The Intimate Register: Listening to Women and the Archive’s Lo-Fi Textures

Description

As part of her Alba residency, Sarah Lutkenhaus will share discoveries from her time spent in the ESS archives, tracing sonic lineages to better understand Chicago — its past, present, and future.

Guided by an interest in female vocalists, Sarah’s research led her into unexpected terrain: intimate recordings, lo-fi textures, and voice qualities that reveal the personal and political resonances of underground sound. In conversation with ESS Archive Director James Wetzel, she’ll reflect on the process of working with archival material, not only what’s preserved, but how and why, and the significance of listening as a method for historical and cultural inquiry.

About Sarah Lutkenhaus

Sarah Lutkenhaus is an interdisciplinary artist working across sound, performance, and printed media to explore the instability of language, and emotional complexity. Using modular synthesis, field recordings, and vocal improvisation, she builds layered compositions that push speech to the edge of abstraction—where meaning and sense of time fracture. Her work embraces the fleeting experience of liveness, crafting emotionally charged environments that heighten the tension between control and vulnerability.

About the Alba Residency

The Alba Sonic Arts Residency is a three-month residency at ESS in which all of the organization’s resources and platforms are made available to a graduating MFA student from Art + Technology / Sound Practices (AT/SP) at the School of the Art Institute Chicago (SAIC).