Sustain.fm

Listening with glaciers? Auscultation and planetary health? Climate data turned into percussion performances played on glacial ice? Tune in for all of that and more in a fascinating conversation with Konstantine Vlasis. Konstantine is an environmental composer, audio researcher, musician and writer currently based in Iceland whose work explores how sound, music, and listening mediate experiences of changing landscapes and ecologies, and how music can be a form of climate communication and environmental storytelling. With collaborations, compositions, and publications with a wide range of people and places around the world, I really enjoyed diving into his world and his sounds.
 
Links and Bio
Artist website https://www.konvlasis.com/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/konvlasis/
Time and Water https://scienceandfilm.org/articles/3747/the-sounds-of-time-and-water
Life of the Glacier https://intotheblue.is/life/
After Ice film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsQoCVlgGn8
 
2124
Composer & Project Lead: Konstantine Vlasis
Produced by Jake LyonsPerformed by Chris ParkerAudio by Yi-Wen Lai-TremewanDirected by Marcus Neudigate
 
Ablation
Composer & Project Lead: Konstantine VlasisVideography: Josh FlintRecording & Mixing: Yi-Wen Lai-TremewanVideo Editing: Jake LyonsColor Grading: Marcus Neudigate
 
Bio
Konstantine Vlasis is an environmental composer, audio researcher, percussionist, NYU Torch Fellow, Leifur Eiríksson Foundation Fellow, Fulbright-NSF Arctic Research Fellow, and Fulbright-Nat Geo Award recipient. His projects, public talks, and performances center on the ways that sound and listening mediate experiences of changing landscapes, and how music can be a form of climate communication and environmental storytelling.
As a composer, Vlasis has become a leading voice within environmental, art-science, and audiovisual composition. His music blends complex rhythmic structures, minimalist textures, and sound design to create environmentally conceptual and immersive pieces. In this regard, Vlasis explicitly builds his works upon pre-existing musical textures created by nonhuman entities, natural soundscapes, and environmental phenomena. His recent compositions expressly focus on ecological awareness, creative approaches to musical sustainability, and the efficacy of art-science collaboration. Vlasis is a visiting lecturer at Listaháskóli Íslands, a research affiliate of Háskóli Íslands, an Innovative Percussion Artist, and a performing member of APEX Percussion.

Fresh off an amazing sound workshop in Norway last week called Soundshed, we hear sounds reflecting sonic presence and absence, hauntings, ruins, and imaginaries. The project, funded by the Oslo Center for Environmental Humanities, explored sound at the intersections of art, ecology, and energy production at Kistefos, a sculpture park and museum located on the site of a former paper pulp mill about an hour outside Oslo. I was excited to be part of this project led by Sadie Menicanin from University of Oslo and can’t wait for you to hear the sonic collages created by the participants.
Co-creators
Sadie Menicanin
Steve Williams
Kyle Devine
Megan Gette
Cristina Archetti
Moa Hjärtström
Elise Matilde Malik
Alexander Refsum Jensenius
Parisa KhoeiLucy Cathcart Frödén
Vicky Mikalsen
Nikos Baskozos
Chryso Nikolaou
Sofia Shuvanova
Kahena Wilhite
 
Links
IMV Instagram @unioslo_imv
Kistefos https://www.kistefosmuseum.com/
Soundshed project page https://www.hf.uio.no/ikos/english/research/projects/oceh/research/teams-phase-two/junior-collaborative-research-teams-1/soundshed.html
UNRULY Sustainability https://unrulinesss.com/

Thumper trucks and dowsing rods. Seismic listening and fraudulent maps. Ham radio and silence. Just a few of the ideas we cover in today’s show with Megan Gette. Megan is an artist, a writer, a poet, an editor, interested in how sensemaking is articulated and given material form. Playing with technologies of listening, fluidity and im/materialisms , her artistic and academic works made for a fascinating conversation. Check out our chat and listen to some of her sounds.
 
Bio
It is hard to name the various crises of the present to which theory promises to attune. The worlds of others are incoherent. Thought is immanent to material processes and their social fragmentations. I am interested in how sensemaking is articulated and given material form. I examine techniques and technologies of listening through which extractive atmospherics shapes perception and ordinary life.
Links
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/808omega/
Artist web site: https://atrace2.cargo.site/

Today I am thrilled to have on the show Natalia Escobar. Natalia is a Colombian interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and DJ whose practice spans moving images, sound, performance, and installations. Her work explores Abya Yala phenomenology, Indigenous cosmovisions, identity, and memory, drawing from decolonial and intersectional feminist perspectives. Since 2021, she has been developing pedagogical projects and collaborations with different Indigenous communities in South America, notably with Las Traviesas, a community of trans-Indigenous women from the Embera people in Colombia. Together, they have developed initiatives that promote social and ecological transformation through artistic processes, emphasizing transdisciplinary collaboration as a strategy to challenge colonial norms and reimagine alternative realities and spaces for knowledge exchange. So you can imagine how excited I am to speak with Natalia today.
 
Bio
Natalia Escobar is a Colombian interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and DJ whose practice spans moving images, sound, performance, and installations. Her work explores Abya Yala  phenomenology, Indigenous cosmovisions, identity, and memory, drawing from decolonial and intersectional feminist perspectives. Since 2021, Escobar has been developing pedagogical projects and collaborations with different Indigenous communities in South America, notably with Las Traviesas, a community of trans-Indigenous women from the Embera people in Colombia. Together, they have developed initiatives that promote social and ecological transformation through artistic processes, emphasizing transdisciplinary collaboration as a strategy to challenge colonial norms and reimagine alternative realities and spaces for knowledge exchange.
 
Links
https://www.instagram.com/discobar/
https://www.instagram.com/poison.arrow/
https://www.instagram.com/awera___/
https://www.instagram.com/pierce_with_arrow/
Artist Web site https://www.nataliaescobar.com/
Awera project https://www.nataliaescobar.com/awera

Today on the show I’m happy to have Robert Willim as a guest. Robert is an artist and a researcher working at the interplay between art, research and dialogue. His practice explores imaginaries, media-related practices and human experiences of technology. In our conversation we explore sound, technology, media, artistic research, industry and society, and questions around digital and material culture.
Links
More about Robert’s work: http://www.robertwillim.com/
https://www.instagram.com/willimworks/
About Mundania: https://mundania.se
The audio paper Mundania – Just Above The Noise Floor:
https://seismograf.org/fokus/sonic-argumentation-ii/willim
A video of the Fields of Unknowing performance in Malmö:
https://vimeo.com/950990832?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci
Info about the performance from the Intonal website:
https://www.intonalfestival.com/artists-2024/robert-willim

We have a special edition this month, a look – actually a listen – back to 2025. Thanks to all of you and my amazing guests, we have quite a collection of sounds to listen to. Enjoy listening to everything from Bristol beats to pond soundscapes to raw heartbeat driven noise. Today we have some sounds from a live broadcast of the show at RBL with me drusnoise, then sounds from Xayide, a livestream recording provided by Mort Drew and Grant Smith from the Soundtent collaborative, JacqNoise & Dan Graveyard live set, Zuzana Hamm / FridaY playing live, Andreas Kühne & Paulina Medvedeva, Hendrik Klatte, and closing with another live set by Jeannette Petrik / Chebedajha. Looking forward to another year of sound and conversation. Until next year, see you on the dance floor.
 
Track listing
drusnoise – There is no separation (live broadcast from RBL) @drusnoise
Xayide – Marginal Disc and ERß @ xayidexadiyei
Soundtent - Jasper Ridge Livestream
 https://locus.creacast.com:9443/jasper_ridge_birdcast.mp3  @ mort_drew  @sound_camp
JacqNoise & Dan Graveyard – Live performance @jacqnoise @dan.graveyard
Zuzana Hamm / FridaY – Soundtrack to Flora (Live at bitumen lichen) @friday_musik
Andreas Kuhne & Paulina- The Informals II 360 (2023) Live a/v performance with Bobbie Johnson, Phonetic, and Marshall Mandiangu @andreaskuhne_ @p.a.medvedeva
Gregor Dys – mumstakes @gregordys
Hendrik Klatte – Mucus
Jeannette Petrik / Chebedajha – live performance at Schwankhalle Bremen @jeannettepetrik

Today I am happy to have Jeannette Petrik on the show. Jeanette is an experimental noise maker performing as Chebedajha, writer, and cultural worker based in the Netherlands. I have been fascinated by Jeannette’s work ever since I saw their live performance in Enschede using heartbeats to clock a live modular synth show.  We talk about live performance, working with environments, and building community and hear some of their incredible live sounds.
 
Links and Bio
Bio:
Drifting off while in the moment, a raw and unfinished collage of harsh and intense analogue and digital electronic sounds emerges from the delicate interaction between a human and a collection of sound devices—sensitively modulated noise with a slow, yet driving pace, embracing the unexpected with a situationist attitude. Chebedajha means “not from here” in an imaginary language. Chebedajha is the solo sound art project of cultural producer Jeannette Petrik, mental child of situationism, adhocism and punk. With a curiosity for sound design, experimental noise and meditation practices, they consider language, sound and design as an opportunity for public empowerment. Operating in the vicinity of intense states of anxiety and pleasure, discomfort and relief, the experimental sound of Chebedajha aims for increased levels of perception and sensitivity to become part of the collective everyday. Petrik is a cultural producer concerned with collective spaces and processes, who challenges hierarchies and structures of dominance. Their practice spans across disciplines which include text, sound, performance and the organising of collective events of doubt. Since 2013, they’re part of Dutch and German D.I.Y. scenes and are active in a loosely organised network of tekno soundsystems. Petrik was an organiser at the squatted D.I.Y. venue The Loch in Enschede. They’re part of the feminist network fem*noise and are active as an experimental sound artist under the pseudonym Chebedajha.
 
Photo credit: Paulus  https://www.instagram.com/by_pauluz/ https://www.by-pauluz.nl/
 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeannettepetrik
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/chebedajha
 
Recordings
sw9mep: excerpt of a live recording that was produced as part of the podcast 'Conversing our Soundscapes of Fear' hosted by studio calh at Z33 in Hasselt, BE (2021): Invited as the show's accompanying musician, I was tasked to try and acoustically articulate their approach towards contemporary sounds of fear.
Quantum Inspired Sound: https://jeannettepetrik.com/quantum-inspired-sound
Recording of live performance at Schwankhalle Bremen as part of the series Anachronism: using a modular synth and other sound devices (2023
Recording of live performance from Voltage Control Amsterdam (January 2025): using the heartbeat together with a modular synth and a Lyra-8

Today I’m happy to welcome Hendrik Klatte to the show. Hendrik has science background and is also an artist, curator and also the founder of re:natura, a non-profit artist collective, music label and experimental laboratory. We get into the intersections between science and sound along with talking about the role of curators in building community and engaging audiences with sustainability through sound.
 
Links and Bio
After studies in biochemistry and pharmacy, Hendrik Klatte applies his scientific background to his sonic, installation, and curatorial work. He studied at the Institute for Music and Media (RSH Düsseldorf) with Heike Sperling, Phillip Schulze and Marcus Schmickler. Here, he deepened his understanding of the connection between science, art, and sound. He completed his studies with a multimedia installation inspired by the slime mold Physarum Polycephalum and a scientific thesis on the representation of biodiversity in experimental musics.
 
re:natura is a non-profit artist collective, music label and experimental laboratory with a clear, shared vision. With a focus on topics of biodiversity, we explore animals, plants, landscapes and natural phenomena. In the critical tradition of naturalists, we compose, publish, perform and convey experimental musics that are concerned with the specifics of life. https://www.instagram.com/label.re.natura/
 
Links
Crescere Release Event
 
Crescere Preorder  / Listening Party (available fromm monday, 13th)
 
Featured artists: IDRA  / Samaquias Lorta / Berenice Llorens
 
Experimontag
 
Release Lapis Elle – Hyphae
 
Release Deniz Dortok – Nocturna
Gregor Dys on Instagram
 
Music For Cinemas on Instagram
 
 Listening Party
 
 
Music credits
from Gregor Dys – Anguilla Anguilla [re:natura]
Gregor Dys – stroemung
 
from Gregor Dys – mumstakes
Gregor Dys – tuer
 
Excerpt from Hendrik Klatte – Mucus [will be released on re:natura]
 
from re:natura #04 – Æther
Laure Boer – Connecting Winter and Spring
Music: Laure Boer
Mastering: Jannis Wolff
 
from re:natura #05 – Crescere
cosmic swarm, Walter Magi – coral nursery: 
Music: Chiara Pitrola, Luca Ventrini
All field recordings are from coral reefs recorded by Dr. Aran Mooney / © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. To donate to their coral reef restoration projects, follow https://explore.whoi.edu/giving 
Mastering: Jannis Wolff

Today I’m happy to welcome Polina Medvedeva and Andreas Kühne to the show. Polina and Andreas create amazing sounds on their own and in collaboration. Together they play with narratives, community, shadow economies, and human relationships with environments. They work with an impressive array of techniques merging merges documentary filmmaking, AV performance, interactive installation, electroacoustic instruments introducing new ways of improvising in live performance. I can’t wait to chat with them both and hear some sounds go let’s get into it!
 
Track listing
Anarchiving Rávdnji (2024). A live audiovisual performance following forward traces from “Rávdnji” exhibition at The Arctic University Museum with Elin Anna Labba’s reading of her book “The Rocks Will Echo Our Sorrow” (spoken in Northern Sámi). For this performance at Tromsø Kunstforening, artists and collaborators of the exhibition Andreas Kühne and Polina Medvedeva improvise with the audiovisual material they gathered for the exhibition and invited Risten Anine Kvernmo Gaup to add new traces in response.
 
Cross-border Interference (to be released, 2026). Part of a documentation series of feedback improvisation performances by Andreas Kühne, camera Polina Medvedeva
Facing the Spills (to be released, 2026). Short film, live film performance and audiovisual installation by Polina Medvedeva and Andreas Kühne with Runa Sætervoll, Anastasia Kizilova, the lands, waters and animals in the Várjjat / Varanger area on the Norwegian side of Sápmi.
 
The Informals II 360 (2023) Live a/v performance by Polina Medvedeva and Andreas Kühne with Bobbie Johnson, Phonetic, and Marshall Mandiangu. Commissioned by Lighthouse, Brighton and Brighton Festival, Supported by Mondriaan Fund, Creative Industries Fund NL and Creative Europe Programme of the European Union
 
Audio Zine "Flowing, flushing, freezing, streaming: Listening at the intersection of human interference" (2025) based on a workshop developed by Polina Medvedeva and Andreas Kühne for Arctic Auditories: Hydrospheres in the High North (NFR 325506,
2021-25), recorded at Tromsø Center for Contemporary Art on May 25th 2025. The audio zine brings together recorded sounds, compositions, and live performances by Anna, Nathalia, Lars, Karolin, Anna, Femi, Lea, Sofía, Sindre, Mattin, Grisha, Anders, Johanna, Gwen, Martha, Eimear, Enrique, Lio, Steve, Ylva, Florentine, Angus, Polina and the anthropogenic waters of Tromsø, Romsa in northern Norway, Sápmi
 
 
Links and Bios
Polina Medvedeva (NL/NO) works at the intersection of film, installation and performance, portraying individuals or communities who exist by circumventing political prohibitions, societal stereotypes, and effects of economic crises and conflicts. Questioning linearity in storytelling, she explores formats that allow for nuance and multiplicity of narratives.
Medvedeva has been a resident at de Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten Amsterdam (2020-2022) and her work was exhibited at among others Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; Lydgalleriet, Bergen; Tromsø Kunstforening; Al-M_a_’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jerusalem and Bak Basis voor Actuele Kunst, Utrecht. Performances include Landmark, Bergen Kunsthall; Baltic Circle Festival, Helsinki; HYBRID Biennale, Dresden; Sonic Acts festival, Amsterdam; Lofoten International Art Festival, Svolvær; Brighton Festival, Brighton. Medvedeva has been a guest tutor at Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam, KMD Bergen, Tromsø Art Academy, ArtEZ Zwolle, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam and a tutor and lecturer at the Utrecht University of the Arts.  She is a member of the selection committee for the Creative Industries Fund NL and a board member of The One Minutes Foundation.
 https://www.polinamedvedeva.net/
https://www.instagram.com/p.a.medvedeva/
 
Andreas Kühne (NL/NO) is a sound artist, composer, and drummer making electroacoustic music, collaborative audiovisual performances and interactive
installations that focus on listening positionalities and cross-pollination between improvisation practices and the milieu.
Andreas is a PhD fellow in electronic music and music technology at the Academy of Music, The Arctic University of Norway (UiT) and Grieg Academy, University of Bergen (UiB). His artistic research seeks to imagine practice-based strategies of radical attentiveness to face industrialisation and settler entanglements to human and more-than-human entities in Sápmi/Northern Norway.
Kühne’s work has been exhibited and performed at among others Tromsø Kunstforening, Landmark Bergen Kunsthall, Lofoten International Art Festival, Arctic University Museum of Norway (NO), Sonic Acts Festival, Rewire Festival (NL), HYBRID Biennale (DE), Baltic Circle Festival (FI), and Lighthouse (UK).https://andreaskuhne.net/
https://www.instagram.com/andreaskuhne_/
 
Combined biography
In their collaborative practice creating storytelling experiences from transdisciplinary assemblages, sound artist Andreas Kühne and artist, filmmaker Polina Medvedeva engage ways of listening-with landscapes and its agents to produce a feedback of the patchwork of historical, geopolitical and socio-economic layers.
 
Lom Audio Priezor electromagnetic microphone https://store.lom.audio/products/priezor?variant=5859618062368
Dylan Robinson (2020) Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies. Minnesota Press
Mark Peter Wright (2022) Listening After Nature: Field Recording, Ecology, Critical Practice. Bloomsbury Publishing
Kühne-Medvedeva (2025) From cinema to stage: On live assembling film, improvisational fiction and relationality. The International Network of Experimental Fictional Filmmaking (INEFF).

Summer holidays time! A break from interviews until August and today we have a return to 2024 with a compilation of sounds from last year. You will hear sounds from all of the artists I interviewed this year ranging from archival sound pieces to techno to sound art compositions to meditations and trash music. Thanks so much to Veronica Mota, Veerle Pennock and Etta Harbor as Parallel Problems, Felipe Vareschi, Monica Sand, Priscilla Haring-Kuipers from This is Not Rocket Science, Melissa Ingaruca Moreno, Juan C. Duarte Regino, Gina Lo, Luis Fernando Amaya for sharing their sounds. And there are some sounds from me – drusnoise – in there too.
Check out the show notes for the track listing and links to all of the artists. And don’t forget you can always go back and listen to past episodes at sustain.fm/radio, on the RBL show site or on your favourite podcast platforms.
Get in touch with us through sustain.fm or info@drusnoise. We would love to hear your thoughts on our shows, ideas or suggestions for future shows, or if you want to bring a sustain.fm event to your town.
Track listing
Monica Sand – Elegi
Luis Fernando Amaya – Bestiario @luisongolilongo
Melissa Ingaruca Moreno & drusnoise – Endarken @mel_ingaruca
Gina Lo – Live at Berlin Modular Society @ginalololo
drusnoise – Future Soundscapes -  Live in Gothenburg @drusnoise
Juan Carlos Duarte Regino – Soundgifts @j.c_d.r
Felipe Vareschi – Noise Mapping @frmvar
Veronica Mota – Utopie und Widerstand
drusnoise – We are but dust and shadows – Live in Graz
This is not Rocket Science – Live at Clubsynth @rocket_not
Parallel Problems – Live at Voltage Control Amsterdam @elektortek @ettaharbar