Texts
Debate and discussion
Phonurgia Nova_2023_audition et discussion (fr)
Daniel Deshays, Radio Campus Paris (fr)
CV
Foto: M. Woodtli 2024
Bernadette Johnson (*1955 in St. Gallen, Switzerland) is a sound artist based in Basel, Switzerland. She understands her work as Audiopoetics – a compositional practice of listening in which meaning emerges and is constantly transformed through the act of listening.
Her artistic practice developed from a largely autodidactic engagement with music, dance, and performance, including studies at the Sigurd Leeder School of Dance in Herisau and in the electronic studio of the Basel Academy of Music. In the 1980s, experimental work with sound material led to multimedia collaborations with visual artists, dancers, and performers.
Shaped by classical and experimental music, as well as her work as a technical assistant and archivist at Radio SRF and Memoriav, her focus gradually shifted toward listening itself, while continuing to work with sound as material. At the center of her practice lies the atmospheric and emotional power of sound and its effect on perception. She uses sound in a minimal way – not as a carrier of meaning, but as a trigger for resonance in the act of listening.
Her work creates situations of concentrated listening in which sound is experienced as a process in flux – often in dialogue with image and language and across different listening contexts, frombroadcast to installation-based settings.
Awarded the Karl Sczuka Förderpreis and the Phonurgia Nova Award, her works have also been recognized by the Forum for Soundscape, Forum Wallis, and as a finalist for the Prix Russolo 2025.
Performances of audio compositions: (among others) in the Sound Tower St. Pölten, Sound Theater of the House for Radio Culture Vienna, Festival for Electro-acoustical Music Bourges, Donaueschingen Music Days, Réattu Museum in Arles (listening balcony), IRCAM Paris, Winterthur Radio Play Marathon, Listen-Bar in Freiburg, Altes Magazin Hannover, VoxNovum, Soundlab VI, Nuit bleue Arc et Senans, Ohrenhoch Sound Galery Berlin, Aufbauhaus Berlin, Ars electronica Forum Wallis, Festival Monestiés…
Radio Broadcasts: Swiss Radio SRF, Austrian Radio Ö1, Radio France, German radio dradio.de, SWR2, Radio Campus Paris, Radio LoRa Zürich, Colaboradio Berlin, JETFM Nantes