Sofie Birch's sunrise concert for the Sleep In at Het HEM, April 20-21, 2024

Hanoi-based, self-taught musician Trần Uy Đức pairs up with multidisciplinary artist Rosanna Graf to make a video clip.

A new track and video clip from an artistic match made in heaven

In this contribution, we broadcast the 12-hour radio programme Until Liberation parts I and II, which include lectures, interviews, book presentations, talks, storytelling, music, songs, poetry and chants, alongside other audio material collected from different online platforms including collaborations with Radio Alhara. The material weaves together times, struggles and sounds from the 1970s to today.

In this third episode of Crit Club, curator, writer and educator Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu and artist Farid Rakun debate the question: should artworks be preserved or recycled after exhibiting?

In what way is fading a means of internally & externally bending “dreams” beyond the black barbershop?

Two soundscapes contrast the silent, deep rest of the forest with its embedded life and knowledge against modern infrastructures of industry and transport that have allowed material, music and information to travel across man-made borders.

These are two playlists made for The Couch, based on different moods one may feel or seeks [during a daydream or after a nightmare maybe], mixing different eras and music movements.

In this podcast Phoebe Zoe Ho and Pia Gräwe open up an imaginary folder to talk about the negative emotions or painful experiences that we keep hidden from others.

This mix by Orpheu The Wizard consists of a selection of songs loosely revolving around the themes of Mystics of the Chthulucene. First up in a new mix series, where artists, selectors, and music geeks connect sounds to a broader and recurring artistic research theme that weaves through The Couch.

For the fourth episode of our collaboration with Future Artefacts FM, hosts Nina and Niamh talk with David Blandy. While revisiting his work, they explore the ends of multiple worlds, from family illness, the foundations of a political system shattering and the end of a 17 year old magical gaming world, Asheron’s Call.

Old Child is a piece for soft voice and eerie sounds. It is an artifact of a certain time and place, as well as a tribute to the ghosts inhabiting it. An old child does not show interest in playing with their peers but prefers to spend their time listening to seniors talking about long-gone times.

For the 3rd episode of our collaboration with Future Artefacts FM, hosts Nina and Niamh talk with Jan Berger, the founder of Mythical Institution, about what magic looks like in game worlds and the limitations of magical tropes and expectations, such as their preference for mediaeval villages, steampunk gadgetry or queer-coded villains.

Asa Horvitz unearths the many layers of GHOST: his poignant performance project on death and its presence among the living.

In this podcast, a contextual performance by Cem A. (aka @freeze_magazine) and Roberto Winter, curators Lucia Pietroiusti and Nora Sternfeld debate an impossible question: should museums exhibit only living artists, or dead artists?

After the music video release Vamos by KG and Fabs, a track written during the Homebase Music Talent Programme (HMTP) Writer’s Camp, Berber Meindertsma speaks with them and two of the coaches of the camp.

For the second episode of Future Artefacts FM in collaboration with The Couch, hosts Nina and Niamh discuss Bea Xu's work which questions how rituals can guide, mislead or comfort us.

In this podcast, a contextual performance by Cem A. (also known as @freeze_magazine) and Roberto Winter, Dutch artist Renzo Martens and curator and sound artist Karim Sultan debate a question that is certainly never asked in the art world: should we stop moving all artworks, or stop selling them? 

Dimension-crossing multisensorial performances at New HHHorizons 2023.

From September 2023 to February 2024, The Couch is hosting 4 episodes of the London-based radio show Future Artefacts FM. Together with the first episode, we sit down with the initiators Nina Davies and Niamh Schmidtke to give you the full story behind their radio show.

For this episode of Future Artefacts FM, hosts Nina and Niamh bring back artists Rebeca Romero (Ep.3) and Akinsola Lawanson (Ep.7) together with Couch curator Maia Kenney to discuss magic and technology within their works and research.

Curator, stylist and writer Leendert Sonnevelt interviews Brian d’Souza, who has made Genius Loci, the first commissioned artwork for The Couch. Sonnevelt and d’Souza discuss the development of the artwork, and what it reveals about the ‘spirit’ of Het HEM.

"I started thinking in an almost choreographic way about music inside this building as it moved from the basement out onto the factory floor and beyond." Couch curator Maia Kenney interviews Orpheu de Jong, Music Curator of Het HEM, in a deep-dive into Het HEM's music programme and its relationship with the building's architecture.

We talk to previous artist in resident and PAN label member upsammy for an in-depth interview, accompanied by a downloadable sample pack. "During our project, we focussed on ways of distilling the temporal and material qualities of the terrain and used these methods to make a composition."

"It’s unbelievable how much sound is to be found in places like this. The music is already there, you just have to pay attention." We look back on the music project of Mona Steinwidder, which was part of our Spatial Range series in 2021.

In 2022, researchers Pamela Jordan and Sergio González Cuervo brought their sonic archaeology project Re:Sounding to our site. "Het HEM presents potent questions, questions that wouldn't come up had we not been thinking about the space through sound, through our perception of it and the perception of the building’s original users."