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| ph by Matej Grgić |
Manja Ristić, born in Belgrade in 1979, is a violinist, sound artist, published poet, curator, and researcher whose work bridges classical training with radical sonic exploration. A graduate of the Belgrade Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music in London, she has performed widely across Europe and North America, collaborating with conductors, multimedia artists, poets, and theatre and film directors. Over the past decade, her focus has shifted toward interdisciplinary sound research, field recording, and experimental radio arts, with commissions from ORF musikprotokoll, INA GRM, Radiophrenia, Radio Art Zone, Kunstradio—Radiokunst, Radio Belgrade, Semi-Silent, and others. Her work is published internationally on labels including LINE, Rekem, Erstwhile, Unfathomless, tsss tapes, Wabi‑Sabi Tapes, DASA tapes, Inexhaustible Editions, Skupina, Flag Day, Okla, and Naviar Records. She is also a founding member of CENSE — Central European Network for Sonic Ecologies.
Ristić’s practice unfolds at the intersection of artistic research, ecological awareness, and embodied listening. She approaches sound not as an isolated aesthetic occurrence, but as a living field of relations — a dynamic interplay between biophony, geophony, and anthropophony, where each sonic event is inseparable from the micro‑environment that shapes it. Central to her methodology is the principle of listening‑with: an active, relational mode of attention and an ethic of co‑presence that transforms field recording from an act of extraction into one of reciprocity — where sonic encounters become shared acts of meaning‑making.
Through the framework she calls mnemosonic topography, Ristić maps the entanglement of sound, space, and memory, revealing how vibrational phenomena inscribe themselves into both the body’s sensory archive and the spatial memory of place. Her works — whether capturing the infrasonic pulse of marine life through hydrophones, tracing the resonant contours of architectural spaces, or re‑imagining mythic narratives through layered soundscapes — invite audiences into a slowed, heightened state of perception. In doing so, she re‑sensitises listening as a practice rooted in the politics of care, re‑establishes bonds with the beyond‑human world, and positions sound research as both an artistic and ethical act.
Ristić has received numerous awards, including recognition for solo and chamber classical music, a shortlist for the Académie Charles Cros Sélection Musiques Expérimentales 2024, an honourable mention from the Phonurgia Nova Awards, and a Golden Award for extended media from the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia.
She has curated events for institutions such as Ars Electronica (Linz), Cona Zavod (Ljubljana), BSFF (Amsterdam), BELEF (Belgrade), the Municipality of Belgrade Old Town, CIFRA World (Dubai), and others. From 2004 to 2024, as a founding member of the Association of Multimedia Artists “Auropolis” (Belgrade), Ristić developed a distinctive body of cultural events, international projects, conferences, and educational platforms in the fields of experimental sound, multimedia arts, and scene-based practices.