Live-Konzert @KAMUNA: Exoplanetary Fictions

How can we shift our perspective and “hear” Earth as an extraterrestrial planet? Global Sonic Research Resident Jiyoung (Chloe) Yoon, together with artists Vardan Harutyunyan and Başak Günak, is exploring how we can make exoplanetary dimensions perceptible through sound, beyond the limits of human hearing.

Program order: Başak Günak (20 min.), Jiyoung (Chloe) Yoon (20 min.), intermission, Vardan Harutyunyan (30 min.)

As part of KAMUNA in the ZKM | Kubus Sound Dome, three residency-based research contexts merge into an auditory expedition beyond earthly soundscapes. Building on the “Global Sonic Research” residency program at ZKM | Hertzlab in cooperation with the Arts Council Korea (ARKO) and the European Center for the Arts HELLERAU, as well as meteorological data from EUMETSAT,Jiyoung Yoondeconstructs the hierarchy of human hearing. What frequencies do we still perceive when we leave our planet? Human voices recede into the background, while urban traffic noises come to the fore. Jiyoung explores the reversal in the hierarchy of our sound perception and highlights the penetrating power of frequencies.

At the same time, the transcultural research project“Stellar Frequencies,” initiated by the Goethe-Institut Armenia in cooperation with the ZKM | Hertzlab, expands this cosmic resonance space to include a geopolitically and historically grounded perspective. Vardan HarutyunyanandBaşak Günak, both residency fellows at the ZKM | Hertzlab, bridge a gap in the Sound Dome between the ruins of the Armenian space center “Aragats” —once a peripheral site of Soviet space ambitions and SETI research—and contemporary theories of the planetary. The dilapidated structures of Aragats, witnesses to an imperially driven “Space Race,” function as a sonic archive of memory that raises questions about responsibility, technological feasibility, and the postcolonial shaping of the future. In dialogue with theMARS! projectby ZKM | Hertzlab, their works unfold into an auditory cartography that connects Soviet space history with current climate data research and the spectral properties of Martian atmospheres.