Olga Kokcharova's LP Furnica is a conceptual and striking sound work that emerged from a recording session in a forest, where the Geneva-based artist captured the sounds of an anthill. As the session unfolded, ants infiltrated the recording device and gradually destroyed its components, leading to intensifying sonic disturbances that overtook the original soundscape.
These interferences ultimately displaced the surrounding forest ambiance until the recording apparatus failed completely, concluding the piece in silence.
Rather than portraying a coherent natural environment, Furnica reveals the friction between organic life and technical apparatus—a dynamic that
Pali Meursault, in his accompanying text, interprets as a moment of rupture between realities. Drawing from Anna Tsing's concept of "friction," Meursault frames the work as a site of entangled interdependence, disruption, and co-creation. The recording becomes an event in itself: a poetic collision of species, systems, and scales. As he writes, it opens the way to "unexpected forms of encounter, of common creation, moments of inter-species diplomacy or co-evolutive invention."
Olga Kokcharova is a Siberian-born, Geneva-based sound artist, composer, and musician. Her practice explores the full spectrum of audibility, working with analog modular synthesizers, prepared instruments, and field recordings. She creates multi-channel electroacoustic compositions, sound installations, and public space performances, often pushing recording equipment to its limits. Kokcharova's work has been presented internationally and includes collaborations with artists such as
Jacques Demierre and
Antoine Läng.
