Katja Molenkamp

Katja Molenkamp is a composer and sound artist who works with the Doepfer A-100 modular system, crafting post-tonal music that dissolves the boundaries between detail and abstraction, the physical and the psychological, the real and the dream. Her work explores themes of trauma and healing, constructing immersive sonic environments that feel both haunting and otherworldly. At the core of Molenkamp’s practice is a dynamic interplay between herself and the autonomy of the machine. Her generative patches animate the modular system, allowing it to evolve unpredictably; at times bound within limits, at others pushed toward the edge of her control.

Drawing on psychoacoustics and nostalgia, she warps sound into shifting, introspective, yet comfortable pocket realms, where time and perception warp beyond recognition, but still firmly anchor in the known. Molenkamp’s compositions are not just heard, but inhabited; sonic interiors that unfold like eerie poetry, perhaps bigger from the inside than the outside, where sound is experienced as a form of soothing quicksand, pulling the listener deeper into an altered state of reflection and dissolution. "Thank you for dreaming."

Learn more about Katja Molenkamp's 20 minute presentation Necessary Selections: Things & the Things Between Things for Maelstrom Slow Dance - June 2017 at Theater Oostpool in Arnhem.  

Learn more about Katja Molenkamp’s written MA thesis (DAI, 2017): Mapping the Canny