“The Sonic and the Void” is a community-based research practice on Critical Sound- and Silence Studies. The research expands through different group dynamics, which form the basis for exploring the politics of silence. During the workshop, we will attune to different forms of silencing. Our temporary community will listen to silences held in our bodies as well as „silences other than the ones imposed“. Through the margins of the audible, we aim to connect with invisible communities, social movements, and voices from the underground. Tuning to these layered holes and blanks, to intervals and pauses, to what cannot be reduced to language, we collectively ask: What politics can emerge beyond the binaries of sound and silence, of visibility and invisibility?

Participants will engage in different listening experiences and somatic practices. Mutual sharing and co-learning are encouraged throughout the session. Sitting in and simply listening is already considered an active form of contribution.

„The Sonic and the Void“ is facilitated by Kosmas Phan Ðinh and Theo Ferreira Gomes. The format is realized in collaboration with Weibel Institute for Digital Cultures (University of Applied Arts, Vienna).

Hosts:

Theo Ferreira Gomes is a transdisciplinary researcher working between curating, community programming, and sound. His independent research explores alternative currencies and how art communities reconfigure the way we circulate value and distribute resources. Together with Kosmas Phan Ðinh, he is researching the politics of silence and its resonances within contemporary power relations.

His sonic research unfolds in relation to practices of DJing: collecting, selecting and sharing music, listening and attunement, dialoguing with communities in movement. Among others, he has performed at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (2024), Moers Festival (2024), Lindenmuseum Stuttgart (2024), Max Planck Institut for Behavioural Biology (2023), ifa Gallery Stuttgart (2023) and Salon des Amateur Düsseldorf (2023).

Kosmas Phan Ðinh works with hybrid methods. Through the continuity of sound-art as well as curatorial and community programming he seeks out contact zones. During the past months he has assembled sound-based exchange formats around the politics and poetics of Opacity, as a fellow of the Academy Solitude.

Based in sonic, aquatic and spatial media, Kosmasʼ independent artistic research crosses new ecologies, anti extractive frameworks and personal mythologies. His soundwork has been presented among others at Display Gallery (Prague), Matadero (Madrid), Floating University (Berlin) Sensorium Festival (Bratislava).

Workshop & Registration Info:

Registration deadline: Thursday, October 16th, 2025

For your registration please write to: [email protected]