CLOSE ENCOUNTERS #10: Echo Ho
The CLOSE ENCOUNTERS web series makes the wide range of media art in NRW visible. For many years and decades, the region has been home to outstanding positions in this field, and it is a great pleasure for us to meet some of these artists and present them in video portraits. This gives us a step-by-step overview of the diversity of media art that characterizes NRW. In previous episodes, we had the pleasure of meeting the artist duo Jana Kerima Stolzer and Lex Rütten, video artist and photographer Nico Joana Weber, performance artist Vanja Smiljanić, photographer Axel Braun, artist Isabella Fürnkäs and the sputnic collective, filmmaker Silke Schönfeld, media artist Vesela Stanoeva and media art fellow Ani Schulze. In the last episode, Thomas Spies spoke to Nieves de la Fuente Gutiérrez.
In the new episode, we are delighted to present Echo Ho, who gives an insight into her interdisciplinary art in conversation with Maria Wildeis.
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS #10: Echo Ho in conversation with Maria Wildeis
In the 10th episode of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, artist Echo Ho talks to Maria Wildeis. Echo Ho doesn’t like to categorize herself as a performance artist, visual artist or filmmaker. Her biography does include painting and film studies in Hong Kong, but when she started studying at the KHM in Cologne, she spent most of her time in Anthony Moore’s sound laboratory, which led her to the new world of sound and electronics. So if it has to be a label, then perhaps media art. For Echo Ho, however, the most important thing is to use material – and that includes all media – to materialize their ideas in order to communicate with the world. Whether with a cactus, a qin or a woven piece of fabric.
Echo Ho is a sound artist and performer. Her artistic practice goes beyond sound, music and performance by consistently bringing together different media forms, materials and genres at the intersection of art, philosophy, culture and technology.
Maria Wildeis is a musician, sound artist, DJ and researcher into spatial aspects of sound and electroacoustic music. She presents her work in concerts, performances and sound installations, in a club context as well as on stage and in art venues. She is interested, for example, in the distribution of loudspeakers in a room, 3D sound, acoustic and psychoacoustic phenomena, but also site- and object-specific aspects, culturally determined habits and expectations when listening. She designs instruments and sound groups in Max / Cycling 74′ as procedural music that is characterized by rhythmic and temporal sound events in nature.
Maria has also worked as a curator since completing her master’s degree in 2010 and currently runs the Kunstraum Gemeinde Köln (gemeinde-koeln.org) at Ebertplatz.
Credits:
Portrait Echo Ho (c) Sabitha-Saul
Portrait Maria Wildeis (c) Josi Hartmann, in der Ausstellung Fruchtbare Strukturen, Kunsthalle Barmen, 2025 (Workshop kulturelle Produktion und Elektronisches-Klangdesign mit Myzellen / Interspecies Design, geleitet von Maria Wildeis)