9 June - 6 August 2023
’Warnings in Waiting,’ solo exhibition at Kunsternes Hus, Oslo
Aura Satz, ‘Warnings in Waiting’ (2023), 3 screen installation at Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Photo by Credit Tor S. Ulstein, KUNSTDOK
How to listen ahead, how to hold the future in mind when listening? The siren is the prism through which to refract a complex web of entangled relationships to threat, alert, alarm, a doorway, an exit route, survival. (Aura Satz, Preemptive Listening, 2022)
How do we hear and understand emergency signals at a time of intersecting environmental and sociopolitical crisis? Does an alarm have to be alarming? And can we imagine sirens beyond the human? Composed of footage shot at sites where sirens are deployed, Aura Satz works collaboratively with a roster of musicians to speculatively reimagine what a siren is.
The project reimagines sirens in order to forge a new understanding of present and long-term emergency. The siren serves as a worldwide symbol of potential trauma, an emblem warning of climate catastrophe, a mouthpiece for sonic governance and crisis management. Many sirens are relics from WW2 and the cold war, repurposed to communicate the threats of extreme weather, a collective commemorative pause, or resurrected to test disaster preparedness.
Drawing on Aura Satz’s ongoing documentary film project Preemptive Listening (2017-ongoing), the triangular installation explores the lifecycle of a siren: sirens in situ, placed within landscapes and architectures of threat; sirens in a factory, suspended in a preliminary limbo; and sirens in a state of obsolescence, in a siren ‘cemetery’ or junkyard.
The site-specific installation consists of films shot across America, Lapland and Fukushima that rotate across different soundscapes, with newly composed siren sounds by an array of experimental musicians. The soundtrack features the endlessly escalating sounds of planetary data; animal howls and the grief of extinction; soaring banshee-like warnings; defiant trumpets; intricate harp permutations; the sounds of the earth’s core.
Warnings in Waiting offers an experiment in listening, exploding the soundtrack within a permutational logic specific to the gallery context, and echoing the modular logic of the siren’s code that can be used to communicate diverse messages across war, weather and civil unrest.
Aura Satz, ‘Warnings in Waiting’ (2023), 3 screen installation at Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Photo by Credit Tor S. Ulstein, KUNSTDOK
CREDITS:
The exhibition is produced specifically for Kunstnernes Hus and is Aura Satz’s first solo show in Scandinavia. Supported by AHRC, OKRE, RCA, Walker Arts Centre, Kunsternes Hus, with support in kind from Kadist. Presented in association with Walker Arts Centre, Tate Modern, and EMPAC.
Musicians (in order of appearance): Laurie Spiegel (astronomical planetary data, electronica); Evelyn Glennie (percussion); Maja Ratkje (voice, bells); Anton Lukoszevieze (cello); BJ Nilsen (wind, electronica); Elaine Mitchener (voice and whistles); Laurie Spiegel (manatees, dogs, cicadas, electronica); Ilpo Väisänen (electronica); Rhodri Davies (harp); Debit (Mayan instruments, AI, Schumann resonance).
Producer: LONO Studio - Luke W Moody Associate Producers: Mika Taanila (Testifilmi) and Tendai John Mutambu; Cinematography: Aura Satz; USA: Brandon Mendel, Jason Boulware; Japan: Hikaru Suzuki with FiveStar; Finland: Mika Taanila with Flatlight Sound Mix and Sound Design: Chu-Li Shewring Associate researcher and podcast producer: Irene Revell Associate researcher: Francesca Cavallo Production transport and assistance in Milwaukee: Jonas Sun and Seamus Carey Special thanks to American Signal, Westshore Services, Lou Mallozzi, Carole McCurdy, Deborah Stratman, Jason Waite and Hiroko Tasaka.
The exhibition is part of an expanded focus on presenting moving image-based works bridging the cinema and exhibition spaces at Kunstnernes Hus, funded by Fritt Ord and Sparebankstiftelsen DNB.
Speaking Sirens podcast The podcast Speaking Sirens, with interviews and excerpts is accompanying the exhibition. Hosted by Aura Satz and Irene Revell. Listen here https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/preemptive-listening/id1690173915 https://soundcloud.com/preemptive-listening/speaking-sirens
26 Sep - 2 Oct 2024 ‘Warnings in Waiting’ showing as part of the group exhibition ‘Landscape as the State of the World,’ DMZ festival, South Korea
Launched in 2023, the Non-Theatrical Program is a curated initiative that challenges the conventional boundaries of film exhibition. By embracing non-theatrical installations, the program showcases the expanded possibilities of contemporary documentary filmmaking. It brings together a diverse range of artists who are redefining our understanding of art, film, and the moving image, embodying the DMZ International Documentary Film Festival’s spirit of innovation and boundary-pushing. Following its successful debut at Camp Greaves last year, this year’s program will be situated within the LAKINS Mall area, adjacent to the main screening venue. Under the theme of “landscape,” the program explores the crises, predicaments, and movements of resistance that shape our world today, as seen through the spaces of our everyday lives: streets, architecture, landscapes, and the natural world. The juxtaposition of the consumer-driven environment of the shopping mall with the multifaceted concept of “landscape” promises an unpredictable and thought-provoking encounter. We hope this program will inspire artists to engage critically with the context of their work, encourage curatorial experimentation among programmers, and offer audiences new and enriching ways to experience documentary film. https://dmzdocs.com/eng/addon/00000002/event3_view.asp?QueryYear=2024&event3Year=2024
04 - 06 April 2025 ‘Warnings in Waiting’ installation as part of ‘Proximity Music: Echoes of Entropy’, at WEST the Hague (ex-American Embassy)
Proximity Music is a joint exhibition program initiated by iii and Rewire. It seeks to connect music, architecture, technology, ritual, and play through sensory experiences. Proximity Music: Echoes of Entropy explores how chaos and entropy act as both forces of creation and catalysts for change. Drawing inspiration from the second law of thermodynamics, where entropy signifies the inevitable drift towards disorder, the exhibition delves into the consequences of these forces on our environment, socio-political systems, and human interactions.
With contributions by: Zimoun, Navid Navab, Chris Salter and Marije Baalman, Ioana Vreme Moser, Natalia (Nika) Sorzano, Aura Satz, Coralie Vogelaar. Curated by Yannik Güldner. Location: West Den Haag de de vml. Amerikaanse ambassade, Lange Voorhout 102, Den Haag https://instrumentinventors.org/project/warnings-in-waiting/ https://www.westdenhaag.nl/exhibitions/25_02_Cultuurhaven/more3 https://www.rewirefestival.nl/artist/aura-satz
28 March - 20 Sep 2026 ‘État bruit’, Group exhibition at Konschthal Esch, Luxembourg
In a complex and multipolar world where economic, political and cultural agendas clash and overlap, the état bruit exhibition focuses on contemporary artists who engage with this challenging, noisy environment, placing sound at the heart of their reflections and, consequently, their work. état bruit aims to provide a contemporary snapshot of the multiple channels, signals and background noises that surround us daily, competing for our attention or distracting us from what is essential.
Group exhibition including Gabriela Löffel, Brognon Rollin, Aura Satz, Nika Schmitt, Tintin Patrone, Open Group, Nik Nowak. Curated by Charles Wennig. https://www.konschthal.lu/en/exhibitions/etat-bruit
3 April - 11 October 2026 ‘Direct Bodily Empathy – Sirens and Feedback,’ Group exhibition at Govett-Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre, New Plymouth, Aotearoa New Zealand
Direct Bodily Empathy – Sound, Signal, Feedback explores sound as a material force of consequence in the world. Through audible currents and felt vibrations, sirens and noise, deep listening is used as a means of knowledge building and a tool for critically engaging with a planet in crisis.
Spanning the Len Lye Centre, Aotearoa and international artists and collectives examine sonic relationalities and the politics of sound through a range of approaches. These include acoustic ecologies, where sound becomes a speculative tool for sensing and indexing biodiversity and climate volatility; concepts of ‘ear witnessing’, where audio material acts as legal evidence; and sound as a decolonial force, where musical composition unsettles acoustic histories while affirming Indigenous ways of being and knowing.
Staging sonic encounters, artists harness more-than-human co-performers, such as the wind, decomposing fruit, and native birdsong, to amplify the voices of weather systems, sonify carbon flows, and attune with the dawn chorus. Others compose warning sirens as harbingers of ecological feedback loops, or turn up the volume on ancestral rhythms to live by.
Through sound installations and sculptural assemblages, field recordings and experimental films, musical composition and archival interventions, lecture performances and deep listening experiences, the exhibition asks: What does a healthy ecosystem sound like? How can sound act as a decolonial gesture? What are the techno-politics of machine listening? What sirens and warnings are needed to survive the future?
Direct Bodily Empathy is a two-part exhibition series curated to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Len Lye Centre. The exhibition’s title pays homage to Len Lye’s notion of ‘bodily empathy’, a term that signals an attunement with the senses, or the transfer of elemental energies. While Sensing Sound amplified artists’ intentions through sonic structures, resonant objects, and shared vibration, Sound, Signal, Feedback asks: What can sound do? Here, alongside Len Lye, contemporary artists employ material sound for the transmission of meaning and as an input for action.
Key Dates: June 27: Official exhibition opening celebration, accompanied by a series of expanded public programmes and participatory events. October 3: The launch of Direct Bodily Empathy, a major publication in collaboration with Perimeter Editions, Melbourne accompanied by a series of expanded talks.
Group exhibition including Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Andrew Faleatua + Stroma, Simon Ingram, Len Lye, Machine Listening, Yuko Mohri, Aura Satz, Rachel Shearer, Weather Cry, YoungEun Kim. Curated by Anna Briers. https://govettbrewster.com/exhibitions/2026/direct-bodily-empathy-sound-signal-feedback