Awarded by Deutschlandfunk Kultur – Radio Art/Klangkunst and CTM Festival, in collaboration with ORF musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst festival, Ö1 Kunstradio, The Wire magazine, and Goethe-Institut, the open call sought unusual explorations of the artistic possibilities of radio and live performance or installation mediums, while also addressing the CTM 2023 – Portals festival theme. The jury consisted of: Carla Boregas (independent artist), Elisabeth Zimmerman (Producer, ORF Kunstradio), Jan Rohlf (Artistic & Managing Director, CTM Festival), Marcus Gammel (Curator, Deutschlandfunk Kultur Radio Art / Klangkunst). Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, the fifth independent jury member was not able to participate.

Anna Kravets – »An Emotional Encyclopedia of War«

Kyiv-based artist Anna Kravets proposes a series of interactions and collective recording sessions to create an auto-ethnographic radio essay on the differences in emotional perceptions of times of war and peace. Continuing an idea initiated together with semisilent.ro, ASCR, and Q-O2, Kravets will invite a limited number of people to a basement / shelter environment where the perception of time and experience can shift, opening up a transition zone in which to explore what a feeling of danger and emergency can do to our bodies. Which types of practical and emotional reactions and responsibilities are evoked, and what can participation and sharing add to such experiences? How might one begin to translate the feeling of war to people abroad, to share the imperceptibility of the war experience and how discordant it is with life beyond its borders?

Having experienced her own habitual reference system fall apart, together with the hopes that the full-scale war would not actually break out in Ukraine, Kravets aims to work towards an emotional encyclopedia in order to try to interact through the locus of strong emotional experience or emotional emergency.

Isuru Kumarasinghe – »Gilunu: I became one with you«

Gilunu – meaning »to be immersed« or »submerged« in Sinhala – plays with our total and constant immersion in sound by exploring resonance and space as instruments through a live performance installation. Radio Lab winner Isuru Kumarasinghe from Sri Lanka proposes to continue his explorations on the resonance of sympathetic strings and space activated by voice and Esraj, using its resonance along with field recordings as the sonic source of an eternal resonating chamber.

The artist writes: »I understand the idea of the resonating chamber to be like a portal: when we step into a space or a place, where the resonance is changed or enhanced, we naturally feel like engaging with that resonance (…) to see how the space transforms the sound and how in return it transforms us. It becomes like a portal into a different world, as part of this world, just for this moment.«  The radio piece will be a re-imagination of the experience of what it is like to enter and be transformed inside a resonating chamber.