SVETLANA MARAS

CV

PRESS

Composer & sound artist
Professor of Creative Music Technology and co-head of Electronic Studio - Basel
Former head of Electronic Studio - Radio Belgrade

Svetlana Maraš is composer and sound artist working across live electronic performance, electro-acoustic composition, sound installation, and the construction of hybrid instruments. Rooted in electronic sound, she moves between compositional, sculptural and performative work in music.

Her live performances are centered around a self-developed technological instrument built from commercial and affordable devices and extreme creative exploitation of MIDI. Technology that she plays with, is seen as an unstable system whose hidden potentials are activated through meticulous design of creative circuitry, sound materials and systems of interaction, and virtuously activated in live performance. Live performance with its spatial qualities remains central to her practice, while recording is approached critically and used only selectively, mainly in the purpose of documentation.

Recent works increasingly focus on sound installations and music as sculpture - exploiting non-standard spatialisation. Projects such as Jazz employ complex signal chain ecosystems by interconnecting existing technological devices in unpredictable and complex ways. Parallel to this, she develops custom instruments-compositions like Tablebook, combining objects, performative interaction, and instrument design.

As composer, she collaborates with musicians and ensembles such as Collegium Novum (Zurich), Black Page Orchestra, ICTUS, Ensemble Phoenix Basel, Trio Catch, Ensemble Vortex (Geneva), Pony Says and many others. In live performance, her ongoing collaboration is with Katalin Ladik.

Her engagement with electronic studios has strongly shaped her artistic and institutional thinking. From 2016 to 2021, she was composer-in-residence and artistic director of the Radio Belgrade Electronic Studio, where she initiated artistic residencies, educational programs, and the restoration of the historic EMS Synthi 100. During this period she created works including Jezik (shortlisted for the Prix Italia), Radio Concert No.1, Radio Concert No.2, and Post-excavation activities, which received the Serbian most notable composition prize - Mokranjac Award in 2021.

She performed and presented her work internationally, at venues, festivals and events such as Rewire, CTM (Berlin), Ars Electronica (Linz), Wien Modern, International Music Institute (Darmstadt), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Kunstmuseum (Basel), Haus der Kunst (Munich), Kampnagel (Hamburg), Ruhr Triennale, House of Electronic Arts (Basel), Musikprotokoll (Graz), Heroines of Sound (Berlin), Onassis Cultural Centre (Athens), Museum of Contemporary Art (Belgrade), Izlog Suvremenog Zvuka (Zagreb), ICMC (New York), ISEA (Dubai), Orpheus Institute (Ghent) and many other places. She was composer in residence at Bern Music Festival in 2025.

Svetlana Maraš was SHAPE artist for 2020. From 2022-2026, shw was member of the Zürich Stadt - Music Commission. She was jury member of Kompositionspreis der Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart in 2025.