Anton Kats on MÆKUR (Anton Kats + Eva Rowson + Maia Urstad) Deleted scenes

This podcast is co-produced by Sonic Acts and part of Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.

It began as an intuition, a desire. Eva Rowson opened up the Landmark program at Bergen Kunsthall with a stack of questions, from the title of the programme that the activity was part of, “Who’s doing the washing up?” to conundrums with few certainties and many potential answers, in a speculative imagining and mapping of possible futures. In the midst of these, a rather more specific question arose: what happens when you cross two practices that draw on communication technology, artistic research, radio, recording, archive, and processes? What happens if you cross Maia Urstad (Bergen, Norway) with Anton Kats (Kherson, Ukraine)?

Our time machine allows us to answer until 2020 with MÆKUR, which is back again with Eva Rowson after a first stint at Lighthouse (UK) in 2019, and which openly incorporates it into the collaborative processes, because it has always been there. With a methodology focusing on aesthetic experience and the present moment, as well as hospitality and context, access and agency, and stories shared and left untold.

MÆKUR create temporary radio labs and portable sound systems as a way to open up communication technology and enhance its usefulness on a local level. Their work involves sensory research on radio and listening, through dialogue between the ongoing present and a constantly growing mutant archive.

In these outtakes, Anton Kats talks about the transition from MAKU to MÆKUR, about slowing down and opening up listening spaces, and about contextual and emotional infrastructure in art practice.