THE Å//A UNIVERSE – Hidden Songlines of the Baltic Sea

Multi-part project about the Baltic Sea, between installation, concert, research and encounters

Commissioned composers: Tomi Räisänen and Amen Feizabadi. Artistic direction: Claudia van Hasselt & Nicolas Wiese

Improvisation/comprovisation: FrauVonDa//, Eva Alkula, Viktoriia Vitrenko, Golnar Shahyar, Ferdinand Breil, Casper Lindroos.
Text: Michaela Vieser & Isaac Yun.

In cooperation with: Finnland Institut in Deutschland, Künstlerhaus Lucas und Neues Kunsthaus Ahrenshoop,  Biologiska Station Husö/Åland, Akademie der Künste Berlin, Kulturföreningen Katrina, Ålands Sjöfartsmuseum 

FrauVonDa// celebrate their 10th anniversary with a special, internationally oriented project that focuses on the threatened diversity of life under water – yet attempts to show the relativity of human perspective.
The Baltic Sea is the youngest sea on earth, wherein evolution has taken a unique and vulnerable path over the last 8000 years.

FrauVonDa// set out on a journey – dive, listen, marvel and ask: how much do we know about this sea, its inhabitants and their subjective environments?
Based on research trips to Ahrenshoop and to the autonomous region of Åland, an archipelago of more than 6,000 individual islands that formally belongs to Finland, FrauVonDa// – together with their collaborators and science partners – explore the acoustic, tactile and visual phenomena as well as the philosophical and narrative potentials of the Baltic Sea in the 21st century.

Inspired by research on the sensory perception of marine animals, by the millennia-old sturgeon, by the symbiotic community structures between bladderwrack, plankton and schools of fish, and nonetheless inspired by the stories of the sea shores’ human inhabitants, FrauVonDa// conceive an idiosyncratic narrative of the Baltic ecosystem, amidst the TERRAPOLIS (D. Haraway) worth protecting and worth living in.
As humans, with our specific senses and interpretations, we are but a small part of this TERRAPOLIS.

FrauVonDa//, with a libretto by award-winning Nature Writing author Michaela Vieser, recount the untold, the unseen and unvoiced – and the need for balance.
THE Å//A UNIVERSE – HIDDEN SONGLINES OF THE BALTIC SEA unfolds artistic research as a panorama in various formats: in two installations/exhibitions, an international audio walk, artistic-political panels, workshops and a transtraditional-contemporary concert piece.

▶ VIDEO

▶ AUDIO

Funded by: Hauptstadtkulturfonds, Neues Kunsthaus Ahrenshoop, Künstlerhaus Lukas e.V., Finnland Institut Berlin, Svenska Kulturfonden, Aue Foundation, Kurverwaltung Ahrenshoop, Åland Islands Government