NORMAL BABYY

Normal Babyy is a Riga-based interdisciplinary art duo composed of Elza Auguste Zīverte and Kristofers Knesis. Their collaborative work blends physical performance, sound, and conceptual experimentation to interrogate the structures—both visible and invisible—that shape perception, behavior, and meaning.

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Across their body of work, they have explored compulsion and self-identity (Hoarder, 2022); randomness and cognitive patterning (Apophenia, 2023); electromagnetic force and psychological charge (Charge, 2023); and the paradoxes of automation and authorship (But, please, think outside the box, 2024). Subsequent works have delved into sonic and affective atmospheres (Charged, 2024), emotional precarity (Dot, 2024), and speculative posthumanism (Material values, 2025), which reflects critically on institutional power and the illusion of autonomy.

In 2025, the duo expanded their inquiry into sensory and environmental perception. I can’t believe it’s not butter! (2025) is a concert of synthesized sounds and synthesized smells—a ritual and tribute to the fragrant tools humans use to mask less welcome aromas, and an invitation to travel through scent’s direct pathways to memory and emotion. Scratching the surface (2025) turns attention to the Arctic, transforming climate data from the MOSAiC research expedition (2019–2020) into sound using the KLIMATON ARCTIC≈2020 sonification instrument, offering new ways of listening to environmental change.

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Their performances frequently question the boundaries between intention and influence, structure and improvisation, human agency and systemic control. By positioning non-human forces—mechanical, material, algorithmic, and ecological—as co-performers, Normal Babyy opens up inquiries into the nature of freedom, authority, and resistance within both artistic and social systems.