Verena Paravel: Cosmofonia

Curated by Fatima Hellberg, Lukas Flygare and Naoko Kaltschmidt

Cosmofonia is an immersive, sensory film project by filmmaker and artist Verena Paravel. Unfolding across multiple chapters and environments, it proposes a new cinematic form attentive to the lives of animals, plants, and ecosystems—not by adopting their perspective, but by displacing the human as the organizing center of perception and opening toward other rhythms, other presences, other forms of agency.

Cosmofonia explores the inaudible sounds and voices of the planet: infrasonic vibrations, seismic resonances, interspecies acoustic exchange, and the sonic traces of ecological transformation and survival. These registers exist beyond the threshold of human hearing and remain largely unknown even within scientific circles. Paravel approaches them through experimental sound practices and unconventional image-making, guided by her interest in “seeing with the ears.”

Her investigations reject both naive naturalism and the fetishization of technology. Image and sound become instruments of attention and contact rather than illustration—revealing a world in which the boundaries between species, bodies, and environments are porous, and where human and nonhuman presences coexist without hierarchy. For many visitors, Cosmofonia will offer a first encounter with these sounds—an experience that transforms not only how we hear the natural world but also how we understand our place within it.

Image Verena Paravel Cosmofonia, 2025-2026 Film still Courtesy the artist