Artist Bio Images Related Events

09 Jan 2019–15 Feb 2019

Anton Kats

  • Project Location
  • Goethe Pop Up Minneapolis
  • "Goethe in the Skyways"
  • City Center
  • 40 South 7th St, Suite 208
  • Minneapolis
  • Info

Radio Amateur Ensemble explores Minneapolis’s ham radio enthusiast community, taking the sonic, social and technological aspects of ham radio communication as scores and notations for improvisation and the sharing of new sound compositions. Considering listening as a generative act, Radio Amateur Ensemble transforms the Goethe Pop Up space in Minneapolis’s skyways into a walkable audio-visual score featuring musical performances/open studios, recording sessions, set design, and an accompanying podcast. The ensemble, developed in collaboration with Patrick Marschke, Cole Pulice and Noah Ophoven-Baldwin, invites the wider audience to take part in the ongoing dialogue exploring amateur radio as a tool manifesting new social constellations, networks and organisms.

Kats’s project is developed in respect to Bertolt Brecht’s critique of radio as an instrument that standardizes individuals into passive listeners. Translating research findings sonically and rhythmically during the duration of the project, the compositions developed by the Radio Amateur Ensemble are performed and recorded during several public events at the Goethe Pop Up Minneapolis and released on a limited edition 7-inch vinyl.

In preparation for his commission in the frame of the Goethe Pop Up Minneapolis the audio-visual installation After Joy is screened in the Pop Up space.

Presented at the Muziris Biennale 2018 in Kochi, India the work follows the traces of four cargo ships: Vishwa Umang, Vishwa Tarang, Vishwa Asha, and Vishwa Abha [Universal Joy, Wave, Hope and Grace] that were built at the shipyard in the artist’s hometown as a part of the Indo-Soviet Partnership in 1973 and 1974. The work combines a two-channel audio-visual installation and the sculpture made of scraped propellers at the St. Paul School Junction in Kochi.

After Joy was developed through a series of radio interventions in the specificity of both sites –Kherson, Ukraine and Kochi, India– and draws on the correlations between Russian Cosmism and the recent Ukrainian history.

  • Info

Radio Amateur Ensemble explores Minneapolis’s ham radio enthusiast community, taking the sonic, social and technological aspects of ham radio communication as scores and notations for improvisation and the sharing of new sound compositions. Considering listening as a generative act, Radio Amateur Ensemble transforms the Goethe Pop Up space in Minneapolis’s skyways into a walkable audio-visual score featuring musical performances/open studios, recording sessions, set design, and an accompanying podcast. The ensemble, developed in collaboration with Patrick Marschke, Cole Pulice and Noah Ophoven-Baldwin, invites the wider audience to take part in the ongoing dialogue exploring amateur radio as a tool manifesting new social constellations, networks and organisms.

Kats’s project is developed in respect to Bertolt Brecht’s critique of radio as an instrument that standardizes individuals into passive listeners. Translating research findings sonically and rhythmically during the duration of the project, the compositions developed by the Radio Amateur Ensemble are performed and recorded during several public events at the Goethe Pop Up Minneapolis and released on a limited edition 7-inch vinyl.

In preparation for his commission in the frame of the Goethe Pop Up Minneapolis the audio-visual installation After Joy is screened in the Pop Up space.

Presented at the Muziris Biennale 2018 in Kochi, India the work follows the traces of four cargo ships: Vishwa Umang, Vishwa Tarang, Vishwa Asha, and Vishwa Abha [Universal Joy, Wave, Hope and Grace] that were built at the shipyard in the artist’s hometown as a part of the Indo-Soviet Partnership in 1973 and 1974. The work combines a two-channel audio-visual installation and the sculpture made of scraped propellers at the St. Paul School Junction in Kochi.

After Joy was developed through a series of radio interventions in the specificity of both sites –Kherson, Ukraine and Kochi, India– and draws on the correlations between Russian Cosmism and the recent Ukrainian history.

Anton Kats

Anton Kats is an artist and musician born in Kherson, South-Ukraine into the family of a WWII wireless radio operators. Kats‘s practice derives from informal everyday relationships within the vibrant neighborhood of his hometown and is complemented through necessity and pragmatics of self-legalization in Europe via entering formal institutions of education. His work with sound and radio often unfolds in public space in form of collaborative interventions, sonic sculptures, musical compositions, and public programs. Kats explores radio as a question of agency and intentionality through the concepts of the radio narrowcast and concrete listening.

Kats’s radio narrowcasts and listening spaces were developed and presented at Studio 174 in Kingston, Jamaica; in Serpentine Galleries, Tate Britain and Tate Modern in London UK; during documenta14 in Kassel; as a contribution to the 10th Berlin Biennale of Contemporary Art; and at the Radiophonic Space: Walk in Archive at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt among others.

Kats has been awarded a practice-based doctorate degree from Goldsmiths University of London. His works have been exhibited and performed in venues including the Serpentine Galleries, Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Victoria and Albert Museum, the Showroom Gallery, and at the documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel.

Related Events

22 Jan–22 Jan
4.30PM – 6.30PM
workshop

Radio Amateur Ensemble. Open Studio.
Anton Kats
29 Jan–29 Jan
05 Feb–05 Feb
4.30PM–8PM
opening

Radio Amateur Ensemble. Opening & Podcast Panel.
Anton Kats