Sonic Investigations
Ludwig Berger
Anthea Caddy
Nicola Di Croce
Mike Fritsch
Gaia Ginevra Giorgi
Alice Loumeau
Peter Szendy
Valentin Bansac is an architect, researcher and photographer from France. He previously worked at OMA/AMO where he participated in Countryside, the future at Guggenheim New York. Valentin graduated from the Experimentation in Arts and Politics Master’s led by Bruno Latour at Sciences Po Paris. He was involved in the two-year research programme, Domesticated Foodscapes, at EPFL.
Mike Fritsch is a Luxembourgish architect, urbanist and educator working between Luxembourg and France. A practising architect, Mike spent several years with OMA in Rotterdam and now oscillates between large-scale transformation strategies and architectural repairs, including collaborations with l’AUC in Paris. Mike teaches at ENSA-M, where he manipulates new territorial narratives on the “already there”.
Alice Loumeau is a French/Canadian architect, researcher and cartographer. She conducts multimedia spatial investigations through writing and cartography, exploring the transformation of territories of the Anthropocene. Alice graduated from the Experimentation in Arts and Politics Master’s led by Bruno Latour at Sciences Po Paris. She has worked as an architect in Rotterdam at OMA/AMO, at l'AUC and UR in Paris and Matheson Whiteley in London. In 2024, Alice took part in a residency at the Villa Albertine in Texas, USA.
Ludwig Berger is a German sound artist, musician, and educator whose work explores the sonic presences of organisms and places. He focuses on interspecies, geological, and architectural listening in landscapes. Trained in electroacoustic composition, he was a researcher at the Institute of Landscape Architecture at ETH Zurich and is a certified Deep Listening instructor.
Peter Szendy is a French philosopher and musicologist. He is Professor of Humanities and Comparative Literature at Brown University and musicological advisor for the book series published by the Philharmonie de Paris.
Showcased as the Luxembourg Pavilion at the 19th Architecture Biennale in Venice, Sonic Investigations is an immersive, joyful and radical invitation to shift focus from the visual to the sonic. As a counter-project to the hegemony of images, the act of listening opens up new possibilities for exploring both built and natural environments and to move our attention towards giving voices to more-than-human agencies. As both a practical and theoretical investigation, the project serves as a tool to re-explore the dense territory of Luxembourg—a significant case study for global western paradigms in territorial planning. The sounds of the region emanating from biological, geological and anthropogenic beings blend into the intertwined soundscape of the Anthropocene and lead to the question: How to reveal the entangled character of specific contemporary situations in Luxembourg?
Commissioned to sound artist and field recordist Ludwig Berger, an in-situ sound piece is at the centre of the project in Venice. Entitled Ecotonalities: No Other Home Than the In-Between, the composition weaves together recordings from distinctive locations across Luxembourg, inviting listeners to explore space through a new auditory perspective. Focusing on multi-perspective field recordings, the piece critically examines the dynamics of the Luxembourgish territory and investigates how ongoing sustainable and digital advancements are shaping the country’s landscape.
Edited in collaboration with philosopher and musicologist Peter Szendy, the book Ecotones: Investigating Sounds and Territories extends the investigations on the relevance of sound in territorial studies outside the context of Luxembourg. Developed as an autonomous reader, it offers a curated collection of texts from various disciplines that examine spaces, territories and ecologies through sonic ventures. Much like the sound piece, the book fosters new cultural frameworks and theoretical tools for spatial practitioners.