén traveled in Southeast Asia to work on her project about Buddhist and Hindu offerings.

*NO SOUND PIECE

Print Details:

Risograph (four colors), hand-sewn binding, Arena paper, printed at Palpabil Studio in Bucharest , 40 copies

Guilaume Bihan

Guillaume Bihan (he/him)

https://www.instagram.com/guillaume_bihan/

At Night I Sang to Bears

The book and the sound piece are two parts of the same work. Although they exist independently, they explore the pictorial dimension and the repetitive aspects of images and sounds, like rhythms that complement each other. Be it visual or auditory, the emphasis is on the almost sensual contemplation of a landscape, on a journey between nature and humanity.

Everything is tinted by a feverish melancholy and a disturbing peacefulness. Followed by the images of an armchair where a Doina is sung, and a skull with its teeth pulled out, the two pieces have a personal story threaded throughout, a lingering presence of a sweet heaviness.

BIO

Guillaume Bihan, born in 1997, is a French-born visual artist, also a graphic designer and a curator, working and living in Paris.

Currently in his final year of a Photo/Video master’s at l’École des Arts Décoratifs de Paris, Guillaume Bihan’s work is a fusion of visual and textual narration. His practice unfolds in photos, videos, cinema, installation and writing, driven by the fictionalization of personal experiences. He explores notions like the study of the intimate, the search for self; physical displacement and stillness; social and internal isolation; the territories of emptiness and revelation; disturbing strangeness.

Print Details:

Photo-Book of 32 pictures and text, laser printed on 80g fine paper. The 40 pages are folded and slid into a crystal paper envelope, with a carton cover embossed with photography on a stainless steel plate printed with sublimation.

Length of the sound piece: ’09:28

LINK SOUND

Alexandru Mihai Budeș

Alexandru Mihai Budeș

Home

https://vimeo.com/alexmbudes

https://www.instagram.com/alexmbudes/

Echoes, Spells and Disenchantment

Memory is a subjective recollection of the past, each time used, information being modified. An echo is a distortion of a sound that travels and bounces off surfaces, but can it be seen as a blurry image of the past?

The two-part project, sound piece and publication, began by speculating on the linearity and circularity of time, how it affects places, and how memory works.

Small villages like Șona, from Brașov county, Romania, are places where time seems to flow more slowly. Villagers live their lives according to a solar rhythm, to the length of the day, to nature and its seasons. Their rare extraordinary happenings are remembered through stories passed on orally. By researching the local myths, legends, and conspiracy theories, the collection came out rather fragmentary, blurred by the locals’ more present-day, recent history and media-affected interest.

To clarify the vague and overlapping view, I’ve used text-to-image Artificial Intelligence as a consulting of a collective memory, trained on billions of images. The more probable the information, the better the results. Like in a game of hot and cold, I feed the AI with the fragments and images taken in Șona, going through art history as the scenes dictated, modifying the description after each result, and getting slowly to the bigger picture.

These filtered-out echoes are singing a legend beyond the known past, about destiny, the passage of time, the circularity of history, and human nature, bringing me back to the intent of my research.

If the sound piece is a boat trip that ends where it starts and vice versa, hearing along distant bits and parts of more clear and more distorted information, the book focuses on these details, filtering and recomposing them.

BIO

Alexandru Mihai Budeș is primarily a storyteller. Touching biographical elements, he weaves together: fact, history, mythology, observations and parallels drawn between the cultures encountered, elements of literature and conversations, human feelings, and states of mind – which interrogate different aspects of common and personal reality, consciousness, and subconsciousness.

His diverse background forms the blueprint of his artistic practice that connects, translates and operates across the borders of different media, artistic genres and disciplines. The work takes the shape of sculptures, performances, films, drawings, installations, machines, and AI programs, which he creates by drawing on sources ranging from local legends to global knowledge and personal anthropology

Print Details

Laser print, color

Covrig (Anca Dima)

Covrig (she/her)

@covrigue on Instagram

the light is disappearing + magick

Inspired by Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, the publication

delves into the mythology created around women healers as witches and generates

images from the realm of plants, animals, spells and charms. These elements are

connected to the practice of healing and protecting. Texts appear briefly, only to state

facts or moods.

The sound part is a mixtape with songs from popular culture inspired by the theme of

witchcraft, a trope that is used very often to describe women. The songs are glued

together by snippets recorded during the residency and they are re-recorded outside,

exploring Șona.

BIO

covrig lives and works in Bucharest, at Atelier MUC.

Mainly focusing on illustration, they branch out into textile play, publication, tattoos and

Education.

Print Details: One colour riso, stapled, 120mg paper

Length of the sound piece: 55min

Alina Ion

Alina Ion (she/her)

alinaion.com

six ways to start a myth

[the title] derives from the ironization of the best-seller books and popular articles from the past decade(s) or so, which come with the promise of helping you with your life.

the project was constructed under the idea of cyclical periods – a book with no beginning and no ending and a sound which has captures sounds from the beginning in the end –

both revolving under a centered piece (such is the forge in the village): the engagement with the metal.

BIO

I was born in ‘the place where nothing happened’ and have been in a love-hate relationship with bucharest for the past twelve years. Walking alongside the quotidian, holding on details and trying to deal with (the perception of) space, I probably still think as a painter hidden under the vast, succinct and long ‘interdisciplinary’ term.

Print Details

Digital print; manual binding; paper: Palatina, 120g

Length of the sound piece: 08:32

LINK SOUND

Matei Monoranu

Matei Monoranu (he/him)

https://mateimonoranu.com/

https://vimeo.com/user47743111

Home

Through the printed piece and the audio material, the artist wanted to explore the feeling of home and belonging somewhere, through his character Simon Siclop, an alter ego representing the emotional side of his life. The atypical format brings back the nostalgia of being a child in the 90’s, when kids adorned their walls with cheap posters of blockbuster movies, video games and various bands.

BIO

Matei Monoranu is an Animation Director and Illustrator based in Bucharest. He graduated in Fine Arts at UAD in Cluj-Napoca and also finished a Master in Animation Directing at UNATC Bucharest. He takes inspiration from daily life happenings and the theme is usually funny, geometrical, wonky and character-driven, often seen through funny loops of cats, triangles and cyclopes.

Print Details:

2 sided 80×60 screenprint, 2 colors, various types of papers

Length of the sound piece: ‘3:47

LINK SOUND

Roxana Morar

Roxana Morar (she/her)

https://www.behance.net/morarroxana

Two weeks, 40 quantified actions

This project revolves around an attempt to measure the present moment. During my two-week stay in Șona, I observed the surroundings, outlined and separated the elements that could end up as the objects of my study. I let myself be affected by anything that came my way and had a quantifiable feature, then ordered them in a timeline-based structure. This process bounded to my sonic experience that triggered, in some instances, what I chose to record. It was also dependent and equally limited by my capacities as a body in space. The outcome resulted in a glossary system of knowledge, action and existence.

BIO

While following a site-specific approach, Roxana Morar addresses topics like the circulation of the matter, system boundaries, transfer of information & human interaction in diverse contexts. Her projects interlace with the area of anthropology & other social studies. She aims to underline the relationship between the audience, the artist and the context. Currently, her art focuses on experimenting and combining artistic mediums such as photography, sound, text, video, performance, sculpture and graphics.

Print Details

Print: Palpabil Studio;

Binding: Ceconii;

Paper: Nautilus 120gr.

Miruna Radovici

Miruna Radovici (she/her)

https://www.instagram.com/miruna.radovici/

Probably a book about water

A pocket book about an unfinished journal in which the writer gathered accidental encounters, ephemeral ideas and small incidents. ”Probably a book about water” is dedicated to water, luck and rejuvenation and it can be brought back to live by whomever may finish it, while taking into account the residues left beforehand.

In some cultures, to talk of water and air means to make small talk.

BIO

Miruna Radovici (b. 1995, Bucharest) is a visual artist who investigates the development of a universe as the works stage the core of social evolution: interactions, language, touch, the organic appearance and disappearance of emotion. She visually transposes them through a multitude of environments (painting, textiles, photography and others) that are meant to illustrate circumstances of intimacy, existential problems, all under the aegis of the private atmosphere of the subjects.

Print Details

riso print, stapled notebook

Length of the sound piece: 01:30

LINK SOUND

Nadine Weber

Nadine Weber

www.nadineweber.ch

soundcloud.com/desolationdatabase

https://vimeo.com/user46679058

Modern Tradition

An observation of traditional and industrial aspects from all the overall image of the village.

BIO

Nadine Weber (CH/NL), born 20.01.1996 in Guggisberg. Works in the fields of graphic design, motion graphics, and illustration. Lived and worked in Bern, Biel, Zurich, Linz, and Vienna.

Works in the experimental areas between analog and digital and represents feminist values.

Currently studies Design Investigations at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and is part of the band “Desolation Database” and DJ.

Print Details:

Print: 3c/1c Risoprint, further processing: saddle stitch + punching, printed by: Vienna Printing Cooperative

Length of the sound piece: ‘3:49

LINK SOUND

Vitaly Yankovy

Vitaly Yankovy

https://vimeo.com/user36297424

https://www.instagram.com/p1ne_3/

Songs for the storks of Sona

Storks are the perfect example of how wildlife and humans can coexist. Storks have lived in symbiosis with humans since the Middle Ages. Saxon villages are popular nesting grounds for storks because of their unique position relative to fertile fields where these birds like to feed. They like the insects and the worms, which is very beneficial for the crops.

In village culture storks can get mystical and magical meanings, which can be different in different regions. There Are many beliefs about storks. That storks settle only near houses of good people, storks settle only in «God blessed» places. Also there is a common myth about storks bringing newborn babies and storks that bring real spring.

Performing for storks brings them agency and establishes relations through sound.

BIO

Visual artist, designer, researcher who finished a Contemporary art course at School of visual communication (Kyiv) in 2014 (curated by Catherina Badianova and Lada Nakonechna). Finished Indie Lab documentary school in Kyiv (2018) and American Art Incubator, organized by Izolyatsia and Zero1 (2020). Participated in many online and offline residencies in Ukraine and internationally.

Works with video essays, animation, 3D, and drawing. Sphere of interest is flexible from subjective data visualization and urban site-specific studies to research of video-games, memory places and specifics of functioning of commercial culture. Study object-oriented ontology and weird objects.

In sound practices use sound for subjective data visualization. Experimenting as a bedroom lo-fi multi-instrumentalist with drone-ambient and post-techno under the alias «P1ne tree».

Print Details:

Cover paper: offset 300g

Pages paper: xerox 80g

Insert paper: olin smooth cream 170g

Font: Inter

Production: Azero

Length of the sound piece: ‘7:50

LINK SOUND

Residency

Location: Șona, Brașov, Romania

Sounds like a Book is thrilled to announce Threads, a residency program in Șona, Brașov county, Romania taking place between the 1st till 15th of August, 2022. The residency will provide 10 Romanian and international artists with the opportunity to develop a project based on two mediums of expression – sound, and book. Artists working in any creative discipline, but interested in expanding their artistic practice are encouraged to apply!

The Threads Residency consists of two complementary parts: a sound art workshop and a book design workshop. The workshops aim at the production of artistic projects based on research and dialogue with the community of Șona village. The Sound-Art Workshop (coordinated by Lukas Jakob Loecker) will introduce key sound-art concepts and tools useful in the research and working process (based mostly on field recording). During the Self-Publishing Design Workshop, held by the Grapho-mat Team, the artists in residency will develop the visual aspect for the sound material, employing the latest concepts and working tools in the fields of book design and self-publishing.

Theme

The residency proposes an in-depth exploration of myths as an in-between reality and fiction type of story. It employs the power of imagination to ascribe meaning and the individual memory to recall the layers of significance. The thread between active and inactive spaces, between places and landscapes, between here and elsewhere lies in the capacity of myths to build a frame in order to accommodate the out-of-the-ordinary and the eerie inside the community. The residency is based on the process of exploring the sonic and material landscapes that lie at the core of the local myths in Șona

Coordinators

Graphomat is an interdisciplinary design studio based in Bucharest, created by Andreea Popescu, Mihai Popescu and Andra Pavel. They specialize in visual identities and editorial design. They also dip their fingers into curating, exhibition design, screen printing, bookbinding, and paper marbling.

www.graphomat.com

Lukas Jakob Löcker is currently teaching at the Department of Media Design (Institute for Art & Education) at the University of Art & Design. The Linz-based multimedia composer and filmmaker is involved in social sound projects and – as a member of the „Backlab Collective“ – in Linz’s local cultural scene, in addition to international mediation and exhibition activities.

Guided Tours

A writer, performance artist, and perfumer, Oana Tudoran‘s artistic practice brings together choreography, fiction and poetry, video, and sensorial experience to evoke the complexity of human emotion, the relation to what is hidden, and the need for grace or release. In her process, the artist harnesses the instinctual to find hidden doors, connect to the ancestral and find imperfect solutions to problems that are difficult to articulate.

https://www.instagram.com/mareadragoste/

Sounds Like a Book Guests

Performance

Costin Duțu is a multi-medium artist and an experimental musician, releasing his sound pieces under two projects: Usurper Rising & Pacific Blood Star. In his sound work, he explores and morphs elements of ambient, drone, tribal music, and harsh noise. His artistic roots lie in esoteric mysticism, veganism, and environmental activism. Though he is based in Bucharest, he lives and creates in both the capital city of Romania and his home village Rîu Alb in Transilvania.

https://soundcloud.com/k-a-l-d-434323996

Collaborative Performance

Artists play with Time - Ingrid Ene and Gheorghe Iosif (dyslex)

Ingrid Ene is a graduate student from the Photography and Time Based Arts Department at the University of Fine Arts Bucharest. Her artistic explorations can be defined in a cross-media path, between image, text, and sound, realizing in the last year a series of book objects, photo assemblies, and poetical searches in sound installations. The approached themes by the artist are the memory, emotional connection with images and sound understood as individual maps that can be shared and withdrawn together with the others.

Gheorghe Iosif (Dyslex)

dyslex (d s l x)

keywords:

soundscaping;

nanotextures and nonlinear audio;

storytelling; sound structures; acoustic experiences and sound installations;

improvisation and composition.

introverted, e(xc)lusive,

pattern oriented; since 2003

chromesthesia; unstable equilibrium sound harnessing/harvesting; real-time structural entwinement manipulation, pushing the boundaries of space-sound ratio; sound immersion;

other keywords:

deathdream; chaos induc[ing/ed] unpredictability; contradiction; expanding structures of granular synthetic post-silence; deathdream; danger music;

[inter/intra]-structural [a]symmetric[al] sound deconstruction ủ̶̘͉n̸̮̿͠

https://soundcloud.com/dyslex_dslx

Conference

Josephine Jatzlau was born in 1997 in Berlin. Currently studying Photography at Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig, she also holds a BA in Media Studies from the Bauhaus Universität, Weimar. Her practice revolves around photography and video and she shots primarily medium format and 35mm film. Interested în landscape, space, and nature, she works with books.

/https://josephinejatzlau.de/

Context

Sounds like a Book is a book-making and self-publishing platform that addresses those interested in the book as a medium of artistic expression. As the chosen name suggests, SLB focuses on the visual transmission, conversion, and representation of the sound.

With the support of our Sounds Like a Book Friends: Fundația Ștefan Câlția, Galeria Posibilă, Graphomat, Time Based Media – Kunstuniversität Linz, Artists play with time, Radio Fro, Radio România Cultural, The Institute, Asociația Jumătatea Plină, Backlab Collective, Revista Arta, Bună Ziua Făgăraș – Radio Star Făgăraș.

Project co-funded by AFCN. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN is not to be held responsible for the content of the project, nor for the ways in which the results of the project might be used. Those are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the grant.