Contact:
Email: elenabotts@gmail.com
Based in:
London and Scotland, UK
Also involved with:
[unknown sound collective], founder and organiser (2019 - currently)
Cowal Art Association, exhibiting member, (2025–2026)
Religion & Art Research Initiative - CHASE Network, affiliate, (2024–2026)
WGXC Wave Farm Radio Transmission Arts, contributor, (2023–2026)
Prattsville Art Center, curatorial Fellow, (2025–2026)
Hubfeenix, artist-in-residence, (2025)
Old School House Residency - Hrísey, artist-in-residence, (2025)
Sarasvati Creative Space, artist-in-residence, (2025)
TurnPark Sculpture Park, artist-in-residence, (2025)
Arts Letters & Numbers, artist-in-residence, (2025)
Bronx River Art Center, artist-in-residence, (2025)
MERZ (Sanquhar), artist-in-residence, (2025)
Bidston Observatory Artistic Research Centre, artist-in-residence, (2025)
Iva Kaufman Associates at United Nations, consultant, (2016–2020)
Bio:
Elena Botts is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher at the University of Essex. Elena’s work explores experimental sound, multimedia art, and the interrelation between artistic practice, perception, and social transformation through collaborative installations, residencies, and projects/releases in digital and physical media. Elena organizes the unknown sound collective and an associated radio archive and associated publications centring on experimental artists and their inner worlds.
Elena has a BA in Global & International Studies and Mind, Brain, & Behaviour from Bard College (2018), a MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts: Performance and Decolonial Praxis from Goddard College (2025) and is currently a PhD Candidate in Film and Literature — University of Essex (2026).
context:
Elena became involved with Kontekst after learning about the organisation from a friend. The publication and festival, as well as the broader collaborative ethos, appealed to them.
KONTEKST:
2025: joined the collective.
PROJECTS:
unknown sound collective (2019-ongoing)
video, film, sound, photography, poetry · length varies · global project · mostly in English
Multimedia international collaborations, of sound, moving image, and digital mapping compilations. Each album approximately an hour. Also directed and filmed several short and one feature length narrative film (“The Death of a Poet” ~2 hours) based on scripted manuscript with the help of numerous collaborators as actors and performers.
Released with numerous labels including Nazlo Records (Tbilisi) and no slack records (Seoul) and Etxe (DC).
View project here.
books (2013-ongoing)
poetry and prose · poetry 6k words, prose 3k words · USA and Zimbabwe · English
Poetry books about a range of topics; prose book: the poem-as-novel is structured by the unknown schedule of the trains, much as the protagonist’s life is, the focus is not on the railroad itself, but rather the world as is arranged in a series of sharp scenes through his uncompromising eye: murders, love affairs, lost children. His world is clearer and more fragmented somehow than ours, given his pathological contextlessness.
Published by small presses such as AllBooks Books, Coffeehouse Press, Transcendent Zero, Pen & Anvil, Shoe Music; featured on Project MUSE and African Books Collective. Also published in over 100 literary & scholarly journals.
View project here.
EVENTS:
Producer and archiver:
WGXC Wavefarm Radio Transmission Arts shows
Summer 2022 · Remote, Global
Installations and shows at DIY venues and radio internationally. “unknown sounds.” Multimedia installations have been shown through Europe, Asia, Middle East, and across the US and Canada; most recently: liebig12 and oqbo gallery (Berlin), Lakeside Theatre (Colchester), raw material and ufospace (Beijing), vokshod (almaty), aurora (Budapest), bar ce (Riga), Rhizome (DC), fabrica (Sofia), h0l0 (Queens), Howling Live and Banjul (Seoul), Tune Hostel (Hakodate), the studio (Laconia), Pauly’s (Albany), superhappyfunland (Houston), ghost and etiquette, yellow house (Santa Fe), Omnihum (Taos), Noisefest (Sacramento), Record Shop (Lubbock), Deep Thoughts (Boston), Olympia Cafe (Paris), sound pony (Tulsa), the farm (Seattle), and on various radio stations including Santa Fe Public Radio, CiTR, Kota Radio, Radio Kingston, Provo Free Radio (2019-Present).
Learn more about the events here.