May 27th – 28th 2025, 14:00 – 17:00 pm
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna | ART AND TIME – MEDIA | Lehargasse 8, 1060 Vienna
This workshop is a collaboration of the Academy of Fine Arts | Art and Time – Media with
Marietta Kesting in cooperation with the FWF-Project V1053, Don’t wake up! Future
Dreaming in the Arts at the Intersection of Aesthetics, Decolonization, and Media
Technology, Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna.
In this workshop Anabelle Lacroix (they/she), a Franco-Australian curator and writer, will
present the artistic and curatorial project Radio Insomnia and introduce strategies for
collective broadcasting as well as politics of night-time listening and curation. Marietta
Kesting (she/her), media, art and cultural theorist will focus on her project Don’t wake up!
Future Dreaming in the Arts at the intersection of Aesthetics, Decolonization, and Media-
Technology with examples of auditory media of the night.
May 27 th 2025, 14:00 – 17:00 pm
Undoing radio: resistance with strategies for collective broadcasting and listening
Anabelle Lacroix will focus on the politics of listening and broadcasting at the intersection
with the public. What are the conditions for speaking and sound making within, and beyond
the gallery space? What strategies can address these conditions?
We will frame our thinking by considering notions of acoustic justice and free radio that will
be explored through the presentation of the artistic and curatorial project Radio Insomnia.
Radio Insomnia is an ephemeral radio with live public broadcasts staged in galleries and
social spaces that emphasises night-time listening and sociability, time dilation and intimacy.
Radio Insomnia is a collaboration with artist Nicolas Montgermont.
—————–>
May 28 th 2025, 14:00 – 17:00 pm
Desynchronize! Radio Insomnia and the politics of night-time listening and curation
Anabelle Lacroix will present Freedom of Sleep, an exhibition at Fondation Fiminco in 2021,
to explore ideas of desynchrony – a method for falling out of a dominant rhythm – such as
the routinised schedule associated with a busy day and its opposite, night-time for passivity,
darkness and privacy; or the temporal norms associated with curating in visual arts
institutions. We will also continue exploring Radio Insomnia with listening sessions of
commissioned artworks.
Marietta Kesting will present her project Don’t wake up! Future Dreaming in the Arts at the
intersection of Aesthetics, Decolonization, and Media-Technology with a focus on a few
examples of auditory media of the night, including Katharina Schmitt’s radio play “The
Molyneux Problem” that discusses sonic dream content of people unable to see.
Following the short presentations and listening session, a discussion of the politics of night
time listening, deliberate wakefulness and (in)voluntary insomnia with a focus on live arts
making and curation can take place, or any other related topics, participants would like to
explore.
Each day, one central text will be discussed, please have a prior read to the following texts:
LaBelle Brandon. 2022. “Toward Acoustic Justice” in The L:sten:ng Biennial Reader. Vol.
1 Waves of Listening. Berlin: Errant Bodies Press, p129-143.
Dunn, N. 2016. Dark Matters: A Manifesto for the Nocturnal City. Winchester: Zero
Books: “Thinking the Pathology of the Urban Night”, p. 75-93.
Additional material:
‚Listening with Insomnia’, Intermediality, No. 41, 2023.
Williams, Robert. ‘Night Spaces: Darkness, Deterritorialization, and Social Control’. Space
and Culture 11, no. 4 (2008): 514–32. Accessed doi:10.1177/1206331208320117.
Guatarri. Félix. 1993 “Popular Free Radio in Neill Strauss”, in Dave Mandl (Ed.) Radiotext(e).
New York NY USA: Semiotext(e), p85-89.
Freedom of Sleep – exhibition at Fondation Fiminco in 2021 https://freedomofsleep.online/
Radio Insomnia https://insomnia.radio.fm/
