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LANDSLIDE / LONGSOR / ERDRUTSCH / ดินถล่ม
An Exhibition by Samuel Johnstone, Pisitakun Kuantalaeng, Ariel William Orah & Collaborators
Presented by Soydivision
Opening April 18 2025 | 19:00 | Novilla, BerlinOpening Hours Saturdays and Sundays: 3 PM – 6 PM
And by appointment via phone: +49 177 3154530
When the Ground Shifts, What Holds Us Together?
LANDSLIDE—or longsor in Indonesian, Erdrutsch in German, and ดินถล่ม (din tha-lom) in Thai—is more than a natural disaster. It’s a rupture. A reconfiguration. A moment of collapse that invites us to rethink the ground we stand on.
Which evokes both natural collapse and societal unraveling, this collaborative project uses sound, memory, and migration to explore how we navigate crisis—and how we rebuild, together.
Emerging from Soydivision’s programming residency at Novilla in collaboration with Moving Poets e.V., LANDSLIDE is a collective response to the fractures of our time: forced displacement, political instability, ecological disruption. But it is also a gesture toward possibility—toward coexistence, adaptation, and mutual care.
A Sonic Topography of Migration, Memory & Resilience
LANDSLIDE brings together artists and collaborators whose practices explore the entangled textures of displacement, belonging, ecology, and transformation—through the medium of sound. Each of the three core artists centers sound as a core element in their artistic practice, using it as a tool for storytelling, resistance, and connection. Having experienced displacement from their respective places of origin, all three have since rooted their creative work in Schöneweide—a Berlin district shaped by its own cycles of industrial growth, migration, and reinvention. Their shared proximity is more than geographical; it reflects an ongoing, embodied negotiation with place, memory, and the sonic echoes of elsewhere.
The exhibition takes place at Novilla, a site that holds its own layered story. Once a private family villa owned by the founder of a textile factory during Schöneweide’s golden age as Berlin’s “Electropolis,” Novilla later became a wartime administrative office, stood abandoned, and has since been reimagined as a cultural space. Like the artists it hosts, the building carries a history of transformation, rupture, and repurposing—making it not just a venue, but an active voice within the exhibition.
Rather than offering fixed narratives, LANDSLIDE unfolds as a shifting, living experience—inviting visitors to listen more deeply to the resonances of personal and collective histories. At its heart, the exhibition asks:
what does it mean to find grounding in a place that is always in flux?
How do bodies carry memory across distances—through voice, rhythm, silence, and sound? Can listening become a form of mapping, a way to navigate dislocation and ecological precarity?
And how might we respond to rupture—not with withdrawal, but through relation and care?
THE ARTISTS & COLLABORATORS
🎙️ Samuel Johnstone
Samuel Johnstone is a UK/Germany-based sound artist whose work focuses on ecological research and mixed media composition. Using sound as a tool for artistic inquiry, he explores the entanglements of human activity within ecological spaces. His works have been presented at venues such as Hellerau Festspielhaus Dresden, Konzerthaus Berlin, and Frequenz Festival Kiel, and performed by ensembles including El Perro Andaluz and Ensemble UnitedBerlin. He is currently an Artistic Research Associate at KreativInstitut.OWL and the founder of unmusic, a platform for experimental sound projects.
⚡ Pisitakun Kuantalaeng
Pisitakun is from Bangkok, Thailand. He started making visual arts and music in 2014 and is interested in music in different media environments. He uses a variety of inspirations in his songs, such as historical events, synthetic sounds, and musical instruments. In 2016, the album "Black Country" began to be prepared. In this album, Pisitakun is talking about a country full of dialogues between dark voices.As Thai history currently unfolds under martial law following the military coup d’état on 22 May 2014 – the thirteenth since the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932 – Pisitakun’s practice represents a decisive break from many of his Thai peers: he questions fundamental and increasingly universal values without merely decrying the fact of corruption or offering neat palliatives.Pisitakun's works are based on political speculation and the external and internal frustrations artists are subject to.
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Photo by Leonor
🌊 Ariel William Orah
Ariel William Orah is an Indonesian artist and community catalyst based in Berlin. Orah’s interdisciplinary practice critically engages with systemic structures while addressing the emotional and cultural dimensions of displacement and identity. Working across performance, sound art, and socially engaged projects—with a keen focus on social and climate injustice—Orah co-founded the collaborative platform and art group sōydivsion, the think-tank initiative Mutating Kinship Lab, and the empathy-driven sound collective L-KW. (arielorah.com)
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Photo by Camila de Abreu
🤝 Collaborators include:
Vasily Ratmansky, Pia Achternkamp, Maximilian Kupi, Irene Ricardo
Pisitakun is from Bangkok, Thailand. He started making visual arts and music in 2014 and is interested in music in different media environments. He uses a variety of inspirations in his songs, such as historical events, synthetic sounds, and musical instruments. In 2016, the album "Black Country" began to be prepared. In this album, Pisitakun is talking about a country full of dialogues between dark voices.As Thai history currently unfolds under martial law following the military coup d’état on 22 May 2014 – the thirteenth since the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932 – Pisitakun’s practice represents a decisive break from many of his Thai peers: he questions fundamental and increasingly universal values without merely decrying the fact of corruption or offering neat palliatives.Pisitakun's works are based on political speculation and the external and internal frustrations artists are subject to.
Ariel William Orah is an Indonesian artist and community catalyst based in Berlin. Orah’s interdisciplinary practice critically engages with systemic structures while addressing the emotional and cultural dimensions of displacement and identity. Working across performance, sound art, and socially engaged projects—with a keen focus on social and climate injustice—Orah co-founded the collaborative platform and art group sōydivsion, the think-tank initiative Mutating Kinship Lab, and the empathy-driven sound collective L-KW. (arielorah.com)
PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS
Friday, April 18
🕔 17:00 – Workshop: Industrieabfälle "Propaganda" #1
→ Led by Irene Ricardo in collaboration with IndustrieSalon Schöneweide. Registration via littlestrategies@gmail.com
🎶 19:00 – Vernissage / Opening Night: Empathonic x Novilla
→ Live concert featuring:
Samuel Johnstone & Vasily Ratmansky
Pisitakun Kuantalaeng
Ariel William Orah
Pia Achternkamp
Maximilian Kupi
supported by Musicboard Berlin
Sunday, April 27
🕚 11:00 – Workshop: Industrieabfälle "Propaganda" #2
→ Radio & sound production session with Ariel William Orah in collaboration with IndustrieSalon Schöneweide. Registration via
saya@arielorah.com
Saturday, May 10
🕓 16:00 – Sound Foraging Workshop
→ Led by Samuel Johnstone
🌙 20:00 – Public Event with Pisitakun
→ Concert + Artist Talk
Sunday, May 18
🕖 19:00 – Finissage: Food Performance
→ Culinary sound ritual with Pisitakun Kuantalaeng & Ariel William Orah
Supporting Institutions & AcknowledgemeOpening concert is part of Empathonic 2025 Part 1, funded by Musicboard Berlin
Radio workshop by Ariel William Orah and Irene Ricardo is presented in collaboration with IndustrieSalon Schöneweide, funded by the Jugend- und Familienstiftung des Landes Berlin.
Gurita Suara by Ariel William Orah is partially supported by the Berliner Senat Klangkunst Arbeitsstipendium.
SADISSONANZ, a collaboration between Ariel William Orah, Maximilian Kupf, and Pia Achternkamp, is supported by Musikfonds e.V., Berliner Senat Reise-Stipendium 2023, Rakarsa Foundation, GREY Gallery Bandung, and Goethe-Institut Bandung.
Soil Loop by Samuel Johnstone is a research project realized at KreativInstitut.OWL.
Three Sounds of Revolution by Pisitakun Kuantalaeng was initiated during his DAAD Residency Berlin 2023.
The remaining program expenses—including exhibition materials, space rental, Samuel Johnstone’s workshop, Pisitakun Kuantalaeng’s public program, the culinary intervention concert by Ariel William Orah & Pisitakun, and promotional materials—were collectively and DIY-organized through the collaboration between Soydivision and Moving Poets e.V.