About
What does it mean to rewire our relationship with sirens away from trauma and catastrophe to one of collectivity and care?
Aura Satz’s installation Sirening (as a verb) can be read as a score for listening forward that holds the future in mind, considering the siren as a portal for political transformation. This session offers a chance to amplify conversations around the chapter filmed in Aotearoa New Zealand, situating the work within local contexts and stories.
Moderated by associate producer Tendai Mutambu, the session will feature an online mini lecture by Aura Satz, and a taonga pūoro performance by Māori musician and composer Horomona Horo. From a Te Ao Māori worldview, law scholar and activist Erin Matariki Carr will expand on her ideas of ‘kincentricism,’ calling for warning sirens that care for the more-than-human and speak to Earth’s living systems, a way of centring the interdependent relationship between humans and whenua.
Each presenter offers a short contribution, allowing the session to unfold through reflection and exchange—considering what it means to listen, respond, and act within the conditions of the present.
Bios:
Aura Satz is a London-based artist based who works with film, sound, performance and sculpture. Her works explore a distributed, expanded and shared notion of voice, and are made in conversation, using dialogue as both method and subject matter. Satz has made several film portraits of listening and compositional practices as well as works centred on sound technology and unusual notation systems. She recently completed ‘Preemptive Listening’, a documentary feature film on sirens and emergency listening, with support from an artist’s residencies at Walker Arts Centre and EMPAC, and funded by an AHRC fellowship hosted at the Royal College of Art. The world premiere was at MoMA’s Doc Fortnight, the UK premiere at Tate Modern, and the European premiere at CPH Dox in Copenhagen, where it won the NEW:VISION award.
She has performed, exhibited and screened her work internationally at institutions including Tate Modern, BFI Southbank, Hayward Gallery, Sydney Biennale, MoMA, Sharjah Art Foundation, and more.
Erin Matariki Carr (Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Awa, Pākehā) is a lawyer, scholar and community educator based in Tāneatua, Bay of Plenty. Matariki dedicates her work to the inter-generational movement of transforming Aotearoa New Zealand’s constitution to one that honours Te Tiriti o Waitangi and uplifts the wellbeing of the land and her living systems. She believes that self-expression is a first step in self-determination, that we must know who we are first, so that we can best care for ourselves and each other.
Tendai Mutambu is a writer, curator, and Director of Enjoy Contemporary Art Space in Pōneke Wellington. He has worked as Development Editing Fellow for Logic(s), a queer Black and Asian tech magazine at Columbia University's INCITE Institute, and associate producer for Aura Satz's debut feature-length documentary Preemptive Listening (2024). He has held curatorial positions at Spike Island, Bristol; LUX Moving Image, London; BFI London Film Festival; Govett-Brewster Art Gallery |Len Lye Centre; Artspace Aotearoa, and served as a juror for the 2024 Walters Prize. Tendai's writing has appeared in exhibition catalogues and magazines including Ocula, Frieze, Art Monthly UK, The Art Paper, and Art News New Zealand.
Associate Professor Horomona Horo (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou, Taranaki) is a composer, musician, traditional practitioner, and interdisciplinary collaborator who fuses the traditional instruments of Māori taonga pūoro, with a range of cultural, musical, contemporary and educational forms. Horo is one of the international Māori faces of taonga pūoro. His mastery and skill of taonga pūoro performance continues its revitalisation, mentored by Dr Hirini Melbourne, Dr Richard Nunns and Hinewirangi Kohu-Morgan. With a 25-year career spanning performance and collaboration across disciplines and genres, he has undertaken artist residencies at Government House, Aotearoa and Brandeis University (USA). A 2024 recipient of the New Zealand Arts Foundations, Arts Laurette, a Pūmanawa APRA Silver Scroll Award, Horomona’s work has featured alongside Aotearoa and international artists at events including WOMAD festivals, Aotearoa; International Rainforest Festivals, Borneo; WOMEX, Rugby & Cricket World Cups, Olympic & Commonwealth Games, The Celtic Festival, Jazz & Blues Festival (Australia), and more.
Image: Aura Satz, Sirening (as a verb), 2026. Still from multi-channel video installation HD and 16mm, duration variable. © and courtesy the artist, London.