Antje Vowinckel, Marc Matter, Swantje Lichtenstein

Antje Vowinckel is a Berlin-based sound and radio artist who studied literature and music. She has been commissioned to do radio plays and shows for a variety of public radio stations such as (WDR, SWR, BR) as well as for foreign stations and festivals (ZKM Karlsruhe, TESLA Berlin, Biennale Bonn, Prix Italia, Festival for Contemporary Music Alicante/Spain, Hammer Museum Los Angeles, British Council, Berlin, Humboldt-Lab). Her works have been broadcasted and presented in Germany, France, Spain, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Czechia, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Croatia, Portugal, Poland, Australia. In recent years, she has created also live performances (organ and objects), installations and video compositions. Her focus is on the musicality of the spoken word, for example in compositions with dialect melodies or in pieces based on automatic speaking.

Marc Matter works as a media artist, musician and freelance curator. He is a founding member of the group of artists known as Institut fuer Feinmotorik, with whom since 1997 he has published numerous sound recordings, an experimental film, a book and all manner of other trifles, as well as dozens of live performances. 2005 saw the publication of the anthology Feinmotorik Kompendium, an artist's book in the form of a lexicon. His work Radio-Imitat, produced exclusively for Radio Arthur, was released on CD at the end of 2009. For Die 50 Skulpturen des Institut fuer Feinmotorik [The 50 Sculptures of the Institut fuer Feinmotorik], he received the Karl-Sczuka Prize for Works of Radio Art in 2011. He devotes intense research to artist publications (artist books, artist records etc.), acoustic art, Poesie Sonore and Visual Poetry. Together with Marcus Maeder and Bernd Schurer (domizil, Zurich), he has interpreted a dadaistic novel by Hugo Ball in the shape of an experimental radio play for Radio DRS2. In 2012 he was a research fellow at the Jan Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht (NL). In 2013 he was the Edith and Richard French Fellow at the Beinecke Rare Books & Manuscripts Library at Yale University (USA), doing research on the sound-poet and publisher Henri Chopin and his publication OU. Since 2010, he has been lecturing in the major Music and Text at the IMM.

Swantje Lichtenstein is a poet and transdisciplinary artist working in the fields of textures, language, voice, poetronics and sound. Her conceptual writing, improvisations and compositions utilize electroacoustic elements to write poetry and sound works. She is a professor of literature and aesthetic practice in Duesseldorf, Germany.

International Festival of Text-Sound Poetry is presented by ISSUE Project Room, Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival, Goethe-Institut New York and Wendy’s Subway. Curated by Lawrence Kumpf, ISSUE Project Room Artistic Director, Marc Matter, Rachel Valinsky, and Macgregor Card.

Made possible by support from the Goethe-Institut New York, the Royal Norwegian Consulate General, Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, the Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and with the support of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.