Anna Schimkat

Coherent States is excited to announce the release of "Water", a new cassette by the media artist Anna Schimkat. Drawing upon her background in sculpture and music, Schimkat's practice investigates the intersection of sound and spatial perception through immersive installations and performances. Highlighting themes of fluidity and interconnectedness, her work examines natural, social, and cultural phenomena, often within site-specific contexts. "Water", conceived during her residency at Salzamt Linz in Austria, offers an immersive exploration of sound and movement, extending this inquiry into the submerged acoustic environments of European waterways.

In Katelynn Dunn's words, "Anna Schimkat’s site-specific installation and performance Water (2025) present the artist’s investigation into the underwater sonic environments of Europe’s rivers such as the Danube and Rhine River as well as Venice’s canals. The sound piece is an accumulation of recordings chronicled with a hydrophone, a microphone that picks up noises from all directions while submerged in aqueous conditions, and mixed to create a binaural composition experienced through headphones. In this work, the feedback registered with the hydrophone is telling of the human impact on ecosystems existing beneath the surface. The inclination to trace underwater sounds began with recollection of the Undine figure, or siren, such as the mermaid Isa or the Danube woman while the war in Ukraine deteriorated gender roles to women as simply wives. The piece expands upon recordings of the noises heard underwater, which encompass a cacophony of bubbling and dripping, clattering ships in the background, and the sound of cars and trams above ground seeping into the underwater soundscape. At the same time, these are accompanied by voices conveying relationships between family members calling attention to care and repair."

Anna Schimkat, born in Darmstadt in 1974 and based in Leipzig since 2006, is a sound & visual artist with a background in sculpture and music. Her work explores the relationship between sound, space, and perception, often resulting in large-scale installations and performances. Her work is documented in a wide number of exhibitions and publications, with many audio documents released on labels such as Fragment Factory, Scrotum Records, and Michael Barthel's Recordings For The Summer.