Diedrich Diederichsen (Photo: Joachim Gern) and Caitlin Woolsey

Perspectives on Katalin Ladik’s Sound Poetry

Conversation

28.2 2025

Stockholm

Dive into Katalin Ladik’s groundbreaking sound poetry in a conversation between renowned art critic Diedrich Diederichsen and art historian Caitlin Woolsey, an expert on the avant-garde sound landscape. The exhibition “Ooooooooo-pus” highlights Katalin Ladik as one of the female pioneers of experimental sound in contemporary art.

Katalin Ladik’s “Ooooooooo-pus” exhibition is filled with sound – the artist has been a pioneer of experimental sound poetry since the 1960s. Her sound poetry is provocative and erotic, funny and absurd, and refreshing in how it plays with language and how we perceive it through listening.

Ladik was not alone in experimenting with sound poetry; she was part of an international movement of predominantly female artists exploring the material and conceptual conditions of performance, score, and the body. It is no surprise that Ladik was often referred to as the “Yoko Ono of the Balkans”, and among her international peers are Ana Mendieta, Hannah Wilke, La Monte Young and many artists associated with the Fluxus movement.

Listen as art critic Diedrich Diederichsen and art historian Caitlin Woolsey share their perspectives on Ladik’s unique approach to sound as an artistic form and how her work relates to some of her international counterparts.

Diedrich Diedrichsen is a renowned art critic and writer, who specialises in the history of experimental sound practices in visual art. He was editor and later publisher of music magazines (“Sounds”, Hamburg; “Spex”, Cologne) in the 1980s. In the 1990s, he was a lecturer and visiting professor at universities in Pasadena, Offenbach am Main, Munich, Weimar, Giessen, Gainesville, St. Louis and Los Angeles. From 1998 until 2007, Diedrichsen was professor of Theory of Art and Design at Merz Academy, Stuttgart, and since 2006, professor of Theory and Communication of Contemporary Art, at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.

Caitlin Woolsey is an art historian whose research focuses on the historical confluence of visual art, sound, performance and media from 1950 to the present. She is assistant director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and lecturer in the Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art. She holds a PhD in art history from Yale University, and has previously held positions at the Guggenheim Museum, National Gallery of Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

Katalin Ladik, Poemim, 1978/2016 © Katalin Ladik. Photo: My Matson/Moderna Museet
Katalin Ladik, Yu Hymn, 1973 Collection of Ludwig Museum, MoCA, Budapest. Photo: József Rosta/Ludwig Museum © Katalin Ladik

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Perspectives on Katalin Ladik’s Sound Poetry