2025 - k.ada | DYSONANCE OF SILENCE | For RITA BAUM magazine, edition 71/72

Graz – City of Design, the polished façade of creativity, woven into the UNESCO network like a moth to light. In 2003 – a cultural explosion: the Kunsthaus – a futuristic organ of imagination, the Murinsel – a drifting café for aesthetes. But the city center – Andreas Hofer Platz – seemed forgotten. A kind of stain in urban modernism, an enclave without a narrative. The concreted breath of the past. A skin no one wants to touch. A body no one knows.

In 2019, this body became my inspiration. The central element of the square is a light mast. A solitary mast – 28 meters – grows out of the pavement like a restlessness. Its crown: a flat relief, round, five meters in diameter. Most passersby don’t know that it’s a lantern, the square’s night lighting. But to me, it was more. A vertical body. A voice box without a voice. The larynx of the city, waiting for a voice. Brecht wrote: “Silence can also scream.” And it was precisely this scream, which no one heard, that I wanted to make audible. Not to add aesthetics – but to hear the hidden rhythm. I saw a space of transformation. While analyzing the history of this square, I came across the text “Ich über mich” by Siegfried Deutsch. The square speaks. “Andreas-Hofer-Platz – a ball and chain on city politics,” “a jewel of Eastern Bloc nostalgia – though the Bloc was never here.” Deutsch gives the place a voice. The square introduces itself: “I am Andreas Hofer Platz – or A-dot-H-dot-Platz, as the mockers say. I don’t know where Andreas Hofer came from. I used to be Fischplatz – the fish market. Then, when the fish and the Nazis disappeared, I was renamed Andreas Hofer Platz.”

Andreas Hofer – Tyrolean freedom fighter against Napoleon – an archetype for the Nazis. The anti-Oskar.

Throughout the 20th century until 2021, the square was the subject of many urban planning projects and architectural competitions – none of which were realized. And here begins my contribution to the history of this square in Graz. I write it by transforming the light mast into a tin drum, naming it: LICHTTROMMEL AUF A PUNKT H PUNKT PLATZ – a literal translation: Light Drum on A-dot-H-dot-Platz. My relationship to the square was more than a site-specific installation. It was an intervention with a living organ – the compressed voice box of the square that was meant to speak. A critical body that interferes in social life, offers resistance – a body of dissonance within silence.

The owner of the structure – including the underground garage, restaurant¹ and centrally integrated 28-meter mast – was not the City of Graz, but the private company Acoton. A crucial fact that allowed us to bypass bureaucratic hurdles. In discussions, we agreed that the end of the installation would coincide with the beginning of the city’s planned reconstruction – tram lines were to cross the square. Roughly three years of duration. With the owner’s consent, I submitted applications to the cultural departments of the City of Graz, the province of Styria, and the Ministry. The city refused funding. Argument: “The expert council assessed the project as incoherent, incomprehensible, and irrelevant in the contemporary context.” The province and the ministry approved – but very late, in July 2021. The timing of the implementation was essential for me: I wanted the opening before the local elections announced for the end of September 2021.

The installation date was set for September 20, 10:00 p.m. Two cranes were needed, streets had to be closed, and work was only possible at night due to heavy traffic. All materials had to be prepared in detail and structurally calculated. The setup: a special ring was mounted on the top of the mast, to which six-meter-long rods were attached. Then the five-meter-diameter lamp head was clad with pre-painted metal sheets. The whole operation took eight hours. The next step was painting 600 square meters of the garage roof with red bitumen.

The exhibition opened on September 23 at 6:00 p.m., accompanied by performances by Alemankale (Markus Deutschmann) and a siren concert – a composition by Christian F. Schiller. At the same time, FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl was speaking at the main square. A contrast of extremes. Sunday: victory for Elke Kahr.

In the following months – the drum lived on. Concerts with repurposed war materials from the Balkans, percussion duels, film screenings, performances. All interventions were spontaneous and publicly announced the day before. Twice the police were called – the second time by an employee from a neighboring building who didn’t know that Holding Graz was an official sponsor. After showing the logo, we were allowed to continue.

This spontaneity is central to me. That way, interventions become visible through accidental audiences.

Art in public space is not decoration. It is an action that becomes a field – not of exposition but of interaction. Art that drills into the city’s nervous system. Not into the aesthetics of tourist brochures, but into what trembles. Lichttrommel is the vagus nerve – the nerve that connects brain and stomach. It warns the body of danger before it recognizes it. A receptor of time. Because the city doesn’t speak to us through brochures. It speaks through tensions. Through bus stops, bottlenecks, through people’s breath. That’s why the drum worked. It entered the city like a foreign body that became an organ. First it was a tumor. Then – a language. Today – a reference point. Young people no longer say, “Let’s meet at Andreas Hofer Platz.” They say, “Under the drum.” Under the dissonance of silence.

And that’s enough. Because this voice doesn’t need phonics. It works through presence. Through rhythm. Through sonic discord. It changes language. And changed language means changed topography. Every square centimeter of Lichttrommel says: I do not agree. Not with blindness, not with “neutrality,” not with aesthetic anemia, not with silence. It is a linguistic construction suspended above the city. Sometimes like an ear, sometimes like a broadcast station, a satellite receiving signals from another time. Signals from 1934. From 1945. From 2025. And from 2045.

I don’t know if the drum sees. But I know that it watches. From 28 meters high, it records. Not photographically, not by notation – but through duration. A witnessing body without memory, which remembers more than an archive. There is no sound in it – but there is rhythm. A resonance that won’t rest. An unbearable flicker beneath the eyelid. Lichttrommel is an organ of bodily self-governance. A shocking territory. An alert zone inscribed into the topography – but disobedient to it. The shadow of extremism once again thickens the air, calling forth ethnic nostalgias and identities that cuddle up to fascism.

In Europe, unrest is growing. The language of exclusion is returning. Hungary, Poland, Italy, Germany, France – all are growing darker. Austria too. In Styria, the new government cut more than half of the independent artists and cultural institutions from funding. Cuts. Depoliticization. There are calls for “ideological neutrality” in art. But art is not neutral. Art is a warning. An echo. A seismographic device. The red roof of the Lichttrommel became a stage – but also a wound from the last century. It scans and disarms the narrative of Blood and Soil. Because that’s not blood. That’s paint. Painted bitumen – it doesn’t breathe for national unity, but for disruption.

Lichttrommel is the echo of Oskar Matzerath’s tin drum. Childlike – but menacing. Quiet – but provocative. Immature by choice. In a world that permits violence, not growing up is a form of resistance. In times when politics legally spreads slogans like “authenticity” or “protection of national identity,” Lichttrommel becomes an antibody. A space for sound. For noise. For performance. For ambiguous voices. And if sound disappears – there will still be echo. And if even the echo falls silent – there will still be rhythm. A rhythm that says: “Whatever happens – I will drum. Until the end.”

A year ago, when tram line expansion reached Andreas Hofer Platz, it turned out that the city would refrain from completely redesigning the square due to the underground parking garage. Removing it would have far exceeded the planned budget and delayed reconstruction by several years. No demolition. But continuation and rhythm.

Lichttrommel on A-dot-H-dot Platz remains. It will remain – until April 30, 2045. The centenary of Adolf Hitler’s death. Not a random date. Not a random memory.

original version printed in Polish here

2023, Alberto Lomas | divergence spaces / convergence spaces 

ada understands art as an articulator of spaces for relationships, spaces that are usually public, where she interferes to break the silence that is being imposed on us by various political and economic sectors, who refuse to understand that the social model we are immersed in has inescapable ruptures and contradictions. therefore, as zbigniew preisner rightfully noted, silence is equivalent to compliance, and this is the reason ada’s work manifests in public, and generates noise (sound noise, media noise, etc...). some may argue that it generates conflict. i do not. i affirm that ada looks for the underlying, invisible, hidden conflict and brings it to light, sometimes literally and never in vain. light is an element that is of great importance in her work, and as in “erinnern”, highlights the need not to leave in the dark the forgotten realities from which good conclusions can be drawn, no matter how inconvenient they may be. as in “tick-tock”, we cannot fail to focus on issues that are fundamental to our own survival, even if one tries to distract our attention from them. in this work we can not but appreciate the device of confrontation that ada usually uses with singular clarity. it is in the sense of that confrontation, a sense that just like in legal disputes seeks justice through the comparison of different versions of a reality, therefore it is not a question of using confrontation as a mere strategy of gratuitous provocation. her confrontation seeks spaces of convergence in a paradoxical way: by creating spaces of divergence. it highlights the need for each one of us to be able to choose on the basis of our own individual freedom. ada deeply believes in the other, the other that does not rely on terms such as identity to justify itself. identity tends to fall into reciprocal qualifications that hardly collaborate to generate an open and a fairer reality (“window on utopia”, “news from nowhere”), i sincerely believe that her utopian society is closer to the notion of community postulated by slavoj žižek (1) at the time of the pandemic, more than she perceives it herself. therefore, her collaborations with other artists have become quite frequent, and she doesn’t hesitate to include the police, the judge and even the councilor. her work “transparadox” in cooperation with the artist werner schimpl was denounced by the freedom party in graz,  that gave rise to the series “zensur” and “i wasn’t there”. a kind of involuntary collaboration that also happened in a slightly unexpected way in the work she created with her students in the seminar “ liminary writings” i had the honour of directing at bilbaoarte in 2021. the site-specific version of “bang ban” that was developed in collaboration with her students eventually included urban artists and even some girls of roma descent. yet again the police collaborated in a more or less involuntary way. this latest collaboration seems to have been guaranteed because during her stay in the programme “uncertain tomorrow” she also managed to get a significant amount of police patrols involved. besides local photographers, international artists and curators, strangely or consequently the action led to a curious dialogue between the police officers and the artists speculating which of the two collectives worked more and got lower remuneration within the community. ada manages to link these two collectives in an inescapable way. she works with the police in a very precise manner, just as she works with written language, a language to which she gives freedom through irony. although it is obvious, i must point out the polysemy of the word “polis”. in addition to its classical meaning (polis was the essential framework in which greek civilisation - the cradle of western civilisation - devxeloped and expanded until the hellenistic period and roman domination), the word polis refers precisely to the guardians of the prevailing decadent morality. (the word poli is a diminutive of the word policía, which refers both to this security corps (2) and to any citizen who acts as an uncritical guardian of the law). in ada’s work we are once again faced with the classic dichotomy between morality and ethics. taking a deeper look at this perspective, the work “lichttrommel” combines all these aspects to some extent. even the very title of the work initiates a contradiction interplay since the light drum refers to an awareness too burdensome to be faced with directly. as gunter grass in his work to which this installation alludes(3) uses a rhetorical strategy in order to deal with the past and painful reality, from a present that drags with it the conflicts generated (and generators), this reality is approached with different tactics. the most evident is the occupation of one of the most visible spaces in the city with a symbol of a disease that society tries to hide. an object placed on the highest public point of andreas hofer platz. a spot that illuminates the entire area around it, since we cannot overlook the fact that it is placed on a lamppost. once again, literal light. without any strategy of concealing or obscuring the problems that drag society down, ada invites various artists to play (4) in her work, with their own tactics, to develop a common strategy of revealing the symptoms of this disease. turning the installation into a space of reference and intervention. a space from which ada warns us of the risk of remaining inactive or absent in the face of the shrinking space for civil society. as a result, and since we are conscious of the dangers of exceptional measures becoming ordinary, works such as “swing” should not be gratuitous, seeing how power is swaying (5) in the face of our passivity on a path that seems irreversible. 

artists in the 21st century must choose between biting their tongue or facing the consequences of their actions by taking a gamble. working with language beyond notions such as beauty means just that: showing up and taking a risk, not in aesthetic operations that conform to a canon marked out by authority but showing the open or badly healed wounds of the paradigm that instead of striving for common good refuses to give up its privileges, thus resulting in the impossibility of being. returning to the notion of “tick tock”, there will be no space to live in, no space to be, no space to exist in: we are in a countdown to which we must react. 

1) “i am not being a utopian. i am not appealing to an idealised solidarity among people; on the contrary, the current crisis clearly demonstrates how solidarity and global cooperation acts in the interest of the future of each and every one of us; how it is the only thing that we can do rationally and selfishly. “ https://ctxt.es/es/20200302/firmas/31388/slavoj-zizek-coronavirus-comunismo-capitalismo-globalizacion-economia.htm  2) “ - oh, that useful, that cunning, that strategic word “security” (...) excludes entire populations from any kind of citizenship by pretending to receive it in a mechanism that allows us to live, without doubt, by controlling and monitoring us in order to protect us, if not to punish us”. georges didi-huberman in “passer, quoi qu’il en coûte”. 2017.p. 49. 3) this refers to the novel “the tin drum” published in 1959. it’s a story about a boy named oscar matzerath who lives during the second world war (1939-1945). through oscar’s voice the author deals with different macabre and childish narrations of the events of the second world war accessible thanks to his tin drum. 4) “play is not the name of an act or action, but the name of a framework of action” batenson, g. (1990): mente y espíritu, buenos aires, 1990, pag. 124. 5) to swing. by a synonymous approximation effect, it can acquire the meaning of the word hesitating according to its fourth meaning in the spanish royal academy dictionary. to make fun of a person or to say funny things to someone with a serious tone”.

2023, Tomislav Brajnović | expression of resistance 

ada’s work, arising from her strong sensitivity to social anomalies and injustices is committed to dialogue with public. one could say that her practice falls into the category of social design, into the realm of social structure. her form flows from the content, using appropriate media, sound, image, video, text, light, space, objects and installation. she fights for artistic freedom of expression, and enters into confrontation with generally accepted norms, „civic morality“ or the legislative one, which she believes should be changed. the form subtly enters and becomes part of the urban views, at first acting delicately and in a non-aggressive way, but a deeper “reading“ reveals very strong content, which often refers to general places or historic “memory“ that gets activated in a new context. ada’s “lichttrommel” can be “read” on several levels. it becomes a kind of poetic expression of resistance or anxiety, indirectly asking questions that remind us of the „old“ paradigm of contemporary art, which was succinctly defined by roland barthes in his 1967 short essay „the death of the author”. barthes argues that the writer or artist has ceased to be the author because of posing questions for which the ultimate answer or meaning is given not by him, but by the audience, those who read, an answer that comes from its subjective predisposition and foreknowledge. if we examine the meaning of the drum (trommel) a little deeper, we will see that throughout history it has been used for military marches and treks, for communication or to announce important news. the drum was used to gather and attract people‘s attention to important news or events. in this sense, we can say that the drum announces a publication, a statement, a proclamation, rather than a question. we can consider an announcement in this context as an answer, regardless of the content or “accuracy”. i perceive ada’s installation, apart from strongly and directly referring to the growth of nazism (whose seeds or characteristics she recognizes in today’s social context), as the creation or opening of a platform for an artistic response which, we can say, by encroaching on contemporary events necessarily encroaches on the political, leaving the old artistic paradigm of indirect implication.this work points to the need to speak out the truth about society and its orientation loudly and in public, which takes the same direction as oscar has been drumming about loudly. however, it has become extremely important (i would call it a  new artistic paradigm) what is being published, the content, the message, whether it offers a solution or an answer, because inarticulate and vague drilling is no longer enough, the danger is greater, less obvious, attacking the premise, perception, subjectivity and spirit. ada senses this orientation of society (according to technocracy, objective optimization, abolition of subjectivity and individuality, standardisation and mediocrity) in her work, „convers(at)ions“. at the same time she is aware that individuals, people with a different perception of things, are the ones who should be the bearers of social change, ritualised, marginalised and excluded from the same society. “lichttrommel” is a marker, a platform like speaker‘s corner in london, a place open to the free expression of personal attitudes and ideas. interestingly, ada did not „go out“ or „surrender“ to the platform, content with the form, the installation, but observed the artists‘ activity in a wider environment that recognize dramatic events in time and generously offer them an acquired, visible space, a red elevated terrace of lights.

Krakowski Teatr Tańca | ŚWIATŁO W SPEKTAKLACH ERYKA MAKOHONA

Ada Kobusiewicz, autorka pracy „La danza de la luz. La iluminación y la danza contemporanea”, nawiązując do Rolanda Barthesa opisuje projektowane przez Eryka Makohona światło w kategoriach punctum, które Barthes charakteryzuje jako ukłucie, jako to, co fascynuje, przyciąga i wyostrza. Przeciwieństwem punctum jest studium, czyli pozbawione emocji odczytanie informacji zawartej w obrazie, warunkowane uczestnictwem w określonej kulturze. Punctum zaś jest kwintesencją subiektywnego obcowania z fotografią, to dostrzeżenie detalu, który porusza odbiorcę i nie pozwala o sobie zapomnieć.

2022 Austria Forum | Episode XI: Ada (Die ungezähmte Widerspenstige) von Martin Krusche

Das Objekt bietet zwar für sich eine Bedeutung an, ist aber auf ein Minimum des formalen Ausdrucks reduziert. Es soll nämlich nicht den Blick auf die gesamte Arbeit verstellen: „BANG BAN“ von Ada Kobusiewicz alias Ada Kada.

2022 Annenpost | Mit Kunst ein Spotlight setzen von Edda Holweg

Die Künstlerin k.ada möchte mit ihrer Kunst die Gesellschaft wachrütteln. Am Lendplatz weist sie mit der Installation „Tick-Tock“ auf eines der größten Paradoxa unserer Zeit hin.

„Habe den Mut, nicht gemocht zu werden.” Dieses Zitat von Bruce Lee ziert an prominenter Stelle die Webseite der Grazer Installationskünstlerin k.ada. Unauffällig ist sowieso nichts an Ada Kobusiewicz, wie die gebürtige Polin mit bürgerlichem Namen heißt. Sie will gesellschaftliche Diskurse eröffnen und riskiert damit auch, für Projekte wie „Transparadox”, bei dem sie unter anderem öffentlich Cannabis anpflanzte und erntete, zwischendurch einmal verklagt zu werden. Doch davon oder gar von empörten FPÖ-Gemeinderät*innen lässt sich Kobusiewicz nicht einschüchtern.

2022 KUNSTOST | D:Demo #8, Ada Kada von Martin Krusche

Ich publiziere hier ein Statement der Künstlerin Ada Kada. Wenn ich betone, daß ich mit einigen ihrer Ansichten nicht übereinstimme, dann besagt das nur, wir haben in etlichen Punkten Dissens. Das heißt nicht, ich würde mich von ihr distanzieren. Ich unterscheide zwischen Argumenten zur Sache und Argumenten zur Person. Ich verzichte auf die Vorstellung, man könne Wahrheiten finden, indem man Widersprüche eliminiert. Ich gehe davon aus, daß es mich ohne Andersdenkende nicht gibt. Es wäre mir unklar, wie ich Erkenntnis gewinnen sollte, wenn ich nur meinen Ansichten folge. Daher veröffentliche ich hier in meiner Dokumentation auch Ansichten, die meinen stellenweise entgegenstehen.

2022 KUNSTOST (Martin Krusche) | STATEMENT von k.ada 

Es ist Zeit, ein richtiges Statement abzugeben und nicht nur über Bullshit zu reden! Liebe Freunde! Liebe Künsler und Künstlerinen! Liebe Antifaschisten und Antifaschistinnen! Wo seid ihr? Wie kann man ruhig sitzen, wenn man weiß, dass 2 Millionen Menschen kein Recht haben, ins Theater zu gehen? Sie haben kein Recht, ein Museum zu besuchen! Kein Recht, ins Kino zu gehen! Kein Recht, ein Schwimmbad zu betreten! Kein Recht, ins Restaurant zu gehen! Kein Recht, ein Buch zu kaufen!

2022 KUNSTOST | Ada Kada: Zwischenstand von Martin Krusche

Samstag, 1. Jänner 2022. Womit das Jahr beginnen? Zum Beispiel damit: Ada Kada ist eine Künstlerin, die in Graz einige markante Akzente gesetzt hat. Sie ist Impfpflichtgegnerin. Damit steht sie in einem anderen Lager als ich (mit meinen bisher drei Impfungen). Da derzeit maßgebliche Kreise Österreichs übereingekommen sind, daß es eine Impfflicht geben soll, ist Ada Kada erheblich unter Druck geraten, denn diese Verpflichtung, bei Weigerung mit Strafe belegt, wird höchstwahrscheinlich kommen.

2020 Der Standard | Kobusiewicz-Installation: "Zack, zack, zack" und "Bla, bla, bla" sind verboten by Colette M. Schmidt

Ada Kobusiewicz bestückte Graz mit 102 Tafeln mit irgendwo auf der Welt existierenden oder frei erfundenen Verboten – eine Referenz auf eine Arbeit von Ewa Partum

2020 Ausreißer #95 online | BAN BANG / BANG BAN von k.ada

Wir sollten nicht vergessen, dass die Prozesse der Polarisierung und der Ausgrenzung eine bedeutende Rolle bei der Verwaltung unserer westlichen Gesellschaften spielen und das soziale Handeln der meisten Menschen bestimmen.

2020 Władza sądzenia ISSN 2300-1690 | BAN BANG / BANG BAN from k.ada 

Lockdown ... it’s good that it happened. I think it was or still is an exercise, a rehearsal, an opportunity, yes, definitely an opportunity to close the drastic gaps between people. I think that what is now important, and even fundamental, is transparency and action, and above all, radicalism and firmness in every area of our lives.

2014 Władza sądzenia ISSN 2300-1690 | Franz Ferdinand Prinzip. Synthesis of two enemies from k.ada

Art Guerrilla Camp in Banja Luka, BIH, Exhibition in Garnisonsmuseum in Graz, Austria | Project of Igor F. Petkovic