Human voices recount the stories of extinct and endangered species alongside recordings of their calls and cries. Scientific narratives of extinction interweave with myths, and listeners are led through traumatic experiences of loss, and of losses yet to come.

Extinction Room began in February 2019 as a performative, 16-channel sound installation, developed together with composer AGF (aka Antye Greie), as part of the larger choreographic work Hopeless. by Sergiu Matiș.

The “Extinction Room” of Hopeless. was then developed into a new work for Europalia Festival, and premiered at the art museum Bozar Brussels, with additional shows in Berlin and Bucharest. Extinction Stories took the shape of a sound installation without live performers and it is a space for listening to the sorrowful echoes of the biodiversity crisis.

Concept: Sergiu Matiș
Composition & mastering: AGF aka Antye Greie
Species research & text: Philip Ingman
Voices: Antye Greie, Lisa Blanning, Lisa Densem, Sasha Perera, Sergiu Matiș, Tiina Laurila
Visuals: AGF poemproducer

Animal recordings from the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Xeno-canto Foundation.
Financed by: AFCN – The National Administration of Cultural Funds, Romanian Cultural Institute, EUROPALIA ARTS FESTIVAL Brussels.
A Sergiu Matiș production.

Funded by: The Capital Cultural Fund Berlin, The Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe Coproduced by: 4Culture Association, WASP Studios, ICI-CCN de Montpellier – Occitanie as part of Life Long Burning (LLB) – Towards a sustainable Eco-System for Contemporary Dance in Europe, supported by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

http://www.sergiumatis.com/
https://antyegreie.com/