stella dieden richter
Rubber’s Sole
3-channel sound installation, 12:44 min (loop), 2025. Equipment: speakers, stands, wooden beams (180 cm high), speaker textile
Rubber’s Sole explores bodily hierarchies and how they can be unsettled. The title refers to the rubber sole–the point where weight meets the ground and grip emerges. In the encounter with the sounds, this grip shifts.
Three speakers are placed in the space; two on stands, one on the floor. The work is based on recordings of wet mud being pressed, released, and dropped. Thuds and sticky releases move between the standing speakers in an irregular pulse; at times isolated, at times clustered. The field thickens and thins, while the floor speaker occassionally recieves impacts, and carries a constant crackle.
The work remains porous. Gradually, traces from the moment of recording leak through–murmurs, a vibrating phone. The distances between the speakers form intervalls and shape the listening; close to the pulse, by the crackle, or inbetween. At the end of the loop, all speakers emit a crackling sound–clearing the field before it begins again.
The piece was created for the show Body at Konsthall C, curated by Queer Cohesion.
Discipline
17.4 sound piece, 12:22 min, 2025
Discipline combines processed field recordings from a research trip to areas in Norway shaped by land- and mudslides, with synthetic and instrumental elements. The piece moves through resonant sine tones, machine noise, and scraping textures, building toward a crescendo before dissolving into a weave of trickling currents, thinned mechanical hums, and recurring resonances.
The piece was created for Traversées Sonores (Sound Crossings)–a surround-sound consert co-organized in Lyssningsrummet, supported by the Royal Institute of Art and Institut français de Suède. Discipline was later presented during Nuit Blanche 2025 at Institut suédois, Paris, alongside works by Ash, Mari Mattsson and tm.
flute but not the master
stereo channel sound installation, 02:53 min, 2024
flute but not the master is built from recordings of salvaged metal tubes, blown through by mouth. The tubes’ varying tones form a high-intensity dissonant mass in which sounds erupt simultaneously, cut off abruptly or fade into slow dissipation, creating a concentrated release of energy.
Speakers are placed directly on the pipes, emphasizing the physical relation between sound and material. Created for the exhibition ‘Buss 501’, the work was activated every ten minutes, allowing each eruption to return as a recurring interruption within the space.
Approaching breach / Närmre brottet
8-channel sound installation,12.11 min, 2023.
Speakers, cables, rubber cylinders
Approaching breach is a sound installation situated in a passage at the Royal Insititute of Art, Stockholm. The work is built from fragmented recordings of a performance in which participants collectively worked with heavy, wet mud. These sonic fragments are arranged into rhythmic sequences that foreground moments of exertion, reorganizing every sound produced during the act to mirror its collective strain.
Planned and incidental sounds merge into an enveloping, wet rumble: low frequency drilling from nearby construction folds into the clatter of hands in mud, punctuated by the sharp squeaks of rubber soles. Their intrusion mirrors the physical exhaustion of the performance and the endurance sustained throughout. From there, the composition disperses into increasingly sparse movements, ending in a thin crackling strand.
The material is distributed through speakers placed at intervals and directed toward the floor and walls. Low frequencies strike the walls, while scraping and squeaking travel along the floor. The passage becomes a space for indirect, bodily listening.
Trailer
ASICS - trickler
performance, 30 min, 2023
A performance for Kunst på Ruinen; a one-day event taking place in the surroundings of a drained lake, before the pumps were turned on to restore the lake and water would seep back. I place myself on a ruin wall beside the lake and slowly pull my body forward. The wall shifts in levels, and with each rise, I bend to lick myself ahead. The slow movement holds the body in exertion, mirroring the ground’s gradual change and dissolution.
ASICS
performance, 10 min, 2022
Running shoes make the body light and bouncy against hard surfaces. Here, the dynamic is reversed —the shoes take control, dictating the body’s movements as they wrestle and caress each other. A rubber sole drags against another, generating sluggish friction that builds tension. The sneakers give vent to a relationship, while the body navigates a choreography balancing resistance and fluidity.
Excerpt (2 min)
One effort, many sighs / En ansträngning, flera suckar
video, 21 min, 2022
This project is inspired by human effort when building on unstable ground. Excavating mud creates movement, while attempts to stabilize and prevent mudslides often worsen the problems we aim to solve. The video shows a group shaping bricks using a segmented wooden frame. As the group forces mud into uniform shapes, the rigid dynamics of production emerge, revealing tensions between labor, constraints, and mud’s unpredictability. The act is repeated until all the mud is shaped.
photo: Niels Engström, Caio Marques de Oliveira
edit: Stella Dieden Richter
participants: Johanna Bjurström, Elmer Blåvarg, Sofia Romberg, Andreas Widoff, Andrea Larsson, Stella Dieden Richter
Trailer
When routine becomes ritual / När rutin blir ritual
performance, 45 min, 2021
This is a performance in three acts where I portray myself and a door as object and subject respectively. In the first act I lie down next to the door to perform a back somersault. Faceing down, I do a slow rise for 20 minutes; I push my body up from the floor to standing position, after which the clothes expose parts of my body. By slowing down my normal speed, hiding my face and letting my clothes expose my body, I try to steer away from the reading of me as a subject. In the second act, I smear the door surfaces and parts with Vaseline, and the third act is the smeared door lying on the floor.
Är man först ren
text, 2021
A poem about caressing the floor, drinking an old glass of water, skin absorbing lotion and a question whether we were first clean and then nasty or the other way around. As a contribution to the livestream Beuys, beuys, beuys, the poem was read aloud three times via phone call; from inside a taxi, a wardrobe, and a taxi again. The voice went straight into the live stream, and with a delay of a few seconds through speakers out into the recording room.
Kulturprofilerna
performance, 30 min, 2021-22
Kulturprofilerna is a queer punk band named after Jean-Claude Arnault—a central figure in Sweden’s #MeToo scandal, known in the tabloids as the ‘Culture Profile’.
The band brought together ten artists, curators, and thinkers, playing on found instruments with raw energy and no filters. As a songwriter and front performer, I helped lead our chaotic shows—using humor and vulnerability to challenge oppressive structures. Our songs tackled themes like lesbian love, annoying pets, and mommy issues—channeling resistance through unfiltered emotion and collective catharsis. We performed at release parties, public institutions and art venues.
Band members: Malin Arnedotter Bengtsson, Sarali Borg, Moa Cedercrona, Stella Dieden Richter, Heidi Edström, Beata Sjöstedt, Laus Østergaard, Lovisa Fahlgren, Lior Nønne Malue Hansen, Lovisa Gauffin Wohlfarth
Credits: Martin Ålund - initiator and sound technician
Setlist
Vilda Vulvan
Port Salut
Alkoholtårta
Boy
Lorte kat
Kulturmannen
Kokosmjölk
Supermakter
Yoga
Franska låten (cover of Poupée de cire, poupée de son)
Trailer
Photo 1: Supermarket, José Figueroa. Photo 2: Musikaliska, Niels Engström. Photo 3: Snotty Seaside, Sanna Albenius. Photo 4: Moderna Museet Stockholm, Albin Håkansson. Trailer: Snotty Seaside, Sanna Albenius