Context

Tuning In — Listening Session

By: Liew Niyomkarn

The Grey Space in The Middle, Friday 7 April, 13:30—14:30

In response to this year’s theme of Instrumental Ecologies, sound artists and musician Liew Niyomkarn will open Rewire’s context programme on Friday with a listening session at Page Not Found. Through crowd-sourced field recordings by friends near and far, we will open our ears and tune into a series of sonic environments in micro and macro forms.

Sounding with the Serge Modular — a workshop by Thomas Ankersmit

The Grey Space in The Middle, Friday 7 April, 14:00—16:00

With the upcoming 50th anniversary in 2023 of the Serge synthesizer, developed by Russian American composer and electronic instrument builder Serge Tcherepnin, the work of Berlin-based sound artist Thomas Ankersmit is revelatory. Working almost exclusively with the instrument for over fifteen years, Ankersmit has attained a scholarly and near-alchemical knowledge of the Serge synthesizer. On Friday 7 April, prior to his performance the day after, Ankersmit will host a workshop in which he will demonstrate his ways of working with the Serge Modular and in which participants are invited to join his experiments in sounding.

For this workshop, you need an extra ticket.

TIMEZONES — A Podcast

between Anthropology, Audio Collage, and Journalism by Norient — listening station

The Grey Space in The Middle, Friday 7 April, 16:30–18:00

The TIMEZONES podcast series plunges into the world of artists and their practices, asking: what does living and working in culture and the arts involve in different countries, cities, and contexts today? The artists’ thoughts on their moods, their social, political, and intellectual realities and their philosophies of life have been worked up into experimental audio collages. The podcasts run the gamut of formats and content, from straight journalism to experimental and documentary approaches, ethnography and fiction, sound art and improvisation.

TIMEZONES is a project by Norient, co-initiated with the Goethe-Institut.

Poetics of Listening —

Seminar with: Brandon LaBelle Page Not Found, Friday 7 April, 15:00—16:00

In conjunction with the release of the publication The Listening Biennial Reader, these two seminars with artist and writer Brandon LaBelle focus on listening as a framework for nurturing expanded relationalities across time and territory. In what ways does listening move us, supporting connections with others? As many artists and scholars attest, listening is a transformative power that impacts onto processes of social recognition, care and mutuality. Over the course of the two seminars on Friday and Saturday, listening will be highlighted as a conduit for enabling recognition that also moves beyond human worlds and the logic of binary thought.

Taking stock of listening’s power, we’ll collectively consider listening as a special form of dreaming, as what delivers messages from other worlds, and that acts as a type of possession transforming what we know of each other.

Instrumental Ecologies

— Assembly with: Matthew Biederman, Liew Niyomkarn, Carla J. Maier, Pierce Warnecke, Mark Peter Wright

The Grey Space in The Middle, Friday 7 April, 16:30–17:45

As part of Rewire’s context programme 2023, Instrumental Ecologies will focus on the ways in which musicians and sound artists find ways of listening with the environment, while critically assessing the environmental impact of the technologies they use, and how they are entangled with natural ecologies. In this assembly, artist and researcher Mark Peter Wright, sound artist and musician Liew Niyomkarn, researcher and editor Carla Maier, and audiovisual artists Matthew Biederman and Pierce Warnecke will enter into a conversation on their work, the politics of field recording, and modes of environmental listening. Wright will open the assembly with an introduction, following his essay Micologies, highlighting hidden interactions between humans, non-humans, and sound technologies.

Radio WORM x Rewire

Rewire is collaborating with Radio WORM, who will be broadcasting live from The Grey Space, with interviews, live streams and conversations, reflecting and reporting over the course of the festival days.