Artist Statement

Hardi Kurda’s work explores the boundaries between noise, music, and social experience, combining site-specific installations, interactive performances, electronic compositions, and experimental radio. Inspired by his migration journey, he developed Found Scores, an alternative listening medium that emerged during times of crisis, transforming overlooked everyday objects into sonic encounters. Hardi collects sounds often dismissed or forbidden—radio static, environmental hums, fleeting human movements—and reimagines them as living scores within immersive installations and performances. Audiences become co-creators, improvising and dissolving the boundaries between composer, performer, and listener, with listening becoming a vital, collective act born of necessity. Through radio frequencies and site-specific recordings, his works reveal the political and poetic power of noise, prompting reflection on memory, belonging, and displacement. By reimagining the familiar and the hidden, Found Scores turns listening into a force for witnessing, archiving, and transformation, urging us to reimagine the world through the act of urgent listening.

Bio Short version 

Hardi Kurda is a sound artist, violinist, improviser, composer, researcher, founder and curator of SPACE21 Sound Gallery (Slemani) and Archive Khanah, he fosters international collaboration and sonic archiving in Kurdistan. Hardi is a visiting researcher at Goldsmiths and the University of Sulaimani, a jury member for the Gaudeamus Award, a co-researcher at the University of Geneva, and a former jury member for the Swedish Art Council. His works defy the boundaries of music and sound through his evocative interplay of suggestive, unconventional sounds, unexpected silences, and textured noise. He includes interactive approaches to his works such as the interactive radio antenna where he explores noises that may have been considered illegal, abandoned, unheard, invisible, broken, distorted, untold, forgotten, or simply noises from nowhere, without a place or destination. Through using radio frequencies as sound material, Hardi bridges the physical and metaphysical, turning ephemeral signals into interactive performances that he developed the concept of The Found Score to connect noises deeply with audiences to create Urgent Listening where listening became a force of necessity based on his listening’s experience when he illegally moved to Europe. His practice spans classical acoustic composition, electronic music, and interdisciplinary pieces where sound merges with other art forms to create transformative listening experiences.

Hardi’s work receive attentions and commissions from festivals, Universities and venues across Europe, Asia, Middle East and Africa such as PRS New Music Biennial in the UK at South Bank Center, Another Sky Festival,Shubbak Festival,Café OTO,  (London), Sound Argument at Leiden University and Orpheus institute (Ghent), Tarkib (Baghdad) University of Santa Barbara (California),Sonorities Festival (Belfast),Borderline Festival (Athens), andMaerzMusik,Soundings ADK (Berlin),Nomos Museum (Gdansk), Reproduction (Goa),CHR (Cape Town)Irtijal festival (Beirut). He has been granted various residencies and grants includingBeyond1932 (London),  LeGuessWho? Festival (Utrecht),Radio Art Residency (Halle, Germany), Swedish Arts Grant Committee,Melos Collective (Vilnius). His recent solo albumRadiola Springs. VGR Culture Grant in Sweden described him as… “Hardi bridges diverse musical traditions with socially committed compositions that blend electro-acoustics and chamber music, enriching the classical repertoire for our times.”

Hardi was granted the first artist residency scholarship from the Beyond1932 project from Kings College (London) where he presented his archive project (Archive Khanah). Residency in Goa with Reproduction in collaboration with LeGuesWho? in Utrecht. He was the fifth scholarship holder of the Radio Art Residency in Halle, Germany, where he created two experimental radio performances based on his illegal journey to Europe that revolved around illegality and the construction of legality. The radio programmes broadcasted on Radio Corax, Shift FM, Deutschland funk Hörspielmagazin, WaveFarm, generation FM, and the live performance on Gallery Blech. He develops the project on illegality in a residency with Melos Collective in (Vilnius). He received the residency programme from the Swedish Artist grant committee to compose the piece for Ensemble Recherche (Freiburg). He created eight radio programme for Stegi Radio (movement radio) explored the noises from Slemani.

As the founder and curator of SPACE21 Sound Gallery, Hardi has transformed the Kurdistan Region and across the country into a hub for sound art and experimental music since 2017, organising festivals, archive projects, workshops, research projects, Label and publications and networking with the international festivals, organisations and venues. SPACE21 is a partner with Sonorities Festival in Belfast, Irtijal in Beirut, Breach in Nicosia, LeGuesWho? in Utrecht and Listening Biennial. 

Hardi is a co-founder of Duo Moment with the cellist Khabat Abas and released albums “Broken Resonance” and “Illegal Performance”. His solo album Radiola Springs which broadcasted on WaveFarm radio programme show, further exemplifies his exploration of the sonic frontier. 

Hardi was a visiting lecturer at the University of Winchester in 2023, Hardi delves into Interaction Design, questioning the role of art in social environments and redefining perspectives on listening. Article about his Album, Radiola Springs on Navel-Gazers, And his performance on PRS New Music Biennial by The Wire. Interview about Listening in a Time of Crisis on Open Works journal Columbia University. A chapter of the book Sound Practices in the Global South, an article about his archive project on The Markaz Review. 

Official website visit, hardikurda.com

Hardi’s scores/works registered and published at STIM click here

Email: info[at]hardikurda.com or hardi.kurda[at]gmail.com