Inter/relations

This year, Rewire’s context programme will revolve around the theme of Inter/relations, taking place at The Grey Space in The Middle, Nieuwe Kerk, and Page Not Found. Through listening sessions, conversations, and assemblies, the programme will tune into entangled environments and sound technologies, while challenging existing borders and linear notions of time.

The festival’s context programme Inter/ relations will explore how recognizing fluid boundaries between humans, nature, and technology, and establishing connections between times and territories are fundamental for contemporary and experimental music and sound practices. Musicians and sound artists experiment with emerging and older technologies, exploring ways to tune into and expose the often invisible yet pervasive systems and networks of contemporary society. They find ways to improvise and collaborate across different time zones. Some approach the technologies they use critically, assessing forms of extraction and the ways in which natural landscapes or communities are exploited. Other artists are interested in the genealogy of instruments — the ways in which music and sound cultures travel — or in developing new contexts for forgotten or pre-colonial instruments. They invite us to listen more closely and collectively, and to recalibrate our relations with our environment.

The first part of the context programme

Instrumental Ecologies focuses on the evershifting role of technology in music and sound practice, and how artists and musicians research and experiment with the ways in which instruments and technologies are entangled with natural ecologies. It also asks how older, analogue, or lowtech tools and instruments are revisited and used in experimental music. The second part will look into interrelations between Times and Territories, challenging existing borders and linear notions of time. During conversations, listening sessions, and assemblies, we will practice forms of intergenerational listening, while engaging with music and sound from various locations and positions. Artists joining the context programme are ABADIR, Afrorack, Andrius Arutiunian, Brandon LaBelle, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Carla J. Maier, Deena Abdelwahed, Ellen Fullman, Giada Dalla Bontà, Hatis Noit, Hannes Liechti,

Heloisa Amaral, Hildegard Westerkamp (audio contribution), Joe Rainey, Liew Niyomkarn, Lucy Liyou, Maria Chávez, Mariam Rezaei, Mark Peter Wright, Matteo Marangoni, Matthew Biederman, meLê yamomo, M I M I, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, Nwando Ebizie, Pak Yan Lau, Pamela Z, Patti Smith and Soundwalk Collective, Paul Purgas, Pierce Warnecke, Stas Sharifullin, Vica Pacheco, Victoria Shen, and Vivian Caccuri.

From the opening programme on Thursday onwards, The Grey Space in The Middle, space for fundamental creativity, and Page Not Found, space for artist’s publications, will operate as the main centers of gravity for the context programme. Radio WORM will be broadcasting live from The Grey Space, with interviews, live streams, and conversations. All context programme activities are freely accessible.

All in It Together

In conjunction with the context programme Inter/relations, Rewire and Norient launched the online publication All in It Together, with essays, audio pieces, and works of sonic fiction by authors from the Norient and Rewire network. How do artists relate to each other and their environments and how does it affect their music? In which way can new forms of listening lead to new perspectives? And how can one think with rather than about music?

Dive into the publication

All in It Together here: