Sonic Trax: Touched by Sound: Re-imagining the Legacy of Michel Waisvisz

Tune in to new podcasts of Sonic Trax, a podcast series by Sonic Acts uncovering the captivating stories behind the evolution of sound art and its lasting impact.
In the two-part podcast ‘Touched by Sound: Re-imagining the Legacy of Michel Waisvisz’, hosts Sève I.V. Janssen and Flavien Gillié explore the profound impact of artist, performer, and instrument maker Michel Waisvisz (1949–2008). Through personal archives, interviews with collaborators, and sounds from the Sonic Acts Archive, the duo reimagines the sonic legacy of this key figure in Amsterdam’s experimental music scene and the international arts community.
Sonic Trax podcasts are available on Acast, Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
The first episode centres around Michel Waisvisz as a composer of the present and combines personal recordings with an interview with the artist and researcher Kristina Andersen, the caretaker of his archives today. The episode explores Michel Waisvisz’ distinctive spirit through the textures of his archives, where every crackle and hum becomes a tactile reminder, and Kristina Andersen talks about how materiality can connect generations and offer a sense of continuity, even between those who have never met.
The second episode continues the playful dimension in Michel Waisvisz’s work, questioning how a legacy can shape new generations, through the force of transmission, performance, and education, re-issuing key instruments, ideas or sets up by Waisvisz. The episode features interviews and recordings with collaborators and emerging artists such as Tarek Atoui, Takuro Mizuta Lippit, Ji Youn Kang, Julia Giertz, Boris Shershenkov and Görkem Arıkan.
Please note: Some of the archival sounds featured in this episode include Michel Waisvisz speaking in Dutch and French. In the first excerpt (Dutch, >6:40), Michel discusses his practice, describing it as musical theatre, though acknowledging that the term does not fully capture its essence. In the second excerpt (French, >9:15), a reporter and Michel highlight how his electronic music devices generate new, futuristic, and otherworldly sounds. In the final excerpt (Dutch, >15:15), we hear Michel reflecting on an analogy between striving for a climax in music performance and the myth of Tantalus.