Psychedelic Choir and Noise Sisters: Let’s Make Noise, Sisters!

Let’s Make Noise, Sisters! (2020–) is an ongoing radical feminist art-music project—presented in this iteration as a multichannel video installation—that searches for answers to fundamental questions that define our present: Can we gather all our anger and need for change and transform this into new energy? Can we abandon our defensive positions and become visionaries? Is it possible to change anger into music that is a stunning and cathartic force?

The answers to these questions are manifested in a series of performative videos that call for collaboration and explore femininity, diversity, heritage, and social background. The project’s initiator, Zorka Wollny, states: “We ask for the use of the entire spectrum of our senses and the embrace of our dying mother Earth with a protective cloud of sound. Let’s offer our audience a beautiful way to channel their anger, frustration, sense of powerlessness—or otherwise—to let their empowerment shine. Let’s awaken some good spirits! We all need them now.”

For 15 years now, Wollny has been creating sound pieces that respond to particular social situations. Her acoustic compositions mostly result from close cooperation with individuals and groups of students, workers, and activists, focusing on vocal performances in public space that address social anger, activism, and the sense of powerlessness. The collaborative project Let’s Make Noise, Sisters! arises from the urgent need to articulate a radical reaction to the recently introduced misogynist policies of the Polish government, which aim to take away women’s self-determination and which are well received and supported by the region’s right-leaning politicians. The “Let’s Make Noise, Sisters!” manifesto contends that all the energy that artists, oppositional intellectuals, and NGOs have invested in recent years in attempting to care for society and disadvantaged groups and to somehow save the crumbling system needs to end. Instead of effectively removing the burden of these responsibilities from the shoulders of politicians and corporations, the energy previously dedicated to this impossible mission rather should be invested in expressing the need for profound change in our social systems.

“Women have always rebelled and plotted against enforced reproductivity,” writes one of the project participants, feminist philosopher Ewa Majewska. She continues: “Herbal, medicinal, and magical forms of knowledge have always been (mis)treated in a similar way to women’s autonomy—throughout history, they have been subjected to ridicule, exclusion, prohibition, and sanction. The rituals and chants we perform here reanimate the memory of the repressed and the destroyed traditions of women’s knowledge, developed by witches, midwives, and sorceresses. Acknowledging the power of our technically mediated ability to restore that memory, we do not want to rule out science or conventional medicine in some sort of revengeful excision. Instead, we want to recall what has been separated from knowledge, often artificially distinguished from it, and thus also destroyed. By reaching out to myths, we do not overthrow reason—we invoke opposition to unjustified suffering, artificial exclusion, inequality, and harm. By claiming the knowledge and wisdom that has been repressed through the ages, we invoke the resistance, headstrongness, and disagreement of women rebelling against violence, exploitation, and the appropriation of our power and our bodies.”

The Psychedelic Choir, initiated by Wollny in 2019, is a group of Berlin-based improvisers that intonates haunted ambient sounds through witchcraft ritual. Bass player Leah Buckareff (of noise duo Nadja) provides a mesmerizing sonic foundation of drones and processed sounds for the vocals.

Noise Sisters is a group of angry women from Warsaw, made up of members of Polin Choir, who joined the Let’s Make Noise, Sisters! project in the autumn of 2020.

Let’s Make Noise, Sisters! is written and performed by Ana Kavalis, Anna Clementi, Anna Gutkowska, Anna Jurkiewicz, Anna Krzystowska, Barbara Popławska, Dagmara Siwczyk, Dominika Korzeniecka, Edyta Pawłowska, Elżbieta Balano, Ewa Majewska, Florence Freitag, Gosia Gajdemska, Karoline Strys, Leah Buckareff, Lyllie Rouvière, Magdalena Żaczek, Majka Gromadowska, Pauline Payen, Renata Dziurawiec, Ula Iwińska, Zorka Wollny.

Filmed by Insa Langhorst, Aleka Polis.

The Pulverturm (Gunpowder Tower) belongs to the former castle wall and is the only remaining building of the fortifications of Oldenburg. Its history goes back to 1529, when Count Anton I (1505–1573) initiated the renewal of the city’s military facilities. Since 1996, the Pulverturm has been used for cultural purposes during the summer and autumn months.

Pulverturm, Am Schlosswall, 26122 Oldeburg.

Produced by Komuna Warszawa as part of the Hub Kultury 2020 residency program Common Ground.