Mechanical Forests
As part of the European project Die Drei Ecken/ Les Trois Angles, Musica, the Donaueschinger Musiktage, and the Sankt Georgen-based Global Forest art society collectively launched a call for applications for an artistic residency in September 2025 in Sankt Georgen, Black Forest.
Mechanical Forests aims to support experimental approaches rooted in specific territorial contexts, where sound art meets technical and natural environments.
Two artists were selected to develop their projects within this framework :
The French artist Yann Leguay. His project addresses a critical approach to the sound medium, and focuses on perception phenomena, listening conditions, and technical materialities. Based on stripped-down setups and minimal gestures, his work questions diffusion means and audience expectations. During his residency in the Black Forest he will design an energy production system activating sound sources, resorting to a thermodynamic device among others. This reveals energy flows, transformations of matter, and unstable balances between technical systems and their surrounding environment. The creation is scheduled to premiere in 2026 at the Musica festival and the Donaueschinger Musiktage.
The Iranian artist Mehdi Behbudi. His creation is scheduled in 2027 and presents a crossdisciplinary work connecting sound design, investigation, and storytelling. It tackles ecological and geopolitical issues linked to specific territories, giving space to both sensitive and documented ways of listening. As part of his residency, he will develop a fieldwork-based project in the Black Forest, combining in situ sound recordings, a collection of narratives, and collaboration with local stakeholders involved in forestry activities. From these materials, he will set up immersive installation displaying a reflection between contemporary uses of the forest, memories of labor, and ecological transformations, resorting to sound documents, voices, and recorded landscapes.
These two projects embody the core concerns of Mechanical Forests: they study the relationships between technical systems, forest environments, and human practices through a situated perspective, turning sound creation into a space to investigate, produce, and transform at a cross-border scale
