Swantje Lichtenstein

Swantje Lichtenstein is a performance artist, sound creator, and scholar whose work critically engages with the intersections of language, sound, and embodied practice. Her artistic exploration focuses on how sound and text can be reimagined to question dominant narratives, build solidarity, and create spaces for new meanings—especially from feminist and transmedial perspectives.

Lichtenstein’s research-based practice spans multiple forms, including electroacoustic sound art, conceptual performance, and experimental writing. Her work is concerned with the ways language and sound challenge existing boundaries, offering alternative forms of expression. She approaches artistic practice as a transformative space for exploring feminist issues, transcultural connections, and community-based collaboration—viewing art not as an external intervention, but as something created within the very communities it engages.

Her work has been showcased in diverse cultural contexts and festivals worldwide, including the Sound-Text Festival; Issue Project Room/Goethe-Institut New York; Poetic Voices Africa Festival, Cologne; SoundEye Festival, Cork; and festivals in cities such as Istanbul, Yerevan, Mexico City, and Bucharest.

Lichtenstein’s publications include poetry, theoretical essays, sound works, and translations. She served as the artistic director of the cOsmOsmOse Festival for Performance Poetry and Verbophony (2013–2017) and the Rolling Eyes Festival (2018), a feminist arts event. She is also a curatorial board member for the Monheim Triennale, a major international festival for contemporary music.

As a professor of Aesthetic Practices and Text at the University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf, Lichtenstein brings her diverse expertise to a wide range of international academic and creative platforms, teaching at universities and art academies across Europe and beyond.

Explore her work and projects:
www.swantjelichtenstein.de
www.covertext.org
www.commarts.net