Aurike Quintelier
imwsts II: bird radio
mwsts II: bird radio is a whimsical in-situ installation, that searches for the age-old relationship between human and bird. Through the trade of birdseed and wool, bird-stories were live broadcastet worldwide from Sweden in April 2025 with online radio.
The installation itself is made of materials found on site, scuffed and sanded and bent and sewn (everything except glued) to create an ergonomic and acoustically interesting structure. Deep inside the metal body, inside the wool, a microphone was hidden that was programmed to record at dawn and again at dusk over the course of five days.
The project came to life during an artist residency with Björkö Konstnod (SE) in 2023, in the most northern archipelago of Stockholm, and was finalised and recorded during a second artist residency in 2025. It is deeply rooted in the theoretical work of Donna Haraway. The title imwsts or ‘it matters what stories tell stories’ is a reference to her philosophy of situated knowledge; it matters what thoughts we think thoughts with, it matters what stories tell stories, it matters what worlds make up other worlds. The broadcasting of live-recorded bird song plays with the claims of a recent scientific study that bird song ‘enhances human mental health’, indicating a lack of predators, and therefor activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Bird sounds supposedly reduce stress, lower blood pressure and alleviate anxiety. The claim and article in itself prove to the artist how far we have removed ourselves from our natural world.
To listen to the recordings of bird radio, feel free to follow this link: https://www.aurikequintelier.be/birdradio
location: Björkö Arholma
date: 2023-2025
curators: Anna Viola Hallberg and Ami Skånberg
residency: Björkö Konstnod – Walking As Practice program
research: researchcatalogue.net/view/2454801/2454797
researchcatalogue.net/view/2454801/2454863
Aurike Quintelier is an architect and spatial practitioner based in Brussels, with work that varies from buildings, interiors, site-specific installations, drawings, collections to scaled models. She believes in the power of the relation between human and the places we are part of, in the symbiotic stories already present that care-fully can be unveiled and dug up. Her work aims to be a ripple with a deeper effect on the people living/experiencing it, and is vernacular when possible. She is fascinated by the impact of spaces on our lives and the mutual care that emerges on a small and large scale. Archiving, collecting and assemblage-ing forms the base of every site-specific question, both in the physical world and the theoretical world, creating work that is deeply rooted in its context.’
