Flow Over Water Borders at Walls Have Ears | ARS Art Factory, Tallinn

Flow Over Water Borders (2019)
Walls Have Ears
ARS Art Factory
Tallinn, Estonia

10th – 18th February 2023

“Flow Over Water Borders” by Kat Austen is presented as a 4-channel sound installation that explores fluidity of identity in relation to borders. Paracelsus famously said of all substances “It is only the dose which makes a thing poison.” Borders constrain and divide, they are often contested, policed, enforced. Yet they also protect, define, collect… Their value is in the way that they and their permeability are navigated. 

Drawing parallels between urban life for young people and the changes to water as it passes through the city, this sound artwork sheds light on the meaning of boundaries, the fluid nature of the self and the eternal navigation of the individual as part of society.

The artwork is based on participatory artistic research focussed on the Panke River in Berlin with local school pupils. Realised through DIY Hack the Panke’s Science by Doing with Art Laboratory Berlin.

Festival Website Walls Have Ears / Sientel On Korvad

More information Flow Over Water Borders

More information Science by Doing at Art Laboratory Berlin’s site

Mapping Gender at Baltic is Curious

On Saturday Kat will be playing alongside Anders Duckworth’s performance of Mapping Gender as part  BALTIC is Curious. Kat has collaborated with Anders on Mapping Gender over the last 2.5 years, creating the sound and music for this exhibition of performance, image, sound and research. It’s an invitation to see the parallels between cartography and clothing, to explore how society controls, shapes and demarcates both landscapes and human bodies – all told through the lens of non-binary experiences.

In creating the soundscape over the last two years Kat has carried out research in liminal spaces – at coasts, riversides and boundaries. In Saturday’s performance, she will use her hacked scientific equipment to play sounds from a water sample that she collected from the Baltic Sea in December last year alongside water from outside the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art.

Performance details:

Saturday 2nd July, 19:00 – 20:00

BALTIC
Gateshead NE8 3BA

Booking essential. Tickets GBP8-12.

Audio Walk: Listening to the Distant Clamours at Perceiving Academy 686, Cyprus

Between 25th October and 5th November 2019, the Cyprus Chamber of Fine Art will be running Perceiving Academy 686, an exploration of the Cyprus ecosystem.

“Distant clamours break on the timeless towers like the sea.”

From Aphrodite by Howard Mumford Jones

Kat Austen will provide to participants a site-specific audio walk “Listening to the Distant Clamours” and DIY hydrophones, to facilitate an sound-based research into the political and physical landscape of the Cyprus coastline.

Flow Over Water Borders at Staatsoper, Berlin

Intervening with Panke River water

Flow Over Water Borders
Sound Installation

14th and 15th June 2019
Junge Staatsoper
Berlin

How does the water change when people act upon it? 

How do we personally change when we interact with other people?

We all have borders. Learning how to navigate them is important. Wether we are overcoming personal hurdles or opening up to others, the process creates changes in both ourselves and others.

“Flow Over Water Borders” at the Staatsoper Berlin, explores the parallel between urban life for young people and the changes occurring in water as it passes through the city. The sound installation explores the meaning of boundaries, the fluid nature of the self and the eternal navigation of the individual as part of society.

Audio recordings were created with class 7c during a co-creation workshop investigating the Panke River in Berlin Wedding as part of the project “DIY Hack the Panke” (Art Laboratory Berlin). Recordings were taken using special instruments developed by the artist, Kat Austen, which generate sounds from the measurement of chemical properties of water.

Part of Wasserklang Orchester.

NB: Entry to the exhibition is only available to Theatre ticket holders.

Wasserklang Orchester workshops DIY Hack the Panke with Gustav-Freytag-Schule

Hydrophone recordings of Berlin waters

Kat will be working during the week of 20th May with students from the Gustav-Freytag-Schule to make sound recordings from water using her hacked scientific instruments and DIY hydrophones, as part of the DIY Hack the Panke project. These recordings will be composed, along with piano compositions with the school’s Klavier AG, into a sound installation at the Berlin Staatsoper in June 2019.

Sensing Water at ZEM Potsdam

Using a hacked pH meter to listen to the acidity of water

13th-14th May 2019
ZeM, Potsdam and surrounds

Kat Austen will be working with participants from the ZeM SENSING PhD programme to explore the human relationship with water using artistic research techniques that meld together embodied explorations with those mediated by sensing equipment. This workshop introduces participants to two artistic research methods that make use of scientific equipment and embodied techniques to connect with water, and facilitates the exploration of local water using these methods.