SPHERE is a group of four post-graduate students in Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam. For this year’s edition of Rewire, the collective will enact a project of relistening to explore the locus of sound, and how sound is transformed when presences and absences are made more apparent. By conducting a series of interviews and drawing from Rewire’s and Radio WORM archival collections, the group explores embodiment and disembodiment of sound, presence and absence of sound, and alternative modes of critical discourse with current and previous artists from Rewire’s curation.

SPHERE comprises researchers Isobel Nicholl, Yağmur (Yago) Sağlam, Elen Zhou, and Niklas Ehret. Isobel Nicholl is a writer and curator based between Amsterdam and London, whose work focuses on process-led practices and examining the conditions under which artistic work is produced and circulated. Yağmur (Yago) Sağlam is a music journalist, immigration policy researcher, and DJ. Their research focuses on sound cultures, electronic dance music cultures, and decolonial Marxist critiques. Elen Zhou’s research interests lie in failures of all sorts, negativities, and non-affirmative ways of thinking in aesthetics and politics. Niklas Ehret is a curator and producer, working around questions of memory, labour, and migration. For Rewire 2026, SPHERE invites visitors to a listening experience that explores sound as meditation, listening as witnessing, and reconceptualises the practice of artist interviews.