Magdalena Manderlová, HISS

HISS, fieldwork, sonic essay, 26 min 56s, artist book, 2019

HISS is a piece commissioned in 2019 for the exhibition The Earth / Current Way of Living, curated by Tereza Záchová at Galerie Emila Filly, Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic. Ústí nad Labem is situated in the North Bohemian region, whose land has been severely transformed and contaminated by the continuous extraction of lignite and related industries. Here, the extraction process has been prioritized over the lives of people and ecosystems, leading to displacement, manipulation, and loss of settlements, villages, water systems, habitats, and plant and animal lives. I engaged with the land and the sonic environments by walking, sensing, listening, field recording, and writing. I wanted to meet the land, to feel its natural and cultural stories while widening my sonic imagination. I walked through Bílina, Braňany, Černice, Duchcov, Jedovina, Lom u Mostu, Mariánské Radčice, Milada, Most, Osek, Roudníky, Trmice, Ústí nad Labem, Vršanská vyhlídka, and Vysoká Pec. I invite and encourage the audience to feel and explore these places, to linger in and drift through this alternative time, sound, and light.

Credits: Field recordings, text, composition and mixing by Magdaléna Manderlová, with the voices of Katherine Butcher and Alex Murray-Leslie. Video animation and graphics by Kateřina Havelková.

Magdaléna Manderlová is a visual and sound artist based in Oslo. She works with the relational and sensory practices of listening and field recording, grounded in a deep interest in ecology, the natural world, and its processes. Her work, often site-specific and fieldwork-based, takes the form of sound installations, compositions, field recordings, concerts, participatory works, and writings, and has been presented internationally. In collaboration with Michal Kindernay, she organizes a yearly symposium dedicated to acoustic ecology and the Kozmické Meadows wetland in her home region in the Czech Republic. She co-organizes the Røst Artist in Residence program in Sápmi-Northern Norway. She is educated at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Ostrava, and the Trondheim Academy of Fine Arts. She is a recipient of State Artist Grant from the Arts Council Norway in 2023-24. She has a history as a singer-songwriter in the Czech DIY scene. magdalenamanderlova.com