Life Between Poles is a multimedia concert installation bringing together the Berlin-based ensemble mosaik and the Irish Quiet Music Ensemble. Composer Karen Power combines real sonic worlds drawn from her explorations in the Arctic and Antarctic with instrumental and sampled sounds and large-scale video projections. The result is a space in which the polar regions resound and become perceptible in all their uniqueness, beauty, fragility and wildness.

After the concert, a panel discussion will take place with Karen Power and Till Kellerhoff (Club of Rome, Global Coordinator for Earth4All).

Karen Power: life between poles (2025)
life between poles emerged from my artistic-scientific research expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic (2022 and 2024). During these expeditions I recorded sounds above, within and beneath the melting ice. The work marks the conclusion of more than a decade of engagement with the acoustic properties and structures of ice, which began with my first Arctic expedition in 2013. At its heart is the connection of these unique soundscapes with two leading contemporary music ensembles: ensemble mosaik (Germany) and quiet music ensemble (Ireland). life between poles is a multimedia, site-related performance for thirteen musicians, video, light, spatial sound and live resonating objects. It is based on field recordings spanning the full frequency spectrum – both audible and inaudible sounds – from two of the Earth's most significant habitats.

The work draws on Pauline Oliveros' concept of “listening as activism”, understanding conscious listening as a form of engagement with ecological and social issues. Its aim is to give voice to the non-human environment and to make the uniqueness, beauty, fragility and wildness of polar soundscapes experienceable. life between poles opens up time and space in which to ask questions about our relationship to our planet. The work offers us sonic reference points through which to hear our world differently – perhaps to re-appreciate the natural diversity of an unspoiled environment and to reflect on two of the Earth's most important ecosystems, upon which we exert such a profound influence. life between poles invites us all to consider that we are everywhere – that our footprint persists and affects every life within an ecosystem long after we are willing to recognise or admit it.

Like many of my works, life between poles challenges all musicians and audience members to simply hear every sound as music we have not yet heard. I invite us all to open our ears and reconnect with our environment – as something that unites rather than divides us – and to reconsider our power and influence over everything that surrounds us.

Much of my recent work focuses on combining different instrumental combinations with composed field recordings in order to foreground unnoticed elements of our natural world – and perhaps to reignite our innate connection and respect for all life on this planet.

life between poles begins with four opposing forces: the two ensembles and the two poles. All begin as separate entities, each vying for their position. Yet as the work unfolds – developing and “melting” around the audience – the boundaries break down, and we recognise that everything is interconnected and that we humans are causing changes that propagate deep beneath us and back from the North to the South Poles.

The Arctic and Antarctic hold our world in balance – like a pair of global bookends – and we are allowing them to diminish continually. Musical materials drawn from two of our planet's wildest, most extreme and vanishing habitats are shaped into a full-evening performance piece. This is mediated through 13 live performers, 3 projection surfaces, an ambisonic sound system with 8 speakers and 2 subwoofers, and choreographed performance spaces. life between poles is a constructed environment built from snapshots of life in two real, living ecosystems. We invite the audience to listen and to explore the connections between human and non-human patterns, sounds and gestures that surround us every day – if only we would take the time to listen.
Karen Power

Earth4All
In 1972, a book shook the world's belief in progress: The Limits to Growth. The first report to the Club of Rome has since been regarded as the most influential publication on the impending overloading of our planet. On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, renowned scientists such as Jørgen Randers, Sandrine Dixson-Declève and Johan Rockström once again look to the future – and present a recovery programme for our crisis-ridden world.

In order to steer the sluggish Spaceship Earth away from its destructive course, they combine current scientific findings with innovative ideas for a different kind of economy. The current report to the Club of Rome provides a practical political guide to five key areas of action in which comparably small course corrections can bring about major change:

• against poverty in the Global South,
• against rampant inequality,
• for regenerative and nature-compatible agriculture,
• for a comprehensive energy transition
• and for gender equality.

↗ More on Earth4All.

Following the concert, the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme and the Cultural Affairs Department of the Embassy of Ireland in Berlin invite guests to a small reception.

Life Between Poles is commissioned by Klangwerkstatt Berlin with the support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. Karen Power and Quiet Music Ensemble are supported by Culture Ireland.