Context

Veering Voices — Conversation

with: Lucy Liyou, Hatis Noit, and Pamela Z

The Grey Space in The Middle, Saturday 8 April, 13:15—14:00

As part of the context programme Instrumental Ecologies, artists Lucy Liyou, Hatis Noit, and Pamela Z are invited to enter into a conversation on the poetics and politics of working with the earliest instrument: the voice. While discussing each of their unique approaches to voice processing and expanding its possibilities as an instrument, they will address questions around silencing and amplifying voices, and how voices channel grief, translate histories, and hold emancipatory power.

Poetics of Listening — Seminar

with: Brandon LaBelle

Page Not Found, Saturday 8 April, 14:15—15:15

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.

Elements of Sounding

with: Ellen Fullman and Pak Yan Lau

The Grey Space in The Middle, Saturday 8 April, 15:30—16:15

As part of the context programme’s track Instrumental Ecologies, artists and composers Ellen Fullman and Pak Yan Lau will enter into a conversation on listening and sounding mediated by their self-built or assembled instruments. The artists share a deep interest in working with acoustics, vibration, and overtones, and in seeing how our modes of listening and being attentive to sound transform throughout time. Fullman will speak more about building, composing, and performing with The Long String Instrument, an installation of dozens of tuned strings which have resonated in architectural spaces across the world. Pak Yan will walk us through her electro-acoustic sound universe, with its prepared pianos, toy pianos, synths, electronics, and various sound objects, producing immersive sound palettes, overtones, and harmonics.

Times and Territories — Assembly with: Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Afrorack, Maria Chávez, Nadah El Shazly, Paul Purgas, Joe Rainey, Stas Sharifullin (remote), meLê yamomo

The Grey Space in The Middle, Saturday 8 April, 16:30—18:00

As part of Rewire’s context programme 2023, Times and Territories will focus on how establishing connections across time and space, while challenging existing borders and linear notions of time, are fundamental for contemporary and experimental music and sound practices. During this assembly, artists are invited to discuss their working methods and collective desires to resist colonial models of listening, by expressing themselves in terms of their arts and craft and their critical faculties. Led by artist, researcher, and writer Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, artists performing at Rewire will enter into one on one conversations as critical friends, reviewing each other’s work and discussing the role of temporality and spatiality, fostering equitable modes of collective sounding and listening together.

Turntablism with: Maria Chávez, Mariam Rezaei, and Victoria Shen

The Grey Space in The Middle, Saturday 8 April, 18:15–19:00

Sound artists, composers, and performers

Maria Chávez, Mariam Rezaei, and Victoria Shen share an affinity for the turntable as an instrument for musical experimentation and improvisation. All three artists have become internationally renowned for their unique kind of turntablism, giving a new framework for a near-archaic and inherently lo-fi form of music making. During this session, Chávez, Rezaei, and Shen will enter into a conversation on their collaboration and the performance for 12 turntables that they will present at Rewire, as well as demonstrating and discussing how their idiosyncratic techniques and approaches to the instrument have evolved over time.

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

The Grey Space in The Middle, Saturday 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.

Radio WORM × 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.