The Mermaid Garden is a radio show featuring experimental music, poetry and field recordings by female and queer artists. From the beginnings of the experimental music field to contemporary artists, the show creates space for deep listening, poetic reflections, and corrects the erased female history within the fields of sound art and experimental music.
The show is created & hosted by sound artist Kristina Mau Hansen and transdisciplinary ethnographer Laetitia Boon.
Upcoming shows:
Episode 6: Saturday 11th of July, 2026Listen back to our previous episodes:
Episode 1: ‘Diving into the Wreck and beyond’
We begin our Mermaid Garden season by listening to Adriene Rich’s poem as our mermaid garden manifesto. The second piece of our first episode invites us to drift along Jana Winderen’s Zooplankton and Phytoplankton sounds. Next, Ann McMillan’s track with field recordings from humpback whales urges humans to be more like whales. With the final piece: Eulogy for the Handfish we morn the cohabitors of the mermaid garden that have been lost.
- Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971–1972 by Adrienne Rich.
- Jana Winderen, The Wanderer.
- Ann McMillan, Whale - Wail, In Peace, En Paix, Part I, Whale I.
- Eulogy for the Handfish by AM Kanngieser.
Listen to the full episode here.
Episode 2: ‘Soundwalking’
This episode is currently lost deep in the waters...hopefully we find it back one day.
Episode 3: ‘On voice’
This episode of Mermaid Garden dives deep into the various expressions of voice - and voice as a means of expression - in sound art. We explore the use of voice as a tool, an element to modulate and create with, as a mode of expression from and within minority groups, and as a universal language.
- Excerpt from Keywords in Sound, book chapter “Voice” by Amanda Weidmann editors David Novak & Matt Sakakeeny
- Dito Mismo, Dito Muna (Right Here, For Now) by Anjeline de Dios
- Excerpt from Sidsel Mundal’s documentary: Meredith Monk “On the voice as an eloquent language”
- Environs 1 & Environs 2 by Meredith Month
- Creole Love Call by Adelaide Hall
- Sámi Joik by Ellen Molnia
- Ora by Daniela Pes
- A trans woman reads the Harvard sentences by Adriana Knouf
Listen to the full episode here.
Episode 4: ‘Echolocation’
How does sound and listening relate to being in place? In our fourth Mermaid Garden episode we explore the concept of ‘echolocation’ and how it’s expressed in field recording art, musique concrete, everyday life and Aboriginal musical cartographies. We explore a diversity of bodies sensory attunements to place and other-than-human spatial locations.
- Dawn on a meadow by Izabela Dłużyk
- Moth - Tibetan bowls, voice, bat calls by Mariolina Zitta
- Excerpt from The New Yorker documentary “A Blind Teacher Using Echolocation to Navigate the World
- Morning by a river by Izabela Dłużyk
- Reading excerpt from Understanding Aboriginal Songlines by Leonardo Muller-Rodriguez
- Marlaloo Songline recorded by The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
- Dream Branch - Intimate Glint by Ellen Fullman
Listen to the full episode here.