Helen Hines
music-alias Kėkė Søl
Helen Hines (b. 1994, Atlanta, USA) is an un-disciplined, Berlin-based artist working with film, sound, performance, and sculpture. Her practice centers on listening as an ethics of intimacy — a relational practice that shapes how we come into contact with others, with environments, and with ourselves. Informed by feminist new-materialist theory, her practice treats attention as a material and affective force that, through somatic scores and ambient sound experiments, is experienced as a form of touch — one that can press, linger, withdraw, caress, overwhelm, or hold.
Hines’s work focuses on eroticism and grief as modes of perception rather than narrative themes. Eros is understood as a portal into embodied investigation — a force that opens questions of shame and de-shaming, feminist refusal, and gender anarchy through sensation, vulnerability, and pleasure. Meanwhile, grief unfolds as a slow, contemplative, process-oriented practice: a space of decay, decomposition, and transformation that presses against the edges of what we understand as life and material vibrancy. Both eros and grief return insistently to the body — as a site of knowing, unknowing, rupture, and aliveness. This research is applied through film and sculpture, using somatic scores and intimate rituals to examine listening, eros, and grief as embodied, material practices.
Sound is a central material in her practice. Hines composes dark ambient and granular noise sound environments that emphasize texture and proximity. She understands ambient sound as the creation of perceptual space — environments that allow listeners to drift and dream. This is applied to sculptural installation and live performance, often activated in collaboration with dancers and performance artists. Her music and sound projects can be found on Spotify and SoundCloud, under the alias Kėkė Søl.
Hines graduated from Yale University in 2017 with honours in germanic literature and existential philosophy. Upon graduating, she undertook somatic training in Thailand, focusing on Contact Improvisation, Butoh, and other touch-based practices like Body-Mind-Centering and Feldenkrais-Methode. She moved to Berlin in 2021 and is currently completing a Master’s degree at Universität der Künste Berlin in Sound Studies and Sonic Art.
She maintains a solo atelier and showroom in Berlin (Choriner Str. 61), where she develops and presents film installations, limited-edition prints, and occasional sculptural and large-scale abstract painting works.
Hines’s work has been presented internationally in galleries, festivals, and research-based contexts, including exhibitions and performances at Hosek Contemporary, Neue Nationalgalerie, Haze Gallery, Pandora Art Gallery, MOLT, Fotodiskurs, and the Listening Biennial (Berlin); international recognition through awards and official selections at institutions and festivals including the Berlin Short Award, Vienna Indie Shorts, Tokyo Women Film Festival, European International Film Awards, and FilmHaus Berlin, with prizes for experimental film, directing, cinematography, and original score. She has worked alongside artists such as Olafur Eliasson, Pipilotti Rist, and Pussy Riot. Hines has participated in numerous somatic-research residencies such as the Reverse Rivers dance company and the Art Continuum nomadic residency in Thailand and the Living Somatic residency in Japan, supporting site-responsive and research-driven projects.
For studio visits or collaboration inquiries, please contact helenhines.art@icloud.com
Selected Projects & Exhibitions
house is a body, body is a home, curated by and featuring Helen Hines (2026, Hošek Contemporary, Berlin) — A transdisciplinary exhibition of sculpture, film, and sound, and a publication that situates itself inside processes of decay. Emerging from encounters with abandoned houses in rural Japan, the works gather ash, clay, discarded objects, and the human body into quiet constellations that hospice erosion.
Arrival Gallery Art Show (2026, Athens) – Presenting sōhōkō, film
LiTE-HAUS Galerie Exhibition (2026, Berlin) – Presenting LOLI, mixed media on wood panel, 120×120cm
Layers of Reality Exhibition, Pandora Gallery (2025-2026, Berlin) – Reliquaries is a series of sculptural works that debuted as part of Layers of Reality, an underground group exhibition at Pandora Untergeschoss Gallery. Situated between altar and ruin, these works operate as small monuments to what lingers, fractures, and transforms. Composed of salvaged and fragmentary materials, each sculpture explores states of suspension—between tension and fragility, presence and disappearance.
Fluid Patterns Exhibition (2025, Riverhead, NY) – Group exhibition, Nov 1 – Dec 13: Film Drink from the River of Lethe selected for the juried exhibition exploring water as resource and disruption in the age of climate change.
Story of Moments Exhibition (2025, Aurea Photogallery – Online) – Group exhibition, Oct 20 – Nov 20: Two black-and-white 35mm film photographs selected. Exhibition focuses on photography as storytelling through fleeting instants.
No Shame Exhibition by Fotodiskurs (2025, Augsburg, Germany) – Group exhibition, Sept 28 – Oct 12: Presented My Body Remembers (with Avélina de Ment: text/voice, Helen Hines: polaroids/sound). The piece explores endometriosis, medical spaces, and embodied memory. Initially censored at Universität der Künste Berlin Rundgang, consequently staged as a guerrilla performance walking the work around campus to confront stigmatization of female bodies and menstruation.
The Listening Biennial 2025(Berlin, Ballhaus Ost) — FeaturingLittle Book of Yes, a collection of eco-erotic listening scores, poetry, and Hines’s film Threads, exploring how deep listening can hold both desire and grief.
Best in Show at Art Fluent’s OBSCURA (2025, Boston/online) — Inside the Birdhouse is a film exploring resonance, voice, and claustrophobic intimacy from inside a suspended birdhouse. Awarded Best in Show at Art Fluent’s OBSCURA.
Chasing Shadows, Finding Light Group Exhibition (2025, HAZE Gallery Berlin) — Film Threads and photographic stills exhibited in a group show focused on light, shadow, and fleeting intimacy.
We Forgive Nothing. We Forgive Everything. Solo Exhibition (2025, SoundsAbout Berlin) — Film installation that examines paradoxes of womanhood, control, and surrender, using layered sound and fragmented narrative.
Crossfade (2025, Hosek Contemporary Berlin) — Group exhibition on transformation and thresholds; presented Drink from the River of Lethe, a film that enters into the shifting timescales of light and water. Deeper questions emerged in the filmmaking process, centered around sensing the distance between ourselves and elemental bodies.
F** INSTA* Group Exhibition (2025, Pandora Berlin) — Pillow Fluffer is an erotic film that premiered in F** INSTA*, a group show addressing the politics of erotic image-making and censorship.
Pussy Riot: Rage (2024, Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin) — Ensemble protest performance led by Nadya Tolokonnikova, involving 60 performers staging acts of feminist resistance.
Veil of Intimacy (2023) — Installation combining film, live sound, and participatory elements on voyeurism, vulnerability, and witnessing.
BLIND (2022, Acker Stadt Palast Berlin) — Sound design for Paul Budraitis’ theatre piece performed in complete darkness, engaging senses beyond vision.
Weathering (2022, Dancehouse Melbourne) — Sound design for [two for now], a dance work exploring interdependence, temporality, and ecology.
TAHARA (2022, Danses de Résistances by Maison de la Culture in Montreal, Canada) — A dance diary of the exhaustive birthday and funeral rituals of trauma. Solo dance performance by Valerie Sabbath. Music and sound composition by Hines.
River City Gallery (2021, Bangkok, Thailand) — Contact improvisation performance in River City’s Van Gogh exhibition with Spine Party Movement (Nitipat Ong Pholchai) and local Thai dancers and photographers
Publications
Listening to Houses by Helen Hines and Natascha Schoenaich (2026, Hošek Contemporary, Berlin) — A collaborative art book that lingers with abandoned and reconstructed houses in rural Japan — attending, through film stills, photography, and essay, to how architecture breathes, absorbs grief, and continues exchanging with air, soil, and time.
Culturale Lab’s 100 Artists of Europe (2026) — Featured artist for the 2026 Print Edition of Culturale Lab’s 100 Artists of Europe.
Little Book of Yes by Helen Hines (2025, Berlin) – A collection of eco-erotic listening scores, poetry, and film (Threads) by Helen Hines, exploring how deep listening can hold both desire and grief. Premiered at the 2025 Listening Biennal at Ballhaus Ost, Berlin.
Confess // XXX by Helen Hines (2025, Berlin) — An anonymous digital archive of erotic stories, transforming confessions into a collective space of de-shaming.
Monochromica Magazine, Issue 005 (2025, Online) – Publication, Oct 17: Two photographs featured in the purple-themed issue. Stills from a film created during research in Japan. The film lingers on abandoned houses and overgrown forests as vessels of memory and loss, using Deep Listening as a meditative approach.
Nude Studio’s Naked is Normal (2024, NYC/London/Berlin) — Publication of poetry and photography exploring ecosomatics, eroticism, and body politics in contemporary visual culture, created by Roxanne Noor, featuring photography and writing by Helen Hines.
Residencies & Research Labs
The Listening Academy (2026, Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, Lisbon) — collective listening residency exploring elemental collaboration, animacy, and planetary coexistence through fieldwork, geology, electromagnetism, and water.
Deep Listening Intensive I (2025, Center for Deep Listening, USA/online) — Training in Pauline Oliveros’ practices of sound, dreaming, and movement.
Dyski x Zennor Sounds Residency (2025, Cornwall, UK) — Cinematic sound residency including Dolby Atmos scoring sessions, field recording, and collaborative workshops.
Living Somatic Residency (2025, Ibusuki, Japan) — Residency in a restored Japanese house; explored eco-somatic and Zen practices, creating listening scores in relation to architecture and memory.
Embodied Presence, Listening Practices Somatic Health Series with Joséphine Evrard, Somatische Akademie (2024, Berlin) — Exploring presence through listening-presence practices rooted in the Perceptual Pedagogy/Danis Bois method, integrating full-presence meditation to investigate how inner and outer spaces resonate, transform, and leave traces.
Body-Mind Centering® Training Series, Somatische Akademie (2024, Berlin) — A Somatic approach that explores the body from cellular awareness to larger body systems through movement, touch, somatization, and reflection, inviting each person’s embodied experience to emerge in relation to a shared theme.
HeArt of Being (2023, Berlin) — Non-verbal improvisation residency hosted by Helen Hines, Prey Collective & Francisco Borges, exploring communication beyond language.
Silent Conversations (2022, Donego, Italy) — Residency exploring silence, poetry, and improvisation; integrated writing with dance.
Stone & Water: Being Nature Retreat (2022, Donego, Italy) — Eco-somatic retreat focusing on elemental metaphors and embodied ecology.
Fluid Substances Residency (2022, Wales) — Collective residency engaging with dance, poetry, and ritual through site-specific improvisation.
Shared Body: Water as Technology Residency (2022, online) — Collaborative exploration of feminist technologies, water, and embodiment.
Art Continuum Nomadic Residency (2020, Koh Phangan, Thailand) — Ongoing collaboration with Reverse Rivers Dance Company in performance, improvisation, and film.
Collaborations & Performance
UN-BROKEN (2026, Berlin) – A performance work in progress exploring fragility, decomposition, and transformation within the body. Emerging in the depth of winter, the piece unfolds as a shared atmospheric space where movement and sound erode, fracture, and reassemble in real time. With dancers Rosalind Holgate-Smith and Maria Cantero.
Sonic Journeys on Refuge Radio Berlin (2024) — Broadcast of erotic sound-work on intimacy and listening.
Lo-Fi Playground x Zukunftsmusik (Nürnberg, 2024) — Participatory sound performance in public urban space.
The Unveiling (2023, Berlin, Germany) — The Unveiling film and performance, by Rosalind Holgate-Smith. Videography by Kėkė Søl and Taiga Trigo. The Unveiling is a slow ritual undressing, an unveiling of clothes and layers beneath which we exist. In this ritual, we dive into the affects of touch, exploring the skin as continuous, through the orifices, and into the digestive tract.
I Love You (2023, Berlin, PREY Collective) — Durational performance ritual of intimacy and sound, inviting audiences into an immersive relational practice.
Touch & Play Festival (2023, Glastonbury) — Workshops on erotic listening and live sound for Contact Improvisation jams.
Meeting Point Residency (2023, Berlin) — Collaboration with Tomáš Wortner and Danny Kearns in movement and sound improvisation, culminating in a live performance.
Listening Touch (2022, Medley Residency, Berlin) — Created live soundscapes for Rosalind Holgate Smith’s somatic research on touch, resonance, and listening.
Gender Diversity and the Curious Body (2022, Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin, Germany) — A Diversity and Inclusion Workshop in collaboration with Alexander Hahne. Input to 4 dimensions on gender diversity and embodied reflections to explore. How do you relate to your gender from within and in relation to/ with others? We explored the politics of bodies, collaboration, and empathy through touch.
Live Music at PJAM (2022, Ponderosa Arts) — Over 15 hours of live improvisational music for CI jams.
Embodied Sound Festival (2022, Sweden) — Workshop on sound physics, resonance, and improvisation.
CI50 Critical Mass (2022, Oberlin, USA) — Improvised sound with Keith Hennessy & Ishmael Houston-Jones’s performance, #CIFuturism. The performance was documented and archived at the Smithsonian Institution as part of the 50th anniversary of Contact Improvisation.
Anime of the Space Between: A Movement/Music Lab (2022, Oberlin College, Ohio) – As part of the CI50 Critical Mass program, Kėkė joined Ophra Wolf‘s workshop as a supporting musician.
Vibrations (2022, London & Berlin) — Music and dance improvised collaboration performance series with dancers Rosalind Holgate-Smith and Keya Mosso. Sound design and live music performance by Kėkė.
Fusion Festival (2022, Berlin) — Solo music performance and participatory ritual, staging speed-dating as an experiment in embodied listening.