SoundLab presents:Kirsten Reese
Date & Time : Friday September 11 2026, 18:00
Location : M1060 Multimedia Theatre, CMC
Kirsten Reese is a composer and sound artist based in Berlin. She grew up in Hong Kong, the Philippines and the Rhineland and studied flute, electroacoustic music and composition in Berlin and New York. Her compositions and installations focus on electronic media and unusual perceptual situations, spaces, loudspeaker constellations and performative settings. Research based projects connect site-specific aspects and ‘found sound’, field recordings as well as archival and documentary material. Ecology related works explore more-than-human, human/instrumental and algorithmic ‘voices’ and their poetic transformation, often in ‘open spaces’ such as urban and rural landscapes.
As a live electronic artist, Kirsten Reese performs improvisations or conceptual sets (e.g. “Creatures and Signals” for archived insect voices and mutated insect sounds on the Fairlight CMI).
Kirsten has collaborated with renowned interpreters and ensembles and her compositions and works are presented at international festivals and exhibitions, i.e. Heroines of Sound, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, Akademie der Künste, Eclat Festival, Wien Modern, Spor Aarhus Denmark, Borealis Bergen Norway.
Kirsten Reese teaches composition and electronic music at the University of the Arts Berlin and is director of the UNI.K | Studio for Composition, Sound Art and Sound Research at UdK. Since 2021 Kirsten Reese has been a member of the Academy of the Arts Berlin.
This September, after her visit and concert a SoundLab in Hong Kong, Kirsten will visit Singapore, Bandung and Manila with her live-electronic ensemble Boeseblick, a tour supported by Goethe Institute.
For SoundLab Presents, Kirsten will present some of her multi-channel works that she composed over the years spanning different themes and soundworlds and with different approaches regarding concepts of spatial diffusion (Deckkraft/opacity with multilayered field recordings composed for SoundDome ZKM Karlsruhe in 2011; Atmende Kugel Revisited with archival sound material relating to the rotating loudspeaker sphere of Hermann Scherchen from the 1960ies; and excerpts of recent multi-channel compositions relating to ecoacoustic research and sound transformation).
