Sonic Acts 2026: Listening Room

Listening Room is an exhibition where soundworks are presented on an octophonic surround soundsystem. Housed in the beautiful glass pavilion of Zone2Source in Amstelpark, it invites visitors to listen with their whole bodies – to engage with the immersive, relational, and ecological qualities of spatial sound.

Think of the exhibition as cinema for the ears: an inward journey shared with others. Settle into floor cushions and blankets, and listen while gazing out through the windows onto the ever-changing landscape of one of Amsterdam’s largest parks.

Listening Room presents many newly produced works by sound artists from the Sonic Acts Spatial Sound Residency. Since the mid-1990s, Sonic Acts has explored how sound behaves in space, pushing the limits of composition and perception. The residency advances this longstanding commitment to multichannel sound as a medium for artistic research, supporting practices ranging from field recording to experimental digital and analogue techniques. The exhibition also features cornerstone compositions from the Musical Research Group of the French National Audiovisual Institute (INA GRM), alongside historical and archival soundworks.

The featured artists include Sam Dunscombe, Marcin Pietruszewski & Lukas De Clerck, BJ Nilsen, KMRU & Aho Ssan, Elizabeth Davis, Hrvoje Pelicarić, Leslie García, Leilehua Lanzilotti, C. Lavender, Ji Youn Kang, pantea, Pierce Warnecke, Clara de Asís, Chris Watson, Espen Sommer Eide & Signe Lidén, and many more. Their diverse and varied works investigate how sound, space, and perception shape one another – how spatial presentation gives rise to embodied experience, and how the body, in listening, reshapes space.

Listening Room runs every Friday to Sunday during the Biennial, with three sessions daily. Tickets and programme details coming soon.

Read more here.

The programme is realised in close collaboration with INA GRM, and is part of New Perspectives for Action, a project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union. Ji Youn Kang’s and Leilehua Lanzilotti’s pieces are commissioned by Sonic Acts. Espen Sommer Eide & Signe Lidén’s piece was commissioned by Sonic Acts and Hilde Methi for the Dark Ecology project in 2017. Sam Dunscombe, Marcin Pietruszewski & Lukas De Clerck, Elizabeth Davis, Hrvoje Pelicaric, C. Lavender, and Clara de Asís participated in Sonic Acts’ Spatial Sound Residency in 2025, where they developed their works. The residency programme is supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL, Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, Cultuurloket DigitALL, Mondriaan Fund, and is part of New Perspectives for Action, a project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union. Additionally, Clara de Asís’ work was co-commissioned with the Archipel Festival and realised by Paradiso and Sonic Acts as part of the same EU funding scheme; the work by Marcin Pietruszewski & Lukas De Clerck is co-commissioned with CTM Festival and realised by Paradiso and Sonic Acts as part of the New Perspectives for Action, a project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union; C. Lavender’s residency was organised in collaboration with Willem Twee Studios. Hrvoje Pelicarić’s work was commissioned by KONTEJNER as part of the Re-Imagine Europe project; the work by Leslie García is commissioned by The Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, MUAC.