Manja Ristić - kairos & the dwellers - Vinyl LP

For its second release, forms of minutiae is pleased to present "kairos & the dwellers", an electroacoustic drone album by field recordist and sound artist Manja Ristić. Stranded on the island of Korčula (Croatia) since the beginning of the current global health circumstances, Manja Ristić roamed on the isle’s shores in quest of new sonic encounters. She approached the Adriatic wilderness by deploying her tools and processes for attentive listening in pursuit of sparking sensory dialogues with the surrounding biomes. Pine forests, shallow waters, coastal lands, abandoned quarries, and their sets of inhabitants were auscultated through various sonic recording techniques involving hydrophones, contact microphones, and stereo set-ups. In resonance with French botanist and landscaper Gilles Clément’s concept of Third Landscape (areas whose evolution depends on nature alone and that are thought as ideal places for thriving biodiversities while unimpededly building genetic reservoirs), Ristić’s compositions draw our attention towards the hidden corners and the micro-environments of littoral and traumatised landscapes — former exploited spaces which were eventually abandoned and given back to non-human regenerative powers. Thus, the album takes the ancient, half-sunken, limestone quarries of Korčula as its primary stage and invites us to listen to the minute acoustics of crustaceans, molluscs, swallows, cicadas, creaking trees, wind breezes, lapping waves, and occasional anthropogenic motions while sharing a haunting reflection on underwater noise pollution as submerged sounds of distant boats overtake the delicacy of the bio- and geophony at play. The result is a dronesque, ambient, quasi-continuous piece that plays with psychoacoustic gestures and builds self-generated fantasies that feed our subconscious and emotional plane. But when listening between the lines, "kairos & the dwellers" also unveils, like most of the artist’s work, a political dimension that involves ecological activism and a strong empathy towards the world’s ecosystems and their dwellers. By combining unprocessed and processed field recordings into electroacoustic narratives, Manja Ristić investigates the historical and ecological richness and fragility of the Korčula island and its encircling sea with the practice of attentive listening as a way of funnelling our thoughts towards the comprehension of a landscape’s memory and present state. • Manja Ristić, born in Belgrade in 1979, is a violinist, sound artist, poet, curator and researcher active in the fields of electroacoustic and classical music, instrumental improvisation, and experimental sound art. Her work blends intuitive composition and field recording practices while focusing on interdisciplinary approaches to acousmatic forms, radio art, and acoustic ecology. Manja Ristić currently works and lives on the island of Korčula, Croatia. Click here to listen. The Wire — issue 447 (review): "Confined by the pandemic to an island in the Adriatic, Ristić has explored the local environment and channelled her multifaceted creativity into composition of evocative soundscapes. A range of field recordings specific to Korčula, captured through hydrophone as well as microphone, are enfolded within luminous drones, like images suspended within the composer’s perceptual sensitivity. Ristić is an artist who notices and takes on board, acutely attentive. Her active presence and involvement is part of the fabric of these pieces. Ecologically alert, they also convey a sense of individual awareness as a kind of permeable membrane, absorbing elements from the world while also transmitting aspects of the self. These are thought-provoking pieces, which also possess a haunting quality."