High on Ambient Aware

What becomes audible when we switch our inner compass to “Ambient Aware”?

The discussion takes place within the exhibition project High on Distortion, Low on Reception.

Artist: Natalia Domínguez Rangel, Florian Kindlinger, Suchart Wannaset
Moderation: Kristina Pia Hofer
(English and German)

In the discussion with the artists, questions are explored that revolve around what is heard and what falls silent: Which frequencies or soundscapes do we perceive, and what remains hidden from us? What does our environment sound like, or what does pollution sound like? How do listeners, sound-makers, and the spaces they move through relate to one another?

Loud and faint, perceptible and obscured, the group exhibition High on Distortion, Low on Reception explores the sounds of our present – layered with noise, lost in resonance. At the core is their role as communication, sensation, and cultural experience.

Poetic and analytical, the artistic works explore the multifaceted potentials of sound as a medium – beyond aesthetic categories or semantics. They reveal hidden, often threatening aspects of our acoustic worlds: the rumble of human interventions in the oceans, the silencing of insects, the hum of invisible electromagnetic fields, or growling acoustic aggression. In the exhibition, visitors encounter sound as a political and affective form of articulation but also as an expression of cultural identity. At the same time, it manifests as an instrument of social control, a trigger for altered perception, or a trace inscribed in ecologies, spaces, and memories.

Artists: Natalia Dominguez Rangel, Jung An Tagen, Marlene Kager, Christina Kubisch / Peter Kutin / Florian Kindlinger, Suchart Wannaset, Hui Ye in collaboration with Qu Chang, Samo Zeichen / Paula Backer

Curated by Elisabeth Falkensteiner, Nora Mayr

High on Distortion, Low on Reception – a collaboration between kex—kunsthalle exnergasse and Klima Biennale Wien

Supported by the Otto Mauer Fonds