Kata Kovács

Kata Kovács is a sound artist and interdisciplinary performer. A 2007 graduate of Budapest Contemporary Dance School, she has been living in Berlin since 2011. She is active in several ensembles, including VROUW!, KvT, and a long-term collaboration with artist Tom O’Doherty. Her works often focus on contemplation and repetition, on the movement of sound in space, and on the performative possibilities of unusual spatial situations. Her works have been presented nationally and internationally, including at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; Serralves Museum, Porto; National Museum of Contemporary Art (Chiado), Lisbon; Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin; Kunstkraftwerk, Leipzig; Digital in Berlin's Kiezsalon series, Berlin; University of Gothenburg, Sweden; Wesleyan University, Connecticut; and ausland, Berlin.

Work

Woven All of Dream and Error
Exhibition and album · Collaboration with Tom O’Doherty · 2024
Website · Album (Bandcamp) · Introductory video

Woven All of Dream and Error was initially presented as an exhibition showing a collection of films, images, and sounds that consider the overlap of two areas of the history of technology: the sites of abandoned railway lines, and the emergence of machine learning — or what has popularly come to be referred to as artificial intelligence. Sound from this exhibition was then released as an album, by Soft Noise Acousmatics, in June 2025.

GRABEN
Live sound, sound design, performance · Under direction of choreographer Diana Naber · 2024
Details (BKV Potsdam) · Trailer video

Performance, live sound, and sound design for the choreographic work GRABEN, by Diana Naber (née Thielen), as part of Potsdamer Tanztage 2024

Acoustic Dances
Live sound · Collaboration with ArtMan association · 2022
Facebook event

Live sound, as collaborative contribution in a workshop series by the Hungarian ArtMan association. The association offered a five-day sensory-based dance and improvisation workshop at the Lake Studios Berlin. Participants were invited to experience their own movements, to connect to the surrounding space and to each other by using their complex physical sensations in a new, inquiring way by excluding visual perception and accompanied by live sound.

Ventana (Día 35)
Film soundtrack · Collaboration with Ana Matey · 2020
Video: Ventana (Día 35)

Music for short film by Ana Matey. The film is one of a series that was undertaken from March 2020, as a response to the sudden change in circumstance caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Each day, for 51 days, a different video portrait was created by Ana Matey in front of the same window. Each film was then given to a different musician or sound artist to create an accompanying soundtrack. This was Day 35.

VROUW!
Sound · Collaborative improvisation ensemble · 2018–present
Website · Bandcamp · Video: VROUW! at Orange Ear, Berlin · Live photo 1 · Live photo 2 · Live photo 3 · Live photo 4 · Promotional image

VROUW! is a five-piece, all-female experimental ensemble based in Berlin. VROUW! plays drums, cymbals, bass, contact mics, shoes, self-made synths, cards, hats, tin foil & plastic bags, bowls, beads, threads and endless other ever-changing amplified objects. VROUW! screams, sings, whispers and listens, riding the intricate waves of their ambient soundscapes.

VROUW! is Agnė Auželytė (keyboards, voice), Tristen Bakker (bass, voice), Kata Kovács (amplified objects, voice), Angela Muñoz (percussion, voice), and Lisa Simpson (talking hats and oscillations, voice).

KvT
Sound · Spatial punk research unit · 2017–present
Website · Bandcamp

KvT is a collaborative unit, which shapes ephemeral soundscapes from the overlapping churn of individually-simple elements. They layer resonance, repetition, movement, and memory — combining iterated fragments of voice, trumpet, and bass. This stripped-down palette allows for a singular focus on the worlds of sound that can be layered and stitched together from voices, fragments, loops, layered resonance, and emergent drone — all undertaken with hand-carried amplifiers, allowing for a spatialised, context-aware live presentation that never repeats in the same way.

Signal Tide
Installation · Collaboration with Tom O’Doherty and David Bryant · 2017–present
Signal Tide full details · Sound mix (LACMA)

Signal Tide is a sound and extraterrestrial radio installation artwork. The work combines real-time signals from an abandoned satellite currently orbiting the earth (the LES-1, launched in 1965) with specially-commissioned music and sound, created in collaboration with David Bryant (of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Hiss Tracts) and Tom O’Doherty. Signal Tide was initially presented at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, from September 21.–24., 2017.

A Practice of Falling
Sound performance · 2016
Video: A Practice of Falling (L1danceFest, Budapest, 2016)

A Practice of Falling is a durational performance considering the implications of repetitive movement combined with sparse sound in large spaces.

Women Behind Drums
Performance · Collaboration with Zinzi Buchanan · 2016
Live photo 1 · Live photo 2

Women Behind Drums is a sound performance, a performative critique of male-dominated spaces and a ritualistic manifestation of a wish for more women behind drums.

Minute/Year
Durational installation · Collaboration with Tom O’Doherty · 2016–present
Minute/Year archive · Minute/Year full details

Minute/Year is an automated, sound-based, multi-year durational installation artwork. It creates a new, one-minute recording every day. Each day’s recording is published online. Minute/Year alters location each year.

FAKE Company
Interdisciplinary performance · Collaborative group performances under direction of Kathleen Hermesdorf · 2016–2020
Video: FAKE Company · Hold Your Horses (2021) · Video: FAKE Company · Reckoning (trailer) (2019) · Video: FAKE Company · Reckonings and Antidotes (Dock 11, Berlin, 2018)

FAKE Company was an international arrangement of performers, an intentionally fluid and flexible group. Gathered by Kathleen Hermesdorf of ALTERNATIVA in San Francisco, FAKE Company was a container and instigator for artistic freedom within creative collaboration, embedded and embodied in ongoing practices of improvisation in movement, theater, sound and visual art. FAKE Company presented work in Berlin, Stolzenhagen, and San Francisco.