Currently based in Vancouver and the Fraser Valley. Living in East Van (north).
Helena Krobath is a self-described effective weirdo. She holds an MA in Media Studies from Concordia and a BA in Communications from Simon Fraser University, where she was awarded the Dean’s Convocation Medal for her graduating class. She was born in Matsqui and grew up in Mission and Abbotsford, BC. Her family immigrated from various parts of Eastern Europe to Manitoba and British Columbia in the 1930s and 1950s. She lives in Vancouver, in the unceded and occupied territory of the səl̓ílwətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations.
Helena takes keen interest in how information is created and communicated. Her fieldwork in places like ports, roadways, and recreational nature zones investigates how infrastructures, sensory tuning, and narrative frameworks co-construct place. She is interested in local information systems and engagement with political realities.
Her art practices incorporate radio arts, electroacousic composition, photography, painting and drawing, writing, and live spatial practices such as soundwalking. Her work plays with multidimensional relations between matter, spaces, and entities, exploring the formation of worlds through shifting boundaries.
Helena writes for various contexts, has exhibited video work at the Feminist Media Studio, and composed a soundscape for Echos and Reflections: A co-located audio mapping exchange hosted by the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster University. She regularly collaborates on soundwalks and interactive events with Vancouver New Music and Vancouver Soundwalk Collective and published the Journal of Design and Culture’s first audio-essay in their special issue on COVID-19 (exploring political economic dimensions of “sheltering in place” through changing soundscapes of East Vancouver). She created audio artwork for Arts Assembly (Ghost Story Commute) and New Adventures in Sound Art’s Deep Wireless 14 festival and Sound Travels (I dreamt this was my home; Surveillance Hatchlings First Flight) and sound design for Frank Theatre (Be-Longing).
Helena has taught workshops on sound, sensory observation, and field recording, including working with Megaphone Magazine writers in a pilot project presenting the Voices of the Street literary anthology in podcast form (release pending); developing audio skills training with members of Our World Language/Nuxalk Radio’s 2020 audio mentorship program; designing/facilitating VIVO’s 2019 podcast construction mentorship telling Vancouver Housing Stories; and supporting environmentally-engaged audio art creation in VIVO’s 2018 mentorship, Still Creek Salmon Sounds. She has given presentations with the Simone de Beauvoir Institute, CiTR 101.9 FM (UBC), the Feminist Media Studio, Vancouver Podcast Festival, and more. She has co-hosted and produced episodes of the Soundscape Show on Vancouver Co-op Radio and volunteers with Vancouver Tenants Union
Contact Me
Available for: project collaboration, communications consulting, educational coaching, creative education, editing, writing, research, and project organizing
Helena.Marie.Krobath[at]gmail[dot]com