Various Artists

*In process of stocking. Limited edition of 500 copies.* Sounds of Absence collects artistic positions on the notion of absence, shaped by two years of pandemic lockdowns. The compilation is a cooperation project with the research group ARS – art research sound – at the Hochschule für Musik Mainz, led by Peter Kiefer, and curated by Wingel Mendoza and Joshua Weitzel. In 2020, ARS initiated a website to collect sounds of public spaces during lockdown conditions, in order to capture the sound of this unique absence of everyday buzz.

In the second lockdown, as the regulations became increasingly complex, this idea developed into the compilation project. Instead of purely documenting the absence, artists from all over the world were approached and asked to contribute a piece that in some way deals with the absence and the conditions of the past two years. Sounds of Absence hence brings together artistic positions from all continents and encompasses a wide variety of artistic approaches towards field recording and electro-acoustic composition.