Larissa Araz

Oto Sound Museum | Zurich, Switzerland

SAHA supports Larissa Araz’s new sound project on Oto Sound Museum, held between 7 November - 30 December 2022.

Voice from afar is a sound work by the artist Larissa Araz (Istanbul, 1990) focusing on the famous Kurdish broadcasts of Radio Yerevan. Radio Yerevan's broadcasts began in 1955, and soon after its launch, the radio station became one of the most important means of communication for the Kurdish-speaking community in the region, and the radio's sound waves helped the community create an identity across borders. Voice from afar is an abstract sound work that explores radio as receiver rather than transmitter. The piece imagines where these portable radios were located and records the radio listeners and their community.

Voice from afar began with extensive archival research, which has led the artist in recent months to imagine and reevaluate the active role of those who listened to the radio, but also to interrogate the issues of participation and listening to sound works in contemporary times. The archive thus meets imagination and experimentation. Voice from afar becomes an inspiration and a channel for active participation and reflection.

Anna Larissa Araz (Istanbul, 1990) focuses on alternative histories, non-human witnesses, and denied evidence. Through personal narratives, she researches documents, archives, belongings, ruins, silences, traces, and memories that are not included in, or kept hidden from social memory. Between reality and fiction, she tries to discuss possible futures and unrevealed pasts using mythology and rituals. She uses different mediums in her practice but mainly focuses on text and image-making. She collaborates with different cultural producers such as independent radio stations, local newspapers, sound engineers, graphic designers, perfumers, and so on.

To listen:

https://oto.museum/index.php

About OTO SOUND MUSEUM

OTO SOUND MUSEUM is a nomadic museum that produces, presents and collects sound works by contemporary artists from different backgrounds, geographies and generations. The museum was born digitally as an iconoclastic environment and a utopian architecture on the platform. It is also used to travel across different places in the physical realm, transforming its identity along the way.