New Posters with Booklets and Sound Number five is out! and Number four too! New Series of Image discs more info First Publication of the IIRRM ressources series Ombra Magnetica and don't forget to check our new vinyls on Speckled-Toshe.ch ! Les Mortes by Benoit Moreau one of our co-Editions with Contrechamps

activeRat was founded in 1998 as an independent publisher for digital media based in Bern and Geneva. Initially, we produced interactive CD-ROMs with artists, artistic computer programs and web-art. As time went by, computers and their operating systems changed, and more or less all our productions didn’t work anymore… Our enthusiasm led us to ignore the media-related boundaries: now, we do printed books, cassettes, vinyls, posters, sound- and media works on SD-cards. We do them all with love and we understood that it is this diversity and the physical aspect we appreciate. Most artists work between the realms of sound and fine art.

We are creating and publishing strange and complicated editions and publications with younger & older friends and artists from here & there. Some are distributed in bookshops and art spaces, but you can directly order most of them directly from this site. So, drop by from time to time to see what we have added, or put you on our mailing list. (You can also be in touch via Instagram, but be aware that we are not too active in social media.
activeRat also distributes editions of other small publishers, labels and friends (and the productions of our sub- and sister-labels, like e.g. speckled-toshe.ch and Contrechamps | Speckled-Toshe or our joint publications with IIRRM).

activeRat

You can reach us by email:

And we still love to get snail mail:

activeRat
Chutzenstrasse 61
3047 Bremgarten b. Bern

or:
rue de Vermont 15
1202 Geneva
Switzerland

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Ombra Magnetica

This record of Ombra Magnetica – Eleonora Polato (Anita) and Jonathan Frigeri (Johnny Haway), co-edited with Zonoff, goes back to a residency by Eleonora Polato at the Q-O2 in Brussels and a project that she realised there together with Jonathan Frigeri in 2016. Now the vinyl record is available, together with a beautiful text by Julia Eckhardt. It is our last activeRat vinyl LP before we started publishing them in our sublabel ‘Speckled Toshe’ (cf. http://speckled-toshe.ch) [ >>more/order…]

Hot Tap

Hot Tap follows the two ‘Hot Tat’ series of artists’ posters. This time the projects consist of different parts: the poster and an accompanying booklet that bridges to a corresponding sound part. Text and sound are sometimes also the result of a collaboration, but always based on the idea to create a coherent whole from these parts.
(Poster, booklet and sound file, 2021)
  • Gregory Bourrilly – (poster, booklet and sound) kiss and smile [more info / buy]
  • Claire van Lubeek & Crowdpleaser – An Infant’s Friend in Sound and Meditation (poster, booklet and sound) [more info / buy]
  • Paulo Wirz & Lucas Wirz – Presságios (poster by Paulo Wirz, booklet and sound by Lucas Wirz) [more info / buy]
  • Xe Ye – The Old Mobius Strip (This edition – like the earlier ones of the Hot Tat series – consists of only one poster.) [more info / buy]

Curious about minds – a series of square vinyl objects

Square Vinyl, 7 *7 inches, 33 RPM, Single Sided, Limited Edition,  Picture Disc / app. 6min.

New discs:

The four first editions of this series are all independent works by four compelling female artists who address the same fundamental questions. Starting from their personal positions, they examine, question and criticize the relationships between gender roles, norms and expectations in society – each in her own way in sound and image.

by

More are in production

The Annotations of the IIRRM #1 (E), #2 (F), #3 (F), 4 (E) and #5 (F and I)

The IIRRM Annotations, is a journal of Zonoff’s ‘Institut de Recherche sur la Radio et la Magie’, which we edit and publish together with them. It is published twice a year and contains texts and images around questions of magick and radio.

Issue #5 (autumn 2023, in French and Italian) comes in three parts: – ‘J’hallucine, donc je suis’, – ‘Sculpter la pensée’, – La meraviglia / Leggende,
20 pages, newspaper and mini-tabloid format of 16 pages. autumn 2023. With radio/sound parts.

Issue #4 (winter 2023, in English), ‘IIRRM at IRMA’. This issue was produced in parallel to a project at IRMA-Republic art space (https://irmarepublic.ch/) as an accompanying publication. Contributions by Olga Kokcharova, zozoTransistor, Canale Milva (Giada Olivotto and Camilla Paolino) and Alchemilla de Tora. Images by Lauren Huret and David Aebi.

Issue #3 (autumn 2022, in French) ‘Maam Kumba Bang: Mythe ou Légende?’ is a documentary and at the same time a sonorous journey to the mythical figure of Maam Kumba Bang in Saint Louis, Senegal. The newspaper is – like the podcast – a result of the research of Mbaye Diop, Eric Desjeux and Jonathan Frigeri in Senegal. (16 pages)

Issue #2 (spring 2022, in French) is dedicated to Gnostic currents in Switzerland and also highlights a connection between Kenneth Anger and a Thelema abbey in Appenzell that lasted for several years.

Issue #1 (autumn 2021) is about conspiracy theories as an artistic form, about fear and how to handle it in a society that still struggles to figure out how it deals with text and code. It also revolves around the simple and, at the same time, very complex question of an existence proof with logic and language.

8 (16) pages, newspaper format.

[more…order]

The IIRRM Resources

In 2023 we started to publish a small but fine series of shorter texts on sound and art in the context of the IIRRM publications under the name ‘The IIRRM ressources’. Like the IIRRM Annotations, this is a joint editorial project that we are realising and publishing with Zonoff.

The first text to appear is Salomé Voegelin’s ‘Unperforming the Dream House’ (with a foreword by Thibault Walter).

[more…order]

Disks of ‘a-sides’ and ‘Speckled Toshe’ (LPs)

Vinyls, 12″, LPs, Limited Edition, 250 copies, black and coloured blue vinyl

As part of the HES-SO research project “a-sides”, we started to publish a few artists’ records (see also our parallel publication ‘A-Sides – A cosmology of audio editions by artists around the Arc Lémanique region’, http://a-sides.ch/publication/) and later integrated them into the label ‘Speckled-Toshe’. All the LPs contain sound pieces by visual artists. These were records with: Hannah Weinberger (a co-edition with the Centre d’Art Genève and HEAD-Genève, supported by the Société Générale), Karl Holmqvist, Anne le Troter. Recent recordings have been realised with Olga Kokcharova, Parker Williams and John Armleder, hot off the press is a collaboration with Joyfully Waiting / Womb, a sampler with contributions from Galaxia Wang, Sandar Tun Tun, Seth Price, Chino Amobi, RM – Bianca Benenti Oriol and Marco Pezzotta, Soraya Lutangu and Mohamed Almusibli, Jan Vorisek, Arttu Palmio, Marion Neumann, Jim Fletcher, Jeanne Graff, Aline Zeltner, The Operator & Stanislav Iordanov and L’acte Pur – Andreas Hochuli & Tristan Lavoyer.

We have just recently released our first co-editions of the series ‘Contrechamps | Speckled-Toshe’ with the Ensemble Contrechamps (contrechamps.ch). Find out more on Bandcamp: contrechamps-speckled-toshe.bandcamp.com

You can order all the items here.

 You Can’t Buy Me Love – Rudy Kanhye (LP 45 rpm)

Vinyl, 12″, 45 RPM, Single Sided, Limited Edition, 250 copies, coloured pink vinyl

A1    You Can’t Buy Me Love    3:22

The recording is a sonic trace of the performance “You can feel it but you can’t hear it” by the artist Rudy Kanhye.
The performance took place at Sou-Sou #4 at Kino REX, Bern on April 13, 2017; at the invitation of Mathieu Arbez Hermoso. [more…/buy]

Thick Kompakt (Cassette 2 x 28 min)

A radiophonic opera imagined and orchestrated by
Celine Aernoudt, Melanie Akeret, Zoé Aubry, Lorraine Baylac, Angélique Dalla-Torre, Aurélie Dubois, Marc Norbert Hörler, Arttu Palmio, Julie Sando, Bruno Schaub, Laurent Schmid, Sara da Silva Santos, Tristan Thévenoz and Vanessa Urben.

An intergalactic trip played live and broadcast by LapTopRadio from one gee in fog in Chêne-Bourg on September 6, 2018. [more…/buy]

Abacus – Radio Magic, various artists (LP and rainbow screen print)

black Vinyl, LP, Limited Edition, a special edition of 250 copies comes with a silkscreen printed by Dasein Studio, Tesserete of a sketch Ugo La Pietra did for the LapTopRadio group, 2018. With: Ergo Phizmiz, Scanner, Delmore fx, Felix Kubin, Jealousy Party,  Johnny Haway.

HEAD-Genève and Razoff – activeRat and Zonoff, 2018 [more…/buy]

A Message to the International Hacker Community – Goodiepal (printed manifesto and audio cassette)

Audiocassette 23 min. 21 sec. with printed leaflet / message by Goodiepal (Parl Kristian Bjørn Vester)
Razoff #04 / 2017 Sound and leaflet by Goodiepal
HEAD – Genève and Razoff
(activeRat and Zonoff), 2018

and also note::

  • straight up

    (printed booklets / paperbacks and sounds on SD cards) by
    Sarah Burger, Ceel Mogami de Haas, Lauren Huret, Laure Marville, Nastasia Meyrat and Yoan Mudry

  • posters

    (inkjet on blueback) by
    Lucas Cantori, Adrien Chevalley, Chloé Delarue, Guillaume Denervaud, Camille Dumond, Thomas Koenig, Maya Rochat

+ find more products here 

The

Artists

For the artists and authors who have contributed to the IIRRM annotations or the artists we have published under ‘Speckled-Toshe‘, see the corresponding pages.
The list below only includes artists who participated in the proper activeRat editions.

Most older editions are not listed in the catalogue anymore, since you would need an old computer with an ancient operation system to enjoy the content… Some are still available, we even did some patches to grant access. You may ask us. The items listed here are all in stock.

The following artists contributed in these editions:
(for the artists in

we’re doing stuff

Since 1998!

and we are still happy like foolish kids when a new edition comes out.

Contact us

By e-mail:
contactactiverat.ch

Or by snailmail:

activeRat
Chutzenstrasse 61
3047 Bremgarten b. Bern
Switzerland

or: rue de Vermont 15, 1202 Geneva

We would be very happy to have you on board with us.
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