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Serbian sound artist, poet, curator, and researcher, Manja Ristić returns for her third album for LINE. Ristić's new album Into Your Eyes is a triptych of her unique micro focus works recalling the subtle, detailed worlds of Steve Roden or France Jobin fused with the adept field recordings of Jana Winderen, Francisco López, and the delicate resonances of Toshiya Tsunoda.
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Every wave, every grain of sand, every rock, every millimeter of current, every hum, every drop of rain, every gust of wind, every grain of salt, every molecule of air, every electric pulse, every Pascal of pressure, every creature in lake, sea, or river, every insect, bird, mammal, arthropod, crustacean, every leaf, branch, root, every inch of soil, every fungal culture, every crystal, every forest, moss, cloud, or heavenly object, every atom of every square millimeter—is sentient.
This triptych of works listens into that sentience. It moves through a world saturated with voices—an intricate weave of physics, chemistry, biology—where nothing is silenced, nothing excluded. Every ripple vibrates with sound, dissolving boundaries and erasing hierarchies. Here, music is not an art form imposed upon the world, but the condition of its being.
'Innocence Overturned' is a meditation on unfinished creation—a pact made in the gaze of death to let the pen rest, to leave the book unwritten. It carries the weight of youthful visions realized and relinquished, of characters conjured and then set free.
'A Seagull Speaks into the Chimney on the Shore of Lake Geneva' is a lament and a witness. In a poisoned ocean, the bird’s cry into the hollow throat of a chimney becomes an act of faith: “Perhaps someone listens.” It is a work of elemental conversations— tide to rock, river to cloud, cloud to sun—and of the human ear straining to hear them.
'Prophecy of the World Without Anguish' imagines a future where such conversations are uninterrupted, where the tide’s love song in Scotland, the whisper of the Adriatic seabed in rain, the hollow resonance of a barrel at the Tagus estuary, and the singularity of each lightning strike are all part of a continuous, unbroken chorus.
Threaded through these works are moments of encounter: a Guardian Angel sculpted by Adrian Arleo on the banks of Rattlesnake Creek; the deep sediments of seashells underfoot; the knowledge that love can grieve into eternity; the recognition that every single body is a battlefield.
Collectively, they form a cartography of listening—a poetics of attention that treats the world not as backdrop, but as a living score.
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READ Manja Ristić’s article 'Mnemosonic Topographies – Sensory Epistemology Between Sound, Space, and Memory' in The Attic Magazine (Oct 4, 2025)
theatticmag.com/features/2483/mnemosonic-topographies-_-sensory-epistemology-between-sound%2C-space%2C-and-memory.html
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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, Radio Cona, Semi-Silent, and others. Her work is published internationally on labels including LINE, Rekem, Erstwhile, Unfathomless, tsss tapes, WabiSabi Tapes, DASA tapes, Inexhaustible Editions, Skupina, Flag Day, 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 object, but as a living field of relations—a dynamic interplay between biophony, geophony, and anthropophony, where each sonic event is inseparable from the microenvironment that shapes it.
Ristić has received numerous awards, including recognition for solo and chamber classical music, a shortlist for the Académie Charles Cros Sélection Musiques Expérimentales 2024, a Golden Award for extended media from the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia 2023, and an honourable mention from the Phonurgia Nova Awards 2022.
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.
She currently works and lives on the island of Korčula, Croatia.
manjaristic.blogspot.com
released November 7, 2025
All sounds recorded, edited, and composed by Manja Ristić
Except for the field recordings of Lake Geneva by Mark Vernon
Hydrophones built by Jez riley French
Mastering by Goran Simonoski, Studio La Plant
Cover image by David Fulford, Black Hill Creative
Text by Manja Ristić
