tekhnē

Pedro Oliveira (BR/DE) is a sound artist and researcher exploring listening and its material intersections with the violences of the European border. In his performances and installations, echo, distortion and feedback serve as explorations of the limits and failures of human and machine listening, and their encounters with the (migrant) body as a site of struggle for identity and belonging. He is part of the guest faculty in Sound Studies and Sonic Arts at the Universität der Künste Berlin, where he also earned his PhD. During his time at TRAFO, Pedro Oliveira will be working on completing a video and sound essay titled “all the elsewheres we dream of.” The work continues his research on the relationships between voice and identity in the context of diaspora, migration, and movement across borders. A short story, written in the tradition of Latin American magical realism, sets the tone for exploring the possibility of a more-than-human becoming. Fused with sounds from Oliveira’s own synthesizer experiments and the extended technique improvisations of flutist Marina Cyrino, the piece becomes a poetic rehearsal for undoing the violent work of borders and their technologies. The residency will focus on capturing images, completing the story, and bringing the video and sonic script into a first finished form, which will be presented as a work-in-progress lecture-performance in early December.