Christina Kubisch

The artist Christina Kubisch, born in Bremen in 1948, is one of the first generation of German sound artists. Having trained as a flautist and composer in Germany, Switzerland and Italy, Kubisch works and researches at the intersection of music, media and art. Her projects and works include the gender-critical performances she developed in the 1970s and the series “Video Concerts” conceived together with the Italian artist Fabrizio Plessi. From the early 1980s onwards, Kubisch increasingly appeared in spatial sound installations, for which she experimented with electromagnetic induction and developed new audiovisual tools, which she later supplemented with the additional medium of light.  

The series “Electrical Walks”, developed as part of an ongoing process, is one of Kubisch’s best-known works worldwide. In this series, which began in 2003, the public sets off on a audio walk in a public space and can hear the electromagnetic fields surrounding them using headphones specially conceived for the project. All the “Electrical Walks” that have been presented internationally are documented in an online archive and supplemented by a comprehensive archive of electromagnetic sounds that Kubisch has compiled. These often also provide her with raw material for her compositions. 

Since 1974 Kubisch has exhibited her works in museums and galleries in Europe, Asia, Australia, North and South America. She has taken part in numerous international festivals and group exhibtions – including pro musica nova in Bremen in 1976 and 1980, Für Augen und Ohren in Berlin in 1980, la Biennale di Venezia in 1980,1982 and 2021, documenta 8 in Kassel in 1987, Ars Electronica in Linz in 1987, 2007 and 2020, the Sydney Biennale in 1990, the Donaueschinger Musiktage in 1993, 1997 and 2011, sonambiente in Berlin in 1996 and 2006, Sonic Boom in London in 2000, sounding spaces in Tokyo in 2003, B!AS International Sound Art Exhibition in Taipei in 2005, Invisible Geographies in New York in 2006, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 2007, Sound Art. Klang als Medium der Kunst at ZKM | Karlsruhe in 2012, Free Sound, The Future Lab in Osaka in 2016, Soundtracks at the Museum of Modern Art San Francisco in 2017, documenta 14 in Athens in 2017, UNArt in Shanghai in 2018, Sonic Acts in Amsterdam in 2019, Time:Spans in New York in 2019, the Ultima Contemporary Music Festival in Oslo in 2019 and the Biennale Musica in Venice in 2021.

In addition to this, Kubisch sound installations are held in permanent museum collections that include the Museum of Contemporary Arts in San Francisco, MASS MoCA in Massachusetts and the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin.