2022
PROGRAMME
Rewire 2022 Festival App
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Contents 2 Introduction CONTEXT 6 Meredith Monk: “Go as far into your dream as possible and find your own unique voice” 12 bela on the nongak music that inspired them 16 Ziúr: An ear for change 20 Anders Hana & Morten Joh on the Norwegian folk music that inspired Naaljos Ljom 24 Lost in conversation: Mabe Fratti embraces misunderstanding 28 FUJI|||||||||||TA on the traditional music that inspired him 30 34 46 60
MUSIC PROGRAMME Thursday 7 April Friday 8 April Saturday 9 April Sunday 10 April
DISCOURSE 75 AFFECT w/ Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta 78 RITUAL w/ Katía Truijen 80 Turn it up! Bring the noise! 84
FILM PROGRAMME
90
SPECIAL EVENTS
PRACTICAL 111 General Festival Info 112 Venues 114 Credits
Introduction Welcome to Rewire 2022, an edition that has known many different scenarios before being able to settle in this definite, COVID-19 restriction- free, format. Rewire is excited by the prospect of presenting a full festival edition in The Hague — for the first time in three years — that reunites audiences and artists from all over the world. Rewire is once again taking over the city centre for its 11th edition; presenting forward-thinking and genre-bending music across a diverse range of venues. The latest addition to the festival’s locations is Amare, a new cultural hotspot for performing arts in The Hague. The Rewire 2022 programme consists of more than 150 individual events including numerous (inter)national premieres, newly commissioned performances, live concerts, an exhibition of sound art works, an extensive discourse programme, film screenings, and even the return of late-night clubbing. For its 2022 edition, Rewire is proud to welcome Meredith Monk for a multi-day focus programme. The world-renowned composer, singer and interdisciplinary artist is recognised as one of the most influential names in contemporary music and performing arts. On each day of the festival, Meredith Monk will be presenting works, including a concert version of “Cellular Songs” with her acclaimed Vocal Ensemble, several films, an artist talk and together with the celebrated ensemble Bang on a Can All-Stars, Monk will perform “MEMORY GAME”. 4 — Introduction
Meredith Monk’s impact on vocalisation and performance can be traced throughout the Rewire 2022 programme. Whether it’s Marina Herlop’s playful and experimental music that evokes the unpredictable vocal treatments of Monk, or Stine Janvin & Ula Sickle’s ‘Echoic Choir’ relying on the power of acoustic voices and spatial resonance. Tarta Relena’s self-described “progressive Gregorian”, traversing the depths of traditional vocal music; M Lamar’s powerful, operatic countertenor voice or Eartheater flexing a three-octave vocal range, all of these artists embody the passion for experimentation and self-expression that Meredith Monk has long evoked. Challenging the notions of what we perceive as electronic and acoustic music is the performance of “100 Cymbals”, a composition by the Japanese luminary of synthetic music Ryoji Ikeda performed by Les Percussions de Strasbourg. Employing ten percussionists in a geometrical set-up consisting of one hundred cymbals, the typically percussive instrument suddenly becomes a site of harmonic tension, producing alluring and hypnotic sounds that verge on droning synthesisers. Rewire is also proud to present Indonesian composer Dewa Alit and his ensemble Gamelan Salukat. Dewa Alit’s work is grounded in the tradition of Balinese Gamelan; however, he approaches this tradition not as something static, but as a set of concepts and principles that can be used to create something radically new. Alit will present music at Rewire that will inhabit precisely this space between the familiar and the invigoratingly unheard, and highlight Gamelan’s connections to electronic music.
venue Amare. The exhibition consists of The Rewire 2022 programme combines new and old musical traditions, uncover- eleven performances and (sound-)artworks ing new sonic worlds through a series of that temporarily inhabit and activate the artists heavily influenced by the music multi-layered foyers and the surrounding heritage of their home country. The South- streets. Korean musician bela has found a way to The 2022 discourse programme contranspose sheet music of Nongak, a tradi- tinues the exploration of the wider context tional form of Korean folk music, into rivet- surrounding the performances and proing power electronics that breaks through jects presented at Rewire. Returning as an conventional rhythmic patterns and tempo in-person festival, it’s been necessary to limitations. Debit dives deeper into the or- consider the systems, routines and pracigins of Mexican music. Using machine tices that have been in place and how learning, she revitalises whistles, ocarinas, these have changed or been paused; the flutes and other wind instruments from way audiences gathered and felt familiar, the archives of the Mayan Studies Insti- and how, for many, this feeling of closetute and instils them with a sense of ur- ness and community may now feel strange gency. Japanese sound artist FUJI|||||||||||TA and take time to regain. This has resulted built a unique pipe organ with eleven into three thematic sections; RITUAL, cupipes, a blacksmith’s air pump and no key- rated in collaboration with media reboard. Intended to evoke rich landscapes searcher and musician Katía Truijen, funcinspired by the Japanese classical form tions as a multitude of compositions for gagaku. Dasom Baek uses various looping cohesion and community. AFFECT, created techniques to breathe new life into tradi- in collaboration with scholar and curator tional Korean woodwind instruments such Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta, explores how the notion of affect can help us unas the Daegeum, Sogeum and Saenghwang. Her contemporary approach to these tra- derstand the sensorial and emotional relationship we have to sound and music. ditional instruments can be mesmerising, NOISE, in collaboration with urban regripping, soothing or unsettling. Naaljos Ljom unlocks the microtonal potential hid- searcher Caroline Claus and Leiden’s Proden in their source material of Norwegian fessor of Auditory Culture and Music Philo folk music, mixing it with aspects of elec- sophy, Marcel Cobussen, challenges us to tronic music, resulting in spirited pieces consider — and reconsider — what the term that subvert our expectation of what the “noise” means and what it does. distinction between analogue and electronic should sound like. The artists and projects discussed here are Rewire 2022 will also premiere newly just a few of this year’s festival highlights. commissioned works, including immersive On the following pages you will find a audiovisual performances by Helm & Nate complete guide to the Rewire 2022 programme, although after two years of panBoyce, Slikback X Weirdcore, Myxomy demic: all things are subject to change. (James Ginzburg & Ziúr), Mint Park & Quiet Download our festival app or check the Ensemble, and Soyun Park & Wellgoodness. website for updates. A collaboration between bass clarinettist Joachim Badenhorst and electronic musician Roman Hiele and the meditative Buzz We wish you an incredibly inspiring festival! Bike from Kaffe Matthews. Proximity Music: Sensing After Thought is a playful and interdisciplinary exhibition taking place in and around the new cultural Introduction — 5
CON TEXT
Meredith Monk
“Go as far into your dream as possible and find your own unique voice”
Written by Liz Aubrey for the Quietus
Meredith Monk greets me warmly from her apartment in New York Tribeca’s district — the same apartment she’s lived in since 1972, along with her beloved tortoise, Neutron. The artist, whose practice spans extended vocal improvisation, composition, piano, art, dance, film and drama, is in a reflective mood. Monk turns 80 this year and the occasion has afforded the prolific performer time to look back — but it’s not something she likes
to do too often or for too long, she quickly points out, tugging on her signature pigtail plaits. “I’m still more interested in what I’m working on now,” she laughs, explaining she’s currently busy in rehearsals for her upcoming appearance at Rewire. “The thing that’s interesting to me is that the ideas are still coming, which is all I ever wanted. I wanted to keep on working until I leave this planet and I feel very lucky that I’m still doing that. My mind is still very fertile.” Context — 9
Since 1965, Monk has been tirelessly creating and evolving her art. She was a pioneer of what is now called “extended voice technique”, but when Monk first began experimenting with her voice in the sixties, the practice didn’t yet have a name. It involves the use of her voice as a singular instrument for communication, making music that sounds as primordial as it does futuristic. She conveys feelings with phonetic devices like howls, gasps, clicks, trills, whispers and yodels to create emotive sonic soundscapes that tell stories without the need for words. While her work that has influenced everyone from David Byrne to Brian Eno and Björk earned her a Grammy nomination and a Medal of Arts from former US President Barack Obama, she says starting out with this technique in the sixties wasn’t easy and required a lot of nerve: she spent a decade largely in isolation, honing her craft. “My experience at that time was pretty alone,” Monk explains. “But maybe lonely in a good sense of the word because looking back on it, I’m happy that I did have loneliness because I had to go deep inside the human voice. Up until that point, I’d been doing complex pieces that included other forms like gesture and image and I was still looking for that emotional centre to my work.” It was a challenging time, Monk recalls, saying there were long periods of silences while ideas slowly formed. “We’re all frightened of space, aren’t we?” she says. “But these periods of what I call the desert, I realised eventually they needed to be nurtured. I had a period where I thought I’d never have a new idea again. I was quite depressed.” Monk says she discovered a book by New York socialite Mabel Dodge Luhan, Winter In Taos, that helped. Mabel moved to New Mexico with her Native American husband 10 — Context
and noticed how quiet her husband’s community became over winter. “Asking her husband why that was, he said: ‘Mother nature needs to rest in order to come forth’ and that helped me so much to not be fighting those times where it seemed like ideas weren’t happening. It’s a nurturing period to let those ideas come forth when they’re ready to come forth. You have to respect those periods. Inspiration comes when it comes.” When inspiration did arrive, “it was an incredible moment”, Monk recalls, when she discovered the power of the voice, something she calls “the first instrument”. “It became the centre of my work and then everything kind of bloomed from that. I’d always made interdisciplinary works, but it took a number of years to find the core amid the mosaic, the ideas.” Monk was from a musical family — her mother and grandfather were singers — and part of her time in isolation was also about figuring out where she stood artistically within that heritage too. “Music was and is like a river in my life, the music is the driving force,” Monk begins. “Coming from a singer’s family, it was such an incredible feeling on one hand coming back to my bloodline and on another hand knowing that I’d found my place in my own way. To find your place in a family like that is not always easy.” Monk eventually combined her vocal expressions with movement and image, something she also charts back to her family. As a youngster, Monk suffered from a visual impairment called strabismus, a condition that led to issues with physical coordination. Her family sent her to classes in ‘Dalcroze Eurhythmics’, a programme that combined music and dance to aid movement. Monk thinks this is why she always saw music “so visually” and why she ultimately built performances that added in
more visual elements. “I love films. Films get me from one day to the next and if I’m inspired by anything, its films. I’m a real movie buff,” she smiles. It’s perhaps no surprise that filmmakers love Monk’s work too, connecting with the combined visual and sonic elements in her work. Filmmakers as varied as Terrence Malick, Jean-Luc Godard and the Coen brothers have all used her music in their films. She laughs recalling the Coen brothers using her track Walking Song in The Big Lebowski to soundtrack a naked Maud Lebowski (played by Julianne Moore), swinging over The Dude (Jeff Bridges) to throw paint at a canvas. “I thought it was just terrific”, Monk laughs. “Another person that used my music who I love was Terrence Malick. I feel like he uses music in such a beautiful way. I think his way is more of a collage,” she says, relating it to her own style of creating art out of disparate elements. “It was just such a wonderful experience, working with him.” Film is also important to Monk for keeping visual reminders of her work for when she comes back to revisit performances: keeping a score of her vocal sounds is a complicated affair and not something she’s often keen to do. Many of her transcriptions resemble seismic voice graphs used by phoneticians to help identify voice patterns. “I am leery about the scoring process,” she smiles, half-grimacing. “I still have a very hard time with scores. I just feel that my music exists between the bar lines or just underneath the bar-lines. With my singers, we work viscerally and sometimes we do use scores as mnemonic devices, but I basically try to get away from the papers as quickly as I can because I do think it’s an extra step where you’re memorising it visually rather than kinetically. I think of [what I do existing] more in the oral tradition.”
That oral tradition comes from the folk music Monk gravitated to as a young woman when she moved back to New York in 1964 (she was born there in 1942). She says that her return, plus the grittier mood of the city back then, bled into her work. “It was a wonderful time to move to New York,” Monk says, recalling her time in “a teeny, little attic apartment” in the West Village and later Great James Street, which was “pretty rough in those days”. “I loved the loft there, but it was like La Bohème with six flights of rickety stairs. One spark and that entire place would have gone.” She was burgled multiple times. “I’d come home, and my vacuum cleaner would be gone one day, something else the next!” After growing tired of carrying her electric organ and amplifier up six flights of stairs daily — and being robbed — she moved to her current apartment: she says the area was very different to the cosmopolitan centre it is now. “This neighbourhood back then was so obscure that nobody even knew where it was, but the city had an edgy quality to it and I think you can hear that on my first album, Key. It reflected life in New York at that time. Edwin Denby [dance critic and poet who worked with Orson Welles] heard it and said this is like Manhattan folk music,” she says, explaining how the influences around her — from the sounds of the poets and folk artists playing bohemian coffee shops, to the experimental art of the Downtown scene — found its way into her work. Monk says New York at that time helped her to be bolder in a multi-disciplinary sense too. “The Downtown world was more experimental with artists there exploring different mediums. The poets were making music, the artists were exploring movement, and everyone was just going across the board of various art forms. I think at a certain point, people went back Context — 11
to their original art forms but with the added knowledge of what they had found elsewhere. It was a huge time of expansiveness. I was very supported by the generation ahead of me, the Fluxus, people who were older than me like Dick Higgins and Jackson Mac Low. Even though they saw my artform was going to be very different, they saw a kindred spirit, really trying to weave together everything. They were fearless and that was inspiring.” Some of Monk’s early work from that time touched on the political, like much of the folk scene were also doing, but it became much more apparent in later works like science-fiction opera The Games and her meditation on fascism, The Quarry. She says looking back at her old work recently, she was struck by how many of the messages still resonate, especially in light of Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine. “It was very interesting to go back to some of this material, but I don’t think I would’ve done it if it didn’t feel so relevant. I think The Games was very prescient, especially during the Trump period but one could say this period as well. I think it is very prescient of the dark forces that are changing our world right now and I think these things are spirallic. From the late seventies until the early eighties, I was very concerned with reflecting the society that I was living in, art as a kind of reflection and then at that point, after The Games, I realised maybe that’s not that useful.” Monk’s later compositions took an about turn, offering opportunities for audiences to re-imagine the world in which we live to see “the possibility of transformation” as she terms it, in order to create a better world. “I’d rather work on art as a healing force rather than a mirroring force because I think that there’s a lot of people now that are doing very overtly political work,” she explains. “I always wanted to do 12 — Context
poetic work because I’m not analytical like say Brecht was. I feel like I can do more by continuing to offer experiences for people where they remember their basic goodness.” In her recent trilogy of works, Oh Behalf Of Nature, Cellular Songs and Indra’s Nest, Monk offers a meditation on our relationship with the natural world that encourages listeners to visualise a more connected world: one where people are kinder to one another and to the planet. They manage to be subversively political while also poetic, seemingly marrying Monk’s earlier and later artistic selves. The works are also preoccupied with death too, the voice as the last instrument now. Monk says the death of her partner caused her to reflect on the cyclic nature of the voice. “When my partner was dying, I would be at the hospital, every day, singing for hours. I’d be singing everything I could think of, everything I ever wrote, every folk song I knew. She was in a coma, and I felt like my voice was a beacon where you know no matter where her consciousness was, she would hear that. The voice cuts through everything and it’s so fundamental to us, it’s so deeply connected to the human heart.” Monk says the fragility of life felt more apparent to her in the last few years, the combined effect of losing her partner, the pandemic and her own increasing age. She’s having lots of thoughts right now of how to “pass on” her difficult-to-pindown catalogue of vocal sounds, how to write her “memoirs” and how, she smiles, she is “now like, gee, I’m warming up for almost as long as the concert lasts. . . my DNA has caught up a little bit!” She’s also been ruminating on art and whether or not it can survive the detriment of the last two years. “I was having some dark thoughts during the pandemic like will art be essential? Will people appreciate how essential
it is? Will they get so used to the screen that live performances will disappear?” Monk was relieved to be back on stage recently and is currently in the middle of rehearsals for her first UK and European shows since 2013, including Rewire where she is performing Memory Game — a collection drawn from nine of her different theatrical productions that span 1983 — 2006 — and Cellular Songs, her most recent work from 2018. “Nothing substitutes for the live experience, nothing, because energy is very real,” she says, still on a high from a recent performance of Duet Behaviour with long-term friend and collaborator John Hollenbeck. They’d done an online version of the show during lockdown, but Monk says it wasn’t the same. “Watching performances on screens is so flat, you don’t really get the energy that you get in live performance, the energy that just stays with the audience and the performer for a long time afterwards,” Monk says. “With a screen, it’s just, well, over and then it just kind of goes into the garbage pail with all the other online shows. Live performance seems to stay with people for much longer.”
in her work to others. “Some of the Radiohead songs I feel I could’ve written. The first song on Kid A [‘Everything In Its Right Place’] I feel like I could’ve written. The piano chords in that, reminds me so much of my own music in a way,” she says. Björk is another artist where Monk can see touchstones. Björk has spoken about Monk’s influence on her work previously and Monk recently revealed the pair are in frequent contact. Looking forward, Monk says she has no plans for any big birthday celebrations: she just wants to keep creating. She is happy, though, that a box set of all her recordings is being released this autumn to coincide with her birthday milestone. Listeners will be able to hear all her vocal work in one place for the first time. “I hope that it encourages people to stay curious,” she says of her body of work. “And to not be afraid. Go as far into your dream as possible and find your own unique voice. Be guided by your voice.” This article is produced by The Quietus
“The live performance experience is so vulnerable — we are all in the same moment. We’re all in the now together, the performers and the audience, and so there’s a kind of exchange of energy, an interaction. I think in my case, by not using words, or using them very sparingly, it becomes even more of a direct, relatable experience for everyone — and the possibility of transformation there is powerful.” In between preparing for her upcoming live shows, working on another album and art installation, Monk says she still listens avidly to music when not creating. She’s a huge Radiohead fan — “I love them, they’re my favourites!” — and enjoys seeing connections Context — 13
bela on the nongak music that inspired them
“I want to truly celebrate being queer with this music. And I want to see how this music can take on different forms.”
On their most recent EP Guidelines, the South Korean producer and performer bela has found a mesmerising way to transpose traditional nongak sheet music to frantic electronic music that borders on radical club music and power electronics. “I embraced the contemporary club culture because the aux cord is shared now.” The past gets warped into grotesque and overwhelming club music on Guidelines, the most recent EP by the South Korean producer bela. The main inspiration for their rhythmically agile and stylistically bold music has been South Korean nongak music. In a correspondence over mail, the producer — set to make their European debut during Rewire — dives deeper into the historic roots of their forward-thinking electronic music. Context — 15
Could you explain what nongak music is and how it has inspired your work? “nongak is a traditional music that connects to the rich history of Sadangpae, vagabond groups of musicians and entertainers that travelled and performed the art of ‘pungmul’ all over the Korean peninsula. It incorporates choreography and traditional beliefs, customs and rituals that would inhabit ancient agricultural fields to accompany life, death, and celebration of common people. Luckily, during the post-war reconstruction of South Korea, some pioneers and researchers archived and gathered the old ways to introduce it to a new audience under government support. It made it into the modern classrooms thanks to their huge effort and I got the chance to learn it within the public education system. You can even see nongak in the Korean media when there’s something to celebrate, like on national holidays. It’s a part of being a Korean person. Growing up queer, I sensed how pungmul and its little cultural aspects are deeply rooted in the patriarchy of Confucianism and its troubles. Questions about identity formed and lingered in my mind, until I decided to tackle those ideas in a musical form.” What aspects of nongak initially at tracted you to studying it? “One year at school, I had to perform something at a talent show. Everybody else played boring recorders, but I was different. I had a close friend who offered to teach me how to play janggu and I did it! That was 17 years ago. I didn’t pursue music professionally then — I’m a media major. I even forgot everything about janggu before I dipped back into nongak. It was through the scope of club music that I saw big potential in its beats, because some phrases are very suitable for a nightclub frenzy. It’s so fast and energetic, yet so simple! I hope that more musicians will actually bring these beats to their music, and not just the traditional instru16 — Context
ment samples as they often do in these orientalism-tinged productions.” What was the process like of familiariz ing yourself and gaining mastery over this form of music? “Oh. . . my music is the farthest from mastery! I may be dabbing into its shallow waters, making small ripples. Anyway, watching YouTube videos of ensemble performances in samulnori and nongak gives you such energy, and then when you hit the jeongganbo — music notation invented by none other than Sejong the Great himself — , you flinch because it just has this cut pieces of phrases in pictures and says ‘repeat.’ It’s kind of like jazz sheet music. So, I’m lost... but I’m also happy at the same time, because I have the know-how to put the music into MIDI blocks. I knew how it should sound, I knew how to read the sheet music, but I didn’t know how to actually play it. I believe that gave me the headspace to make something different and unique.” How do you think your modern practice of reinterpreting nongak relates to or diverges from its traditional roots? “I feel confident about the rhythm, because it is more fixed, but at the same time it has the potential to be jammed and experimented with. From there I build my own narrative of sound. I fill in the gaps between the beats with melodies and sound textures that verges away from the traditional instruments. What I tried to achieve through the Guidelines EP was purely musical, put out of its original context. I had to reinvent the picture, mainly because I am disconnected from the old value system. Sadangpaes were treated as the lowest of the social ranks. Those who played nongak music used to be segregated from society on different levels. Now their art is taught all around the country and it is a legitimate career path. However, the sense of disregard is still strong in the collective subconsciousness. Being a musician is still
considered to be one of the worst paths to this day. Parents cry to stop you from pursuing weird music other than classical and K-Pop. I am owning that. I embraced the contemporary club culture because the aux cord is shared now. I want to truly celebrate being queer with this music. And I want to see how this music can take on different forms. In that sense, I fell away from the traditions.” What are the challenges and possibili ties of translating your work to a live setting? “Recently, someone in the Korean traditional music scene suggested including nongak performers in my set. There are plenty of actual nongak performers who could perform perfect nongak for you, but I’m still in the process of learning how to reach out to people, which will allow me to explore such methods of collaboration. For now, I perform alone. It’s only recently, among the comfort of supportive friends from similar backgrounds, that I realized that I am driven by anger when I make sounds. Now that I found a reason behind my creative process, I could start finding ways to express it in a performance. Now it is quite clear: I grab a mic and a multi-effector and I show people my best anger through the medium of computer and voice. Of course, I dream of composing works for professional performers. One day, perhaps, when they’re ready!”
Context — 17
Ziúr
by Bouke Mekel (whirlnl)
An ear for change
In Berlin, Punk artist Ziúr grew into the authentic sound manipulator she now is, both in the studio and behind the CDs— always seeking out and pushing at boundaries. She’s played Rewire before, back in 2018, and now she’s back with a double- header of performances: as part of duo Myxomy and in a multimedia collective with dancer Kianí del Valle and video artist Sander Houtkruijer.
Ziúr grew up in a provincial town where she started teaching herself how to make punk music: putting her versatile voice to good use as a singer, enthusiastically charging into the crowd and rolling around on the floor. She was afraid of not being good enough to contribute when using musical instruments, and was also never given the chance. When, years later, she did finally have a go at drums and guitar it turned out that, even if she couldn’t play a perfect Jimi Hendrix solo, she most certainly could produce a shedload of creative guitar sounds. She started to write more and more numbers and, through her interactions with sound engineering she eventually came into contact with the world of sound manipulation through digital audio editing system Logic. She developed further as an electronic artist and DJ after moving to cultural hotbed Berlin. As a newcomer, she was struck by the conformist attitude of the Berlin squatting scene, and decided she no longer wanted to be
part of a punk scene that demanded adherence to a particular set of codes. She felt she was not being understood or appreciated, but eventually came across kindred spirits including Aïsha Devi, James Ginzburg, Slikback and Elvin Brandhi, with whom she was able to enter into projects with complete freedom. During the recent period dominated by the coronavirus pandemic — aptly described by a friend of hers as “the chewing gum years” — she spent a lot of time in her studio perfecting her unique audio world on four albums and several EPs. She is currently working on what she calls her “jazz album”, which has a key role for rototoms. Her EP Now Now (2021), which was created spontaneously in just 27 hours, is exemplary of her oeuvre: her voice, comforting and melodic on Bleak, flows beautifully through the shocking evolutions of her emotion-drenched soundscapes. OG Context — 19
Ziúr’s “headstrong, mature” punk approach and love of sound manipulation make up major pillars of her work. When I ask her about her influences, at first she has difficulty coming up with an answer: “Well, not that noisy construction site outside, that’s for sure.” But just a little later, she comes up with a convincing reply: “My faithful salad bowl is for sure one of my influences, for years now. And I recently made some recordings with packing tape. It was the end of the roll and it made all kinds of nice, rhythmic ‘tshwop’ sounds when I pulled on it, also in the low frequencies.” The sound of strips of tape being ripped off a table comes through the Skype connection. “This roll of tape is the OG (Original Gangster).” It’s an organic sound that creates a whole sonic world of its own; a characteristic ingredient that corresponds to Ziúr’s surprising way of cooking: new alchemistic elements are constantly bubbling to the surface in her layered work full of distorted samples — at times hard and explosive, at others softer and more flowing. And the same applies to her working process. “I don’t really have a work routine. It goes in waves. Sometimes I’ll work for really long stretches, hours at a time during a short period; then I have normally have to spend a few weeks finding myself again. It ebbs and flows.” A similar dynamic characterises her collaborations. Her recent intensive cooperation with James Ginzburg (of Emptyset) under the name Myxomy — their first official collaborative performance will be at Rewire, with lighting design by Theresa Baumgartner — is built on mutual musical challenges. She knew Ginzburg already from previous collaborations, including through his Bristol- and Berlin-based label Subtext. Last year on their debut record Myxomy they created a mix of pop and experimental electronics by expanding on one another’s work. It was also Ginzburg who introduced Ziúr to young Vietnamese multimedia collective Ră’ n Cạp Đuôi Collective. She worked as a 20 — Context
co-producer on the record Ngủ Ngày Ngay Ngày Tnâ. Thê’ (2021), giving the world an insight into the experimental scene in Ho Chi Minh City.
Weightless
So in recent times, Ziúr was forced to spend a lot of time in the studio, though rays of light appeared on those occasions when the lockdown rules were temporarily relaxed, allowing the stage goddess in her to get out and play. “I don’t make my music for people, but I give them an opportunity to understand what I do, and to enjoy it. I give myself completely at every show. There are moments when I lose myself in the music and there’s a connection with the audience: then we’ve come full circle. At moments like these, I feel weightless and free, and I feel an immense oneness.” One such moment came at her tribal performance in Kraftwerk Berlin with dancer Kianí del Valle and video artist Sander Houtkruijer last October, during Berlin audio-visual arts festival Atonal. “That was magical, the energy was good and I saw people grinning — just for a while they didn’t need to wear a mask. That was one of the highlights of my life.” This collaboration came about when Kianí del Valle invited Ziúr to attend dance rehearsals to see whether she could quickly come up with music for one of her pieces. This was the first time that Ziúr was moved by dance, and she clicked immediately with Del Valle. When Ziúr was then not given the assignment after all, the two of them decided to take the time to work together on a new project. They entered into a deeper emotional relationship that allowed them to create art with complete freedom; to feel instead of to think. Sander Houtkruijer had known Ziúr for a while already. The basis for their current cooperation dates back ten years, to the time they met on the street and made a plan to make a video together. Now, finally, there is a video to accompany the perfor-
In her DJ sets, peerlessly and taking lots of risks, Ziúr threads together several audio streams. The Beat-Sync function makes it possible to synchronise the speed and pitch of up to four CDJ players. She likes to use this as it gives her the opportunity to focus more on other aspects of the music. “What I find more problematic, and what almost no one is talking about, is the quantize button, which forces you to work in four-four time. I find this limiting, because I want more rhythmic possibilities.” She also denounces the toxic atmosphere that can sometimes arise in discussions of what a good DJ is, and in the focus on how you should use the technology. “People think up all kinds of rules for how you should live your life, or for how you should DJ. The reason they do this is to exercise power over others, so a dynamic is set up where they know how to DJ and you don’t. This excludes other perspectives, while it is these in particular that are really valuable. There are probably loads of people who have tens of thousands of Euros ’worth of equipment and are condescending about a kid with a ripped version of Ableton who doesn’t know how to use the pre-sets, but who does make the sickest numbers. It’s like Daniel Johnston, who was able to write the most sublime songs with really simple guitar playing. Like those people in the ‘Make America Great Again’ caps, they are clinging to their position of power and are scared of change, which of course is inevitable.”
think it’s important not to stand still, to keep on looking for new boundaries. I want to be surprised, to enter into confrontation with new things. If I keep on hearing the same thing, I get bored. I want to listen to new things, and I actively go looking for them. I am not going to get comfortably entrenched in a safe position. For example, a while ago I listened to the new album by The Weeknd. A record that is smart and flawlessly produced and getting five-star reviews, but in my opinion lacks an emotional foundation that allows you to be transported.” In the current hit parades, authentic musicians trying to capture the zeitgeist in their own way are hard to find. “These days, most artists want fame above all else, instead of to make art for art’s sake or to get something out of themselves. I think this is a sad and dangerous development. But I do understand that people want to belong and don’t want to be bullied for standing up for their own ideas and opinions.” Ziúr then tackles the subject of how an attempt is being made in contemporary culture to be inclusive, to ensure that more diverse opinions and people from different communities are heard. “For example, diversity is a buzzword at the moment. Suddenly loads of people think diversity is important, but they don’t really know why they should be striving for it. They don’t realise how truly beautiful it is to bring people with different opinions and backgrounds together around the table and learn from one another’s differences.” The result of this interpersonal and emotional hybridisation and cross-pollination can be heard in Ziúr’s work; hopefully, this will mean that more people pick up an ear for change.
Diversity
This article appeared in Gonzo (circus) #168
mance and Houtkruijer is working on new music videos, working — like the others — with an obsessive eye for detail. For their performance at Rewire, the three artists will continue where they left off at the Atonal show.
Four-four time
The urge to force a change can be heard in Ziúr’s music, which throws you from one emotion to another in a wild maelstrom. “I
Context — 21
Anders Hana and Morten Joh on the Norwegian folk music that informed Naaljos Ljom
“We had no choice but to start working together again”
Diving into the seams of Norwegian folk music, Anders Hana and Morten Joh as Naaljos Ljom unlock the harmonious potential hidden in their source material. For their new musical project, they turned to archives of traditional Norwegian folk and stumbled upon a treasure trove of microtonal melodies, nearly forgotten instruments and intoxicating rhythms. “We found music we had never heard before, with revelation-like astonishment.” Context — 23
Anders Hana and Morten Joh previously played in noisy and rambunctious musical outfits like MoHa!, Ultralyd and N.M.O.. Their most recent project Naaljos Ljom takes a different course and is heavily informed by their shared discovery of traditional Norwegian folk music in various archives around the country, including The National Library of Norway. Suddenly, they stumbled on a treasure trove of microtonal melodies, nearly forgotten instruments and intoxicating rhythms; captivating music that defies the usual conventions of scale, pitch and harmony. It has set the prolific musicians on a path to translate these musical gems to a more contemporary project with modern instruments like guitars, synthesizers, drum computers and tape echoes. How has the heritage of traditional Norwegian folk inspired your work? “A big part of Norwegian folk music consists of melodic material played over a stamped rhythm, and was used as dance music. Traditional instruments are the Hardanger fiddle, violin, mouth harp, willow flute, langeleik (a sort of droned zither) and voice. Various drums have also been played, but this tradition died out a long time ago. Traditionally the music has been performed solo. The melodies have travelled from region to region and have been filtered through the different characteristics of each area. Therefore, there are many different ways of playing each melody. Contrary to the folk music in Sweden, where the shadow of functional harmony is more present, this is less apparent in the Norwegian music. When listening to old archive recordings, one can tell that the tonality is partly influenced by the harmonic series, but also by incorporating an array of neutral intervals forming mixed and ‘neutral’ scales. This has changed with time and it has become more customary to interpret the old scales either to a minor or major scale. Eivind Groven, who was a folk musician and a music theorist, suggested already in 24 — Context
the 1920s that one should use intonation just as a tool to approximate the vast number of scales and pitches, instead of filtering everything through the European classical 12 equal temperament, in which most of the pitches from the traditional music would then be seen as deviations. All the music we currently play as Naaljos Ljom is in one way or another derived from archive recordings obtained at various archives around the country, including at The National Library of Norway.” What aspects of the music initially at tracted you to studying it? “The discovery of the Norwegian folk music archives and the old tonalities they conceal was a determining factor. It was a period of suddenly finding a lot of music we had never heard before, with revelation-like astonishment. Five years after we stopped working together in the noisier bands MoHa! and Ultralyd, we had both on separate ends found microtonality and intonation to be potential fields of interest. It was at that point we realized the aforementioned Eivind Groven was a pioneer in the field and also a folk musician. Somehow, we had no choice but to start working together again and began an intense study of this music.” What was the process like of familiariz ing yourself and gaining mastery over it? “At first, there was a lot of listening to the archive recordings, then there was the process of analysing scales and pitches from different tunes and players, figuring out how to generate these pitches from an analogue synth, making a microtonal guitar and obtaining a langeleik with adjustable frets (developed by Niels and Anders Røine). We have also started playing Hardanger fiddle in order to get a feel for the music on a traditional instrument and in such a way improve the translation to other instruments. Anders also went to learn mouth harp playing from traditional performers
in Setesdal. You could say we are still at the stage of familiarizing ourselves with it, but we cannot say we have gained mastery over it yet (if ever...). Though the way we practice the material is not unlike the way we have worked together earlier, especially in MoHa!: by repeating small phrases or cells over and over again.”
lot of time tuning on stage—so in that sense we follow the guidelines.”
How do you think your modern trans lation of Norwegian folk relates to or diverges from its traditional roots? “We are trying to use pitches and scales that we have found in archive recordings. The electronic rhythms we use derive from the stamped rhythm. We try to play the melodies as close to the material as possible, most of the time. The traditional music was used as dance music in the old days and we try to further develop this concept. It diverges in the sense that we use modern instruments such as synths, guitars, drum machines and tape echo. We also sometimes filter the tunes through other scales than used in the source material. We are using other registers; we can play the melody in a much slower tempo or use a subdivision grouping other than that of the main beat.” What are the challenges and possibili ties of translating your work to a live setting? “In principle, all our material is already translated into a live setting as we work out the forms together and rehearse repeatedly to be able to play them — our first release was more or less all recorded live. Of course, in a live setting on stage we could potentially extend the durations and allow for some unforeseen things to happen, especially if audience members decide they want to dance. One challenging element is changing between the different tunings rapidly between the individual songs and we hope our audiences don’t mind too much that we spend some time doing so. Real Norwegian folk musicians are however known for spending a Context — 25
Lost in conversation:
Written by: Ruben van Dijk
Mabe Fratti embraces misunderstanding
Collaboration and communication are key to most musicians, but the Guatemalan cellist and composer Mabe Fratti is set on also making music about those processes. She did so on her startling 2021 solo album Será que ahora podremos entendernos, as well as through her playing with Gudrun Gut, Concepción Huerta, and the birds outside her window.
Don’t get her mistaken: Mabe Fratti loves small talk. She’s just not sure she’s very good at it. “I have all these thoughts and then, when I say stuff, something very wrong comes out,” she tells me over Zoom from her home in Mexico City. “I’ll say something and think: did I say it in the wrong order? Why did I say it like this?” In recent years, the way she, or people in general, verbally communicate has become one of the central themes to her work, starting with her 2021 album Será que ahora podremos entendernos, literally translated: Will we be able to understand each other now? An extraordinary album that not only deals with her communicatory struggles lyrically, but is in itself constructed as a scatter-brained tête-à-tête. Fratti grew up in a conservative, evangelical environment in Guatemala City, but traded it for Mexico City six years ago, when a residency at the local Goethe-Institut opened her eyes to the city’s vibrant experimental scene. Having only ever been there once as a child, her second visit was enough to convince her to relocate from one metropolis to another. “In Guatemala, there’s no government infrastructure for culture. Even though Mexico has corruption — because of course it has — there is a lot of infrastructure for culture. I think Mexico City is the city with the most museums in the world.” The dynamic and spacious nature of the city, in particular, appealed to Fratti. “Guatemala City is architecturally developed to be very closed. You don’t normally walk on the streets and if you do, you’re afraid someone might rob you.” But in the spring of 2020, Mexico City, too, became suffocating. The country’s recently introduced “traffic light” system had the capital on red alert, with only essential activities operating, and so when a friend told her she was going to visit some friends Context — 27
in the country, Fratti joined without a moment’s hesitation. She spent the next month in La Orduña, an old factory turned squat house somewhere between Veracruz state capital Xalapa and the volcanic rainforests of Cofre de Perote (one of the most biodiverse places in the western hemisphere). Because of a job she needed to finish, she brought her cello and other equipment, but otherwise she had little to no intention to record. That changed quickly, when the full potential of La Orduña revealed itself. Here, a convergence existed of the wild and domesticated. Chickens roamed around freely, and so did the deadly violin spider. “First of all, it was very hot and humid, I was with very good friends, and it was mango season. And I love mango! Being in such a peaceful environment, you can’t help but react to the nature around you. And even though nature can be scary sometimes, there was a very soft energy, there was warmth from close friends. I don’t know. . . It just gave me a sense of ease.” Like many others, Fratti had emerged from the worst of the first lockdown hyper sensitive to social interaction. During a conversation on her first day in La Orduña, she came to think of the mind as a funnel of words and how we are only ever able to successfully convey a fraction of what we’re thinking or feeling. It became the lens through which she started to perceive life, as slowly the songs on what would become Será que ahora podremos entendernos began to take shape. The songs on the album are loose rumi nations, sometimes entirely instrumental, more often accompanied by instinctively written mantras. Fratti describes the process behind the album as “diagramation”: the act of configuring the many ways one can go from point a to point b in any given space. Practically, this meant that the songs 28 — Context
on Será que ahora podremos entendernos all had their starting point, and a general notion of the direction in which to go from there. Whatever happened largely became a process of improvisation, including freerein contributions by members of drone rock band Tajak (with whom Fratti was staying at La Orduña), experimental composer Claire Rousay, and local musicians Sebastián Rojas and Hugo Quezada. The results often mimic conversation. Aire, reminiscent of Warren Ellis’ soundtracks for Mustang and Wind River, feels like a monologue with the common thread predetermined, although it finds itself occasionally side-tracked. Un Día Cualquiera forgoes consistency entirely, like a group chat where every single contribution gets lost in translation. It turns Será que ahora podremos entendernos into an occasionally disorienting listen, where moments of miscommunication are often alternated by sudden synergy. Opening track Nadie Sabe displays a rare moment of collective agreement. Here, the fauna of Veracruz sings loudest and in full accordance with Fratti’s cello parts. “I opened the windows, because in front of me was this big, natural space and so the sound of birds would come in. In a song called Hacia el Vacío, as I was playing this part, a bird responded to me. Or maybe it wasn’t responding to me at all, but we were in a rhythm. I was like: this is great!” Since Será que ahora podremos entendernos, Fratti has further explored the intricacies and limitations of (human) interaction on her collaborative album with veteran experimentalist Gudrun Gut, Let’s Talk About The Weather. The two had met and even collaborated before, during her 2016 residency at the Goethe-Institut, so when both of them, mid-pandemic, found themselves with an excess of time, the connection was easily made. They applied for a
“virtual residency”, won it, and only then started properly talking…about the weather.
This article was originally published by online music magazine Front (fr-nt.nl).
“We had a meeting and we started talking about how it was snowing in Germany at a very weird time of the year, while here it was hot. It was very hot. And then we started talking about how talking about the weather can be small talk, but can also be this very deep, important thing.” And so, Let’s Talk About The Weather underscores the importance of discussing the weather; not only as a way to bridge a gap in conversation, but as something that, as weather extremes are becoming more and more frequent, is of an all-encompassing significance to our everyday lives. Air Condition, halfway through the album, sees the hazy warmth of Mexico City and the deep winter cold of Gut’s hometown of Uckermark collide, as field recordings from both places are juxtaposed. The more ambient minded second half features countless snippets of private conversations, sound sculptures, and weather forecasts. Like an alien approach to human interaction, or wiretapping at an intercontinental level. Fratti is about to set forth on a European tour — starting with Rewire festival in The Hague — that will see her performing another recent album, Estática, a collaboration with long-time friend Concepción Huerta, as well as songs from Será que ahora podremos entendernos. Or at least, as they currently exist. Because her live performances are as much a part of the continuous, open-ended conversation Fratti finds herself in. “I feel totally fine if it doesn’t sound like the album. I have no problem with that. Especially when I practice with other musicians, it is an open- ended process. It involves everyone and it has changed a lot, because of all these new people putting their voice into it.” Context — 29
FUJI|||||||||||TA on the traditional music that inspired him
“It sounds even more electronic than electronic music”
Japanese sound artist Yosuke Fujita has become known for stunning audiences and listeners with his unique hand-built organ, evoking rich sonic landscapes. His unique and improvisational work is inspired by the traditional Japanese court music known as gagaku, established around the 10th century. As a self-taught enthusiast of gagaku, FUJI|||||||||||TA crafts mesmerizing sounds that channel his prestigious, traditional roots. “I love layering sounds in a way that they wouldn’t be layered traditionally.” Performing at the 11th edition of Rewire, Yosuke Fujita will bring his distinctive approximation of Japanese gagaku music to the stage with his hand-fabricated pipe organ, consisting of 11 pipes and no keyboard. The sound artist known as FUJI|||||||||||TA weaves the mesmerizing tones produced by his organ in a captivating, near-hypnotic whole. In an interview conducted over email, the Japanese musician, composer and performer reflects on the traditional music that has inspired his artistic practice. Could you talk more about Japanese gagaku and the ways this musical tradi tion has inspired your work? “Gagaku is Japanese classical music with a history of over 1200 years. I was influenced by the tradition of music in a number of ways. My initial interest was not so much in the specific musical theory, but in the use of my imagination in producing the sounds. I learned that musically, even if it is a same, single note, the sound you make while having a distinctive vision is completely different from the sound you make without that vision. It doesn’t even matter what that vision is. For example, you can imagine where the sound reaches in the venue—you can even picture it going beyond the venue to reach the whole city. Whatever your vision is, it will affect the sound in a significant way.” What aspects of Japanese gagaku initial ly attracted you to studying it? “The layers of sound are very unique. Most modern
music is determined by the harmonious rules invented in Western music. Gagaku’s harmonies are clearly out of step with them. I love layering sounds in a way that they wouldn’t be layered traditionally. I would like to make an album in the near future that sublimates this in my own manner. The old Japanese instruments used in gagaku are also very interesting, thanks to their unique overtones. This amazing overtone is difficult to create with electronic sounds. It sounds even more electronic than electronic music.” What was the process like of familiariz ing yourself and gaining mastery over this form. music? “I just listened to the records ...” How do you think your modern practice of performing Japanese gagaku relates to or diverges from its traditional roots? “I am not a traditional gagaku performer, so my activities are also quite different from the context of traditional gagaku. However, I have performed with traditional gagaku players, and there are many other performers who also play gagaku and are actively involved in improvisation. Currently, gagaku is not a style of music that people are generally familiar with, but there are some attempts to promote it through different approaches. In my case, I’m just a fan of classical gagaku, so I’m experimenting with my own expression of the influences I’ve received from it.” What are the challenges and possibili ties of translating your work to a live setting? “In my case, I think that working on an album and a live performance are two completely different things. So, I’m trying to do things on stage that can only be done during a live performance, and that, of course, can’t be replaced by an album.”
Context — 31
THU APR 7
Rewire 2022 Prelude: The Garden of Ryoan-gi
Keynote: Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta
On the eve of this year’s festival, the Royal Conservatoire presents a special prelude concert with free admittance on the 7th of April in the Ensemble Hall of the Royal Conservatoire in Amare. The programme, labelled “The Garden of Ryoan-gi”, offers a retrospective of the nearly complete piano (keyboard) oeuvre of the late composer Louis Andriessen. Besides key works such as Trepidus and Image de Moreau, other relatively unknown works by Andriessen will be performed by piano students of the Royal Conservatoire. A unique addition to the programme is a performance of the staggering composition De Staat for two pianos by Gerard Bouwhuis and Ellen Corver. No official release of this version, created by alumni Gerard Bouwhuis and Cees Zeeland — that has been explicitly approved by the master himself — exists to this date.
Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta is a Lecturer in Ethnomusicology and Popular Music Studies at the University of Birmingham, with previous appointments at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (Berlin) and the University of Groningen (NL). His research focuses on urban electronic dance music scenes, with a particular focus on affect, intimacy, stranger-sociability, embodiment, sexuality, creative industries and musical migration. He is currently conducting research on “techno tourism” and other forms of musical mobility in Berlin; he has a forthcoming monograph based on earlier research, entitled Together Somehow: Music, Affect, and Intimacy on the Dancefloor (Duke University Press). For this Keynote on the opening night of the festival he will share an online keynote lecture on his notion of “Stranger Intimacy” and will offer an introduction to affect theory and its relationship to sound and music.
A Louis Andriessen piano retrospective
34 — Thursday, 7.4.
In conversation with Stine Janvin & Ula Sickle Artists Stine Janvin & Ula Sickle will have a discussion on connectivity, memory, touch and other senses that filter into their installation “Echoic Choir,” which they present during Rewire 2022. Their collaborative performance evokes the ritual of coming together on a dance floor around music in the late hours of the night. While gathering in a nightclub has been almost impossible over the past years due to the new reality brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, “Echoic Choir” takes on the challenge of using “physical distancing” rules as artistic parameters.
A Symphony of Noise: Matthew Herbert’s Revolution Film Screening
A Symphony of Noise takes the viewer on a journey with Matthew Herbert, the revolutionary British musician and composer. Step into the mind of the artist known for his political pieces, combining music derived from real life sounds with politically sensitive issues. Herbert’s premise is that music has undergone a revolution. Instead of making music with instruments, we can now use anything that makes a sound. The film captures creativity at its core. After watching A Symphony of Noise we will listen to music, but also to the world, in a way we have never done before. Enrique Sánchez Lansch, 2021, Germany, 101 min
Thursday, 7.4. — 35
FRI APR 8
and production skills into freakishly beautiful electronic pieces. Fusing the growling low frequency ranges of dubstep, grime and drill with alienating sound design and hyper-personal lyrics, aya warps her club music inspirations into a nightmarish world of art and critique.
Alabaster DePlume The British artist, poet and multi-instrumentalist Alabaster DePlume crafts experimental and gentle pop music, inspired by jazz, punk, indie and Asian music, combined with spoken word. He has been praised as one of the most vital and adventurous artists to emerge from the UK in recent years, known for his fluid and intimate live performances. For Rewire 2022, Alabaster DePlume will be joined by his band to perform a live set that includes material from his album GOLD, released on renowned Chicago label International Anthem.
aya ft. Sweatmother Emerging from the UK as one of the most exciting and innovative new artists, producer aya — formerly known as LOFT — has found ways to contort her poetry, voice 38 — Friday, 8.4.
aya will perform her Hyperdub debut Im hole at Rewire as a special A/V performance in collaboration with London-based artist and filmmaker Sweatmother. Just like in aya’s music, the video work of Sweatmother subverts hegemonic representations of voice, body, gender and gaze, carving out an artistic and demonstrative space where representation can be freed of objectification. Presented in collaboration with Carhartt WIP
Bang on a Can All-Stars & Ensemble Klang “Forgiveness & Forgetting” World premiere
The forces of two of the most thrilling and adventurous ensembles unite on stage, during the world premiere of this new piece by The Hague-based composer Pete
Harden. Written specifically for New Yorkbased Bang on a Can All-Stars and The Hague-based Ensemble Klang, Harden’s composition, titled Forgiveness & Forgetting, explores the unique, collaborative dynamic between these sextets on stage. It’s an exciting musical endeavour for all involved parties, as both of these chamber music ensembles are praised for their collaborative nature and playful, audacious approach to music. Bang on a Can All-Stars also performs Meredith Monk’s MEMORY GAME alongside Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble on Saturday 9 April.
focussed “YCO” label with frequent collaborator aya. Presented in collaboration with Carhartt WIP
Blackhaine
BFTT Both BFTT’s productions and DJ sets glide through techno-club conventions with playful and personal innovations as heard on recent releases with ANSIA & Polity. 2022 will see the release of a debut album on TT and a club focussed 12" on DJ Python’s worldwide unlimited label. BFTT is also co-curator and resident DJ for North UK based multi-media collective Mutualism, who hold a monthly residency with NTS Radio, as well as running the club
With his latest EP And Salford Falls Apart, the performer, choreographer and musician Blackhaine has established himself once again as one of the fiercest embodiments of British counter-culture. A sensational multi-disciplinary artist that manages to channel British desperation and austerity in gripping and cinematic music, choreography and video work, Blackhaine is heavily inspired by the modus operandi of the 1995 black-and-white film La Haine. Just like the seminal film, Blackhaine voices the angst of the marginalised in ways both sensitive and aggressive, resulting in captivating songs and performances that fuse rap, spoken word, trip-hop, ambient and drill into a thrilling new whole. Presented in collaboration with Carhartt WIP
Friday, 8.4. — 39
Circuit des Yeux Featuring Residentie Orkest strings As Circuit Des Yeux, the American vocalist and composer Haley Fohr combines the adventurous spirit of experimental music with the emotional proximity of pop, folk and rock. Since establishing the moniker in 2007, her expressive and versatile voice remains a powerful tool of composition, employed alongside a wide-array of musical styles, instruments and collaborators. Her sixth and latest album -io reflects on loss, grief and isolation, resulting in an intimate epic that works its way through unsettling emotional lows and dizzying highs. Circuit des Yeux will be joined at Rewire 2022 by a quintet of string players from Residentie Orkest, the renowned philharmonic orchestra from The Hague.
40 — Friday, 8.4.
claire rousay + ensemble World premiere
Based in San Antonio, Texas, percussionist, improviser and producer claire rousay creates sound that magnifies the importance of everyday life’s often-ignored moments — from voicemails to whispered conversations. She has released a run of albums over the last two years for labels like Longform Editions, Astral Spirits and American Dreams, notching up a significant amount of positive critical attention from Pitchfork, NPR and elsewhere. During Rewire 2022, she will perform material from her upcoming album Everything Perfect is Already Here alongside a small ensemble that interprets the album arrangements live for the first time. The ensemble includes Mari Maurice from More Eaze on violin, Harpist Marilu Donovan and violinist Adam Markiewicz from NYCbased duo LEYA.
DEBONAIR Few enjoy such a cherished, credible and powerfully engaging position as DEBONAIR. The DJ and radio host is regarded as one of the hardest digging selectors in the underground with a formidable knowledge of post punk, new wave, body music, proto techno, the avant-garde and off-kilter house and she delivers these exquisitely during her incendiary DJ sets, which take place everywhere from subterranean sex clubs to post modern art spaces. DEBONAIR’s selections always captivate the dancefloor. Presented in collaboration with Carhartt WIP
n’ lurching beats on their kaleidoscopic self-titled LP, recently released on Belgian electronic music label STROOM. Consisting of filmmaker and poet, Dalia Neis, and musician and producer, Enir Da, this eclectic musical outfit crafts a lyrical and cinematic patchwork that giddily breezes through jerky samples and hyper visual poetry that masterfully piece the album together. During Rewire they will translate their ambitious debut record into an expressive and immersive live show featuring guest musician Chris Lamouroux.
Helm & Nate Boyce
World premiere
Dali Maru & The Polyphonic Swarm
World premiere
Dali Muru & The Polyphonic Swarm (formerly FITH) channel panoramic film scores, faded Carpathian travelogues, and blistered
Following the release of his thrilling new album Axis, the British noise experimentalist Helm joins forces with the American visual artist Nate Boyce for an immersive A/V performance based on Helm’s newest work. A propulsive, throbbing and convulsing piece of harmonic noise and spelunking audio design, Axis proves to be a fascinating sonic framework for Boyce’s tactile and uncanny approach to (digital) imagery. Known for his solo exhibitions, visual work and frequent collaborations with musicians like Matmos and Oneohtrix Point Never, Boyce is an established figure in the worlds of contemporary art and experimental music. He also made the music video for Repellent, the lead single from Helm’s Axis album. Commissioned by Rewire Friday, 8.4. — 41
Jameszoo’s Blind Group World premiere
In an ongoing quest to bypass preconceived notions of music and to circumvent creative blind spots, Jameszoo (Mitchel van Dinther) embarked on a sonic journey for one of his most rambunctious albums to date. Blind—released on Brainfeeder— is a gleefully quick-witted tour de force through Jameszoo’s musical brain. For his playful and unpredictable compositional work, Jameszoo contracted trusted collaborators like long-term writing partner and keyboard whizz Niels Broos, Swedish bassist Petter Eldh and drummers Richard Spaven and Julian Sartorius, alongside a bunch of motorised instruments like the Disklavier that generate unhuman, yet acoustic arpeggio’s that elope over the tantalising music. During Rewire 2022, Jameszoo will present the world premiere of a live performance based on his new album with an ensemble consisting of Mitchel (electronics), Niels Broos (keys), Richard Spaven (drums) and Frans Petter Eldh (bass) and a Disklavier.
42 — Friday, 8.4.
Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble “Cellular Songs: Concert Version” As part of a special focus programme on Meredith Monk, Rewire presents a concert version of Cellular Songs performed by Meredith Monk and the women of her acclaimed Vocal Ensemble. A “deeply affecting meditation on the nature of the biological cell as a metaphor for human society” (Financial Times), Cellular Songs features some of Monk’s most adventurous and daring music for the voice to date, paired with violin, piano and keyboard. Over the course of the performance, shimmering, multi-dimensional musical forms evoke such biological processes as layering, replication, division, and mutation. Cellular Songs is the second part of a trilogy of music-theater works exploring our interdependent relationship with nature, following the highly acclaimed On Behalf of Nature (2013) and the recently premiered Indra’s Net (2021).
Marina Herlop The conservatory-trained composer, vocalist, and pianist Marina Herlop has often toyed with classical composers like Debussy and Chopin, giving a contemporary tip of the hat to canonical, romantic music. Recently she has extended her sonic set of tools to a more cybernetic side of music with miu, her first single release on leading avant-electronic label PAN. On Miu, Herlop experiments for the first time with konnakol syllables and Karnatic rhythms, harnessing processed human voices and synthetic electronics. The playful and experimental music evokes the unpredictable vocal treatments of Meredith Monk. As such, the Barcelona-based artist invites the listener to step into her otherworldly dreamscape, falling down a sonic rabbit hole into a garden of forking paths. During Rewire 2022, Herlop will be performing her stirring compositions with a five piece band. Presented in collaboration with Carhartt WIP
Pavel Milyakov & Yana Pavlova
World premiere
Prolific Russian producer Pavel Milyakov is perhaps best known under his moniker Buttechno, through which he mines the outer-ranges of contemporary electronic music for idiosyncratic club cuts that resist easy categorisation. Working together with Ukrainian artist and vocalist Yana Pavlova, the playful experimentation of Pavel Milyakov takes a distinctive turn towards analogue instrumentation, vocal manipulation and rhythmic experimentation. At Rewire, the duo will present a live set, created during a residency in The Hague, based around their first collaborative album Blue and the follow-up album Wandering. Even though Blue is a lighter and less moody work, both albums explore the textural sound of droning guitars, shoegaze, ambient, noise and spoken word.
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MSYLMA & Ismael The Saudi Arabian musician and singer MSYLMA channels pre-Islamic and quranic poetry in his deeply personal music that combines R&B and experimental club music. He collaborated with the Cairo-based producer Ismael for his newest album مذاهب النسيان/ The Tenets of Forgetting. Ismael provides a lush electronic patchwork of swelling synths, emotive sound design and club-adjacent percussion to provide a hypnotic framework for MYSLMA’s soaring, plaintive voice to shine through. During Rewire they’ll perform their album live, accompanied with visuals by Omar El Sadek. Presented in collaboration with Carhartt WIP
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Myxomy (James Ginzburg & Ziúr)
World premiere
Emptyset’s James Ginzburg teamed up with producer Ziúr for a seemingly effortless, intuitive approach to hazey pop, broken trip-hop and near-apocalyptic club music. Their shared output as Myxomy is a cathartic tour-de-force through the margins of pop music and the depths of electronic experimentation. During Rewire, Ginzburg and Ziúr will present the inaugural live performance of their shared moniker, a live show that sounds like a vibrant club event and feels like a forward-thinking rock concert. Commissioned by Rewire
xperience that invites us to rethink the e overlap and differences between electronic and analogue music and art. Co-presented by Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag and Amare Coproduction: Les Percussions de Strasbourg / Festival Musica Commission: Los Angeles Philharmonic, 2019 With the special help of Yamaha and Turkish cymbals
Ryoji Ikeda & Les Percussions de Strasbourg “100 Cymbals“ The renowned Japanese-born and Paris-based visual and sound artist is mostly known for his compositions in the field of experimental electronic music and computer art. Groundbreaking works like +/-, Dataplex and Test Pattern play with the binary nature of 0s and 1s, producing synthetic sounds that are often almost bordering on the edges of human perception. For this Dutch premiere of a special collaboration with prestigious ensemble Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Ryoji Ikeda brings his grid-like approach to music to the realm of analogue and physical instrumentation. Employing ten percussionists in a geometrical set-up consisting of one hundred cymbals, this captivating performance subverts the audience’s expectation of the metallic instrument that’s often used for its rhythmic signposting. Here the cymbal becomes a site of harmonic tension, producing alluring and hypnotic sounds that verge on droning synthesizers. In the process, 100 cymbals is as much a stage performance as an audiovisual installation, a highly compelling hybrid
Sofie Birch & Johan Caroe Formed out of two collaborative sessions on three analogue synthesizers, musicians Sofie Birch and Johan Carøe crafted their collaborative album Repair Techniques as a spontaneous, yet delicate ambient piece. As the title implies, the work is a soothing balm for disruptive and chaotic life events, a testament to putting the pieces together through love and support from friends and loved ones. Faint echoes of new age shimmer in this gentle meditation on healing and care that remains engrossing and moving throughout its eleven tracks. Bringing along a collection of synthesizers and analogue instruments, the duo will re-shape and re-perform this airy, intri cate and intimate album in The Hague’s Lutherse Kerk.
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Slikback x Weirdcore “VOID” World premiere
The subversive visuals of Weirdcore are a thrilling match for Slikback, a prolific and omnivorous musician who has emerged as one of the most exciting club artists from East Africa in recent years. Known for his dark sound design and mischievous approach to sampling and composition, Slikback has found a terrific aesthetic mould for his unique fusion of contemporary club styles like techno, dubstep, jungle, breakbeat, footwork, trap and drill. London-based visual designer Weirdcore also knows how to bend genres and styles in his own visually unique ways. For over 15 years he’s collaborated with a huge range of daring contemporary artists, creating mind-bending technology-driven videos and boggling tour visuals. Together, the duo will present the world premiere of a brand new audiovisual performance called “VOID”. “VOID” is curated by Unsound, commissioned by Rewire, Donaufestival, Unsound
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Stine Janvin & Ula Sickle “Echoic Choir” This collaborative performance from vocalist Stine Janvin and choreographer Ula Sickle evokes the ritual of coming together on a dance floor around music in the late hours of the night. While gathering in a nightclub has been almost impossible over the past years due to the new reality brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, “Echoic Choir” takes on the challenge of using “physical distancing” rules as artistic parameters. Relying on the power of acoustic voices and spatial resonance, the project aims to create a collective and immersive sensorial event, by placing the performers and the audience in a shared space. Sound, choreo graphy and lights create a strong synesthetic experience that channels the embodied experience of being on a late-night dance floor. Revisiting this setting and its sensory memories, albeit within new parameters, allows for new perspectives on a familiar scenario. The spectators are invited to participate in the work through their listening and their physical presence, realising a new kind of collective ritual.
The Bug Featuring Dis Fig, Flowdan, Manga Saint Hilare Revered for his cavernous and weighty electronic music, Kevin Martin (aka The Bug) has been an integral part of contemporary club music since the early ’90s. The Bug will be joined live by Dis Fig to perform music from In Blue, their collaborative album released on Hyperdub. The Bug will also perform his most recent LP Fire— the third exhilarating part of an incendiary urban triptych, that began with 2008’s explosive London Zoo via 2014’s mind-melting Angels & Devils—fourteen tracks that immolate the synapses, flail the body, that cinematically take you from arcing evocations of a bleak lockdowned city-scape to swooping deep-focus close-ups of Martin and his collaborators’ psyches at breaking point. He will perform Fire together with heavy-hitting grime MCs Flowdan and Manga Saint Hilare.
Tirzah Combining the sensuality of contemporary R&B with the bravado of experimental electronic music, the British musician Tirzah is subtly pushing the sonic qualities of adventurous pop forward. Armed with a remarkably soothing voice, her enigmatic, down-to-earth vocals have proven to be the perfect combination for collaborators and bandmates Mica Levi and Coby Sey’s no frills-approach to song production. Following the off-kilter soul of her debut album Devotion, Tirzah doubles down on the synthetic textures of her music on Colourgrade, a more experimental album reminiscent of Inga Copeland and Dean Blunt. And yet, despite all the sonic experimentation, either on stage or in the studio, Tirzah’s signature heartthrob sentimentality continues to shine through.
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SAT APR 9
—__–___ (More Eaze & Seth Graham) World premiere
As —__–___, Austin-based multi-instrumentalist More Eaze and Dayton, Ohio-based Orange Milk founder Seth Graham craft a path to transcendence through an other- worldy clash of lush instrumentals, proces sed vocals and jittery samples. Their collaborative album The Heart Pumps Kool-Aid traverses the uncanny valley, riding on the waves of ethereal sounds and liminal internet aesthetics. This cinematic and sonic journey is reflected in an immersive live show, a world premiere presented during Rewire, that channels the dreamlike—and sometimes nightmarish—visions of Harmony Korine’s and David Lynch’s decaying America.
Anna Meredith journeys across the contemporary musical landscape with music that’s often described as “uncategorisable” and “genre-defying”. Meredith straddles the different worlds of contemporary classical, art pop, techno, largescale installations and experimental rock with playful, eclectic and energising music that has garnered her many accolades, including a MBE for Services to Music in the 2019 Queen’s Birthday Honours List. Rewire 2022 will see the maverick artist and her band performing material from her latest album FIBS, alongside other work.
Anna Von Hausswolff “All Thoughts Fly”
Anna Meredith As a composer, producer and performer of both acoustic and electronic music, 50 — Saturday, 9.4.
The music of Anna Von Hausswolff lingers between the melancholic and ecstatic. Inspired by folklore, fairy tales, literature, poetry and cinema, the Swedish multi-instrumentalist evokes layered narratives and dense storyworlds with her unique music that channels classical, post-metal and sombre pop. Her earlier albums combined opaque instrumentations with urgent vocals, but on her latest album All
Thoughts Fly, Von Hausswolff isolated a church organ as her only musical tool of expression. The result is an intimate and captivating sonic journey that transposes the 16th-century instrument to highly distinctive, contemporary compositions. At Rewire, she will perform live on the church organ of De Grote Kerk.
Cheb Runner “Angry Immigrant” World premiere
bela
European premiere The South-Korean musician bela has found a way to transpose sheet music of Nongak, a traditional form of Korean folk music, into riveting power electronics that breaks through conventional rhythmic patterns and tempo limitations. The resulting EP Guidelines offers a singularly propulsive form of mind-bending electronic music that sounds refreshingly alien, but remains steeped in tradition. Performed live during Rewire, bela will introduce their contemporary fusion of Nongak with experimental club music.
Producer Cheb Runner (real name Reda Senhaji) is a musical hurricane rooted in the Moroccan soil, exploring the West European electronic musical landscapes. Nurtured by both worlds, he represents a new sound of in-betweenness. During this hour long live-set entitled “Angry Immigrant” he will be supported by artist Salim Bayri. “Angry Immigrant” is a musical tribute to 10 years of immigration in Brussels.
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Dis Fig
Coby Sey Hailing from South-East London, vocalist, DJ and multi-instrumentalist Coby Sey has emerged as a distinctive presence in the exciting intersection between contemporary club, DIY-art, and music production. This prolific performer and producer offers a shifting, disorienting vision of club music. As a long-time collaborator with Mica Levi, Tirzah, Babyfather, Klein and Kwes, Coby’s recorded work spans the realms of live instrumentation, sample-based productions and experimental music, melding recognisable motifs of, amongst others, hip hop, drone, jazz and grime into a dubbed-out anaesthesia. Live, these dreamlike compositions are imbued with a heavy, uneasy dancefloor energy, often abetted by intimate live vocals. With his debut solo LP on the way, Coby will be joined by London friends and collaborators to stage his distinctive, open-door approach to music at Rewire 2022. Presented in collaboration with Carhartt WIP
Best known for her barbarous and genre-ranging DJ sets, at Rewire 2022 the New Jersey born, Berlin-based artist Felicia Chen (AKA Dis Fig) will present her unflinching live show. Based around her debut album Purge, released on New York collective and experimental label Purple Tape Pedigree (PTP), Chen explores her own vulnerability via a palette of noise, power electronics and orchestral composition that treads the line between the brutal and the sublime. Chen’s own voice is at the heart of the album and performance, which ranges from tender choral moments to agonising screams and back again.
Dasom Baek Dasom Baek uses various looping techniques to breathe new life into traditional Korean woodwind instruments such as the
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Daegeum, Sogeum and Saenghwang. Combined with the physical presence of Dasom Baek’s voice, these instruments conjure holistic, multi-sensory experiences through piercing loops and dizzying musical phrases. Her contemporary approach to these traditional instruments can be mesmerising, gripping, soothing or unsettling. Her hypnotic live performance is a near-ritualistic experience that’s equally grounded in traditional music, performance art and avant-garde compositions.
instrumentals. Joined by harpist Marilu Donovan and violinist Adam Markiewicz of LEYA, alongside two flutists and a cellist, Eartheater will perform a new live show based around her latest album at Rewire 2022.
Eartheater featuring LEYA and guests
Ecko Bazz
Eartheater’s soundworld is one of opposites. Gliding between the serene and the turbulent, contemporary club sounds and pastoral folk music, digital punctuations and classical composition, multi-instrumentalist, composer and vocalist Alexandra Drewchin has forged a striking sig nature over four albums. Flexing a three- octave vocal range, provocative lyrics and curious wordplay, Drewchin’s songs are multilayered and rich in meaning, imbued in a cheeky spirituality that defines the Eartheater project. 2020’s “Phoenix: Flames Are Dew Upon My Skin” released on tastemaking label PAN, further expanded the scope of her vision as Eartheater, in which she balances the unabashed prettiness of acoustic harmonic songs with the dis sonant gestural embroidery of oblique
Merging the sounds of hardcore UK grime with dancehall, American trap and ferocious Lugandan lyrical style, the Ugandan rapper Ecko Bazz has become a unique phenomenon exploding onto the Eastern Africa hip hop and grime scene. His forceful and poignant club music is now taking the world by storm. His explosive debut album Mmaso—recently released on Hakuna Kulala—promises to be a hard-hitting tour-de-force that interrogates violence, religion, drug abuse and poverty in Uganda through the lense of Ecko Bazz’ distinctive musical personality. Kenyan club futurist Slikback is also billed on the album as one of the producers of the abrasive rap cuts. Presented in collaboration with Carhartt WIP
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Eddy Rakovic Eddy Rakovic is a DJ and producer based in The Hague. Working with sounds since 2013, he has developed a wide yet singular musical style that feeds into the scene of his city. He worked for several years at the recordstore 3345 and is one of the driving forces behind Plaza, a recently sprung platform giving a stage to new voices.
early self-released tracks garnered him a production credit on Ye’s seminal rap album Yeezus and roused dancefloors worldwide thanks to his frantic, strobe- laden deejay-sets. Having taken time out to focus on his fledgling Trance Party clubnight, the seminal producer is finally back with new music of his own. In advance of the release of his highly anticipated debut LP on WARP Records, Evian Christ presents a first listen to his much-awaited new material, accompanied by a spectacular liveshow designed and operated by frequent artistic collaborator Emmanuel Biard.
Flock (Bex Burch, Danalogue, Sarathy Korwar, Al MacSween, Tamar Osborn) World premiere
Evian Christ
European premiere Under the moniker of Evian Christ, Joshua Leary managed to distil various innovations of 2010s club music into one forceful musical project. Taking cues from southern trap, euro trance, stadium-sized EDM and the emerging stylistic traits of deconstructed club, Evian Christ blew up undercurrents in electronic music to a widescreen, 4K blockbuster experience. His 54 — Saturday, 9.4.
Bex Burch is a composer, percussionist, producer, and instrument maker. Employing the gyil (Ghanaian xylophone) in new and unexpected ways outside of its traditional setting, she has carved out a unique sonic space for herself in which she embraces new musical challenges across a range of percussive instruments. Flock, her latest collaborative project, is perhaps the percussionist’s most ambitious work to date. It features intuitive rhythmic interplay between her and Sarathy Korwar, Al MacSween (Maisha), Dan “Danalogue”
Leavers (The Comet Is Coming) and Tamar Osborn (Collocutor). The music is a perfect encapsulation of an ever-shifting sound that Bex Burch refers to as “messy minimalism”. The exciting, avant-jazzy collaboration is a powerful example of how improvisation can be utilised as a tool for composition.
Holly Childs & Gediminas Žygus
Golin The Amsterdam-based, Japanese-American artist Golin blurs the lines between mainstream pop and envelope-pushing electronic music. Recalling the cybernetic pop experimentations of SOPHIE, AG Cook and like-minded hyperpop-innovators, Golin’s jittery and skittish pop songs sparkle with a radiant personality. Through her distinctive sound, Golin offers a unique musical perspective on the way that her art can mediate contemporary experiences of cultural and physical displacement. Golin’s most recent solo EP Crush is a compelling showcase of herself as singer-songwriter, producer and performer. This playful, exciting and catchy collection of synthetic and ethereal earworms is an electrifying invitation into Golin’s idiosyncratic sonic world. Presented in collaboration with Carhartt WIP
Writer and artist Holly Childs and artist Gediminas Žygus fold critical reflections on ecology, memory and media theory into hybrid performances that combine bespoke choreography, dense spoken word, experimental film and intense electronic music. The starting point of their second album Gnarled Roots, released on the Subtext label, was 9/11 — in the words of the artists — a cataclysmic and highly theatrical event that has permanently reconfigured media, surveillance and capital on a global scale. Naturally, the result is an equally anxious and pensive work that explores binaries and duplication, puzzles and paradoxes, collapse and destruction.
jaimie branch “Fly or Die” Over the last decades, the Brooklyn-based trumpeter and composer jaimie branch has Saturday, 9.4. — 55
been on the forefront of the contemporary American jazz scene. Known in Chicago and New York for her spectacular live shows, branch has taken a no-limits approach to jazz that’s open to any sound, genre, gender and style. What holds everything together is her radiant presence and a playful dynamic between the musicians on stage. After having extensively played parts of it on stage, branch finally released her debut solo album Fly or Die in 2017. It’s a powerful piece of music that doubles as a scorching indignation of the political crisis at the heart of the United States and the rest of the world. It’s fruitful formula — or rather: the lack of any formula — ushered in an even more experimental, but no less compelling sequel in 2019. This Rewire alumnus and contemporary jazz-innovator will perform her politically charged and sonically adventurous masterpiece Fly or Die and its equally riveting sequel Fly or Die II live on stage.
inner-mechanics of footwork, the exciting house mutations that have shaped the sonic identity of the windy city. Her 2017 album Pariah was a masterclass in the dynamic tension between frantic subbass and spacious headroom; a footwork masterpiece that brought the genre to new heights. With Jana’s most recent album, the 2021 Planet Mu release Painful Enlightenment, her craft is becoming even more distinct. Letting loose some of the more conventional rhythmic characteristics of the Chicago sound and incorporating challenging jazz samples, Painful Enlightenment is a deeply personal work that’s wellversed in both the world of footwork and experimental electronic music. Presented in collaboration with Carhartt WIP
Jenny Hval
Jana Rush Chicago born and raised, it’s safe to say that Jana Rush is deeply familiar with the 56 — Saturday, 9.4.
Inspired by pop luminaries like Kate Bush and Laurie Anderson, the Norwegian singer- songwriter Jenny Hval has carved out her own and unique space on the boundary of contemporary pop and avant-garde music. Multidisciplinary and transgressive by nature, her polyphonic artistry is seamlessly interwoven between musical, literary, visual and performative modes of expression.
Combining elements of electronic music, jazz, rock and pop, Hval’s sound shifts from project to project. What brings all her output together — either individually or in collaboration with peers like Håvard Volden and Susanna Wallumrød — is a literary and intertextual depth to her finely crafted, dreamlike music. Her most recent album Classic Objects is a stunning and cinematic journey through Hval’s identity and subconsciousness, exploring, in her own words, “what ‘just me’ could mean.”
performed in a duo setting before. During Rewire they will fuse their particular artistic sensibilities into a thrilling new whole. Commissioned by Rewire. Presented in collaboration with Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond.
Mathijs Leeuwis
Joachim Badenhorst & Roman Hiele World premiere
The improvisations of Belgian clarinettist and saxophonist Joachim Badenhorst meet the distinctive electronic music of Roman Hiele with their first collaborative performance as a duo. Badenhorst has established himself as a key figure in contemporary European jazz, by founding the KLEIN label and performing notable solo and collaborative projects. He has previously worked with producer Roman Hiele (who has a new record coming out on STROOM) but the eclectic pair have never
Pedal steel guitarist, composer and “explorer of sound” Mathijs Leeuwis transforms his analogue instruments in complex and evocative tape-loop based compositions. Constantly looking for new sounds, methods of composition and ways of creating music, Leeuwis often deconstructs his work to rebuild it under new configurations. The results are often lush musical pieces that bring a tinge of Americana into thick layers of ambient. During Rewire 2022, Leeuwis will bring new renditions of his solo compositions to the stage with Dutch guitarist Marzio Scholten, Mathijn den Duijf on electronics, Reggy van Bakel on percussion/electronics and vocalist Theo Decloedt. Collaborating with visual artist Janine Hendriks, this unique collaboration will traverse the prolific sonic landscapes of the bright composer and performer. Saturday, 9.4. — 57
Mika Oki
Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble and Bang on a Can All-Stars “MEMORY GAME” As part of a special focus programme on Meredith Monk, Rewire presents this performance of MEMORY GAME by Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble and Bang on a Can All-Stars. Drawing from Monk’s extensive catalogue of groundbreaking compositional work, New York chamber outfit Bang on a Can All-Stars joins forces with Monk and members of her ensemble to present nine reorchestrated pieces from Monk’s varied theatrical productions, most prominently The Games: a science fiction opera. As the title implies, it’s not only a fitting retrospective of Monk’s lasting artistic triumphs, but also a compelling reminder how Monk’s music can play with our expectations in poignant and compelling ways.
The Brussels-based deejay, visual artist and producer Mika Oki delivers eclectic, hard-hitting and surprising dance floor sets with prolific selections that range from jungle, UK bass and gqom to dark electro, mesmerising trance and heavy EBM. By animating a wide range of vocal samples, experimental sounds and electroacoustic music extracts, she plays like a sculptor with a duty to create an unsettling atmosphere. Percussive but generous, erudite yet uninhibited, Mika Oki’s unique mixes deliver sights and sounds to behold.
Mira Calix (1970—2022 †) Mira Calix tragically passed away on 25 March. The South-African born and British-based artist was due to perform her 58 — Saturday, 9.4.
new show origins — movement is freedom at Rewire 2022 on Saturday 9th April. Mira was not only a hugely talented artist and composer, she was also a beautiful, caring human who touched the lives of everyone who had the honour of working with her. Having released numerous forward-thinking albums on Warp Records, she pushed the boundaries between electronic music, classical music and art in a truly unique way. She will be sorely missed, and our heartfelt condolences go out to her family and friends.
Of The Negro Superman combines modern classical music with black and doom metal to reflect on the African Americans’ experiences of enslaved and liberated consciousness. During Rewire the artist will premiere a new work called Machines and Other Intergalactic Technologies of The Spirit, a piece that is heavily inspired by Sun Ra’s retro-futurist sci-fi projections on the mind and spirit.
Nelly
M Lamar “Machines and Other Inter galactic Technologies of The Spirit” World premiere
M Lamar is a composer who works across opera, metal, performance, video, sculpture and installation to craft sprawling narratives of radical becomings. Fully embodying his Afro Gothic aesthetic, M Lamar creates stylistically bold works that critically engage with the status quo. His latest of academically-informed modern opera pieces Lordship And Bondage: The Birth
There’s a captivating duality to the music of Nelly, a Netherlands-based producer and deejay with Indonesian roots. When behind the DJ booth, Nelly distils dark musical forces into high energy sets, rich in atmosphere and dense with emotion. Impactful hypnotism, explosive rave, stylish trance and growling machines colour her powerful sets, and make for moments of true escapism and non-stop physical workouts. Away from the club, Nelly threads fluid musical stories that draw on a wide array of genres. They explore the darker side of her psyche and investigate the diasporic nature of her family history. Her storytelling audiovisual projects, mixtapes and photography draw on intergenerational trauma and how to deal with it.
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Nkisi “Invisible Gestures, First Encounter: Zangbeto” Melika Ngombe Kolongo, known by her alias Nkisi, explores the sonic resonances between traditional rhythms, hard European dance tropes, and synthesizer melodies. Her intricate sound worlds channel African cosmology through a dazzling array of contemporary club styles like gqom, juke, grime and techno. Combining sweeping polyrhythms with a keen ear for distinctive sound design, her animated electronic music reaches ecstatic heights, as witnessed on her LP 7 Directions, released on Lee Gamble’s UIQ label. During Rewire, Nkisi presents a new A/V performance, focussing on the gestural world of spiritual guardians called the Zangbeto. Presented in collaboration with Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond.
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Scratcha DVA Throughout the past decades Scratcha DVA, also known as DJ Scratcha, Scratchclart or DVA, has established himself time and time again as one of the quintessential figureheads of contemporary UK club music. As a figurehead in the British pirate radio scene, he was part of the burgeoning era of 2-step and UK funky, contributed to the rise of UK grime and incorporated a plethora of emerging musical styles in his anything-goes, club-focussed productions. When footwork flew over from Chicago and gqom crystallised in Durban, Scratcha DVA was there to collaborate, experiment and exchange knowledge and experiences. Suffice to say that this prolific producer and deejay defies easy categorizations, but it’s guaranteed that Scratcha DVA shares his rhythmically agile and playful music with the dancefloor in mind. Presented in collaboration with Carhartt WIP
Tarta Relena Catalan duo Tarta Relena (Helena Ros and Marta Torrella) bring an entrancing immediacy to vocal music. Perhaps jokingly, they self-describe their music as “progressive Gregorian”, yet traverse the depths of traditional vocal music and elevate their historical inspirations to thrilling and timeless new heights. The result could best be described as an exciting blend between the staggering harmonies of Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares and the cinematic textures of Arca. Debut LP Fiat Lux is a testament to the musical talents of this duo that draw inspiration from Mediterranean folk, Georgian laments and the 12th-century mystic Hildegard von Bingen. The sparse, but gripping use of electronic accompaniment on the album underlines the urgency in Tarta Relena’s exquisite harmonising.
Ziúr with Kiani del Valle & Sander Houtkruijer Perfectly embodying the boundless creativity of a new generation of iconoclastic producers, musicians and performers, Ziúr has become one of the most exciting producers to come out of the fringes of Berlin club music. Her albums on iconic electronic music labels like Planet Mu and PAN are exhilarating, envelope-pushing explorations of club music’s potential to alienate the senses, distort reality and liberate its listeners from the dreary status quo. Bringing along Puerto Rican dancer and choreographer Kiani del Valle, along with Dutch video artist Sander Houtkruijer, this immersive live show by Ziúr doubles down on her cinematic approach to music production. The result is an exhilarating and intoxicating performance with cathartic music, hypnotic visuals and ecstatic dancing.
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SUN APR 10
Caterina Barbieri
Bitchin Bajas Formed in 2011 by Cave-guitarist/organist Cooper Crain, Bitchin Bajas explores the hypnotic depths of musical loops, either short and concise or long-winding and elastic. The trio’s mantra-like approach to music results in hypnotic pieces that range from moody sound waves — eloping pads, shimmering strings and reverberated sounds — to tantalising synthesizer arpeggios. Short or long, fast or slow; what matters in the music of Bitchin Bajas is finding a groove and allowing yourself to go deeper within it. On their latest album Switched On Ra, the trio consisting of Cooper Crain, Rob Frye and Daniel Quinlivan apply their looping ethos to the musical vision of one of their heroes, Sun Ra. Employing vintage synthesizers, drum computers and vocoders, Bitchin Bajas channels the cosmic jazz and far-out synth experimentation of the Afrofuturist icon and brings it to their own stratospheric levels.
Caterina Barbieri is an Italian composer and musician who explores themes related to machine intelligence and object-oriented perception in sound. Her current sonic research investigates the creative use of computation and complex sequencing techniques to explore the artefacts of human perception and memory, by ultimately inducing a sense of ecstasy and contemplation. During Rewire 2022, Caterina Barbieri presents a site-specific show featuring new music and a rework for four voices by Evelyn Saylor of Ecstatic Computation’s opening track Fantas with light design by Marcel Weber.
Carl Gari & Abdullah Miniawy German trio Carl Gari (Jonas Yamer, Till Funke and Jonas Friedlich) and the Egyptian singer and trumpeter Abdullah Miniawy have been working together for the
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last few years, melding sobering electronic soundscapes with poetic lyrics reflecting the mood of modern day Egypt. Coming together first on “Darraje”, which was recorded over a few days in Cairo for Will Bankhead’s The Trilogy Tapes, the EP pulsates at the edge of the dancefloor with swollen atmospherics and Miniawy singing plaintively in Arabic. Their current release for AD93 centres around the poem in “B’aj ”بعاج, featuring Miniawy as the protagonist who has jumped from the 8th floor of a building in Cairo and describing scenes of Egyptian society as he falls. It’s a powerful conceit and evocative sonic portrait of Egyptians living under the brutal oppression of the Al-Sisi regime.
a set of concepts and principles that can be used to create something radically new. During Rewire 2022, Dewa Alit will bring his group Gamelan Salukat to The Hague to perform the music of Genetic (released on Oren Ambarchi’s Black Truffle label) among other pieces for the first time outside of Bali.
Debit
World premiere
Dewa Alit & Gamelan Salukat
World premiere
Contemporary Balinese composer Dewa Alit is a key figure in contemporary Indonesian music. He is the founder of Gamelan Salukat, a 25 member ensemble that performs on instruments specially built to Alit’s designs, using a unique 10-note scale. Their contemporary take on traditional Balinese Gamelan music has been presented extensively throughout Asia, Europe and North America. Alit has also collaborated with renowned ensembles such as Bang On A Can and Ensemble Modern. Alit presents Gamelan not as something static and from the past, but as
As Debit, the New York-based musician Delia Beatriz brings avant-garde production techniques into the fold of experimental and often club-focussed music. Her previous releases on trailblazing label Naafi saw her investigating her Mexican roots through a unique interaction between complex sound design, pulsating rhythms and weighty basses. With her most recent album, The Long Count, she dives deeper into the origins of Mexican music, sourcing sounds of pre-hispanic Mexican instruments that date back to Mayan civilization. Using machine learning and taking inspiration from musique concrète, Beatriz revitalises whistles, ocarinas, flutes and other wind instruments from the archives of the Mayan Studies Institute at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and instils them with a contemporary sense of urgency, through beatless compositions with captivating electro-acoustic textures. Sunday, 10.4. — 65
FUJI|||||||||||TA
Grouper
In 2009, Japanese sound artist Yosuke Fujita hand built a unique pipe organ with eleven pipes, a blacksmith’s air pump and no keyboard. Instead of being just another musical instrument, Fujita intended his organ to evoke rich landscapes inspired by the Japanese classical form gakagu, or “elegant music”. Now, with an augmented version of the organ that also utilises sound-synthesized tanks to generate water sounds from multiple aquariums, he explores the sonic depths and possibilities of his own musical instrument on acclaimed albums and intimate live performances. Last year, FUJIIIIIIIIIIIITA performed with his uniquely crafted pipe organ during the online edition of Rewire. This year Yosuke Fujita will bring his equally laborious as meditative performance to a live audience.
As Grouper, the Oregon based musician Liz Harris creates intimate songs that are often covered under a hazy blanket of fuzzy static and crackling reverb. Through this opaque sound design her emotionally piercing melodies and dreamlike vocals still shimmer like bright stars on a cloudy night. Grouper’s 2008 breakthrough album Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill established her as one of the leading musicians of psychedelic dream pop. With the two-part album A I A: Dream Loss and A I A: Alien Observer she doubled down on her ambient esthetic. With her twelfth and most recent album Shade, Grouper’s music seems to be at its most boiled down and intimate: a finely distilled journey through stripped-down studio sessions where you can hear the floor creak and fingers slide over guitar frets. During Rewire, Grouper will perform a hauntingly beautiful sonic tapestry of heart-wrenching ambient folk.
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Gagi Petrovic “Vox Populi & Choosing Freedom” World premiere
Rewire 2022 will share two works performed by Gagi Petrovic with his GEST instrument, to showcase the range of his sonic expression and innovation. “Choosing Freedom” allows him to explore the outer edges of music, subverting categorical notions of what music should sound like. “Vox Populi” sees Petrovic embracing the more conventional role of the singer- songwriter. The song cycle consists of three world premieres for voice and live electronics that express how social constructs can suppress a person’s horizon.
Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer manage to create a distinctive dyad that comes together with grace and truth. Travelling in 2017 together to the Åland Islands (an archipelago that is host to around 6,500 islands) in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland, they decided to capture the serene and strange quality of their surroundings through a collaborative musical project, to be released in March on International Anthem as Recordings from the Åland Islands. Reflecting on the dynamic landscape, perpetually lit under the summer sun, their debut album offers plaintive, meditative and melodic pieces that gently sublimate the splendour of the Åland Islands. The result, sparkling with Chiu’s soothing arpeggio’s and Honer’s scintillating string instrument, could be compared to acoustic-ambient classics like Jon Hassell’s Vernal Equinox or Brian Eno’s Another Green World, however without any trace of retro-tinged nostalgia.
JJJJJerome Ellis European premiere
Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer European Premier
The combination of modular synthesizer and viola is an uncommon one, but musicians
On his powerful, new album The Clearing, composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and writer JJJJJerome Ellis masterfully weaves together the looping techniques of electronic music with acoustic and analogue elements to create an intimate and essayistic epic that reflects on time, blackness and identity. Ellis, who has a block Sunday, 10.4. — 67
stutter, allows the unintentional gaps in his vocals as another analogue permutation of his narrative-heavy music. On stage, JJJJJerome Ellis also embraces these stutters — or as he calls them “clearings” — as spontaneous occurrences that challenge notions of temporality, identity and performativity.
that combines their dystopian, brooding music with acute, analogue visuals projected by 16mm film projectors.
Lamin Fofana “Shafts of Sunlight” World premiere
Jerusalem in my Heart As Jerusalem In My Heart, Lebanese-Cana dian producer/musician Radwan Ghazi Moumneh and filmmaker Erin Weisgerber have been at the forefront of contemporary experimental music, shaping intricate and urgent audiovisual worlds. Jerusalem In My Heart is guided by Moumneh’s melding of “traditional” melismatic singing (in Arabic) and buzuk playing with modern deployments of modular synthesis, sound design and field recordings. Their agitated, yet unwavering work warps traditional Middle Eastern music and culture through a prism of restless avant-garde modernism, reflecting on destabilising effects of global ism on the Arab world. During Rewire, Jerusalem In My Heart will translate their urgent material to a site-specific performance 68 — Sunday, 10.4.
New York-based artist and musician Lamin Fofana explores questions of movement, migration, alienation and belonging in his prolific artistic practices that range from experimental albums and deejay-sets to installation work. Often working in trilogies and triptychs, the art of Lamin Fofana is of a dense and intertextual nature, in which original music compositions, field recordings and archival material manifests themselves as a multisensory experience. For Rewire 2022, Lamin Fofana presents “Shafts of Sunlight”, an open-ended improvisatory performance-installation with fragments and debris from stretched out studio sessions. It is a disruption of the linearity of historical time, what historian Robin D. G. Kelley alluded to as “blues time — it is simultaneously in the moment, the past, the future, and the timeless space of the imagination.”
LEYA
Lisa and the F.I.X.
Harpist Marilu Donovan and violinist/vocalist Adam Markiewicz are NYC-based duo LEYA. LEYA works with and against the grain of tradition, mining intensity though alternate tunings, strange harmonies, and dreamstate operatic vocals. The resulting experience is one of beauty, but spans many imperfect worlds. LEYA has released a steady volume of work in several years. Their two albums via NNA Tapes, The Fool (2018) and its critically acclaimed follow-up Flood Dream (2020), exist alongside a wide range of collaborations. In 2018, the group wrote and performed a full-length soundtrack to I Love You, an erotic film directed by Brooke Candy and produced by PornHub that also features the duo as actors. 2019’s Angel Lust, a collaborative EP with Eartheater, followed courtesy of experimental label PAN. Most recently, LEYA released the Eyelines, an eleven track collaborative mixtape featuring contributions from claire rousay and EARTHEATER.
Lisa and the F.I.X. is a bard, pop star, and musician who weaves raw stories together with delicate songs. She’s the alter ego of the hyper-productive composer Luke Deane (UK 1990), now based in the Netherlands together with Andreas Kühne (Drums) and Uldīs Vitols (Bass). At Rewire 2022, Lisa presents her debut album, Footsteps On The Wall produced by and featuring leading musicians from Asko| Schönberg and Slagwerk Den Haag. Together they combine the sensuality and vulnerability of pop with brooding textures from contemporary club music. These ensemble-musicians enrich Lisa’s bass-infused harmony with analogue flourishes from instruments such as the duduk, cimbalom, pan-flute, and cello. Footsteps on the Wall is an intimate, yet epic work, offering shimmers of light and brightness on a murky, hazardous sonic journey.
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Mabe Fratti
Naaljos Ljom
Originally from Guatemala and now based in Mexico City, the experimental cellist and composer Mabe Fratti has become a fixture in Mexico’s flourishing improvisational music scene. Through hypnotic and captivating pieces, she sews contemporary elements like shoegaze and dream pop with ancestral influences that go from Gregorian chants to Sephardi music, transforming them into ingredients of a potent sonic ritual that causes a profound emotional impact. Created during a lockdown in Veracruz, Fratti’s second album Será que ahora podremos entendernos leans heavily on improvisation and collaboration, while remaining playful, musing and forthright. Bringing along synthesizers, guitars and samplers, Fratti will perform her equally ecstatic and pensive album live together with a group of guest musicians.
Diving into the seams of Norwegian folk music, Anders Hana and Morten Joh as Naaljos Ljom unlock the microtonal potential hidden in their source material. The duo, known from bands like MoHa!, Ultralyd, N. M. O., and Brutal Blues, have joined forces yet again now focussing on mixing just intonation and microtonal Norwegian folk music with aspects of electronic music, resulting in spirited pieces that subvert our expectation of what the distinction between analogue and electronic should sound like. Adapting the album to the stage, Naaljos Ljom’s performance becomes a fascinating update of traditional music: a norwegian folk concert to dance to.
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Oceanic & Ensemble Klang “A Sonically Open City” Job Oberman, the Dutch producer better known as Oceanic, navigates between house, techno and ambient to create evocative music that sits comfortably between intimate sonic expressions and trailblazing club jams. “A Sonically Open City” is his first collaboration with The Hague-based Ensemble Klang, a collection of iconoclastic musicians that playfully subvert expectations of a classical ensemble. Oceanic and Ensemble Klang have spent 2021 moving around the city of The Hague, filming and recording their interactions with its sound world: forests, beaches, highways, factories and many other sonic sources have been brought into the fold, resulting in “A Sonically Open City”, a brand new, 50-minute work that spans multiple genres, embracing various forms of music-making and a multitude of influences. Taken as a whole, the work forms a profile of The Hague, celebrating the diversity of its landscapes and natures, and charting the breadth of activity that continues to take place within it.
Silvia Tarozzi Silvia Tarozzi translates her poetic album Mi specchio e rifletto to the stage with a dense sonic cloud of violins, voices, guitars, synth, sax and theremin. Known for her performances of forward-thinking compositions and nuanced improvisations, Tarozzi is a renowned Italian violinist, vocalist and composer who once studied under the tutelage of influential American composer Garrett List. Earlier works like the Pauline Oliveros collaboration for the album Virgin Violin or her contemporary re-interpretations of female folksongs of northern Italy with Deborah Walker offered more stark, textural explorations of the violin as an instrument for polyphony, cacophony and noise. The collaboration with Éliane Radigue saw her dive into the minimalism of pure acoustic drones. With her most recent album Mi specchio e rifletto, Tarozzi explores a brighter side of her craft, allowing the violin amongst other instruments to create lush tapestries over which her vocals can soar. Heavily inspired by the poetry of Alda Merini, Tarozzi’s own lyrics reflect on love, motherhood and the indelible state of being. Sunday, 10.4. — 71
SKY H1 & Mika Oki
SOON
The evocative, rave-crushed songs of SKY H1 capture the blurring lines between the flourishing contemporary club sounds of drum and bass, grime, dubstep and techno. Injecting this exciting hybrid of rave music with ambient-leaning sound design and schematic bursts of pop-oriented songwriting, SKY H1 has found a unique approach to contemporary electronic music that brings a heady excitement to the bodily thrills of the club. Her debut album Azure, released on AD 93, builds on this foundation and elaborates on a delicate medley of experiences and forms which translates into an imaginative and quietly ambitious sonic journey. Collaborating with visual artist Mika Oki, SKY H1 presents a new audiovisual show to celebrate the release of Azure. Their audiovisual show takes the meditative content of the album and deciphers its poetics into an alluring live performance. Mika Oki’s visual installation, called Parhélion, is inspired by the optical phenomenon called soleil double, and offers a subtle scenography of light, projections, smoke and shadows that meet the visual inspiration behind SKY H1’s latest work. Presented in collaboration with Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond.
SOON is an Amsterdam-Berlin duo comprising Liú Mottes, a guitarist whose work has brought stardust to the likes of Dutch alternative pop acts like Blue Crime and New YX, and musical polymath Jochem van Tol, who plays drums and keys, often all at once. The pair have been playing on and off for two years or so, working up enough material to make an expansive and sometimes dreamy self-titled debut album that nods to the avant-garde and experimental rock and film music.
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Slumberland feat. Sainkho Namtchylak As Slumberland, the Belgian musician, composer and instrument-maker Jochem Baelus tinkers on his hypnotic krautrock, embellished with distorted exotica. After creating his signature battery of sewing
machines, projectors and dismantled mechanical objects, Baelus immersed himself into the world of 64 year old voice-artist Sainkho Namtchylak and assembled a new sound sculpture inspired by her sonic presence. Namtchylak grew up in Tuva, an autonomous Russian republic north of Mongolia. Known as a rebel pur sang, she became the first female overtone artist and started combining these traditional chants with influences from avant-garde music. Her indomitable demons and Russian beat-poetry are now accompanied by Bealus’ compellingly minimal, yet vigorous compositions. Presented in collaboration with Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond and STUK.
At Rewire 2022 Kirby will present a new live show combining visuals and music from his final opus under the moniker, Everywhere at the End of Time, charting the advancement of Alzheimer’s disease from “beautiful daydream” into an “abyss” of confusion, horror and isolation. Aphex Twin collaborator Weirdcore provides the visuals, inspired by The Caretaker’s iconic cover artwork by painter Ivan Seal.
Yamila “Visions” World Premiere
Looking over the precipice of pure emotion, Yamila dances between electronic and analog music, tradition and experimentation. Following in the wake of her first work, Iras Fajro (Forbidden Colours), supported The Caretaker & Weirdcore by Clark (Warp), this year the Spanish comThe Caretaker is British multidisciplinary poser, cellist, singer and producer will remusician Leyland James Kirby’s longest- veal her most intimate catharsis in her running project, launched in 1999 with a second album Visions (Umor-Rex). A celerecord paying tribute to the Haunted Ball- bration of hallucinatory powers of music, it room scene from Stanley Kubrick’s cult offers a journey that prodigiously unites film The Shining. As The Caretaker, Kirby baroque accents, Spanish folklore and conexplores themes of memory and loss temporary electronic music, and includes a through manipulating and degrading re- collaboration with the New York based mucordings of 1920s and 1930s ballroom music. sician Rafael Anton Irisarri. Sunday, 10.4. — 73
DIS COU RSE
The Rewire 2022 discourse programme returns to ground the festival lineup into meaningful segments and lasting considerations on the many folds of contemporary music. Bringing together artists, performers and thinkers for a series of conversations, readings, listenings and screenings, this year’s discourse programme will circle around three themes—NOISE, AFFECT and RITUAL. The discourse programme include keynotes by Marcel Cobussen and Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta; a series of “resonant seminars“ from Brandon LaBelle, conversations between Jana Rush and Caroline Claus, Bianca Ludewig and Nkisi, Stine Janvin & Ula Sickle and Tactology Lab curators Dianne Verdonk & Roald van Dillewijn. There will be artist talks by Meredith Monk, Slikback, Lamin Fofana with JJJJJerome Ellis, Nkisi and Debit. In addition, a reading group on bell hooks hosted by M Lamar; a film installation of soramimi by FUJI|||||||||||TA; a panel Talking About Music with iii; and a zine which includes contributions from Grouper and poet Momtaza Mehri.
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AFFECT w/ Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta
In their introduction to The Affect Reader, Gregory J. Seigworth and Melissa Gregg assert affect’s “immanent capacity for extending […] both into and out of the interstices of the inorganic and non-living, intracellular divulgences of sinew, tissue and gut economies and the vaporous evanescenses of the incorporeal (events, atmospheres, feeling-tones)”. In simpler terms, affect is a name we give to a network of forces that we experience as an encounter; they touch us, propel us into movement, towards thought and emotion. There’s an overlap with sound studies when we look at the language we use for affect— it’s often described through sonic and tactile metaphors of vibrations and resonance that relay an image of a collective experience; a crowd of people being washed over by a wave of calming music, feeling it through their skin and bones.
We’ve all had those moments of surprising connection & warmth on the dancefloor— and maybe also moments of shocking alienation—but why do they happen? What role does music and sound play in these encounters? With this theme we explore how the notion of “affect” helps us better understand how we can use our experience of sound and music. We explore the engagement of sound beyond what we hear with our ears to consider the vibrations, emotions, and other exchanges that occur. At Rewire 2022, there’s a close but subterranean intimacy between touch and hearing, one that many artists make use of in their practice and performance. These musical-emotional-sensory resonances already show up in the way that we talk and write about music and sound. What metaphors do we use? What improvised vocabulary? Discourse — 77
On the Thursday prelude to the festival, ctivist and academic Luis Manuel Garcia- a Mispireta will share an online keynote lecture on “Stranger Intimacy on the Dancefloor”, offering an introduction to affect theory and its relationship to sound and music. Artists Stine Janvin & Ula Sickle will follow with a discussion on connectivity, memory, touch and other senses that filter into their installation “Echoic Choir”, which they present during Rewire 2022. Ahead of their Tactology Lab performances, Lab curators Dianne Verdonk & Roald van Dillewijn will present a showand-tell talk with various self-made instruments to reflect on the tacticity of sound and reflect on their experimental work which finds new physical ways of interacting with technology for performing arts. “Talking About Music”, a panel with Proximity Music curator Matteo Marrangoni and artist Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork, bringing together different musical backgrounds for a collective listening session to investigate the languages we use to talk about music and the consequences and effects this has on our experiences. Bianca Ludewig, a cultural anthropologist who researches artistic practices and working conditions at transmedia festivals, will share a talk titled “Affective Communities”. She will also join Nkisi on Sunday for a conversation on the educational and healing properties in vibrations, in connection with the sonic ancestral research that feeds into Nkisi’s new project with The Secret Institute titled Invisible Gestures—the first encounter of this project will be shared Saturday night at Paard. Performances of interest to this theme include Lamin Fofana, Nkisi, The Tactology Lab, Tirzah and Echoic Choir. In addition, the exhibition of Proximity Music: Sensing After Thought invites you to perceive and experience sound in new ways. Later in 2022, Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta will publish Together, Somehow: Music, 78 — Discourse
Affect, and Intimacy on the Dancefloor with Duke University Press. He has sustained blogs for over 10 years as part of his fieldwork and writing practice. The below extract is taken from luisinparis.blogspot.com and will feature prominently across several chapters of his forthcoming book. samedi, septembre 05, 2009
Souvenir 03: The Welcome Home (with Seuil)
OK, so I’m writing this more than two months after the event itself, but I just had to document one thread of events from the party that I thought was really interesting: At the party itself, sometime around 2 or 3 a.m., a girl dancing near me approaches and asks, “Hey, are you Luis?” When I say yes, she seems really thrilled and says,
“It’s so good to finally meet you! I’m really good friends with O [a friend from France that lives in Chicago now and was co-organizing tonight’s event] and I’ve heard so much about you. I’m Lola.” She’s originally from Poland and I just returned from a year in France and Germany, so we talk a bit about the differences between North America and Europe and the odd situation one can develop of feeling at home in one place while longing for another place. We cross paths occasionally throughout the rest of the party and check in with each other, saying things like “How’re you feeling?” and lightly grasping each other’s shoulders. The afterparty at a friend’s warehouse loft starts at about 7 a.m. and runs until some ungodly hour that evening (9 p.m., I think). I have a great time and hang out with friends, but eventually I tire and need to get home. I’m still marginally jet-lagged from my return from France, and I’ve spent all week unpacking things and running errands. It’s nearly 2 p.m., I haven’t slept all night/morning, and I was beginning to run out of energy. I make the rounds of the room, saying goodbye to everyone. As I’m saying goodbye to O… She sees Lola nearby and asks us both, “Do you know each other?” Lola says, “Of course! We’re best friends.” Her arm comes up around my shoulder, and my arm winds around her waist. While still facing O., as if we were performing for her, we turn to each other, press our torsos into a half-hug, and reach out with our other arms to rub each others shoulders affectionately. I turn to give her a peck on the check and she turns her head toward me and we end up exchanging a brief peck on the lips. We had just met for the first time in our lives a few hours ago, and we had hardly said anything to each other after our brief conversation at the party. Nonetheless, something about our encounter made is possible for Lola to claim that we were
“best friends,” for me to agree and engage smoothly with her in these gestures of intimacy. It was casual and undramatic, as if we were making observations about the weather rather than claiming a deep, 12-hour-old friendship. O. smiles with an expression that could be indulgent or bemused or merely pleased, and she says, “Of course.” (By the way, Seuil’s set, both at the party and the afterparty, kicked major ass.) Posted by Luis-Manuel Garcia at 07:07 0 comments Labels: Affect, Chicago, Fieldwork, GlancingContact, Intimacy, Partying, Solidarity, Touch
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RITUAL w/ Katía Truijen
At Rewire 2020/21 we explored the theme of (re)setting, asking how we can reorientate ourselves in a world that is constantly shifting in unexpected ways. In his book The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present, the philosopher and cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han defines rituals as an important technique for us making a home for ourselves in this world, for us to reset and reorientate; “[Rituals] transform being-in-the-world into a being at home. They turn the world into a reliable place. They are to time what a home is to space: they render time habitable. They even make it accessible, like a house.” 80 — Discourse
Byung-Chul Han’s book emphasises the important role rituals play in building communities and networks, sharing values, and maintaining a sense of cohesion and integration in our societies. Yet he sees them in demise, and this ‘disappearance’ is at the same time cause and consequence of today’s narcissism and individualism (read: capitalism), which makes us feel disoriented and lost in society. Rituals generate a community without communication, but now we have communication without community, he tells us. Rituals are tools to transmit, represent and embed the values of a community. So what happens when these fall absent? And how can we embrace them again or begin to create new ones? At Rewire 2022, RITUAL invites you into an experimental series that explores the many different elements that form a ritual. While often described as spiritual and transcendent, they equally ground us into our daily lives and help us connect with our surroundings, each other, and ourselves. Through a sequence of contributions, the series explores sub themes such as Attention, Ceremony, Technology, Resonance, Belonging, Closure and Power, and serves as an entry into collectivity and cohesion, into new rituals. Throughout the festival days, artist, writer and theorist Brandon LaBelle will host a series of gatherings at independent bookstore Page Not Found, with each session talking through an aspect of resonance. These “Resonance Seminars” will discuss how resonance operates in experiences of cooperation and communal effort, as well as its place within expressions of social recognition; on radical sympathy, restorative justice and more-than-human encounter; and finally on the physicality of resonance: how touch guides us into a range of contacts and practices. By gathering and reflecting together, the seminars aim to nurture a performative scene of resonant creation.
Sound artist FUJI|||||||||||TA shares his film Soramimi in response to the theme of Attention. “Soramimi means ‘mishearing’ in English. It means that you hear a sound that is not actually being made. My days are filled with soramimi. Searching, Searching, Searching, But it is rarely found.” It is a film by FUJI|||||||||||TA, recorded at his house and in his neighbourhood. Edited by Tatsunori Kasai, graphic design by Junpei Inoue, special thanks to Yusuke Nakano and commissioned by VIRTUALLYREALITY. Artist M Lamar facilitates a reading group on We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity by cultural theorist, bell hooks to think through rituals of dominance and power and how we can turn to the prolific writing of bell hooks as a starting point on a journey of healing and love. Debit will share an artist talk on the rituals, ceremonies and technologies of time that exist within her practice and have fed into her recent debut album The Long Count. In addition, RITUAL shares a zine designed by Fallon Does, this includes contributions from M Lamar, Brandon LaBelle, artist Grouper, poet Momtaza Mehri and FUJI|||||||||||TA. This is freely available during all RITUAL programmed events and at Page Not Found. Performances of interest for this theme include; Debit, “Echoic Choir”, Grouper, M Lamar and FUJI|||||||||||TA. RITUAL is co-curated with Katía Truijen, a media researcher, writer, curator and musician based in Rotterdam.
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Turn it up! Bring the noise!
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Coby Sey is a Lewisham-based musician, producer and vocalist. His intimate, introspective music has been released on labels such as AD 93 and CURL, the collective he co-founded with Mica Levi and Brother May. His collaborative spirit has been demonstrated through projects with artists such as Tirzah, Klein, Babyfather, Kwes, and others. 2021 saw Coby Sey working as a co-writer on Tirzah’s landmark album, Colourgrade, as well as collaborating with the likes of Cosha, Leifur James, Kelly Lee Owens, Infinite Coles, Lafawndah and Galya Bisengalieva on a string of singles, remixes and reworks. In this conversation Coby Sey discussed his relation to noise, and his personal history with music as a necessary disruption. We dive head first into our conversation and talk about recent experiences of noise—Coby Sey is included in a Sp*tify playlist titled “Noisy Voices”, sounds labelled as ‘radical and experimental’—before we realise we need to circle back to
the beginning and first understand how we’ve each defined the term noise in our heads. For Coby, the definition of noise is linked to expectation and agency. “Noise is a disruption, but it can be a positive one. It helps us to break away, which is often what we need to do. It’s often not premeditated”, he adds, before immediately asking himself if adding distortion to a track would be noise? “Perhaps it’s defined by the recipients, the listeners”—he ponders aloud. “Or maybe it’s the person making the noise.” I interject and ask about non-human noises and sounds, and then we have a long pause where it becomes clear that noise is a difficult one to put into words, but we seem to be circling around a shared feeling on what noise is. We start again. How does noise tend to make us feel? “I feel a resonance with it,” Coby starts. He tells me about an article he read earlier that morning that sug gested people who are feeling annoyed or upset often listen to heavy metal. Discourse — 83
pparently it can help to process emoA tions if we listen to music that matches our mood. “For me,” Coby says, “some noise feels cleansing.” This isn’t to say that Coby is annoyed or upset, though. For the entire conversation he sits back in his chair and looks off to a corner in the room, deep in audible thought, only to occasionally focus back on me and laugh at himself for going off on a tangent. “Noise,” he continues, “can be meditative in itself.” It’s the same way with lower frequencies; sub bass, dub music. “These go through our bodies and into the core—undiluted, concentrated noise.” So what are we left with to define noise by? “Jazz used to be considered ‘noise’ by the so-called ‘mainstream’, he tells me. Jazz musicians were ‘formally’ trained but searching for a style of music not restrained by the parameters they studied. Nina Simone, a classically trained pianist, was dubbed as a ‘jazz musician’, which at the time carried certain labels reminiscent of connotations that used to be heavily associated with hip-hop before the 2000s; it was the stripclub music of its time and she famously felt some type of way about it. It undermined her musicianship compared to her counterparts who were white. Same with Miles Davis—another musician who went through traditional, institutional training. He didn’t like to be called ‘jazz’. He said jazz was another way for critics to discriminate to call him the n-word. He described the music by his peers and him as ‘social music’ and an attitude rather than a definable sound.” “Of course,” he adds, “jazz is heard differently now, it’s not considered ‘noise’. It’s understood more, it’s accepted—mostly. It’s the same with hip-hop, rock & roll, funk, reggae, house etc. Eventually they get popular or accepted; sometimes through artists, personalities and labels who either crossover without compromise; sometimes through artists, personalities and labels who are considered ‘palatable’ to the mainstream.” 84 — Discourse
In 2003, the then Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone hosted Rise Festival at the Millennium Dome (now the O2 Arena) with Public Enemy as one of the head liners. As a young teenager, Coby says he was blown away by their live performance. The North-American hip-hop group formed by Chuck D and Flavor Flav in the 80s attracted attention for their unabashed and radical politically charged lyrics and criticism of the media and racism faced by African-Americans. Coby hears them in a lot of music at the moment, not related or restricted by genre, but this energy that struck him as a teenager standing in the audience listening to Public Enemy, he feels it again. It’s not just the politics, the lyrics or the message they shared; It’s a feeling that’s interwoven into their songs: this urgent feeling. An unshakeable sense of fearlessness. Public Enemy upset the status quo within hip-hop. Not only did their messages confront the listener with their black nationalist politics, their music was also often sonically unpleasant. Their sample- filled, sonic signature was created by their production team, the Bomb Squad, and often referred to as “organised noise”. They created technically impressive, dense, multi-layered productions full of abrasive samples from far reaching genres like pop, rock and heavy metal—a technique more common today, but at the time it was a sound that defied categorisation and left them as outliers of hip-hop. This raw expression, “without any diluting or compromise for acceptance or palatability” is essential for Coby. It stops us in our tracks, it diverts us and it teaches us something new. Music, in its rawest form, is often labelled as “noise” or “noisey” by the mainstream because it’s either not understood or it doesn’t align with what is considered to be “acceptable” or following familiarised rules. “I don’t know the origin of the word noise,” Coby says. “Sometimes I think the word noise has been
adopted as a reactionary label on those who have been marginalised or seen as peripheral based on identity and/or taste. I think over time, the word noise has come to mean other things. You know how derogatory words towards marginalised groups and subcultures get reclaimed as a way to find self-acceptance? I feel it’s not too different from the word ‘noise’ – I think it’s now positive and negative at the same time. It’s morphed.” And it’s not just because of certain styles of music being accepted, Coby explains that more people embrace literal dissonant sounds and are finding ways that it can be used as a voice and as a source for sonic high. “I can think of a few ... i. e. Sun Ra Arkestra, Sonic Youth, Mica, Boredoms, mbv, Jah Shaka, Nivhek, Alpha Maid, Penderecki, This Heat, Public Enemy.”
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FILM PRO GRA MME
Expand your festival experience with our film programme, exploring key themes and artists through a cinematic lens. This year’s programme, screened at Filmhuis Den Haag, includes two film works by Meredith Monk, a documentary on the inquisitive artistic practice of Matthew Herbert, 35mm film experiences by Daïchi Saïto and Peter Tscherkassky and more.
Ellis Island + Book of Days
Meredith Monk
Ellis Island
A Symphony of Noise — Matthew Herbert’s Revolution Enrique Sánchez Lansch
A Symphony of Noise takes the viewer on a journey with Matthew Herbert, the revolutionary British musician and composer. Step into the mind of the artist known for his political pieces, combining music derived from real life sounds with politically sensitive issues. Herbert’s premise is that music has undergone a revolution. Instead of making music with instruments, we can now use anything that makes a sound. The film captures creativity at its core. After watching A Symphony of Noise we will listen to music, but also to the world, in a way we have never done before. Enrique Sánchez Lansch, 2021, Germany, 101 min
An intensely memorable film evocation of America’s immigrants; set in the crumbling halls of contemporary Ellis Island. Blackand-white, near-static shots of actors and actresses realistically portraying turn-ofthe-century immigrants are combined with color shots of a modern-day tour guide conducting a tour of the buildings. Elements of modern dance are also incorporated, as contemporary dance groups often interact with the immigrant re-creations. Ethereal music and chanting accompany the piece, adding to its reflective tone. Meredith Monk, 1981, USA, 28 min
Book of Days
Book of Days is a film about time, originally drawing parallels between the Middle Ages, a time of war, plague and fear of the Film programme — 87
Apocalypse, with modern times of racial and religious conflict, the AIDS epidemic, and fear of nuclear annihilation. In light of the current pandemic of 2020, the cyclical nature of such phenomenons has made itself known once more. While the film provides no answers, it nevertheless is a poetic incantation of that which connects us. Meredith Monk, 1989, USA, 74 min
earthearthearth + Train Again Daïchi Saïto / Peter Tscherkassky
An exploration of contemporary experimen tal cinema featuring accelerating soundtracks by Jason Sharp and Dirk Schaefer, both screened on 35mm format.
Train Again
Train Again is a phantom ride through the engine room of the seventh art, a ceremony of the (violent) mechanics of railway vehicles and image transporters. Tscherkassky flits through the history of the filmic avant-garde, conceiving his work as a centrifuge of quotations from the pantheon of visionary cinema. One could call this highly complex and simultaneously elemental film a darkroom action experiment, an underground blockbuster, or a kinetic painting in a thousand shades of gray. In any case, Train Again is an ecstatic ode to the fragility and explosive force of the cinematic medium. Peter Tscherkassky, 2021, Austria, 20 min
earthearthearth
The expansive mountainscapes of the Andes are the basis for this new, 35mm film by Daïchi Saïto. Once again propelled by the free, pulsating improvisation of saxophonist Jason Sharp, in which his heartbeat and breathing play a prominent role, the series of images slowly becomes more abstract. The end result is a hypnotic, sensory meditation on “our” earth. Daïchi Saïto, 2021, Canada, Japan, 30 min 88 — Film programme
Expedition Content
Erik Carel, Veronika Kusumaryati In 1961, filmmaker Robert Gardner organized the Harvard Peabody Expedition to Netherlands New Guinea (today West
Papua). Funded by the Dutch colonial government and private donations, and consisting of several wealthy Americans wielding 16mm film cameras, still photographic cameras, reel-to-reel tape recorders, and a microphone, the expedition settled for five months in the Baliem Valley, among the Hubula people. Expedition Content is an augmented sound work composed from 37 hours of tape by sound artist Erik Carel, which document the strange encounter between the expedition and the Hubula people. The piece reflects on intertwined and complex historical moments in the development of approaches to multimodal anthropology, in the lives of the Hubula and of Michael, and in the ongoing history of colonialism in West Papua. Erik Carel, Veronika Kusumaryati, USA, 78 min
film, sound, light and music. A meditation on WWII and recurring cycles of intolerance, fascism, and cruelty in history, Quarry centers on a sick American child (played by Monk) whose world darkens as her illness progresses. Meredith Monk, Amram Nowak, USA, 82 min
Shorts: Aura Satz A focus programme on Aura Satz, visual artist and filmmaker from Spain, featuring a selection of her recent work, including The Grief Interval and short films on Beatriz Ferreyra and Laurie Spiegel.
The Grief Interval
Quarry
Meredith Monk, Amram Nowak
Between 1975-’76, composer, singer, direc tor/choreographer Meredith Monk and her company, The House, created Quarry as a mosaic of images, movement, dialogue,
In this audiovisual broadcast, artist Aura Satz collaborates with electroacoustic composer Sarah Davachi to sonically haunt a decommissioned coal fired power station. Weaving eerie aural warning and mourning, the film project summons the possibility of the pause in a landscape of looming ecological emergency. Aura Satz, 2021, UK, 20 min
Film programme — 89
balances that govern everyday life in a domestic setting. The artist films a group of her friends in their own homes, performing various small actions in accordance with her instructions. Giolo chooses to walk a shifting line where gestures remain ambiguous, expressing a kind of violence that is not immediately recognisable. Eva Giolo, 2020, Italy, 9 min
Shorts: Ritual, Noise, Affect A compilation programme featuring short films that deal with this years’ themes at Rewire: Ritual, Noise, Affect
La mano que canta
La mano que canta builds a web of connecting gestures, voicings, and images in time. These elements mimic each other following an open associative sequence: from the extraction of oak bark in Extremadura during the yearly cork harvest, to the peeling of an orange before a handheld fire, or the act of washing someone’s hand; from the tremor of leaves to that of a voice, to a bird’s flapping wings in the distance, or, again, the feedback loop between the performer’s chant and hand movements. Sensorial resistance to fixity and hierarchy, focus on transformation with all senses engaged in the process, are key aspects to this new work. Both freeform and minutely composed, La mano que canta proposes a lyrical interplay of correspondences where bodies, landscape, and the camera jointly perform, attuned to one another. Alex Reynolds, Alma Söderberg, 2021, Spain, 22 min
Flowers blooming in our throats
Filmed after the lockdown caused by Covid-19, Flowers blooming in our throats is an intimate, poetic portrait of the fragile
90 — Film programme
soramimi
FUJI|||||||||||TA FUJI|||||||||||TA is a sound artist living in Japan. He creates his unique sound art and music which takes various natural phenomena that respond to his interest in wanting to hear unheard sounds and noises. Besides performing his music at Rewire 2022, FUJI|||||||||||TA will also present his film soramimi in response to the theme of Attention. Quoting the artist on his film: “soramimi means “mishearing” in English. It means that you hear a sound that is not actually being made. My days are filled with soramimi. Searching, Searching, Searching, But it is rarely found.” A film by FUJI|||||||||||TA, recorded at his house and in his neighborhood. Edited by Tatsunori Kasai, graphic design by Junpei Inoue, special thanks to Yusuke Nakano. The work was commissioned by VIRTUALLYREALITY.
Film programme — 91
SPECI EVEN
IAL NTS
In addition to the music, discourse and filmprogram mes, Rewire offers several special events throughout the festival weekend, ranging from (sound)artworks to in- store concerts. All special events are open to the public.
Proximity Music: Sensing After Thought Proximity Music: Sensing After Thought is an exhibition which invites visitors to experience focus and distraction, to act and to contemplate. What happens when we stop thinking and start doing and perceiving? Is complexity better grasped intuitively or analytically? Can it help to delegate thinking to machines? Rewire and iii present a selection of artworks by international and local artists in and around the new Amare cultural centre in The Hague. Performances and installations temporarily inhabit the multi-layered foyers and the surrounding streets, producing incidental events that function both as discontinuities or disturbances as well as channels to create new connections. In a famous conversation between John Cage and Morton Feldman in 1966 the two composers consider the question “is intrusion a distraction or is it culture?” and what it means to be “deep in thought”. They suggest how being interrupted can help us move out of thought and into experience. The english word “afterthought” is usually employed in a negative sense, something of secondary importance. What could After Thought mean for us today, amongst all our mindless thinking machines and mindfulness gurus? 94 — Special events
Angelo Custodio “HUM (an/other)” (2022) Angelo Custódio is an artist originally from Portugal and living in Amsterdam who works with voice and performance. He creates sonic based experiences which address the body and vulnerability from a crip/queer perspective. Within the program of Proximity Music: Sensing After Thought he is presenting his new work “HUM (an/other)”, an immersive participatory installation expanding listening through touch and artificial intelligence. A machine learning system reacting to visitors processes the artist’s voice. Visitors are invited to place a custom made tactile transducer on their own bodies, merging themselves with a hybrid organism. “HUM (an/ other)” is presented in collaboration with Das Leben am Haverkamp at Stille Veerkade 19 with the financial support of Mondriaan Fonds, Stroom Den Haag and Stichting Stokroos.
Arvid & Marie “The Full Body Smart Automatic Manipulator” (2019) Arvid & Marie are an artist duo who’s work combines nature, technology and humour. With awareness that “we indeed do not understand the machines that we make” they have created performative installations in collaboration with pigs, robots, yeast and AliExpress. Under the guise of a retro futuristic musical duo they present themselves as “We are Omninaut, how delightful can we be?”. Within Proximity Music: Sensing After Thought they exhibit “The Full Body Smart Automatic Manipulator”, a pseudo-living mechatronic massage chair who talks and offers robotic intimacy services to visitors. Arvid & Marie were residents at Jan Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht in 2020-2021. “The Full Body Smart Automatic Manipulator” was supported by a Research Fellowship at Chronos Art Center Lab in Shanghai.
Davide Tidoni “NEIDERLANT OU NEIDERLANT” Davide Tidoni is an artist and researcher working with sound and listening. His work often takes the form of sonic interventions in the built environment which address presence, perception, architectural acoustics and social dynamics. He is interested in the use of sound and music in counter-culture and political struggles. For Proximity Music: Sensing After Thought he presents “NEIDERLANT OU NEIDERLANT”, a series of videos which are karaoke interpretations of Dutch songs by non native speakers. Additionally, at unscheduled times, Davide Tidoni will perform “Ultras Mashup”, a series of performative interventions acting as intentional disturbances.
Special events — 95
Gemma Luz Bosch and urriaan de Vos “Aircilla” (2021) J “Aircilla” is a large-scale kinetic sound sculpture, a mechanical clockwork generating three dimensional animated geometries of movement and sound. More than 250 handmade ceramic chimes hang above visitors appearing like a giant chandelier. The chimes are raised and lowered through a system of ropes, clamps, pulleys and wheels. The raising and lowering of the chimes causes them to collide, creating a soundscape that evolves hand in hand with the shape of the physical structure. “Aircilla” is a collaboration between Gemma Luz Bosch and Jurriaan de Vos. Gemma is a composer and new instrument maker working with ceramics. In her work she uses her own hand made instruments exploring the boundaries of music. Jurriaan is an installation-artist with a background in physical theatre. He is fascinated by kinetic art, transforming spaces, and the relationship between nature and technology. “Aircilla” is presented in the foyer of Amare, where visitors can experience it for a month, also during the weeks following Rewire festival. 96 — Special events
Jacqueline Kyomi Gork “The input of this machine is the power an output contains” (2021) Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork is an artist based in Los Angeles with a background in history of communication technologies, acoustics, computer music and contemporary dance. Her work has been described as exploring the “choreographic potential of sound”. She plays with sound and architecture, often introducing sculptural elements that modulate how we listen, see and navigate space. The human voice and the human body play a central role in her work. Through the use of both speech and song, language unfolds in it’s sonic, semantic and affective dimensions. For Proximity Music: Sensing After Thought, Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork will be presenting a new version, adjusted to the space of Amare, of “The input of this machine is the power an output contains:” a durational performance investigating public speech. A performer is asked to recite an AI-generated text created with a machine learning system trained on political speeches. The voice is processed by electroacoustic means shifting between intelligibility and
unintelligibility. Visitors are invited to come and go at any time and explore the textual and acoustic space together with the performers. This project was created for the exhibition Made in LA: 2020 a version at Hammer Museum with support from VIA Art Fund.
Kaffe Matthews “Buzz Bike” (2022) Kaffe Matthews is an established composer/sound artist originally from England now based in Berlin, who has been working for over 20 years around what she calls “Music for Bodies”. Matthews creates physical listening experiences using new technologies in which musical compositions are inserted within everyday activities such as cycling, lying in bed or kayaking. For Proximity Music: Sensing After Thought she has been commissioned to make a new site specific work which combines her previous geolocated bicycle compositions in the “Sonic Bike” series with the tactile and meditative experience of her “Sonic Bed”. Using this new custom made cargo bike, “Buzz Bike”, visitors can explore downtown The Hague while lying within it, feeling and
listening to this new composition moving around them whilst gazing at the sky and the tops of passing buildings. “Buzz Bike” is designed and created by Kaffe Matthews and Nick Martin in association with Imagineer Productions (Coventry, UK). Itcan hold one adult or several children. Commissioned by Rewire
Kexin Hao “Future Dance of Nostalgia” (2022) Kexin Hao is a young artist originally from Beijing and based in The Netherlands where she graduated in 2021 from the Royal Art Academy of The Hague. Her graduation work “Total Body Workout”, investigates through joyful group exercise the authoritarian image of the healthy body. For Proximity Music: Sensing After Thought and she has been commissioned to produce a new work, “Future Dance of Nostalgia”, combining ethnographic research, rhythmic choreography and gaming. Taking the form of classic dancing video games such as “Just Dance“, the work invites visitors to perform a choreography based on gestures related to pre-industrial, heavy Special events — 97
physical labour. Historical archives of work songs provide the inspiration for the music by Rachwill Breidel, who renders the old tales and melodies into clubbing beats that lead the dance. Visitors can experience the work by playing the videogame as well as by joining group dance sessions taking place daily in the foyer of Amare. “Future Dance of Nostalgia” is created in collaboration with Leonardo Scarin (game design), Ludmila Rodrigues (choreography).
Jesus Canuto Iglesias “The Contemplation Bench” (2022) Jesus Canuto Iglesias is an artist originally from Spain and based in The Hague, where he graduated from the ArtScience Interfaculty in 2019. He creates sound sculptures and installations that combine industrial and machine aesthetics with digital media. His work is experienced by the audience as spatial and tactile compositions. For Proximity Music: Sensing After Thought he has been commissioned to produce a new work titled “The Contemplation Bench”. The work takes the form of a large circular bench made of polished steel, accommodating 98 — Special events
up to 12 people at once. Industrial vibration motors are placed under the benches. The motors are computer controlled to convey music through tactile vibrations. Visitors are invited to sit on the benches and feel the composition. Under the disguise of a cold, minimal and industrial exemplar of design furniture, the work addresses touch and intimacy within the public setting of Amare. Commissioned by Rewire
Mihalis Shammas “Lyraei” (2021) Mihalis Shammas is an artist with a background in architecture, industrial design and music originally from Cyprus and based in The Hague. He graduated in 2021 from the Institute of Sonology, creating a new electro acoustic instrument called Lyraei. A modern electronic interpretation of the ancient greek harp, this is a string instrument that is played as an electronic synthesiser. Electromagnetic induction electronics designed and fabricated by the artist are employed to excite the strings and generate continuous sounds that can be controlled with unprecedented
precision. The instrument is designed to create an immersive and physical experience in which the player leads listeners into a state of trance through dense sonic tapestries. For Proximity Music: Sensing After Thought Mihalis Shammas will perform daily concerts.
Soyun Park + Wellgoodsness “Fantasia Realism” (2022)
Mint Park + Quiet Ensemble Mint Park is a young electronic musician and new media artist originally from South Korea and based in Amsterdam. Her sound-driven practice investigates space, texture, and natural phenomena. Artist duo Quiet Ensemble, based in Rome, over the last 12 years have created a series of immersive audiovisual works exploring chaotic processes. For Proximity Music: Sensing After Thought, iii and Rewire have invited Mint Park to work with Quiet Ensemble. The outcome of an intensive 1 week residency in The Hague is a collaborative performance playing with sound, light and fluid dynamics, attempting to govern a miniature ecosystem within a black box theatre space. The performance is presented multiple times per day at Theatre aan Het Spui, directly opposite the main exhibition site of Amare. Commissioned by Rewire
Soyun Park is a digital artist working with image and interaction, originally from South Korea. She graduated in 2021 from the Graphic Design department of the Royal Art Academy in The Hague, where she is currently based. Her powerful and entrancing graduation work “Wunderkammer 10.0”, created in collaboration with Inwoo Jung and Yelim Ki, carried the viewer through an AI generated audiovisual journey exploring a post-apocalyptic data landscape. Inwoo Jung is a music producer and interdisciplinary artist from South Korea and based in Cologne who is also working under the alias of Wellsgoodness. The program of Proximity Music: Sensing After Thought features a premiere of their audiovisual collaboration “Fantasia Realism”, connecting the methods adopted by the surrealist during the early 20th century to current research in machine learning. In Fantasia Realism a machine learning system trained on fictional stories such as fairy tales, horrors and thrillers is used to generate a composition of visual and sonic material which the two artists then manipulate live in a theatrical performance. “Fantasia Realism” is supported by Arts Council Korea. Commissioned by Rewire
Special events — 99
Tactology Rewire X Lab Carhartt WIP Instore
Sounds Like Touch stimulates interdisciplinary co-creations and functions as a platform and springboard for artists and creators to experiment with physical forms and ways of interaction with technology. Together with them, we aim to develop and On Saturday 9 April, Rewire and Carhartt encourage a tangible and accessible prac- WIP team up for an in-store event in The tice of the electronic performing arts. The Hague-based record store 3345. The event creative processes and the results of Lab 2 is freely accessible and bills aya, Torus, and will be presented at the festival. Sounds Yeong Die & LazerGazer. The sets will be Like Touch is carried out by creatives and livestreamed on the socials of 3345. Come is generously funded by the Municipality over to listen to some tunes or to shop the of Utrecht and Cultuur Innovatiefonds limited edition Carhartt WIP X Rewire 2022 Utrecht. shirts. 3345 is also selling vinyl and merch throughout Rewire at various festival locaParticipating artists are Elsa van der Linden, Jaromir Mulders, Saskia de Vries, Daniel tions. Cross, Owen Storni, Noor Sanders, Myra- Ida van der Veen, Niels Dielen, Kaylie Kist, Pierre Estourgie, Ineke Vermeulen and Michelle Vossen.
100 — Special events
Roos Pollmann: Plastic Healing Altar
As part of Rewire’s year-round Education programme, Rewire presents the interactive installation Plastic Healing Altar for children 5 years and up, by artist and musician Roos Pollmann. This installation will also feature a walk-in workshop that focuses on the theme of sound and ritual. This educational afternoon programme is open to the public for free in the central library of The Hague.
Mathijs Leeuwis: Reduced Sensory Stimulus Concert
Pedal steel guitarist, composer and “explorer of sound” Mathijs Leeuwis transforms his analogue instruments in complex and evocative tape-loop based compositions. Constantly looking for new sounds, methods of composition and ways of creating music, Leeuwis often deconstructs his work to rebuild it under new configurations. The results are often lush musical pieces that bring a tinge of Americana into thick layers of ambient. Alongside his performance on Saturday 9 April, Mathijs will be performing a special reduced sensory concert as part of our Outreach programme, allowing people with sensitivities to light and sound to attend. This concert is presented in collaboration with Onbeperkt Genieten. Special events — 101
Sounding the Spui On Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 April, the iconic Spuiplein in the city centre of The Hague will be transformed into the site of an immersive, sonic experience. The installation channels different environmental sounds, sourced from The Hague by a variety of composers, sound artists, students and pupils, free for everyone to visit. The project is realised by students of Sonology, Composition and ArtScience at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague, in collaboration with alumni. 102 — Special events
Sounding the Spui programme overview
Saturday 9 April 12:00
excerpt from De Promenoir van Mondriaan (collaborative work from 1994, supervised by Dick Raaijmakers)
14:00
BMB Con. — Hei 1988
15:30
performance by school children under supervision of Hilde Wollenstein
17:00
Hilde Wollenstein: Please stop yelling at me, I don’t know what I want.
19:30
Jan Boerman: Maasproject 1
20:00
Margherita Brillada: Il Tempo Sospeso
20:30
Constant: excerpt from New Babylon
21:00
Kees Tazelaar: Luchtveld
22:00
end
Sunday 10 April 12:00
excerpt from De Promenoir van Mondriaan (collaborative work from 1994, supervised by Dick Raaijmakers)
13:00
BMB Con. — Hei 1988
14:00
Kim Ho: Máni
15:00
Julio Molina Moya: Haagse Markt 2016
16:00
Jan Boerman: Maasproject 2
17:00
end
Special events — 103
19 mrt — 14 aug 2022
Robert Knoth &
Antoinette de Jong Tree & Soil
Koop je tickets via Fotomuseumdenhaag.nl
2022
13.04–11.10
Woensdag 13 april
Donderdag 28 april
Woensdag 6 juli
Dorian Electra / Tolhuistuin
Kokoroko
Sons Of Kemet / Tolhuistuin
Maandag 18 april
Dinsdag 14 juni
Dinsdag 11 oktober
Portico Quartet
Arooj Aftab / De Duif
Hiatus Kiayote
COMING SOON IN PARALLEL
LYZZA Major League Namasenda Pangaea
Chippy Nonstop
PinkPantheress
Colin Benders & Boris Acket present _rhizome (live A/V)
Two Shell
Courtesy (live) JASSS Kleine Crack (live)
INFO & TICKETS: www.parallel.am
MOTEL MOZAÏQUE FESTIVAL
21-22-23 APRIL 2022 ROTTERDAM GET YOUR TICKETS NOW VIA MOTELMOZAIQUE.NL
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TALK SHOW VACUUM VOETVOLK YAYA BEY & MANY MORE
DISCOVER THE FINEST NEW MUSIC, PERFORMANCE & ART IN ROTTERDAM
JUNE 2022 LOCATIONS (NL) Performances
Klara Lewis & Nik Colk Void+Pedro Maia (AV Live) Helm(live) (visuals by Tatsuya Fujimoto) Mark Fell & Will Guthrie Dadub & Fax—Hypersynchronous (AV Live) Animistic Beliefs & Jeisson Drenth present CACHE/SPIRIT (AV Live) Marco Donnarumma presents Corpus Nil Dylan Cote & Pierre Lafanechère present Earthsatz (AV Live) Lichun Tseng & Robert Kroos (AV Live) Nikki Hock‚ BJ Nilsen Club Nights
Pessimist, Umwelt, Mad Miran, Unit Moebius Zohar, Marsman, AcidicMale, Das Ding Slick Chick, Genyten, Raff, Rita Maomenos Blondewednesday
Initiated by
Exhibitions
Conference
Joanie Lemercier, Carla Chan, Marnix de Nijs, Cocky Eek, Macular, Mariska de Groot, Marco Broeders
Stefan Sorgner, Lisanne Buik, Matthew Fuller, Geocinema Network, Visual Methodologies Collective, Lawrence Lek’s The Sinofuturist Trilogy, Roel Dobbe, Eric Parren, Holly Dicker
More to be announced...
With the support of
Multi-sensory encounters with urgent ideas, experimental music & contemporary art
Conflux Festival
02 — 05 VARIOUS ROTTERDAM
ConfluxFestival.nl
carhartt-wip.com
@carharttwip
ENKIDU KHALED / PLATFORM 0090
God 99 Bar by bar, night by night, story by story, onward!
Voorstelling | Coproductie — Do 14 & vr 15 april
DE BRAKKE GROND X MELKWEG
IKRAAAN Concert | Coproductie — Vr 27 mei
LISA SPILLIAERT
Growth Record Expositie — t/m Zo 15 mei
www.brakkegrond.nl
112 — Special events
General Festival Info Ticket & information desk The ticket and information desks for Rewire 2022 are located at The Grey Space In The Middle, and PAARD.
Scan the QR code and download the official Rewire 2022 Festival App for free.
The Grey Space In The Middle Address: Paviljoensgracht 20, 2512 BP, Den Haag PAARD Address: Prinsegracht 12, 2512 GA, Den Haag Opening Hours: Friday 8 April: 12.00—00.00 at The Grey Space in the Middle. From 00:00 at PAARD Saturday 9 April: 10.30—00.00 at The Grey Space in the Middle. From 00:00 at PAARD Sunday 10 April: 10.30—22.00 at The Grey Space in the Middle.
Night trains If you’re travelling to The Hague from surrounding areas in the Netherlands, you will have no trouble getting home at night. Throughout the Rewire weekend, trains departing from The Hague’s two main train stations — Central Station and Hollands Spoor — run approximately every 30 minutes until just after midnight. From midnight on, trains run every hour from Hollands Spoor. This train passes through Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam, Leiden and Schiphol. General info — 113
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Amare
Spuiplein 150, 2511 DG
PAARD
Prinsegracht 12
Korzo
Prinsenstraat 42
Lutherse Kerk
Lutherse Burgwal 7
The Grey Space Paviljoensgracht 20
Koorenhuis
Prinsegracht 27
Koninklijke Schouwburg Korte Voorhout 3
Theatre aan het Spui
Spui 187
Grote Kerk
Rond de Grote Kerk 12
10 Das Leben am Haverkamp
1
Stille Veerkade 19
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Boekhorststraat 126-128
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12 Filmhuis Den Haag Spui 191
13 Nieuwe Kerk Spui 175
14 Centrale Bibliotheek Spui 68
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Lange Voorhout 102
16 3345
Noordeinde 87G General info — 115
Credits Supervisory Board
Berith Danse, Janke Brands, Jo Houben, Marleen van Uchelen
Director
Bronne Keesmaat
Policy & Development
Ingrid Beer
Programme
Bronne Keesmaat (Head of Programme, Curator Music), Gerben de Louw (Programme Assistant, Co-curator Music, Curator Film), Jo Kali (Curator Discourse), Henk Koolen (Co-curator Music), Matteo Marangoni (Curator Proximity Music)
Marketing & Communications
Daisy Benz (Marketing & Communications Manager), Andy Norstrom (Marketing & Communications Assistant), Hugo Emmerzael (Content)
Education & Outreach
Zoe Reddy
Production
Rik ’t Jong (Technical Production Manager), Daan Jonkers (Technical Production), Joya de Bock (Artist Production + Volunteers), Barbara de Haan (Site Production & Hospitality), Isa Sánchez (Volunteer Coordinator), Sannah Lasqad
Visitors Programme Stacie Sueko Lyons
Editorial
Hugo Emmerzael, Jo Kali
116 — Credits
Design
Anja Kaiser & Jim Kühnel (Campaign & Identity) Dinamo (Type)
Web Development Basten Stokhuyzen
Thanks
We would like to thank all of our partners and sponsors for their continuous support. A big shout out to our amazing team of volunteers and ambassadors, and of course a big thank you for visiting our festival. Rewire Festival 2022 is organised and presented by Stichting Unfold
© 2022 Rewire Festival / Stichting Unfold
Disclaimer
Although we strive to ensure editorial completeness, we may have missed certain copyright issues. If you spot something of yours that we used, drop us an email and we will credit you. E-mail pr@rewirefestival.nl Mail P.O. Box 243 2501 CE Den Haag
Funding & Institutional Partners
Sponsors
Creative Partners
Media Partners
Partners — 117
Next Events
11 June Rewire X Korzo: Lotic presents Water, Jessy Lanza Korzo, The Hague
14 September Jon Hopkins presents Polarity Amare, The Hague
For more info and tickets: rewirefestival.nl
2023: 6–9 APRIL
Early bird tickets now available until 1 May For more info and tickets: rewirefestival.nl
