Water Angels

A major part of Katalin Ladik’s work was associated with vocal and instrumental music, although she had no particular music qualifications, nor was she an ‘amateur musician’, but rather a phenomenon of music excesses and voice miracles, combining music, theatre and poetry. Her music essentially addresses relations between sound and woman’s body. It was the music of a female body and its motions, transformation, action and expression: when she produced sounds with her body as a music instrument, playing folk or self-made instruments nude; when she voiced poetry or transformed voice into linguistically inarticulate sounds of phonic poetry; when her voice turned into a scream transforming poetry into acoustic event of music; or when she borrowed her transgressive voice to experimental musicians
Katalin Ladik pursued her interest in music with the collaboration and life with the composer, musicologist and ethnomusicologist Ernö Király, while working for the Radio Novi Sad. Király developed his unconventional style in a synthesis of Hungarian folklore and free modes of music performance based on the relation composer-performer. Important issue for Ladik was how a woman attained subjectivity – unique feeling of the world – with a voice distinguishing her body as feminine
The other important context of Ladik’s involvement in music was the contact with the Ensemble Acezantez (Ansambl centra za nove tendencije Zagreb) and the composers Dubravko Detoni, Branimir Saka? and Milko Kelemen. The ensemble was founded in 1970 and lead by Dubravko Detoni. The ensemble focused on combinations of tone and noise, movement, light, acting and pantomime. Katalin Ladik performed with them in 1972 and 1973