A Performance – lecture by Pia Palme: about listening, composing, noise, and emerging patterns around a puddle of rainwater contrabass recorder, electronics, texts, video and improvised music.

Pia Palme is a composer, theorist, and performer born in Vienna, where she lives. For her, listening perception is a political activity. She directs her ears inside her environment and into herself, charting the background noises of society as well as the noise of her own mind. From this material she composes her works, often using texts, installations, electronics, and video to position vocality and instrumentality within a scenic arrangement. In some of her works, she also acts as a performer.

In 2017 Pia Palme finished her PhD research in composition for her thesis The noise of mind: A feminist practice in composition at the University of Huddersfield, UK under Liza Lim. Currently Palme explores the format of the performance-lecture, which allows her to integrate her activities as a theorist, interdisciplinary artist, composer, and performer. Recent lecture-performances brought her to Harvard University, Goldsmiths University London, and the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

As a performer with her contrabass recorder (built by the Swiss manufacturer Kueng) she has premiered and performs works by Èliane Radigue, Joanna Wozny, Jorge-Sanchez Chiong, Hannes Kerschbaumer, and Katharina Klement.

Interdisciplinary collaborative projects are an important feature of her work. Pia Palme works as a curator and producer; she teaches recorder, and gives workshops on improvisation and experimental art.