Rewire Festival Programme 2019

2019

PROGRAMME

CONTENTS

2 Introduction

CONTEXT

4 Nicolás Jaar:

Rhizomatic Tendencies

8 Clean, Precise and

Unpredictable: Jlin and the

art of movement

12 Nyege Nyege:

An Inside Scoop on East

Africa’s Outsider Sounds

14 Rewire meets

Dag in de Branding

DISCOURSE

19 Instrumental Shifts 22 Symposium

24 Staging Sounds

26 Artist Talks

27 Alexine Rodenhuis:

Radical Companions

31 Aidan Wall:

Leafhead’s Teething

34 James Hassall:

New Technologies and

Paradigmatic Shifts

38 Tolga Arslan & Mette Slot

Johnsen: Instrumental

Convergence and Divergent Minds

42 Guilherme Coelho:

The Necessity for Artistic

Engagement in the Field of AI

46 Holly Dicker & ST-DUO: How to

Make a Tunafish Sandwich

PROGRAMME

48 Friday Artists

60 Saturday Artists

76 Sunday Artists

86 Special Events PRACTICAL

107 General Festival Info 108 Venues 110 Credits 111 Partners

INTRODUCTION We are thrilled to welcome you to Rewire 2019. Our ninth edition upholds the festival’s tradi­tion to present adven­ turous music; highlighting multidisciplinary crossovers and forward-thinking artists, those who push boundaries and rewire the idea of what music and live performance can be today.

to present a focus on Chilean producer and composer Nicolás Jaar. At Rewire he will present several projects that epitomise his experimental and explorative spirit: a commissioned performance for piano, saxophone, electronics, percussion and duduk; a solo set presented in combination with an installation by Vincent de Belleval & Jaar; a programme showcasing artists from his Other People label; and an artist talk reflecting on his practice.

This year we have assembled a programme that resonates, promotes and fosters the innovative music we witness around us.

We bring together artists who embrace change, find new artistic directions and collaborations, seek out new forms of performative expression, use emerging technologies, such as AI, or invent their own instruments. At Rewire 2019 we explore how artists disrupt the status quo and how they intervene across a spectrum of musical outputs and artistic disciplines.

As a music festival we believe our role is not only to curate music, but to draw connections and facilitate relevant and important discussions around it. With our 2019 discourse programme we continue our exploration of the wider context surrounding the performances and artists with the understanding that, while music can be enjoyed in isolation, it can also provide a vital glimpse into the way we navigate ourselves in the world.

These ideas materialise throughout the festival weekend as concerts, interdisciplinary performances, talks and workshops.

New this year is a prelude event at the Royal Conservatoire on Thursday 28 March; a collaborative programme with contemporary music festival Dag In De Branding; a symposium organised with the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision; a film programme; and a series of soundwalks.

With more than 150 individual events, this is the most extensive festival edition to date.

As an artist who consistently pushes his practice into new territories, we are proud 4 — Introduction

Instrumental Shifts, the first of our discourse themes, serves as a metaphor for rapidly changing times; moments of new questionings, understandings and orientations. With it we give space to reflect on our contemporary positioning and the current debates that surround us — like those on responsibility and ethics, creativity and autonomy. On Friday, we present a full day Symposium that opens scientific research to the artistic world. Over the course of the festival, Instrumental Shifts zooms in on the many technological developments in process today and the effects these are having, not only on the music we hear, but on the ways we exist as a society. We seek answers to how this coincides and

conflicts with musical and cultural progression and autonomy.

performance ’Endless Power’ in collaboration with visual artist Emmanuel Biard.

Staging Sound, our second theme, observes the performative nature of music; the experience, ritual, and show. It’s the creative process by which musical material is translated into performance and a growing need for an experience beyond the sonic and an urge for an artist to express ‘liveness’ through gestures and presence.

Bringing live debuts to The Netherlands with exciting performances that go beyond their solo electronic outputs are Jlin, who will be joined by ten dancers from Company Wayne McGregor; Tim Hecker, a solo performer here accompanied by an ensemble of traditional Japanese gagaku musicians; and Sega Bodega, who transitions from electronic music producer to on stage performer with his first live show.

The Rewire 2019 programme also features a number of special projects making their (inter)national premiere. Chicago-based composer, clarinetist and singer Angel Bat Dawid performs the spellbinding spiritual jazz of her recent debut ‘The Oracle’ with the help of a six-piece ensemble, while the Begena, one of the world’s oldest instruments, comes to life accompanied by soulful incantations in a rare performance by Ethiopian artist Sosena Gebre Eyesus. Iona Fortune & NYX come together for a liminal ceremony that re-embodies digital instrumentation and live electronics, and movement artist and vocalist Elaine Mitchener explores the universality of death and rebirth with her celebrated, contemporary opera ‘Of Leonardo Da Vinci.’

Throughout this booklet, you will also find texts by writers that engage with these themes. Selected through an open call are contributions by Aidan Wall, Alexine Rodenhuis, Guilherme Coelho, Holly Dicker, James Hassall, and Tolga Arslan & Mette Slot Johnsen.

As a festival that operates outside of the mainstream, we often find ourselves in peripheral settings and surfacing global ­ scenes, such as with this year’s Ugandan Nyege Nyege showcase. Although our focus is openly international, we also take note of the immense talent and innovation we have at home with more than a quarter of this year’s programme consisting of Dutch artists.

Rewire has established itself as a producer of new works, steadily supporting and investing in the music community. In addition to Nicolás Jaar, you will find several other commissioned or co-produced works at the festival, including a new work by British pianist Kit Downes and The Haguebased Ensemble Klang; British electronic musician Mark Fell’s new piece for electronic music, light, kinetic objects and human movement; and Dutch artist Haron who will be accompanied by pianist Anne Veinberg for his first ever live show: a performance for piano, electronics and spatialised sound. Danish composer and artist Astrid Sonne has been invited to perform a new work with local musicians, while electronic producer Lotic presents his new live

At Rewire 2019, we invite you to embrace the unknown, the unruly, and to feel as inspired by the artists on show as we are. We wish you an incredible ninth edition of our festival!

Bronne Keesmaat Founder and director

Introduction — 5

NICOLÁS JAAR:

Words by Mathis Neuhaus

RHIZOMATIC TENDENCIES

When reflecting on Chilean-American composer Nicolás Jaar’s artistic output, the term rhizome comes to mind. Coined by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guatarri in the 1970s, rhizome has since been an en vogue metaphor for describing a non-hierarchical organisation of knowledge. Its train of thought is based on presenting culture as a constantly sprawling map or network, with a range of attractions and influences that can refer to each other. The rhizome reacts to the complexification of the world by allowing to think about cultural production as an active, ongoing, processual activity that does not always predictably lead from A to B. Since releasing his first EP ‘The Student’ for Wolf + Lamb in 2008, Nicolás Jaar’s work has sprawled out in many directions and drawn its own map. Sometimes prominently, sometimes in disguise, he has explored the possibilities of composing and presenting music that overcomes gratuitous and superficial classifications of genre, practice or audience. This does not mean his music occupies a context-less realm, though. In fact, Nicolás Jaar’s artistic output could best be described as a reflection on myriad meta-contexts that change and shift over time, just as the artist himself changes and shifts.

Born in New York City in 1990, Jaar’s first forays into performing music emerged while wandering the streets of the city with his friends, looking for electrical outlets into which they could plug their gear and present songs to an undefined and always-new audience. A piano-trained accordion player at the time, Jaar also ex-

plored the possibilities of programmes like Ableton for producing music on his own — while still in high school, sitting in libraries or maybe his own bedroom, to reference a notoriously applied term for young people who often work hardwareless and in solitude on electronic music.

His critically acclaimed debut album ‘Space Is Only Noise’ from 2011 changed all that.

Suddenly lauded as one of the most interesting and unique voices in contemporary electronic music, Nicolás Jaar became a globetrotting live performer (and often DJ) at the age of 21. The musician carved out a sonic palette beyond conventional reference points and struck a nerve: elegantly maneuvering his own musical world, occupied by hushed voice-fragments, sparse arrangements, and a multi-instrumentalist sensibility.

Even though ‘Space Is Only Noise’ was a benchmark at the time, Nicolás Jaar did not rely on it being exactly that. It may be a bigger hub on his ever-expanding map, but its popularity did not prevent Jaar from further pushing into new territories. Not interested in having just one tone, the musician continued on an artistic path marked by exploration, collaboration and constant progression. Up to this point, this meant releasing two more albums: one being ‘Pomegranates’ in 2015, an imagined 20track score to Sergei Parajanov’s 1969 avant-garde film ‘The Colour of Pomegranates’; and one being ‘Sirens’ in 2016, an accomplished piece of political and personal songwriting that dealt with topics ranging from alienation to questions of identity and borrowings of surrealist poetics.

Context — 7

The stretches in between Jaar used for different means of exploring sound production and presentation. Together with multi-instrumentalist Dave Harrington, he formed the two-man supergroup Darkside, and on his own he founded Other People, a project often described as a label, but which goes beyond the traditional notion of what running a label typically means.

The self-described “sound/image/data archive” constantly bends the implications of occupying the role as a music distributor and, consequently, gatekeeper in the 21st century.

Take the aptly named project ‘The Network’ as an example: structured as an expansive radio play positioned around a DJ at the helm of his own radio residency, the digital space http://other-people.network gives room to 333 different radio channels. All of them are made-up of more than 20 hours of Jaar’s own mixes and music that sit next to conceptual sound pieces focusing on Justin Bieber or the annual Forbes list of the world’s top billionaires. Spending some time in this rhizomatic network leads to serendipitous discoveries at the same time as providing the opportunity to reflect on the radio’s inherent possibilities as a broadcasting structure. The conceptual approach of ‘The Network’ is positioning it beyond traditional notions of music production and reception. It’s a fitting agent of Nicolas Jaar’s artistic agenda, which is likewise defined by using a multiplicity of convention-bending voices to fathom what it means to be an artist in present times.

Over the last few years Nicolás Jaar has ventured further away from composing music in traditional formats, instead immersing himself in more-freewheeling contexts and collaborations. Together with Mexican choreographer Stéphanie Janaina he performed the 3-hours live improvisation ‘¡MIÉRCOLES!’ that also makes use of 8 — Context

a show-specific publication to mediate the creative process behind the two artists’ practice and collaboration. Expanding the territories of his practice, he even went underwater on the coast of Stromboli. In collaboration with Lydia Ourahmane, he realised the work ‘Music for Two Seas’ that the public could listen to for as long a duration as they could hold their breath.

The delicacy and unpredictable outcome of multi-disciplinary collaborations is what makes them exciting, and Nicolás Jaar is very much aware of these dynamics. He came a long way from tinkering with Ableton on his own private and intimate compositions to opening up and letting the world and all its influences shape integral components of his body of work. He has fostered connections with the world and in turn opened up multiple entryways to his body of work: one can consider Nicolás Jaar a performer, a collaborator, an enabler or musician. Or everything at once. By refusing to work in a singular medium or production strategy, he explores the full potential of contemporary music composition.

It would not be an exaggeration to therefore describe him as a prototype artist for our present day and age.

What’s so appealing about Nicolás Jaar’s work is seeing an artist in flux: constantly formulating and executing new ideas and thoughts, there seems to be no fear for failure. As an intellectual risk-taker with seemingly endless curiosity, he appears to be moving and stretching in every direction at once; picking up what interests him along the way, joining forces with collaborators and considering the contexts that surround him at any given time. As Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari write in their 1980 book ‘A Thousand Plateaus’: “A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.”

Nicolás Jaar and Other People at Rewire 2019 vtgnike

Saturday 30 March — Paard I 23:45 — 00:45

Nicolás Jaar presents Free 2 Move (live/dj)

Saturday 30 March — Paard I 02:00 — 03:15

Lucrecia Dalt & Alessandra Leone

Sunday 31 March — Korzo (zaal) 14:15 — 15:00

Pierre Bastien & Tomaga

Sunday 31 March — Koorenhuis (zaal) 15:45 — 16:30

Patrick Higgins

Sunday 31 March — Paard I 18:00 — 18:40

John Bence

Sunday 31 March — Oude Katholieke Kerk 19:00 — 19:45

Nicolás Jaar & Group

Sunday 31 March — Grote Kerk Concert 1: 21.15 — 22.05 Concert 2: 22.30 — 23.20 Read more about the artists in the artists overview, starting from page 62.

Context — 9

CLEAN, PRECISE AND UNPREDICTABLE:

Words by Jo Kali

JLIN AND THE ART OF MOVEMENT

10 — Context

“I feel like movement has a sound,” Jerrilynn Patton, better known as Jlin, begins to explain over Skype. “In the same way that people hear colours, for me, movement has a sound.” Her interpretations of this is what she expresses through her music. The American musician has carved out a space for herself in today’s art world,

one that’s not necessarily left behind, but proudly moved beyond the categories of club, footwork and electronics she was once being attached to. Within her work, there has always been the connected thread of movement, however haphazardly it’s been stitched. One of her latest collaborative projects brought her together with British award-winning choreographer Wayne McGregor on ‘Autobiography’, an expressive portrait illuminated by the sequencing of his own genome that Jlin in turn sountracked.

Jlin’s own interest in movement didn’t arrive in any formative way. Her first memories of dancing are with her parents, com-

ing home after church, “playing old records and dancing around — but not in a serious way, just us enjoying ourselves.”

But dance is not the only thing that comes to mind when we talk about sound and movement. To Jlin, the way someone blinks their eyes or gestures with their hands, these idiosyncratic movements are not only mesmerising but also revealing and worth studying, and when I ask what she has in mind when creating, she admits she’s just as likely to be thinking of a fight scene as of a dance one. “I feel like dancing and fighting are the exact same thing, I think they coincide,” both a sequence of movements.

We talk of the music video for “Unknown Tongues” off of her 2015 record Dark Energy in which we encounter dancer Lilian ­ Steiner. “Her movement is so abstract, like nothing I had ever seen before, and she does not do what you would expect. She’s moving in a way that her personality does not match — and I love that!” Jlin is often seeking this distance and unfamiliarity. It feeds into CPU — clean, precise and unpredictable — “a rule of mine,” which has been evolving in tandem with her artistic output. It’s these elements she strives for in her own work but is also looking out for when working alongside others.

“When I met Wayne [McGregor], I could instantly feel his spirit and his vibe was right. He doesn’t follow the rules, which is something I love about him because neither do I.” McGregor, who also falls under the CPU guidelines, shares interests that revolve around the ‘technology of the Context — 11

body’ and through his work we find him constantly seeking new ways of physical thinking, communicating ideas through the body to audiences. Talking about their recent joint endeavour — Jlin writing the score for McGregor’s dance performance Autobiography — she expands on the topic of collaboration to explain that a certain level of mutual respect and friendship has to be met before the work can even begin.

“The closeness comes first. It’s not the art, there has to be a connection before we can create. My personal comes before my solo work.”

This prerequisite of closeness and friendship arises from the fact that the process of creation is an extremely vulnerable one for Jlin. “I create from the core of myself — I create from a space of vulnerability.

My phrase ‘creating from the belly of the beast’ is often misinterpreted as a demonic ­ statement, but it’s not, it’s having to create from a place that’s not complacent.” It ties in with another mantra that Jlin holds close, the need to reflect the times and stay true to herself, something borrowed from classical pianist Nina ­Simone — an artist Jlin refers to as an elder, an ancestor.

Through this she strives to create something authentic and meaningful, connecting the dots instead of only making your head bop, as she puts it.

This intimacy in her own work means it’s crucial to have trust and respect with those she’s collaborating with. “Before putting so much of myself into it, I need to know someone else is submitting the same,” Jlin acknowledges. The collaboration with McGregor felt just 12 — Context

like that, giving Jlin the space and acknowledgement she needed to respect her own work: “there was something about Wayne allowing me to display that side of myself and trusting me that allowed me to trust myself too.” In working with McGregor, she went through a process of change, she changed the way she approaches writing a piece. She describes it as a more considerate approach that involves important conversations in the beginning, making sure everyone involved is on the same page not only regarding the project but also on a personal level: “if we start together, we’ll end together.”

“Another thing I learnt was to listen more — listen to my instincts.” No matter how successful one may be, Jlin argues, everyone experiences doubt and pressure from

society, from their peers, it’s inescapable.

A big learning experience was to acknowledge self-doubt as intrinsic to the process and share her output with her trusted collaborator regardless. “When I created the first overture I had never let people listen to pieces like that before,” McGregor would send key words to Jlin; sadness, energy, vulnerability, doubt. This was the starting point for ‘Abyss Of Doubt’ featuring in ‘Autobiography’; “no out, no out, no matter what I do I cannot get out of this state of mind.”

There’s also been a change in physical self perception: recognising the musician as a body. “I detox to keep myself clean when I am creating, no sugar, no alcohol. I don’t need supplements to create, I am that thing, I don’t need to be enhanced by ­anything.” In keeping with that, she shifted her sleeping pattern so she could work from 2am to 6pm and also went vegan, which, she says, “gave me such clarity and focus to feel and sense things. I took that on as a method for when I am writing now.”

Ultimately, Jlin’s reflections on her writing, the process of collaboration and her fascination with movement tie in naturally with McGregor’s ‘Autobiography’. More than just a novel way of relating to choreography — the dance movements were computer generated from the sequencing of McGregor’s genome — Jlin relates the piece to human behaviour. After all, “human behaviour is the way we move through the world.”

Jlin & Company Wayne McGregor perform ‘Autobiography Edits’ at Koninklijke Schouwburg on Friday 29 March. Read more about the performance on page 53.

Context — 13

THE INSIDE SCOOP ON NYEGE NYEGE’S OUTSIDER SOUNDS

Nyege Nyege Tapes at Rewire 2019 Friday, 29 March

Otim Alpha Paard II 01:00 — 02:00

Kampire

Paard II 02:00 — 03:00

Bamba Pana & Makaveli

Paard II 03:00 — 04:00

Nestled between the shores of Lake Victoria and the edge of downtown Kampala is the homebase of a small collective that has come to represent the beating heart of East Africa’s burgeoning electronic music scene. Formed in 2013, Uganda’s Nyege Nyege has rapidly evolved into a thriving record label, music festival and recording studio, exploring, producing and releasing some of the most thrilling outsider music from around the region and beyond. Driven by a search for the unexpected and a desire to break assumptions, the collective uses its platforms to showcase a myriad of regional sounds — everything from Kenyan dark metal to the traditional music of Western Uganda, the singeli rave of Dar Es Salaam to the hybrid live techno of Nihiloxica — without being boxed in in any way.

With a trio of label stalwarts in Otim Alpha, Bamba Pana & Makaveli and Kampire taking the stage on the Friday of Rewire 2019, we asked Nyege Nyege founders Derek Debru and Arlen Dilsizian to ready us for what each artist has in store.

Otim Alpha “Otim Alpha and Leo P-layeng are real legends in Northern Uganda, yet quite unknown in the rest of the country, because people usually like to hear what comes from their own tribe. Otim Alpha has a crazy life story that deserves a book, from being a boxing champion to protecting his village during times of war. He’s been a musician and a farmer his whole life. At a time when people couldn’t afford entire bands to perform at their weddings, he and Leo started to interpret all of their traditional songs in an electronic way, making it easier for people to access it, and then performing as a duo rather than a big band.

The sound they invented, and later renamed Acholitronix, became incredibly popular throughout the Luo community of Kenya, South Sudan and Uganda. You can now hear their music on very different local

platforms. Otim and Leo have also been big advocates of traditional music, and through their work have set up local studios in their hometown Gulu, giving other young producers and musicians the opportunities from which they benefited.”

Kampire “Kampire has been at the forefront of the music scene in Kampala for many years. In the beginning she would write about festivals and artists in the region, and even helped kickstart the first Nyege Nyege festival in 2015. Soon after, she moved from the dancefloor to the DJ decks and that’s when it became clear to everyone how extremely gifted she was. Always aiming to turn up the dancefloor, she’s very careful with her selections and is out to surprise everyone on it by introducing them to new artists from across the continent. Expect sweat on the walls!”

Bamba Pana & Makaveli “Singeli is the rave music of Dar Es Salaam. It draws from many different genres, like taarab, vanga, mchiriku and sebene, and has been around for more than 15 years.

There are countless strains of singeli, and each studio, whether it’s Sisso Records, Pamoja Records or another, has its own particular sound. Singeli is often mentioned in the same breath as Shangaan, Gabber and Happy hardcore, because of its furious pace and its punk attitude, but it’s quickly developing its own reputation as a unique sound and aesthetic, one that will hopefully see it explode on a global scale.

Makaveli is one of the first MCs of the singeli scene. We met him and Bamba Pana on a research trip to Tanzania through a very fortunate but random encounter with a cab driver called Abbas Jazza, who is now the manager of all of the singeli acts. We invited them to come to Uganda for Nyege Nyege Festival and the rest is history.”

Context — 15

REWIRE MEETS DAG IN DE BRANDING

Rewire x Dag in de Branding Saturday, 30 March

Henry Vega & Jan Willem Troost Korzo (studio) 14:45 — 15:25

Diamanda Dramm

Korzo (zaal) 15:45 — 16:15

Elaine Mitchener

Korzo (zaal) 17:00 — 17:55

Eli Keszler

Korzo (zaal) 19:05 — 19:45

Kit Downes & Ensemble Klang

Lutherse Kerk 20:00 — 20:45

Read more about the artists in the artists overview, starting at page 62.

This year, we are teaming up with fellow The Hague festival Dag in de Branding to showcase the latest developments in ­contemporary and improvised music. Co-­ curated with Dutch pianist Saskia Lankhoorn, the Rewire x Dag in de Branding route on Saturday, 30 March crisscrosses surprising festival locations and presents five unique live performances: Eli Keszler, Elaine Mitchener, Diamanda Dramm, Henry Vega & Jan Willem Troost, and a special commission for the Lutherse Kerk organ by Kit Downes and Ensemble Klang. We asked Ensemble Klang guitarist and artistic director Pete Harden to shed light on their upcoming collaboration.

Pete Harden on Ensemble Klang’s project with Kit Downes Kit Downes is an artist who makes such deeply personal music, a music that has such honesty, that genre and background become trivial. So while, on the face of it, asking this jazz pianist and organist to work with Ensemble Klang, a new music ensemble, seems curious, Kit is in fact exactly the kind of artist the group focuses on: someone making music external to any expectations, and plundering the cracks between established traditions to find something thrilling and new.

you’d expect — given those jazz roots — but also Kit’s fantastic ear for colour and unorthodox instrumental use.

His recent focus is on organs, particularly mechanical organs, whose systems he manipulates to find exciting new sounds and textures in this oldest of instruments. This Rewire & Dag in de Branding commission sets him loose on the historic 1762 Bätz organ of the Lutherse Kerk, combining it with Ensemble Klang’s sextet of horns and rhythm section.

The collection of interlocking works is called ‘Debris’. Kit calls them “an ode to the inanimate — studies of subjectivity and isolation that find meaning in chance.” He splits the ensemble into two, with the majority of the sound-world rooted in the quartet of himself at the organ, Saskia Lankhoorn at piano, Joey Marijs on percussion and myself on electric guitar. But that world is also interrupted by short virtuosic interludes from the three horn players of Ensemble Klang. It gives an entirely contemporary turn on the antiphonal church music that would have been heard for centuries in this majestic setting.

I met Kit when we were both performing in Ivo van Hove’s Network at the National Theatre in London last season. As part of a quartet of musicians, all from different musical backgrounds, we bonded over accompanying long Bryan Cranston monologues. It was the kind of project that I think neither of us are regularly involved in, but in that period I got to know him and his music.

The invitation to work with Ensemble Klang came from admiring not only the sensuous and intricate harmonies that Context — 17

The Rewire discourse programme reflects on artistic practice in both historical and current contexts while situating music within wider social and cultural conversations.

At Rewire 2019, we pay particular attention to contemporary artistic practice, and facilitating discussions around creativity, collaboration and autonomy. Materialising in the form of a one-day symposium on Friday and a series of artists talks, panels, workshops and screenings on Saturday and Sunday, we layout some of our current explorations and interests as starting points through which you can navigate the weekend. This combi­ nation of performances alongside talks and texts enables us to present a multilayered perspective on developments in the domain of arts and culture.

Focussed on the shifting nature of music and musical performance, we ask not only what is driving these changes, but what they mean for us now and in the future. Embedded in two central themes, Instrumental Shifts and Staging Sound, we have invited a selection of inspiring artists and speakers to engage and reflect on this dynamic landscape.

These include: Rebecca Fiebrink, Mark Fell, Mick Grierson, Angel Bat Dawid, Federico Campagna, Nicolás Jaar, Low, Actress, Lotic, Emmanuel Biard, Jennifer Walshe, Memo Akten, Adam Harper, Elaine Mitchener, Sega Bodega, Bob Sturm, Ash Koosha, Róisín Loughran, Thor Magnusson, Maaike Harbers, Anna Mikkola, Dianne Verdonk, Laura Agnusdei, Enrique Manjavacas, Dick Rijken, Anja Volk, Peter Bloem, Hibiki Mukai, and Aimee Cliff.

20 — Discourse

INSTRUMENTAL SHIFTS With Instrumental Shifts, ­ we zoom in on the many technological developments in process today and the effects these are having not only on the music we hear, but on the way we exist as a society. We are seeking answers to how this coincides and conflicts with musical and cultural progression and autonomy.

Within this theme, we critically reflect on our dependency and embrace of all things technology, leaving room to critically examine what technology is to music and the concentration on all things ‘high tech’ ­— machine learning, artificial

In conversation with Actress

Saturday 30 March — Korzo (club)

Darren Cunningham has been a mainstay of London’s music scene for almost a decade, consistently launching himself into new horizons and collecting a sci-fi aura around his Actress pseudonym. Although originally introduced as an electronic producer, he’s had notable collaborations with London’s Contemporary Orchestra and, most recently, Young Paint, an AIbased character who has learnt not only to react but to take the lead in its interactions with Cunningham. In this conversation, we stretch through Cunningham’s music to date, taking particular interest in his collaborations and changing practice.

intelligence, and so forth. Or perhaps it’s best to ask which role music is playing for technology; which role music (and the arts more generally) plays in an increasingly technologically complex world? Instrumental shifts will at times be narrowed down to individual technologies; asking how they have moved us forward as a society, shifted us into new directions, or possibly even stalled us. While looking backwards at the changes we’ve gone through, we also want to leave ample space for speculative thinking; what comes next? and, where will we go from here?

Music Hackspace presents Machine Learning for Artists

Saturday 30 March — Het Nutshuis

Ever wondered what machine learning really is, and how to use it in creative ways?

Led by Dr. Rebecca Fiebrink, this workshop by London-based collective Music Hackspace give you a hands-on introduction to user-friendly machine learning tools for creating new music and art, as well as for working more effectively with sensors and other data sources in building real-time interactions. You will also learn how machine learning is capable of generating new content, making it easier for non-programmers to build and customise systems, and enabling programmers to build new creative systems more Discourse — 21

quickly. During the workshop, you will be using free and open source software to hook up game controllers, sensors, webcams, and microphones to interact with sound, animation, game engines, and other creative gear.

The workshop costs € 10 and registration is required.

Instrumental Shifts Panel Jennifer Walshe, Memo Akten and Dianne Verdonk Sunday 31 March — Korzo (club)

for the future of human creative practice?

Will all of us soon sit at home watching algorithmically-generated music videos after robots take our jobs? In this talk, she will show how machine learning is instead opening doors to new forms of human creative expression.

This talk will include live demonstrations of machine learning used to make new musical instruments and interactive art.

Anna Mikkola

Sunday 31 March — Korzo (club)

Much of the anxiety around emerging technology and the advancement of AI centres around a worry for what our role in the future might be; be it in the arts, the workplace or as carers. While constant threats are thrown at us in regards to AI and robots one day being able to replace us, we often forget to remember the role humans have played to date and the collaborative, often dependent relationship technology has with us. In this panel moderated by Dazed Digital Editor Aimee Cliff, we invite Jennifer Walshe, Memo Akten and Dianne Verdonk to address the role of artists in developing and working with new technologies.

Visual artist Anna Mikkola explores the ways technology, nature and culture are entangled in the process of knowledge creation. Considering that interfaces and infrastructures format lived reality, her work often materialises as videos and installations depicting narratives where different entities and points in time are woven together. In this performative lecture, Mikkola will examine the intersections of health and technology, reflecting on rituals and collective behaviour to a sound design by Pekka Airaxin.

Rebecca Fiebrink

Italian philosopher and writer Federico Campagna researches the connections between metaphysics, theology and the design worlds. His latest book, ‘Technic and Magic: the reconstruction of reality’, exposes the foundations of today’s technological culture. Leading on from the practice-based conversations in the Instrumental Shifts Panel, Campagna’s talk will introduce a more philosophical perspective to understand how we use technology to construct and make sense of the world around us.

Sunday 31 March — Korzo (club) A Senior Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, Dr. Rebecca Fiebrink’s research focuses on designing new ways for humans to interact with computers in creative practice, including the use of machine learning as a creative tool. In her Rewire 2019 keynote, she will delve into the realms of machine learning algorithms to examine how these systems are capable of creating new images, sound, and other media content. What do algorithms mean 22 — Discourse

Federico Campagna

Sunday 31 March — Korzo (club)

Discourse — 23

SYMPOSIUM: INSTRUMENTAL SHIFTS The Instrumental Shifts Symposium explores new frontiers of computer science, music, and future technologies.

Organised by The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision RE:VIVE initiative and Rewire at West Den Haag, the one-day programme brings together leading researchers, academics and artists to lift the hood on the dynamic facets of artificial intelligence and how they contribute to evolving creative processes.

The symposium takes place at West Den Haag’s new location at the former American Embassy on the Lange Voorhout 102 from 10:00 — 17:00 on Friday, 29 March. Attendance is free, but registration is required.

Dr. Thor Magnusson

10:30 — 11:00

In his opening address, Dr. Thor Magnusson, Head of Music at the University of Sussex, will present his book, ‘Sonic Writing’, and examine how contemporary music technologies trace their ancestry to previous forms of instruments and media.

Prof. Mick Grierson

11:00 — 12:00

One of creative computings’ leading experts, Professor Mick Grierson of Goldsmiths Digital and University of the Arts London’s Creative Computing Lab, will detail his work on Massive Attack’s 20th anniversary of ‘Mezzanine’ and describe the technological challenges of producing CD quality output from neural networks.

Lightning Round Dr. Anja Volk, Dr. Peter Bloem and Hibiki Mukai

12:00 — 12:30

Pivoting to a flurry of short talks from researchers based in The Netherlands, this lightning round will cover the role of music information retrieval in chord identification, machine learning practices for generative film scores, and an interactive and generative system based on traditional Japanese music theory.

Lunch

12:30 — 13:30

Bob Sturm

13:30 — 14:00

Professor Bob Sturm of Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Technology is a leader in building machine learning models of folk music from Ireland and Sweden. He will outline how he works to apply these models in different musical contexts and will address the ethical questions raised by such work.

Laura Agnusdei

14:00 — 14:15

Laura Agnusdei is a musician and researcher at the Sonology Department at the Royal Conservatoire will debut a new performance based on the output of Bob Sturm’s Folk RNN (Recurrent Neural Network) project.

Dr. Róisín Loughran

14:15 — 14:45

A Senior Researcher at University College Dublin’s Natural Computing Research and Applications Group, Dr. Róisín Loughran will explore the creative limitations of generative music and how we can best measure and assess the outputs from these systems.

Break

14:45 — 15:00

Enrique Manjavacas

15:00 — 15:30

Enrique Manjavacas is a PhD student in Computational Linguistics at the University of Antwerp. In his talk, he will explore current methods and research on text generation with artistic purposes, zeroing in on Language Modeling and the use of artificial neural networks to generate hiphop lyrics.

Ash Koosha 15:30 — 16:00

London-based electronic musician and technologist Ash Koosha is known for his unique VR sound sculptures and computer-generated compositions. At Rewire 2019, he will showcase his latest project Yona with her creative engine, a combination of generative softwares and high-end production methodologies.

Symposium Panel Dick Rijken, Ash Koosha, ­ Dr. Róisín Loughran and Maaike Harbers

16:00 — 17:00

The Instrumental Shifts Symposium concludes with a panel discussion that forecasts where we are going as artists, researchers and technologists. Moderated

by STEIM Director Dick Rijken, the panel will reflect on the benefits of partnerships between artists and knowledge institutions; the limitations of technology and how we can overcome these barriers; how we can be ethical and whether it even matters.

Discourse — 25

STAGING SOUND Staging Sound observes the performative nature of music; the experience, ritual, and show. It’s the creative process by which musical material is translated into performance and a growing need for an experience beyond the sonic. There’s an urge for an artist to express ‘liveness’ through gestures and presence within an ever changing environment in which music is being listened to. What do these tell us about the state of music, music as entertain-

ment, and music as commodity? Within this theme, we take an in depth look into the ways in which artists are choosing to express, present and perform their music, be it through new and inventive instruments, seeking out collaborations with visual artists and choreographers, or adding tactility to digital music. What patterns and trends are emerging, what is driving us towards these these processes, and where will it lead us?

Staging Sound Panel Elaine Mitchener, Mark Fell and Sega Bodega

In conversation with Lotic & Emmanuel Biard

Saturday 30 March — Korzo (club)

As a music festival, we are constantly considering the performative nature of music and the ways in which artists are choosing to express their work, be it alone or in collaboration. With Staging Sound, we pay particular attention to the perception of liveness in a performance. For this panel, we invite artists who move beyond the sonic; vocal performance artist Elaine Mitchener, pioneering electronic musician and sound artist Mark Fell and DJ and producer Sega Bodega, each of whom will be presenting a new and unique performance piece at Rewire 2019.

26 — Discourse

Saturday 30 March — Korzo (club)

Performing under the name Lotic, J’Kerian Morgan is an enigmatic electronic musician and DJ who has begun to push against the performative expectations of a club artist with a number of choreographed performances. Their latest project brings them together with Emmanuel Biard, a visual artist known for his collaborations with Evian Christ, Koreless, Illum Sphere and Lone. Both artists will join us for a conversation on staging sound and interdisciplinary collaboration ahead of their a/v performance Lotic: Endless ­Power.

Adam Harper

Sunday 31 March — Korzo (club)

Adam Harper is a musicologist and music critic specialising in historical and contemporary ideas surrounding the ‘progressive’ music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and their technological platforms. He is the author of Infinite Music: Imagining the Next Millennium of Human Music-Making (Zero Books: 2011), in which he speculates on how music may sound, and what forms it may take, in the future. As part of Staging Sound, and in partnership with The Wire magazine, Harper will examine the history of performed music to date and what it means to experience liveness.

MORE ARTIST TALKS

In conversation with Nicolás Jaar

Saturday 30 March — Korzo (zaal) In anticipation of his two Rewire 2019 performances, the first a solo live/dj performance at Paard on Saturday and the second a new commissioned work premiering at the Grote Kerk on Sunday, Nicolás Jaar will zoom in on the diversity of his practice. Spanning his own solo releases, film scores, improvised live sets and his Other People label, the Chilean-American musician and composer will reflect on his musical journey and the strong explorative approach that has guided it from the start.

In conversation with Low

Saturday 30 March — Korzo (club)

Pioneering American trio Low have cultivated a deeply emotional brand of harmonic, minimalist indie since their 1994 debut ‘I Could Live In Hope’. Not ones to indulge nostalgia, their twelfth and latest album, ‘Double Negative’, sees Alan Sparkhawk, 28 — Discourse

Mimi Parker and co return with a radical new sound. In this conversation, Low will speak to The Wire, charting a course from ‘slowcore’ to snarling static and shattering electronic beats and their twenty-five-year career.

In conversation with Angel Bat Dawid

Saturday 30 March — Korzo (club)

The story of Angel Bat Dawid’s lauded debut ‘The Oracle’ is one of boundless dedication to improvisation. A classically-trained pianist and clarinetist, Dawid learned to trust her instinct and ear through jam sessions at Chicago’s Sonic Healing Ministries and a global journey of free and spiritual jazz discovery from London to South Africa. Now an emblem of Chicago’s vibrant avant-garde scene, adding her aura to performances with the likes of Roscoe Mitchell, Jamie Branch and Ben LaMar Gay, we sit down with Dawid to listen to all that has inspired and influenced her along her path of music and spirituality.

Words by Alexine Rodenhuis

RADICAL COMPANIONS It’s 1972 and Daphne Oram is onto something.

“We will be entering a strange world where composers will be mingling with capacitors [and] computers will be controlling crotchets.”

In her seminal text, A Singular Note, Oram imagines an unfamiliar realm where humans and machines are creative partners— interfering in their utility and collaborating in a novel output. She outlines this strange ecology through a new form of sound production: one defined by expanding the human musical lexicon through a technical medium.

Discourse — 29

Oram was an early pioneer of electronic music production whose groundbreaking impact on musicology will resonate far beyond our time. Her musings shaped a techno-libertarian utopia where machines with humanising factors could facilitate fantastical compositions. This ideology of a symbiotic relationship between humans and devices was outright prophetic in its day; nearly fifty years later and Oram’s speculations are more real than ever. As we reflect on her words today, we can hope to find clues for clarity in confusing times.

It’s 2019 and we as humans are standing on unsteady legs.

Ours is an era defined by uncertainty. We are wrought by unanswered questions of agency, authority and biopolitics. The zeitgeist of this post-digital age is an overwhelming precarity—a mood tainted by unbalanced hierarchies and overexposed narcissism. The result is a permeating isolation and a lack of independent control.

practitioners across the fields of sound composition, performance and visual arts.

As boundaries between genders, disciplines and art forms become increasingly blurred, so too do the limits of independent creation. By expanding on the promises of distributed networks, we can look to structures of collectivism, cooperation and collaborative production to reverse the segregations of capitalistic systems. In seeking companions and building communities, we can turn away from the isolations of individualism.

Decentralisation is the path to liberation.

By adopting a protocol of collaboration, contemporary creatives are applying decentralisation as a methodology for production. Perhaps stemming from the same intentions as the group compositions of Pauline Oliveros, we are now seeing harmonies between humans, machines and performative bodies. A contemporary exWe are living under the weight of network ample is Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s capitalism, informatic capitalism, platform Ensemble, a Berlin-based collective of mucapitalism—each oppressive framework sicians, vocal artists and an artificial intelseems increasingly unnavigable. So how, ligence named Spawn. “The shared sensiwhen technological structures and inter- bility is less about music in isolation, and faces dictate our behavior, can we re-­ more about a certain kind of experimentaimagine a future of new regimes? tion and ethos,” says Dryhurst in a recent conversation, On Redesigning the System.

He proposes a model of co-conspiration What we need is a radical as a form of defiant action and urges us to reorganisation. challenge these great stories that we have told ourselves about independence.

Today we are in the midst a major shift away from individualism and towards de- “When everyone is independent,” he says, centralised egalitarianism. As the acceler- “it turns out that we don’t have much colation of blockchain technologies and arti- lective bargaining power to influence anything all.” ficial intelligence opens up new realms for distributed power systems, artists and musicians have recognised a refuge in the in- Reclaiming agency through interdependfrastructures of diffusion. Beyond the ence is Ensemble member Colin Self, whose pragmatics of noded-networks and cryp- recent album Siblings presents an audatocurrencies, the underpinnings of decen- cious call for action. By building a commutralisation have more to offer to creative nity of voices, bodies and computers, the 30 — Discourse

project unifies a non-biological family of bold and undaunted beings. The performance of the album unfolds in a chaotic choreography—an uncurbed display of raw energy that feels incredibly beyond human. Bodies become social agents in a temporary society that is equally primitive and futuristic.

Self’s Stay with the Trouble (for Donna) proposes a world of radical togetherness.

The raucous track references Donna Haraway’s concept of kinship as a non-innocent, non-complicit reaction to the ethical dilemmas of our “damaged planet.” The result is a forceful and fiery assembly of friends—their palpable energy reminiscent of adolescent rebellion. By joining together this ceiling-shaking cohort of pseudo-relatives, Self echoes Haraway’s mandate for resolute commonality.

A new breed of cross-disciplinary communities is emerging.

Sparked by shared desires for solidarity, inclusivity and change, creatives are increasingly forming collectives to fill the gaps of hierarchical agendas. One example is Keiken, a group of thirteen artists and musicians who are “together challenging the dynamic of reality and questioning how societal introjection governs the way we think and perceive.” Keiken’s work interrogates archetypal stereotypes and activates networked spaces as sites of expanded consciousness.

Similarly bending against normative frameworks are South London-based CURL, a ­label and self-described “interdisciplinary community” who are expanding the eclectic musical practices of co-founders Coby Sey, Brother May and Mica Levi. Along with a revolving group of local companions, CURL represents a constructive camaraderie—a fellowship formed by celebrating unity rather than independence.

It’s a framework we see increasingly emerging. Unified by difference, Laboria Cuboniks is a collective of six artists, researchers and musicians behind the Xenofeminist Manifesto, a proposal which insists on a “profound reworking of the universal”. Following on the heels of Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, the group condones an excess of modesty in current feminist agendas, and instead advocates an assertive strategy to “dismantle gender” and demolish in-egalitarian politics. “No more futureless repetition on the treadmill of capital” they demand. Instead, they urge us to “redeploy existing technologies and invent novel cognitive and material tools in the service of common ends”.

Can we find allies in algorithms?

Today we can see profound potential in artificial intelligence as a collaborative partner. Darren J. Cunningham, creatively known as Actress, has recently joined forces with a nascent “A.I. sprite” named Young Paint. Born from a learning program which has been trained to emulate Cunningham’s musical process and style, Young Paint is the cool and quirky younger brother of his creator. When the duo performs live, the A.I.’s fantasy physique is visualised in a shiny and toned silver avatar—hovering massively on a projector screen alongside his seemingly smaller, imperfect human counterpart.

The relationship between Actress and Young Paint shows the promising role of A.I. in shifting power away from the individual as sole creator. There are certainly still elements of self-reference in the underlying design, but the transfer of agency to this alter-biological being represents a new opportunity in letting go of control.

Cunningham describes it as a “complex simplicity”: his fundamental motive is to investigate the “vacant soul of computer Discourse — 31

language, determination and logic” from a humanist perspective.

Machine learning gives creative producers the ability to augment their limited human capabilities with infinitely more inspiration than a singular brain. Regarding her own A.I. accomplice, Holly Herndon affirms: “in nurturing collaboration with the enhanced capacities of Spawn, I am able to create music with my voice that far surpass the physical limitations of my body”. For her latest album, PROTO, Spawn has joined forces with Jlin, Lily Anna Hayes, Jenna Sutela and Martine Syms to create uncanny new compositions.

Visual artist Harm van den Dorpel similarly engages with generative technology as a collaborator rather than simply using it as a tool. The artist works to demystify the “romantic notion of artistic genius” and to open up the “black box of computer algorithms which increasingly influence our personal lives and forecast our political future”. Challenging traditional artistic mediums that limit artists to working only with their own hands and minds, van den Dorpel rather trains a software program to produce a series of optimal works. By intervening with continuous feedback and selection, the resulting output is a combination of unpredictability and intention— artworks emerge as a crossbreed of aesthetic objectives.

But optimisation can also lead to complication.

We must hold caution as we brazenly expand beyond the bounds of human imagination. Digital-artist Lawrence Lek highlights this warning in his recent video Geomancer. Working with A.I. as an actor in a complex narrative, the film depicts a former military satellite drifting towards earth on a journey of self-discovery. Geomancer “alights on a longstanding tension 32 — Discourse

between the place of the human and the role of the machine”. What ensues is a sort of creative awakening where questions of memory, perception and alienation are brought to the fore in a clash of self-awareness and machinic desires. The A.I.’s existential experience of earth is sharpened by contemporary hopes and anxieties—it ponders, “do I really belong here?”

As we humanise our machines we also risk making them increasingly sensitive. Looking into the future from half a decade ago, Oram forewarned us that we might easily be led to thinking that “we are opening up the road which will take us to a panacea”.

However, she heeds “the more we consider it the more we realise that the future still rests with human character and personality”.

“There is no panacea.”

In many ways, Oram was an oracle of a complicated future. As we now attempt to untangle the nets of networks and navigate the dark corners of capitalistic structures, we must acknowledge the value which stands in front of us in human form.

Indeed there is thrilling potential in building partnerships with machines and algorithms, but in these experiments it is also imperative that we recognise our unique strength as sentient beings. Only in creating protocols which exude our care and cognisance can we forge constructive collaborations. We must be intrepid, determined and unwavering.

Words by Aidan Wall

LEAFHEAD’S TEETHING Dusk’s last sliver of sunlight crept across the littered concrete floor of Grace’s studio. Little bursts of flux smoke swam up from where she sat huddled at her desk with her head deep in some soldering mischief. Her desk was covered in tufts of yellow fluff, which kept flitting about with each deep sigh she exhaled. Grace was the staunch solder queen of the gang, and her hacky workshop was the last piece of real estate on Dominick Street that hadn’t been turned into a hotel or an apartment block or an office. She’d been talking to the gals for weeks about the project she was tinkering with, she’d called them over tonight for the first test-run. As the sun finally passed behind an atrocious hotel, Sorcha barged back into the room beaming.

“I always forget that you have an antique toilet in here! So retro, so cute,” Sorcha said, skipping over the piles of messy wires towards the lamp in the corner. “It brings me such joy to flush a toilet without having to wait through a targeted ad first.” Grace looked up from her desk and turned to face Sorcha while sliding her glasses up her nose.

“I’m quite certain the algorithm’s microphones have been charting exactly how long it takes me to pee. My pre-flush ads have become nearly exactly one bladder’s length on average, based on the last few times I’ve peed.” She placed the soldering iron down and stood up, grasping something. “Anyway, I think it’s finished!”

Discourse — 33

“The algorithm knows your body better than you do, Grace!” jested Sorcha, finally landing over by the lamp and flicking it on to reveal Grace proudly holding up a small luminous yellow sphere. “Wait. . .

That’s what you’ve been working on all this time!? It. . . looks like a tennis ball.” Sorcha’s words splintered Grace’s triumphant smirk.

“Well friend, it might look like a tennis ball, but I’d like you to show me another tennis ball that holds as much radical potential as this one,” Grace retorted.

“This little ball is my latest experiment!”

Sorcha snatched it from her hands and bounced it on the floor. “Be careful with that Sorcha, you eejit!”

“Okay!! Jeez. . .” Sorcha handed the orb back to Grace. “Can I be so sneaky as to ask what it is exactly that yoke does?”

“So like, it’s all about interconnectivity these days, right? First the cars became self driving and then it was the selves themselves that got corralled into the automation stream,” said Grace, her brow furrowing. “And the data-stream is so full of noise, like, it’s inescapable for most folks. They don’t even know they’re in it!”

The look on Sorcha’s face was of familiar unenthusiasm. “When you’re nattering on about all this stuff you always speak so. . . Grace-fully.”

“Ha. . . Don’t be so Sorcha-stic for once. This is serious stuff! The data-stream is nearly impenetrable. Their algorithm is so strong, but it has holes! I’ve been working on a parasitic counter-algorithm, for the gang to use! And it’s inside this li’l’ tennis ball!”

Sorcha decided to amuse her. “Is that even how algorithms work?”

“Listen Sorcha,” said Grace, lowering her tone in a teacherly way. “Their algorithm is misogynist; ours stems from kindness. Theirs is born to surveil us at every moment; ours is born to rupture their power.”

34 — Discourse

“Gracey, you always know how to manifesto but you never know when to manifeston’t. . .” Grace looked over the rim of her glasses at Sorcha, who, becoming increasingly impatient, pleaded, “Just tell me what it does! In a language I can understand!”

“The crude edges of my code will make designers vomit and its radiant truth will make tech bros piss themselves.”

“Okay! Now we’re talking!” Sorcha’s eyes became alight with devilment.

“It’s better if I just show you,” said Grace, shutting off the lamp and strutting confidently towards the stairs.

“C’mon, I think Gobnait’s waiting outside with Leafhead!”

“Leafhead?!” Sorcha shouted, pushing past Grace. “I call first dibs on petting her!”

The two emerged out into the muggy half-bright street. Even in the dim twilight Grace could easily make out Gobnait waiting up by the junction. Her ornate shoulder tattoos, mere squiggles at this distance, bore the gang’s iconic slogan: “Live for crushing, crushed by living.” At her feet was Leafhead, the cutest Doberman either side of the Liffey. The sound of Sorcha’s impish yell resounded across the near-empty road. “Leafheeeeeeeeeead!”

Gobnait coyly waved before sauntering down to them, Leafhead in toe.

“Howdy. Do I have popcorn in my teeth?”

“They’re pristine babe. You look like a million bucks,” said Grace, kissing Gobnait on both cheeks.

“Ya hun,” Sorcha said, glancing up from where she was hunkered, petting Leafhead violently. “You look like bank bailout bucks today.”

Gobnait blushed and asked, “You said something about a secret project test-run . . . thingy?”

“Oh buddy. Wait until you see the project,” Sorcha teased.

“You’re a brat, Sorcha! Gobnait,

look here.” Grace held out the ball in her hand. “This little tennis ball has sensors that will react to Leafhead’s saliva. So when she bites down on the tennis ball . . .”

Sorcha shot upright. “Splat.”

“Something to that effect,” offered Grace calmly, “maybe an inverse splat. It’s not actually meant to hurt anyone . . . physically.”

“Cool,” Gobnait said, patting Leafhead. “I used to love tennis.”

As the bells struck five, like clockwork, the business people began filtering out of their offices at the same time as the tourists started leaving their hotels to go to their scheduled dining locations. Grace and the gang were rendered invisible to the pedestrians. “Look at them, with their implants and their goggles. Walking around like their faces are strapped to the bottoms of chairs.” Grace’s claws gripped harder into the tennis ball. Leafhead’s eyes chased it as Grace passionately gesticulated. “The algorithm defines their tastes, their routes, their clothes. It’s an auto-generated life. It’s all noise. This is gonna break it.”

“Let’s fucking break it!” Sorcha yelled giddily.

Grace wound the ball back behind her head and with a great chuck sent it flying down the street. Leafhead jolted after it as it tumbled closer and closer to a briefcase man on his commute home. The man didn’t notice Leafhead, even as she pounced four feet into the air and chomped down on the ball which was passing by his face. As her teeth sunk into the ball a high pitch rang out which burst the data-stream’s noisy flow and for a moment there was silence. The man’s face dropped. Back outside the studio Grace gasped and Gobnait stared deadeyed while Sorcha bent over with laughter. Catching her breath she bellowed, “His trousers! Guess he must have been a tech bro.”

Discourse — 35

Words by James Hassall

NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND PARADIGMATIC SHIFT 36 — Discourse

objects

You can use instruments ‘incorrectly’

a technology

and you can use them in such a way that exceeds their instrumentness.

the following of rules.

skilled behaviour.

Must instruments make air vibrate, or can they simply suggest ways of doing so?

New technologies are only constrained by their physical limits, given the lack of convention digital canvases are fresher.

(a silent instrument can still be in use)

The correct use of an instrument is softly constrained by convention, rigidly constrained by physical limits and falls over into non-instrumental use at an undefinable point.

(beating someone to death with a saxophone)

Others start afresh (digitalisation), transcending bodies and using the unique qualities of digital technology as a starting point; they facilitate

Digital instruments are often simulacra of once physical things (digitisation) and their interfaces resemble physical assemblies.

Like trombones and violins, they facilitate

The earliest instruments were probably bone flutes. [machinery] [craft]

Technology has instigated a rupture that requires a reorganisation of knowledge, not just an expansion of terms.

The Sachs-Hornbostel system categorises the ways in which all instruments in the world make air vibrate. There is just a single category for ‘electrophones’, encompassing all the instruments that make sound through electronic means. This is ontology outstretching epistemology.

/new instruments help us to think differently

We are witnessing the fruition of a dialectic that stretches our understanding of technology and the ontology of music to breaking point. Once it breaks, it must be built anew.

Unanchored from the demands of human cognition and competence, digital instruments open the doors to exploring the impossible, forging new modes of creation that explode the tentative relationship between subject and object entirely.

Unanchored from the demands of performance and skill, electronic instruments open the doors to exploring sonics and texture, forging new aesthetics and placing the musical object at the centre [as opposed to the affective relationship between hearersubject and music-object being primary].

delivers a substantive expansion of the ontological object ‘music’.

As tools they are defined by Subsequent developments: their function, relationship to agents and psychic optimised the interface between body and instrument continuity. You can use nonliberated instruments from the constraints of the body instruments as instruments, liberated instruments from the constraints of the mind but they become instruments when you use them intentionally [agency] The computer is not just a neutral to make sounds. [function] instrument, enabling us to capture and generate new sounds - it feeds They return to being [continuity] back into the system of [actortea-chests or combs as soon context-tool ]in such a way that it as you put them down.

(blowing down the wrong hole)

But instruments needn’t be tangible anymore; a DAW is an instrument, so is a piece of code.

These instruments are gestural and expressive - a good instrument should shorten the gap between intention and action as much as possible.

They are thus intimately connected to the qualities of the human body and the act of making air vibrate with our dexterous parts.

Instruments were once only tangible objects - items that you hold, bang. blow, strum and

Musical instruments are

SKILLS

a subset of tools

body mind

Instruments

RULES

[computation]

38 — Discourse

The state of the world informs the music that can be created and the music that it makes sense to produce.

Music is a subcategory of noise, produced against a technological background.

Some noise is produced by technology, some by nature.

§3

Noise doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

§2 In a famous essay, the Italian Futurist Russolo implied that noise is inherently a product of technology and that noise, in a sense, can only exist in a world shaped and permeated by technology.

Sound gives us information about the (extra-aural) world.

Sound can be illustrative.

§1

Illustration §4

and the world is energised and enlivened by sounds - those generated by technology, both musical and incidental

world sound

|

music and world being metaphysically distinct, connected via analogy and metaphor

A pendulum has swung from:

Sound tells us about our environment, in more ways than one.

The bounce of an echo indicates how far away a wall is, the rumble of thunder warns us to expect rain, the metaphorical potential of music gives us access to a noumenal truth.

Not only that, but technology gives us new dynamic contexts to create sound in; soups of phenomena to form new sounds from; new ways of conceiving of the relationship between sound and world because sound and world, in their symbiotic way, have redefined each other.

Technology gives us new ways to mimic the sounds of nature but also new sounds to mimic.

‘Ancient life was all silence’: nature provided our soundtrack.

symbiosis

§5

Technological development doesn’t produce inexorable change in a linear direction; it causes fissures, negations, syntheses. Our art responds accordingly.

Noises used to intrude on us, now we manage them.

As our technology develops, the machines get quieter - cars prowl the streets with purring engines, factories house whirring robotics instead of clattering pneumatics, our houses insulate us from the world outside, we cocoon ourselves with headphones and curate our own soundworld.

But the world doesn’t just get noisier.

in.

technology’s racket seeping

>

to: music and world being metaphysically entangled because sound and music collapsed together, thanks to

Modernist composers distilled the sounds of the machine-world into formalist compositions that analogised the clang and clatter and carnage of the twentieth century; Cage delivered those compositions back to the world and dissolved the ontological distinction between music and noise, art and world.

The world is the cluttered ambience out of which music’s orchestrated self emerges

Words by Aidan Wall

}

‘Ancient life was all s i l e n c e .

In the nineteenth century, with the invention of the machine, Noise was born.’ - Luigi Russolo, 1913

bass

written by jhassall (steep incline) jameshassall.co.uk (steepincline.co.uk)

While digital technology has alienated music from the body, it has reconnected the individual with the fruits of their creative labour.

but MIDI changed all that; the individual producer has complete control over the sum and the parts.

drums

Music serves neither capital nor ideology.

On the contrary, the bedroom producer is the archetypal flourishing Marxist: unalienated from their creative product, in total control of their means of production, and unconstrained by the demands of capital. The avant-garde academic has a fleeting freedom, the digital native has radical agency.

This is politics from a different technological age.

Cornelius Cardew argued that academic music (Stockhausen) served capitalist ends (Imperialism) by disconnecting itself from materialist concerns.

To serve the people, so he wrote, music should communicate ideology and employ the working class in a democratised industry.

&

£♪££££

(Disintegration Loops).

Digitisation is the process of converting analogue to digital, squeezing the old forms into new structures. When this happens there is always a residue - and sometimes that residue is a new form of art

Formats constrain possible artworks, but the development of new ones creates space for acts of liminal ingenuity.

Through formats, information is sold.

Formats are technologically defined repositories for soundas-information.

TRUTH

We reveal its distorted image through slices of technology and sell it by the pound.

What is the noumenal truth of music-as-object?

Digital formats can be infinite and musical objects are only constrained by our subjective apparatus.

Experimentation with form and technological ‘progress’ cause these alignments of truth and medium to phase until new Events occur, with plenty of intermediary ephemera - dust clouds, yet to coalesce.

When technologies of information consumption (the vinyl record, the printed book) align with aesthetic truths, new conceptual objects are born (the album, the novel). An Event, as Badiou would have it.

(and access to IT)

for

and against

the means of distribution.

< > COMMERCE

The music industry is defined by technology:

TECHNOLOGY

(and access to it)

Production used to require a division of labour,

guitar

with

thru

from

the means of production

FREEDOM

Industry

Words by Tolga Arslan and Mette Slot Johnsen

INSTRUMENTAL CONVERGENCE AND DIVERGENT MINDS

40 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Discourse

In light of how pervasive AI has become as a science, it would be naive to think artificial intelligence wouldn’t affect our perception of creativity. In this text we would like to explore what creativity is, why it is often considered a uniquely human trait, and the possibility of human creations, such as AI, being able to challenge us on the subject of creativity — a provocative and, for some, terrifying possibility.

Creativity can be seen as an inner impulse to express ourselves; humans will ultimately create regardless of the existence of an audience or attention for creative output. To date, machines have only created when instructed or programmed to do so. This lack of autonomous behaviour in machines is important if autonomy is to be considered a characteristic feature of intelligent, creative behaviour.

Distinguished AI philosopher, Margaret Boden OBE explored the nature of creativity and identified it in three forms: combinational, exploratory and transformational.

The first of these involves concocting unfamiliar combinations of familiar ideas such as analogies and poems. These can be conscious or unconscious like a physicist comparing an atom to the solar system or an unwitting association triggered by visual art or a poem. This form of combination requires a knowledge base in the creator’s mind and also the ability to associate them in various ways.

The second involves exploration of conceptual spaces. Conceptual spaces are a “disciplined way of thinking that’s familiar to a certain social group.” This kind of creation results from an exploration of structured space that is not unlike a geographical exploration of a physically existing area.

This could be a style of painting or a culinary tradition where we would come across and attain E.G. a previously unknown or unnoticed practice.

The third involves the transformation of conceptual spaces. Conceptual spaces have their limitations so this form of creativity involves the modification of those boundaries or structures. To continue with the geography analogy, this would be like rerouting a motorway or adding a roof extension to a cottage. This kind of creation is performed when the creator modifies their thought process or style of thinking.

The unthinkable is thus achieved or created in this case.

How do machines and their “intelligence” come into this? Boden explains; “Conceptual spaces, and ways of exploring and transforming them, can be described by concepts drawn from artificial intelligence.”

Hypotheses about structures and processes can be modelled, compared and tested.

Combinatorial creativity is technically easily achieved by computers such as using two data structures and drawing randomly from them. The question is, can a random combination be labelled as creativity? Furthermore, does this creativity belong to the machine, or the human who wrote the programme? Other factors that question the legitimacy of machine creation are the lack of consciousness, autonomy, desire and values.

Nick Bostrom’s thesis ‘The Instrumental Convergence’ suggests that “several instrumental values can be identified which are convergent in the sense that their attainment would increase the chances of the agent’s goal being realised for a wide range of the final goals . . .” Recognisable tools or those are deemed necessary for certain objectives to be realised, for examples musical instruments are needed for the production of music. Convergence is then the limited selection of tools available for that goal.

In ‘The Extended Mind’ philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers propose the mind Discourse — 41

as being able to connect to external objects to aid cognitive processes, in one sense it can offload the task of memorising to a notebook. Thus, the mind links to this external entity, and forms a coupled cognitive system in its own right, and the boundary of the mind is extended to the notebook. Through the mind-notebook interaction, information is circulated both ways. Such is perhaps the mind-­instrument relationship too. The creative process arguably brings a divergent nature to this interaction; combining, transforming and exploring the information. Instruments converge, minds diverge; increasingly intelligent tools instrumentalise the mind and vice-versa. This way the mind-instrument system performs instrumental shifts.

We now come to the contemporary music production where the use of AI tools such as IBM Watson Beat, Google Magenta’s NSynth Super, Jukedeck, Melodrive, Spotify’s Creator Technology Research Lab, and Amper Music, has become commonplace. This in addition to early incarnations used by David Bowie on his Berlin trilogy albums in the 70s and Brian Eno’s self-generative music in the 90s to name only a few.

From Actress’ blank Young Paint robot and their AV projected existence; to Jennifer Walshe’s AI alter ego Ultrachunk, produced

by Memo Akten; and auxiliary human Yona who, with human input and CGI, creates and performs their own songs in collaboration with creator Ash Koosha, Rewire presents us with a number of performances that bring to light these questions.

Apart from the extra virtual hands, perhaps AI offers us freedom from the personal aspect of human creativity. Perhaps it allows space for ex­ perimentation and diminishing focus on gender, race, class etc. Naturally the programmer or author need to be considered in AI creation but, ultimately, we reflect our own feelings in any interaction with art, so, not only does the author figuratively die, but we can ask 42 — Discourse

if it mattered in which form they even lived to begin.

It’s thought provoking that the AI we use daily, originates in 1941 when cryptologist and pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing first started investigating m ­ achine intelligence. Turing developed the Turing Test as a method to “examine a machine’s ability to demonstrate intelligent behaviour equivalent to or indistinguishable from a human.” He proposed that machine’s have a specific type of intelligence rather than there being a replication of human intelligence by machines. By the same token we should perhaps consider the possibility of a machine specific creativity governed by its own rules and consciousness.

Whether in politics, economics or new technologies, it’s often advantageous for established power structures to cultivate a conscious mystification of bigger concepts — we see this in practice with AI. There’s a clear sense of encouragement that AI are too complex for common society to understand. Instead we need to move away from this tendency and recognise the possibilities of AI. There’s a need to question those who tell us to fear it. By engaging with everyday AI, while questioning our relationships with its owners, we can aim to demystify AI and consider it a useful creative tool instead of a potential existential threat.

Discourse â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 43

Words by Guilherme Coelho

CALL FOR INVOLVEMENT: THE NECESSITY FOR ARTISTIC ENGAGEMENT IN THE FIELD OF AI 44 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Discourse

Instrumental shifts are often attached to disbelief, concern, and anxiety. Rapid and unpredictable, they quickly morph into normalised concepts for the generation to come, often without being hindered by an appropriate amount of scrutiny. The discourse surrounding Artificial Intelligent tools in music making seems to comprise mostly of scepticism and apathy. It is currently perceived that computers are only competent at processing and calculating data and that they lack intuition, imagination, creativity and common sense — but isn’t generating content a form of intuition and creativity in itself? Aren’t simulations representations of imagination? The double-edged sword of globalisation has been tremendous with regards to the existence of new sonic landscapes and unprecedented musical homologies. However, it has normalized the concept of corporate entities amalgamating musical culture that, nowadays, mostly derives from corporate platforms that tend to accommodate for modern neurotic haste.

At a time when mass adoption of these algorithms is slithering into every part of the music industry, companies are interacting with their customers using biased neoliberal algorithms to dictate the way that people reach and interact with content; these corporate entities are dictating the architectural structures that shape the nature of culture and societal practices. Music is on the edge of seeing the implementation of intuitive tools that will enhance and vastly expand the current musical vocabulary and musicians’ compositional capabilities. The process of digitisation propelled by this technology will reshape auditory cultures, the way that music exists and how music is made.

The majority of the design and intent of these tools is currently underway and in focus of corporate agendas. Companies such as Google, Facebook, Spotify and

IBM are at the forefront of ground-breaking research and productional designation of such tools. At the end of 2017, Francois Pachet — one of the researchers at the forefront of Machine Learning for the creation of music — became the director of the Spotify Creator Technology Research Lab: a company accused of having fake artists in influential playlists as a means to save money in royalties. It is difficult to imagine that Spotify hired Pachet to push musical possibilities forward instead of to improve the company’s business model and profits. The growing power of Spotify as a syndicate and leading provider of music, and the fact that one of the leading research teams of Artificial Intelligence composition is working for such a company, is concerning, to say the least. It is hard not to foresee the possibility of a landscape where capitalist entities might exist, disguised as artists, with the audience unaware of their nature.

The music industry is currently running the risk of eroding the cultural evolution of music through the allure of convenience and the homogenisation of its process through the dictation of corporate algorithms. Algorithms run the delicate and thin line of having someone’s opinions embedded in their code; these systems can have deceptive, misleading and ultimately destructive ways of influencing creativity by automating people’s paths using a profit-led algorithm. By replicating past practices and their inherent patterns, these systems are, unfortunately, more likely to automate the status quo than evolve it.

The preferences of creative outcomes of Artificial Intelligence will probably lead to music that represents chart leading-based music and structures based on commonality. Companies will almost certainly continue to use Artificial Intelligent tools to shape creative designs to enhance consumer satisfaction.

Discourse — 45

The scarce resource of today is an audience’s attention, and the idea of a reductionist bubble of automated neo-liberal consumer-based music that increases the efficiency of consolidating the modern neurotic haste of everyday digital detritus — might become more prominent owing to the use of this technology. There is a need to dictate the formulas and cultural guidelines of this technology before artistic practices and their agency is being affected by methods that aren’t fully understood and formulated by neo-liberal companies. Musicians and musical institutions should take the leading roles in this phenomenon by being the descriptors and curators of these systems instead of the corporate entities that are currently formulating such infrastructures.

Artificial intelligence will enable the emergence of new methods of synthesis, processing, sonic enhancement, composition, and vastly expand the creative possibilities constrained by the limitation of people’s brains. However, these systems should be used to encourage alterity instead of replication. The people — or, should it be said, the companies — dictating which architectures should be formulated are mostly concerned with the realisation of outcomes that fit within previous notions of what songs should be according to a neo-liberal paradigm. So, will this not significantly homogenise the musical landscape?

What is needed is for people, namely musicians, artisans, and creatives to become familiar with these tools and use them to maintain a level of deterministic awareness of diversity and integrity. This will not happen, however, if such people are overly sceptical of these tools. Tools that are in a nutshell, predictive models of their data.

Musicians need to detach themselves from the anthropomorphic and anthropocentric notions connected to the process of music 46 — Discourse

making and creativity and accept the fact that such tools are bound to become a practice of future methods of creation.

The sooner these beliefs are taken, the quicker these tools can be shaped towards better sociological practice. Culture does not keep up with the underlying implications of technological advancements, and only after some time of coexisting with them does society realise and act to solve their often unchangeable repercussions.

There is a need for artists to carefully shape and reassert their values into the cultural guidelines of this technology. The discourse surrounding this topic so far has not been as alarming as it will be in the following years due to common disbelief, lack of understanding of these systems ability’s and because such programs are yet to be part of common practices. Artistic and academic institutions need to investigate, analyse and shape the possibilities that these systems will provide and how they will develop society, auditory cultures, and cultural and artistic practices before they result in capitalist, generic, automated products harmful to artistic agency. Otherwise, the subjective answers to the questions regarding the rightful nature of the use of these systems might not be guided by the artists and listeners responsible for the cultural guidelines and notions that are inevitably present in the formation of assumptions and interactions. It will be answered by the companies that dictate and construct the cultural environment and, consequently, the behaviour within it.

Discourse â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 47

An introduction to Rewire scores, a series of limited edition print texts to be found throughout the festival weekend.

HOW TO MAKE A TUNAFISH SANDWICH Words by Holly Dicker and designed by ST-DUO.

48 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Discourse

Imagine one thousand suns in the sky at the same time.

Let them shine for one hour.

Then, let them gradually melt into the sky.

Make one tunafish sandwich and eat.

‘Tunafish Sandwich Piece’, Yoko Ono, 1964 A man dressed in a creased dark suit, shirt and tie stands in the centre of a stage. He is a monolith of concentration. His mouth is a taut line. His eyes, framed in round glasses, is fixed on a vessel — a humble kitchen pan­ — placed at his feet on the floor. His left arm is folded neatly behind his back as his right, poised at chest height in front of him, steadily drips liquid into the pan below. The man is George Maciunas, founding father of Fluxus, the playful intermedia-based art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. In this instance Maciunas is performing George Brecht’s ‘Drip Music’ at the Hypokriterion Theatre in Amsterdam during one of the many Fluxus festivals that toured Europe between 1962 and 1963.

‘Drip Music’ is one of Brecht’s earliest ‘event scores,’ a performance technique that would become synonymous with Fluxus. Brecht evolved the ‘event score’ model under John Cage’s tutelage at the New School for Social Research in New York City towards the end of the 1950s.

Brecht was one of many artists to emerge from the New School as affiliate of Fluxus.

‘Event scores’ were plain cards with short text prompts. They were designed to be enacted or performed. They typically subverted simple, everyday actions, turning them into art performances ranging from the mundane, such as dripping liquid into a pan, to the truly bizarre, outrageous and utterly impossible. They were funny, disruptive, social and socially engaged, critical,

political, absurd, ambiguous and sometimes deeply lyrical. Often they were meditative, like Yoko Ono’s ‘Tunafish Sandwich Piece’ quoted above.

‘Event scores’ encouraged reflection upon one’s environment, routine and daily life.

They trained the level of attention usually reserved for fine art appreciation upon quotidian experiences, making art life and life art, where drips are sensual gestures and sandwiches ooze with cosmic paradox.

Like the musical scores they referenced, ‘event scores’ could be performed by anyone — artists and public alike. Interpretative variation was mostly welcomed.

Even though Fluxus officially ended with the death of Maciunas in 1978, its influence as an anti-establishment art movement (a “living art” and “anti-art” a “non art”, according to Maciunas’ 1963 ‘Fluxus Manifesto’) resonates in the work and practice of artists who continue to reject formal institutions. ‘Event scores’ are still being enacted today. Through the 1960s and 1970s they were preserved and disseminated through various associate independent presses, such as co-founder Dick Higgins’ Something Else Press. And thanks to Ken Friedman, who joined Fluxus in 1966, they were collated and redistributed on a bigger scale in 1990 in the form of The Fluxus Performance Workbook. The Workbook has since been updated, xeroxed, digitised and uploaded to the internet by Performance Research.

The Rewire scores have been commissioned as a weekend-specific response to The Workbook. These can be read, performed, traded, collected, discussed, debated, exhibited or ignored. You will find them across the festival weekend during the discourse day programme as well as studded around venues, entrances and desks.

Discourse — 49

Astrid Sonne presents Cycles of Lost and Found (World premiere)

Actress + Young Paint (live AV/AI)

The alias of British electronic musician and producer Darren J. Cunningham, Actress has established himself as one of the most singular voices in UK electronic music. Operating at the cutting-edge of club culture for more than a decade, his shadowy, unpredictable music draws heavily on 2-step garage, bass-heavy sounds, and London’s rave heritage. For his latest project, released as a mini-album and now a fully-fledged live AI/AV performance, Actress explores the creative and social potentials of machine learning and artificial intelligence with the help of an AIbased character named ‘Young Paint’.

Having spent the better part of 2018 learning and programming on a diet of Actress’ unique sonic palette, ‘Young Paint’ now takes the stage as a life-size projection, paralleling its creator’s performance in a unique digital duet between man and machine.

A classically-trained musician turned electronic composer, Astrid Sonne thrives on the glorious dissonance that comes from using viola and chamber choir in the same breath as brain-scrambling noise and glitchy abstraction. Whether performed live or recorded Sonne’s mesmerising worlds of sound blend intense synth bass stabs with gripping melodies and lush, organic textures. At Rewire, Astrid Sonne presents the first performance of a new work entitled ‘Cycles of Lost and Found’ accompanied by a trio of local string players.

Bamba Pana & Makaveli

(Nyege Nyege Showcase)

Bamba Pana & Makaveli are two pioneering artists from one of the world’s most 52 — Friday, 29.3.

­ xhilarating electronic music scenes, Tane zania’s singeli. Born and raised in the outskirts of Dar Es Salaam, and mainstays of the capital’s revered Sisso studio, the producer and rapper each deliver their own take on the high-octane music that is singeli. Rocketing forth at a blistering 180 bpm, their songs combine defiant, satirical lyrics about everything from police corruption to dating while broke, and set to a frenetic mix of Zanzibari taraab, South African house, noise, gabber and happy hardcore.

Clara! y Maoupa Clara! y Maoupa is the duo of Brusselsbased MC, DJ, producer and curator Clara! and her recording partner Maoupa Mazzocchetti. Armed with an encyclopedic appreciation of reggaeton, Clara! channels her love of the imported dembow rhythms of her youth into electrifying Reggaetoneras mixtapes. Maoupa Mazzochetti, on the other hand, is best known for his pulsating EBM productions and industrial misshapes. Joining forces for their infectious debut ‘Meneo’ last summer — Clara!’s vocal and recording debut — the pair now transform their wisted reggaeton into an energising live performance.

Flohio Flohio is the latest sensation to emerge from South London’s fertile musical grounds. Steeped in grime tradition and armed with a poetic, rapid-fire flow, the British-Nigerian rapper and artist effortlessly crosses hip-hop and electronic genres to deploy her cutting, no-nonsense and often confessional narratives. Known for her collaborations with fellow Londoners God Colony and GAIKA, Flohio harnesses the fire of recent releases ‘Wild Yout’ and ‘Nowhere Near’ and channels it into an unbridled live show.

Free Fall Improvisers Orchestra The Free Fall Improvisers Orchestra is a vibrating, multilayered, electro-acoustic orchestra comprising fifteen musicians, composers and performers from all over Europe. Representing the international Friday, 29.3. — 53

creative scene and wave of new music in The Hague, they combine free improvisation, indeterminacy, chance music and free jazz with elusive and outspoken methods, concepts and works of orchestra composers and renowned masters like Anthony Braxton, Lawrence Butch Morris, Barry Guy and George E. Lewis. Free Fall is conceived by and based in Studio Loos.

Jasmín

Gazelle Twin presents Pastoral Gazelle Twin, an invention of British performance artist, composer, and producer Elizabeth Bernholz, explores deeply dystopian themes through a patchwork of restless, industrial pop and electronics, and unconventional live performances. Now clad in red and white and riding hobby horse, Gazelle Twin’s latest incarnation is a terrifying 21st-century court jester who serves as a deranged, absurd reflection of our deranged and absurd times. Set against a verdant backdrop of hedgerows and steeples, Gazelle Twin deconstructs British identity and the murky relationship between past and present to a frenetic soundtrack of antiquated instruments, choral infusions and rural 90s rave. First taking the stage as a duo, Gazelle Twin will be joined by electronic drone choir NYX for a stirring finale of ‘Pastoral’.

54 — Friday, 29.3.

A relative newcomer to the Dutch club scene, Jasmín has rapidly become a feature of Amsterdam’s nightlife institutions.

A regular at De School, Red Light Radio — home to her Petting Dogs show — and Utrecht’s Stranded FM, the up-and-coming DJ wades into moody atmospheres with sets that shift between raw electro, powerful percussion and psychedelic techno on the one hand, and broken beats and melodic ambient on the other.

Jessica Sligter presents Polycrisis:Yes! Jessica Sligter is a Dutch-Norwegian artist and producer whose rich and moving experiments in avant-pop and electro-folk inhabit an elusive area between sound and song. Awash in sea of strings, analogue synthesisers and abstract electronics, her

commanding voice shifts from operatic declarations to intimate whispers as she navigates complex, often political conceptual spaces. At Rewire 2019, she presents her new release, ‘Polycrisis:yes!’, a futuristic imagining of a collapsed European identity that weaves excerpts of speeches

by European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker into a bleak but brilliant portrait of our times.

Kampire

(Nyege Nyege Tapes Showcase)

Jlin & Company Wayne McGregor present Autobiography Edits In the three short years since her debut, Jlin has established herself as one of the world’s highest acclaimed electronic musicians. Creating from the beauty of darkness and blackness, the American producer’s visionary use of percussion and meticulous production techniques have resonated far beyond the club context.

Jlin’s latest project sees her collaborating with multi award-winning British choreographer Wayne McGregor for the production of a groundbreaking performance in contemporary dance. Built around the sequencing of McGregor’s own genome, ‘Autobiography Edits’ brings dancers from his world class dance ensemble, Company Wayne McGregor, to the stage with a live score of sinuous electronics and ambient minimalism by Jlin herself.

The latest talent to emerge from East Africa’s flourishing electronic music scene is Kampire, a Ugandan DJ, writer and core member of the Nyege Nyege Tapes collective. Fascinated by the intersection of East African musics like Lingala and soukous with Western electronic music, she blends a diverse array of continental and diasporic traditions into a powerful, bass-heavy style that is distinctly her own.

Lafawndah Lafawndah is the alias of globetrotting singer and producer Yasmine Dubois.

Raised in both Tehran and Paris, she draws on a wealth of musical influences — from Nina Simone to traditional Middle Eastern singers and dancehall queens to modernist bass and grime — to craft her own Friday, 29.3. — 55

­ istinct and ritualistic take on global elecd tronic music. Releasing a criticallyacclaimed EP on Warp in 2016 and a collaborative project with Midora Takada this past July, Lafawndah unveils her newly-released full-length debut ‘Ancestor Boy’ at Rewire 2019.

Mohammad Reza Mortazavi

Mette Henriette Mette Henriette is one of the rising stars of contemporary music. Having already worked with the likes of Marina Abramović, Manfred Eicher, Nicolás Jaar and CocoRosie, the Sámi-Norwegian composer and saxophonist released her debut album to widespread acclaim via Munich-based label ECM in 2015. Built around mesmerising tenor saxophone that shifts from disarming fragility to powerful full-tilt blows, she skirts classical and jazz conventions to craft a distinct, genre-defying world of sound with a remarkably expressive and emotional range. Taking the stage as a trio at Rewire 2019, her tenor lines will be accompanied by hypnotic piano and tender, droning cello.

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Cascading rhythms, uptempo beats and trance-like textures, Mohammad Reza Mortazavi’s musical efforts may be the work of a single pair of hands, but performed live they take on a sound of orchestral proportions. Born in Iran and now based in Berlin, the percussion virtuoso has been trained in the fine art of traditional Persian hand drumming — the tonbak and daf — from the age of six. Having revolutionised the instruments’ playing techniques, he now harnesses his unique dexterity to craft hypnotic polyphonic rhythms and refined melodies with endless variation.

and future. Like the oddball playlists and distinctive aesthetics of his acclaimed radio mixes, his Nosedrip DJ performances offer a glimpse into his illustrious musical library. With his expert selections he’s capable of setting moods like no-one else and leaving dancefloors gasping for breath.

Niels Broos & Jamie Peet Fusing contemporary styles like jazz, hiphop, and electronics, Niels Broos & Jamie Peet have built a reputation as two of the most influential young musicians in The Netherlands. Whether performed live or recorded, the jazz-piano virtuoso and daring percussionist harness a dexterous improvisational style that bears traces of distinctive electric peripheries, trademark Rhodes warmth, and present-day jazz.

Stretching from trippy, Brainfeeder-like melodies to gritty minimalist overtures, the duo constantly expand their peculiar and adventurous sonic parlance.

Otim Alpha

(Nyege Nyege Tapes Showcase)

Nosedrip Founder of the revered Stroom imprint, Ziggy Devriendt aka Nosedrip has built a reputation as a heady (re-)introducer of iconic releases from both past, present

Ugandan musician and singer Otim Alpha got his musical start as a wedding ceremony leader in his native Gulu City. A master adungu and nganga player — Ugandan instruments with a striking resemblance to the harp — and one of a handful of musicians to pass down Acholi folk traditions, he began by reinterpreting the sounds of local wedding songs with the help of a computer. Nearly two decades on, his pioneering concepts have inspired an exhilarating micro scene, synthesising electronic sounds and traditional instrumentation into fast-paced, polyrhythmic genre primed for dancefloor madness.

Friday, 29.3. — 57

Red Brut

club spaces has seen him chalk up an impressive catalogue of hard-hitting, bassheavy releases for the likes of Crazylegs and LuckyMe. At Rewire 2019, he presents the latest iteration of ‘self*care’. Originally released as a digital EP before evolving into a video project, ‘self*care’ now takes the form of a live performance built around live vocals, club-centric R&B and a visual installation by Shaun Murphy — responsible for Lanark Artefax’s critically-acclaimed stage design.

Red Brut is the solo moniker of Rotterdam-based artist and musician Marijn Verbiesen. A vital force in the city’s underground art scene, her work as Red Brut reveals a unique ear for day-to-day sounds, musique concrète composition and spontaneous sound collage, weaving these elements into a distinctive and truly personal tapestry of avant-garde tape music. Making her self-titled debut via KRAAK last year, she channels her do-it-yourself experimentalism into a spellbinding solo performance.

Sinjin Hawke & Zora Jones

Sega Bodega London-based DJ and producer Sega Bodega has built a reputation as being one of the UK’s most innovative and precocious creative minds. Inspired as much by his close network of peers as his love of cinematic soundscapes, his work in and out of 58 — Friday, 29.3.

Zora Jones and Sinjin Hawke have been at the forefront of club music for nearly a decade. Each a celebrated artist in their own right, the pair mine elements of Jersey club, footwork, bass and grime, and fuse it into sleek, high-octane experiments in dance music. In addition to a slew of solo and collaborative releases, Jones and Hawke also craft interactive visual worlds as audiovisual production unit Fractal Fantasy. At Rewire 2019, they unveil their acclaimed live performance, an audiovisual experience that combines motion capture technology, dance, and new strains of club music.

live vocals and samples, she investigates the boundlessness of music, fiction and reality. At Rewire 2019, she presents her latest project, ‘Kalender’, an audiovisual show in which her live music is accompanied by an illustrated film. Situated between deep sleep and awakening, fantasy and reality, the performance embodies and translates that which you can or cannot think, see and feel.

Spekki Webu Unrestrained by genre or tempo, The Hague DJ and producer Spekki Webu shifts seamlessly from jungle to trance and techno. A Het Magazijn resident and founder of the ‘Mirror Zone’ imprint, he has built a reputation as a shamanic club charmer, inducing cerebral highs with his characteristic rawness and pluriform aesthetic.

Tanya Tagaq

Stekkerdoos presents Kalender Stekkerdoos is the alias of The Haguebased audiovisual artist Jessie Hoefnagel.

Harnessing dreamy noise, field recordings,

One of Canada’s most original and celebrated artists, Tanya Tagaq is an improvisational vocalist, avant-garde composer and bestselling novelist who fuses the ancient traditions of Inuk throat singing with elements of jazz, industrial, metal and electronic music. In its many forms, Tanya Tagaq’s art challenges static ideas of genre and culture and contends with themes of environmentalism, human rights, and post-colonial issues. Joined by violinist Jesse Zubot and percussionist Jean Martin at Rewire 2019, she channels recent releases ‘Retribution’ and ‘Toothsayer’ into an intense live performance.

Friday, 29.3. — 59

Tashi Wada Group The works of L.A.-based composer and performer Tashi Wada are grounded in a belief that music should be as direct as possible. Experimenting with harmonic overtones, resonance, and dissonance, he uses simple structures, tuning and pitch to generate rich sonic worlds full of unexpected effects. For his latest project, Tashi Wada Group, he’s enlisted the talents of Julia Holter and Corey Fogel to perform their collaborative album, ‘Nue’. Drawing on forms of ancient and devotional music, psychoacoustics, and the minimalist bagpipe music of his father — renowned Fluxus artist Yoshi Wada — Tashi Wada and co. create an endless night of dreams that is full of joys and demons.

60 — Friday, 29.3.

Tim Hecker & Konoyo Ensemble Over the course of 15 years and twelve solo and collaborative albums, Tim Hecker has cultivated a distinct brand of ‘ambient noise’ that is at once intensely physical and profoundly emotive. For his latest projects, ‘Konoyo’ and ‘Anoyo’, the Canadian composer and sound artist travelled to Japan to record with Motonori Miura and an ensemble of traditional gagaku musicians — players of a form of classical Japanese music that has been feature of the country’s imperial courts for centuries. Performed live at the Koninklijke Schouwburg, Tim Hecker & Konoyo Ensemble blend these ancient instrumentations with Hecker’s characteristic synthesisers, ambient drone and warm harmonic noise to create a stunning adaptation of old and new.

upsammy

Yves Tumor

In just over a year, upsammy aka Thessa Torsing has ascended the ranks to become one of dance music’s most exciting new talents. Garnering international acclaim for her ‘Another Place’ and ‘Words R Inert’ releases, the Utrecht-based electronic musician was recently snapped up by London’s Whities imprint for a split with BFTT. In each new outing, whether on record or in her expansive DJ-sets, upsammy hones dynamic blends of experimental electronics, spatial soundscapes, sci-fi techno, raging body music and intense, electro-fired workouts.

Yves Tumor is the alias of Sean Bowie, a restless sonic provocateur and musical chameleon whose dynamic recorded output traverses haunting ambient collages, ethereal lo-fi soul and confrontational noise. His latest effort, ‘Safe In The Hands Of Love’, was released without warning by Warp in September and is widely praised as the ‘‘benchmark for experimental music”. Ushering his audience into a beautiful, primal world of distorted pop, the album embraces everything from 90s alt-rock to noise. Live, Yves Tumor’s persona defies expectation. Typically found harnessing a maelstrom of violent catharsis, his appearance at Rewire 2019 sees the enigmatic artist transform his critically-acclaimed album into a stunning, live spectacle.

Friday, 29.3. — 61

30.3.

Sat ur day

Anat Spiegel presents Temporary Palaces Anat Spiegel is a Dutch-Israeli composer and performer of new music, experimental opera and song. Guided by her mesmerising vocals, her works chart the endless expressions of the human voice, exploring everything from jazz, folk and indie rock to classical contemporary music. The result is a beautiful and haunting song which shifts between the theatrical and the personal, the tender and the forceful. At Rewire 2019, Spiegel presents ‘Temporary Palaces: The Incomplete Songbook of Robert Montgomery’, a new work for voice, harmonium and electronics that is based on the iconic textual artworks of Robert Montgomery.

boundaries of genre convention. First emerging with a unique collage of ballroom, R&B and bass music for Rabit’s Halcyon Veil, the NON Worldwide co-founder has since honed her own, unique brand of fiercely-political, experimental dance music. Snapped up by Hyperdub for her ‘debut proper’, the Cape Town-based artist’s latest effort, ‘Death Becomes Her’ showcases her talents as a performer, producer and lyricist as well as a collaborator. Rapping and singing to productions by the likes of GAIKA and Nguzunguzu’s Asmara Maroof, the album explores emancipation and trans identity, and is intended as a means of “killing the old self, and expressing a poetic way of assuming a new identity”.

Angel Bat Dawid (European premiere)

Angel-Ho South African performance artist, producer and songwriter Angel-Ho defies the 64 — Saturday, 30.3.

Descending on Chicago’s hallowed jazz and improv scene just a few years ago, ­Angel Bat Dawid’s potency, prowess, spirit and charisma have taken her from relatively unknown improviser to emblem of her city’s avant-garde in no time at all. Released to widespread acclaim in February, her spellbinding debut ‘The Oracle’ charts

Dawid’s worldly journey with jazz and improvised music from London to South Africa, and serves as a vibrant document of black life as it stands today. Making her European premiere at Rewire 2019, Angel Bat Dawid conjures ‘The Oracle’ into a mesmerising live show with the help of a 7-piece ensemble.

CCL

Animistic Beliefs

CCL’s kaleidoscopic blend of rhythmic and melodic matter oscillates between heavy club material and delicate musical textures.

Whether its breaks, bubbling acid, UKleaning techno or textured ambient, the Seattle-based DJ’s distinct dancefloor sound has a remarkably combustive potential. A founding member of TUF — a collective focused on community-building and creating visibility for underrepresented artists in dance music — CCL harnesses eerie and fluid sounds that set the tone for the Saturday club night.

Breathing new life into electro with their distinct analogue means, Rotterdambased duo Animistic Beliefs reimagines UK sounds, IDM intricacies and Detroit feelings through their vast collection of vintage gear and DIY modular synths. Thriving in gloomy, strobe-lit basements, their spellbinding and retro-futuristic sound will spring to life at Het Magazijn during Rewire 2019.

CTM The alias of Danish cellist, singer and composer Cæcilie Trier, CTM exudes a deft and gentle musical touch that bridges the worlds of classical composition, modern folk, and experimental pop. Released Saturday, 30.3. — 65

across two stunning albums — the most recent of which came out this winter via Posh Isolation — her soulful songs feature soft and spontaneous vocals that drift across a soothing palette of acoustic guitar and string instrumentation, electronic sound bites and digital ephemera.

De Methode Nestled amidst gritty depths and brittle heights, De Methode’s live performances are a memento to a fragmented club-dream.

Utilising a distinct blend of rich field recordings, ultrasound textures, and processed vocals, the The Hague-based musician bridges the musical spheres of ambient noise, club, and romanticised pop with feverish melodies and languid, pitched-down percussion.

CURL CURL is a London-based collective featuring Mica Levi, Coby Sey and Brother May. A tightly knit community of artists and musicians from the city’s underground — a number of whom have previously graced Rewire stages — CURL was formed with the intent of performing, selecting and releasing music with a view to extending interdisciplinary practices. Now CURL head across the channel to showcase their progressive, post-genre experiments at ­ Rewire 2019.

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Diamanda Dramm

(Dag in de Branding)

Amsterdam-based musician Diamanda Dramm is a veritable violin virtuoso. Picking up the instrument at the age of four, she premiered Louis Andriessen’s ‘Raadsels’ at the Concertgebouw for the opening of Holland Festival at the age of 13 and went on to become the first ever string soloist to

win the Dutch Classical Talent Tour & Award. As part of the Dag in de Branding programme at Rewire 2019, Dramm presents ‘Violin Spaces Extended’, a performance for violin and electronics featuring visuals by James Murray and compositions

by Garth Knox and David Dramm.

Eli Keszler

(Dag in de Branding)

Doon Kanda Known for his groundbreaking video works for the likes of Björk, FKA Twigs and Arca, Japanese-Canadian visual artist Jesse Kanda recently expanded his artistic practice into the realms of electronic music as Doon Kanda. Debuting with ‘Heart’ in 2017 and following it with ‘Luna’ a year later, both of which were released by Hyperdub, Kanda explores a hallucinatory sonic palette that ushers you deep into his idiosyncratic, techno-spiritual world. At Rewire 2019, he presents a rare live performance composed of new work as well as material from his recent EPs.

New York-based composer and percussionist Eli Keszler bridges the realms of avant-garde jazz and electronica. Renowned for his intensely rhythmic and propulsive solo drumming, Keszler builds deeply resonant and melodic worlds of sound that seem digitally-enhanced but are all produced by hand. After a year of collaborations with the likes of Laurel Halo and Oneohtrix Point Never, Keszler recently released his first solo music in over two years. Entitled ‘Stadium’ and ‘Empire’, the new releases expand on his repertoire, incorporating the characteristic assortment of percussion, keyboards and acoustic instruments, alongside mesmerising string and brass arrangements.

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and liberal vocal manipulation, Bristolbased techno-not-techno duo Giant Swan unleashes a maelstrom of aggressive dance music, quaking bass and hypnotic electronic noise with telepathic intricacy. Built on a foundation of rhythmic tension and frenzied improvisation, their live sets are a pummeling, ever-changing spectacle that must be seen to be believed.

Elaine Mitchener presents Of Leonardo Da Vinci

(Dag in de Branding)

The work of Elaine Mitchener spans a wealth of artistic contexts and disciplines.

Rooted in improvisation, contemporary music theatre and performance art, the British-born vocalist, movement artist and composer will perform her celebrated movement opera ‘Of Leonardo da Vinci’.

Exploring the universality of death and rebirth, the opera melds vocal improvisation, sound art, image and movement into a singular artistic expression. Starring Mitchener in the lead, the performance is directed by Dam van Huynh, with music by David Toop and a film by Barry Lewis.

Henry Vega & Jan Willem Troost (Dag in de Branding)

Giant Swan Hunched across a table of machines and pedals, and incorporating abused guitar 68 — Saturday, 30.3.

Uniting as Nine Volt, New York-born new music composer Henry Vega and Dutch cellist Jan Willem Troost bridge the worlds of traditional instrumentation and electronic sound. First coming together for the dance and film project Prague Pieces, Vega and Troost will present a new work entitled ‘Nine Volt Motions’ at Rewire 2019.

Harnessing Vega’s ‘microminimal’ approach and Troost’s folk, pop and contemporary music inspirations, ‘Nine Volt Motions’ materialises as a subtle and colourful electroacoustic experience.

Jason Sharp A mainstay of Montreal’s jazz and improv scenes, Jason Sharp is a celebrated saxophonist and experimental composer whose solo works for the iconic Constellation Records reveal a unique fusion of technology and the human body. Known for his creative and musical use of extended technique, Sharp combines the deep, droning sounds of his baritone and bass saxophones with customised electronics that translate his heartbeat and breathing into an array of analogue drums, sine waves, feedback and synthesisers in real time. The result is a staggering expanse of electroacoustic sound that blurs the lines between the organic and the electronic.

producer, musician, art director and curator who crafts conceptually-driven and physically-reactive worlds of electronic sound. Morphing rapidly from uncanny-valley EDM to sweeping expanses of choral synths, his tactile and elastic compositions shift from heavily structured to freely fluid, symphonic to dissonant, and minimal to intricate. Gearing up for a staggering seven releases in 2019, his most expansive is an ode to the comedies and tragedies of life that establishes Osborne-Lanthier as one of the most audacious composers of contemporary electronic music.

Jessica Pratt

Jesse Osborne-Lanthier Jesse Osborne-Lanthier is a Montréalbased multidisciplinary artist, designer,

Harnessing an elegant, minimalistic approach to songwriting, LA-based musician Jessica Pratt serves up a captivating distillation of lush chamber pop and mysterious psych-folk. Guided by her characteristic voice and subtle guitar-technique, her latest album ‘Quiet Signs’, released to widespread acclaim in February, sees Pratt refine the sparse palette of her recent past into a more distinct and direct expression.

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which resonates within her use of deep chords, Pratt hits on a profound clarity that befits the intimate church setting of her Rewire 2019 performance.

Kelly Moran

Julia Holter Duo Julia Holter is a boundless experimentalist whose recorded output blurs the lines between indie, traditional pop, modern composition and electronic music. From her 2011 full-length debut ‘Tragedy’ through 2015’s landmark ‘Have You in My Wilderness’ to last year’s critically-acclaimed ‘Aviary’, the LA-based composer and multi-instrumentalist exudes an ambitious and uncompromising dedication to experimentation that continues to evolve in scope and sound with each new release.

Joined by fellow LA-based musician Tashi Wada, Julia Holter Duo sees her transform the unique world of chamber pop and droning electronics into an immersive one-off live performance.

Kelly Moran is a New York-based pianist, producer and composer whose experiments with electronic sound and traditional prepared piano transcend seemingly divergent musical realms. A darling of the classical music establishment, her intricately arranged electro-acoustic compositions have also caught the ear of groundbreaking sonic innovators like Oneohtrix Point Never and Margaret Leng Tan. Snapped up by Warp Records, her new album ‘Ultraviolet’ plays to a wider, more arresting array of influences, combining prepared piano with elements of jazz, dream pop, and heavy music.

Kit Downes & Ensemble Klang

(World premiere / Dag in de Branding)

London-based composer, pianist and organist Kit Downes dives into the space 70 — Saturday, 30.3.

­ etween the organised and the disorganb ised. His work as an organist is as much one of explorer and archaeologist as sparkling improviser and virtuosic interpreter.

Studying extended techniques derived from instruments that are sometimes in a state of disrepair, he connects and adapts the improvised tradition of the instrument to explore themes of duration, vibration and mechanics. At Rewire 2019, Downes presents a new collaboration with Dutch new music group Ensemble Klang. Commissioned by Rewire and Dag in de Branding, the project sees Downes compose a new set of works for the Lutherse Kerk organ, alongside Ensemble Klang’s electric guitar, piano, percussion and saxophones.

coupled with her newly-released contribution to the iconic DJ-Kicks series and her Rinse FM residency form the foundation of her latest Rewire outing. Setting up shop behind the decks, Laurel Halo’s DJsets promise “a blistering ride through electro, trippy minimalism and textures that range from icy to dubby.”

Lotic presents Endless Power

(Co-produced by Rewire)

Laurel Halo (dj) Laurel Halo has been on a role as of late.

Over the course of the past year and change, the enigmatic Berlin-based electronic musician has unveiled a trio of genre-bending releases, starting with the synthetic jazz of ‘Dust’ through the mysterious ambient environments of ‘Raw Silk Uncut Wood’ and onto the melodic techno of her collaborative EP with Hodge. The latter,

Berlin-based DJ and producer Lotic has evolved into one of the most important voices in avant-garde club music. First emerging with an apocalyptic mix of gut-wrenching bass, splintered R&B, and skewed electronics, Lotic’s full-length debut ‘Power’ sees them stretch their wings into unexpected new spaces, both compositionally, and, for the first time, vocally. At Rewire 2019, Lotic transforms the album into an ambitious new a/v collaboration with visual artist Emmanuel Biard. Co-produced by Rewire, ‘Endless Power’ explores the many ways in which power can be expressed and experienced.

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digital and analogue synthesis as well as acoustic instruments and audiovisual components, she creates vast, haunting soundscapes that oscillate between minimalist structures and piercing power electronics.

Originally from Sweden’s rural north, Horn’s latest album ‘Kontrapoetik’ delves into the deceivingly serene and turmoiled past of her home region through a bewildering patchwork of field recordings, radio broadcasts, church organ and Buchla synthesiser.

Low Low is the pioneering American trio led by Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker. Over the course of twenty-five years and eleven albums, the Minnesota band have cultivated a deeply emotional brand of harmonic, minimalist indie that is steeped in subtle soundscapes and divine harmonies. Not ones to indulge nostalgia, their twelfth and latest album, ‘Double Negative’ sees Low defiantly ditch the playbook in favour of a radical new sound. Rooted in a landscape of snarling static and shattering electronic beats, ‘Double Negative’ is their most brazen and empowering album to date and widely regarded as one of the best releases of 2018.

Maria W Horn Stockholm-based composer Maria W Horn is fascinated by the manipulation of time and space through sonic extremes. Using 72 — Saturday, 30.3.

Maurice Louca Elephantine Band Maurice Louca is one of the most gifted, prolific and adventurous figures on Egypt’s thriving experimental arts scene. A founding member of Lekhfa — with whom he performed at Rewire 2018 — and Dwarfs of East Agouza, the Cairo-born musician and composer is also a celebrated solo artist.

With two critically acclaimed albums to his name, in which he uses tape loops and sampling to merge the traditional and contemporary sounds of the both the Middle East and the West, Louca presents his third and most ambitious at Rewire 2019. Entitled ‘Elephantine’, the new album, and by extension performance, is a panoramic odyssey in which Louca leads a six-person ensemble through everything from cosmic free jazz and psychedelic rock to Egyptian shaabi and African and Yemeni folk traditions.

Nicolás Jaar presents Free 2 Move (live/dj)

(Other People at Rewire)

Nicolás Jaar is an artist who has consistently pushed his practice forward into unexplored terrains for the past decade.

Whether it’s his multiple acclaimed solo releases, film scores, improvised and durational sets or his Other People label (home to his Darkside and Against All Logic side projects), the Chilean producer and composer has always embraced a strong explorative and process-based approach where pop is a knife’s edge away from drone, minimalism or Musique Concrete.

Presented as part of the Other People ­programme, the first of Nicolás Jaar’s two ­Rewire 2019 performances is a special solo set in which he seeks to implode the hierarchies inherent in our club environments.

Leaving the stage empty and open to the crowd, he will perform from the front of house and in combination with an installation by himself and Vincent de Belleval.

Obol Le Obol Le is the new project of Bolivian-born performer and singer Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti. Drawing inspiration from Andean traditions and ceremonies, in particular the Phujllay clan’s practice of dividing the seasons into sound periods, she translates her source material into a mesmerising sonic dream of pop, electronics, folk, and drone.

Using an array of synthesisers, live tape manipulation, instruments and vocals, coupled with custom-built algorithmic video projections based on Bolivian weaving rituals, Ferragutti and her band craft a vibrant, virtual tapestry of colors, light and sound.

Puce Mary Puce Mary is the solo moniker of Danish experimental artist Frederikke Hoffmeier. A mainstay of Copenhagen’s vibrant punk scene, Hoffmeier’s musical output is rooted Saturday, 30.3. — 73

in industrial noise, sound collage, power electronics and musique concrète. Having forged a reputation with her powerful and arresting live performances, she followed up her four solo albums for Posh Isolation with her new, critically-acclaimed album ‘The Drought’ via Berlin-based label PAN last year.

Rian Treanor presents an insightful and compelling musical world of fractured and interlocking components. With releases for Planet Mu and Warp sub-label Arcola, Treanor’s distinct blend of hyperchromatic UK garage and pointillistic footwork — coming in at an unrelenting 150 bpm — is sure to leave the dancefloor in awe.

RAFF Rotterdam-based DJ RAFF is part of the city’s new generation of burgeoning techno and electro producers. Working at the Clone record shop by day, he’s become a frequent highlight at local haunts like BAR, Operator, Red Light Radio and PIP by night.

Rian Treanor Reimagining the intersection of club culture, experimental art and computer music, 74 — Saturday, 30.3.

Sote Sote has been at the vanguard of Iran’s experimental music scene for nearly two decades. The alias of SET Festival co-founder Ata Ebtekar and one of the country’s most accomplished electronic musicians, Sote explores sound and anti-sound through abstract synthetic compositions that range from the delicate to the abrasive and the acoustic to the electronic. With a recorded output released by the likes of Warp, Opal Tapes and Morphine, Sote channels his uncompromising, physical sound into a powerful solo performance.

Spinifex The members of six-piece ensemble Spinifex hail from each corner of Holland’s avant-garde and experimental scenes.

Known for their super tight structures and razor-sharp improvisation, there’s a whole lot more to Spinifex than first meets the eye. What sounds like a fusion of jazzcore, punk, metal and other Western contemporary sounds is anchored by ancient, cyclical rhythms from the Near East that are bubbling just beneath the surface. At Rewire 2019, the outfit presents SOUFIFEX, a new project inspired by Sufi traditions of Kurdish-Iranian and Pakistani Qawali heritage that sees the outfit delve into a magical world of repetitive patterns.

Tirzah

Brother May, London-based soul singer and songwriter Tirzah has a similar knack for crafting intimate and infectious off-kilter pop.

Armed with a remarkably soothing voice, her enigmatic, down-to-earth vocals first caught ears back in 2013 with the releases of ‘I’m Not Dancing’. Five years on, Tirzah has finally returned with her debut album ‘Devotion’. One of the most compelling releases of 2018, ‘Devotion’ sees Tirzah drift from the bright club vibes of her past to reveal a deeply personal brand of British RnB anchored in Mica Levi’s experimental sonics and softened by her own melancholic words.

Violet In the three short years since returning to her native Portugal, Lisbon-based DJ and producer Violet has become a mainstay of the city’s vibrant underground and nightlife scenes. Co-founder of online radio station Rádio Quântica and Naive Records, she’s also a resident at mina, a collective that aims to bring ravers and DJs together with sexual and gender liberation causes. In both her DJ-sets and own productions, Violet elegantly blends techno with breaks and acid basslines, twisting them into new contexts full of dub-inspired bass, jacking rhythms, brass flourishes, and dreamy chords.

Hailing from the same stomping grounds as CURL-members Mica Levi, Coby Sey and Saturday, 30.3. — 75

vtgnike

(Other People at Rewire)

First cropping up on Nicolás Jaar’s Other People label back in 2014, vtgnike (pronounced vintage nike) is the alias of Russian producer Danila Avramov. Born and raised in the city of Vladimir, he’s become a formidable force in Moscow’s underground electronic avant-garde. Affiliated with both the RAD movement and GOST ZVUK, his musical output is a shape-shifting exploration of all manner of electronic genre, from soulful jungle and footwork to melancholic breakbeat, experimental hiphop and more ambient affairs.

‘The Disintegration Loops’, Basinski has been a vital force in the New York art scene for over three decades. His Australian counterpart is a preeminent experimental composer and media artist, and founder of leading avant-garde label Room 40. Having repeatedly crossed paths over the course of the past decade, the duo came together to release their first ever collaborative effort in October. Presented live at Rewire 2019, ‘Selva Oscura’ delicately toes the line between English’s polished, cerebral output and Basinski’s melancholic tape loops to create a shifting soundscape of seemingly limitless ambient drone.

YEK: Mohammad Reza ­Mortazavi & Burnt Friedman

William Basinski & Lawrence English William Basinski and Lawrence English are two of ambient music’s modern masters.

Best known for his four-part masterpiece, 76 — Saturday, 30.3.

YEK is the latest collaborative endeavour of iconic German electronic musician Burnt Friedman. Having spent the better part of 30 years in pursuit of a sound that bears no connection to existing musical traditions and a practice rooted in unlearning, Friedman’s celebrated works pull apart the foundations of techno, dub, jazz, and world music. His counterpart in YEK is Iranian percussionist Mohammad Reza Mortazavi,

a modern master of the tonbak and daf — traditional Persian hand drums — who harbours an extreme acoustic range and extravagant technique. Together, the duo embark on a euphoric, trance-inducing trip that marries timeless percussive sounds with flurries of melodic electronics in pitch-perfect harmony.

Zoe Reddy

Zeno van den Broek presents Breach

(World premiere)

Originally trained as an architect, Zeno van den Broek is a Dutch-born, Copenhagen-based composer and visual artist whose works explore the relation between musical forms, architectural structures and spatial awareness. At Rewire 2019, he presents the world premiere of his new album ‘Breach’, an audiovisual work that dives into chaotic systems and recent social upheaval around the world by exploring the build-up and release of tension and energy in a new form of pitch-black metal electronics.

The Hague-based artist and Antilounge affiliate Zoe Reddy crafts unique, multi-layered compositions by combining distorted vocals with a rich patchwork of electronic loops, field recordings and divergent production techniques. Accompanied with visual elements like video and photography, her latest project ‘The Machine Set’ wields a spectrum of field recordings of everyday items like blenders, washing machines and drills that she live mixes with percussion and vocals to create an idiosyncratic musical language.

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31.3.

Sun day

Alex Zhang Hungtai

music comes to life on stage, where he’s built a reputation for electrifying drums solos and off the cuff improvisations. His counterpart, Valerio Tricoli is a composer, improviser and sound artist whose explorations in musique concrète and free improv employ vintage analogue electronics, tape machines and effects. Coming together at Rewire 2019, the duo mine elements of post-punk, krautrock and musique concrète to produce waves of hypnotic drums and synthesised sound.

Alex Zhang Hungtai’s musical repertoire has radically shifted with each new incarnation. First emerging with the crooning experimental pop of Dirty Beaches nearly a decade ago, he’s since released saxophone-driven free jazz as Last Lizard and dark dissonant drone with his Love Theme trio. Now recording and performing under his own name, the Taiwanese-born artist and musician channels his diverse practice into rapturous ambient compositions full of digitally disfigured saxophone, choral serenades, twisted synths, and soaring church organs.

Annelies Monseré

Andrea Belfi & Valerio Tricoli Andrea Belfi is an Italian percussionist who artfully blends the acoustic with the electronic in a modest setup of drums, synths and samplers. A live performer at heart, his 80 — Sunday, 31.3.

Annelies Monseré’s sparse and contemplative songwriting is the perfect accompaniment to her nocturnal instrumentation.

The Ghent-based producer’s captivating works balance a warm blanket of synthesised sound, tape-hiss, and refined musical colouring to devastating effect. Her latest record, ‘Happiness is Within Sight’, welcomes the listener into an expansive auditive space that displays distinctly gloomy qualities and affords ample room for her wide-spun songs to bloom.

has been hailed as one of experimental music’s most influential guitarists. Appearing on the underground scene as a co-founder of Harry Pussy, Orcutt helped build the prototype for noise-rock in the ‘90s and beyond. With each recording and performance, the virtuoso instrumentalist continues to invent a sonic vernacular founded on raw and tortured tones, ragged minimalism, and seemingly inexhaustible improvisational stamina.

Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman & But What About present Sogokuru Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman is a Rwandanborn vocalist, composer and artist who channels field recordings of rural and urban East Africa into what she terms ‘Afrique Concrète’. Joined by contemporary music ensemble But What About, she will present the Dutch premiere of her new work ‘Sogokuru’. Exploring contemporary forms of animism and how they persist despite the oppression of the colonial period, the piece merges her own experiences with those of her 108-year-old grandfather, one of Rwanda’s last living traditional hunters and doctors.

Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt Searing electric guitar freakouts amidst a frenzy of freewheeling drum rolls and crashing cymbals; the union of improv veterans Bill Orcutt and Chris Corsano may sound like sheer chaos at first, but it’s actually a carefully cultivated sonic dia­ logue that explores the frontiers of noise, rock and jazz. Each a veritable mainstay of the free improv, avant-rock and noise music since the late 90s, the duo now channel their respective talents into wild, polyrhythmic explosions. Having released ‘Brace Up!’, their first ever studio recording, last March, Orcutt and Corsano now set their sights on Rewire 2019.

Bill Orcutt (solo electronics) Combining the expansive components of blues, noise and improvisation, Bill Orcutt Sunday, 31.3. — 81

Seamlessly combining nifty footwork with a broad range of sonic styles, his vast output delves into elements of classic ambient and Japanese traditional music. Harnessing bright, plastic-sounding MIDI instruments and extreme negative space minimalism, Foodman’s offbeat, multicoloured sound palette comes into full bloom on his latest album ‘Moriyama’, a critically-acclaimed release for New York label Palto Flats.

Dianne Verdonk A classically-trained double bass player and cellist, Dianne Verdonk has always craved the making and performance of electronic music. That drive ultimately inspired the Dutch performer and composer to invent her own, peculiar set of electroacoustic instruments. Whether the Bellyhorn, a giant instrument to sing to, Pulseyarn, a pendulum that allows her to build rhythms on the spot, or La Diantenne, an electronic instrument that translates her own personal musical expressions into rich and colourful compositions, each invention extends the range of her musical ideas into pioneering new realms.

Foodman Part of Japan’s flourishing juke scene, Foodman is the alias of Nagoya-based experimental producer Takahide Higuchi.

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Haron

(World premiere) First emerging with releases for The Hague club music stronghold BAKK Records (sharing records with Legowelt, Aurora Halal & SFV Acid), Haron has adopted a more introspective approach as of late.

The new direction culminated in his breakout debut ‘Wandelaar’ on newfound label Queeste, a meandering and mesmerising ambient soundtrack to summer that is steeped in graceful melodies and soothing improvisation. Commissioned by Rewire and accompanied by pianist Anne Veinberg, he will present the world premiere of a new performance for piano, electronics and spatialised sound that combines elements from ‘Wandelaar’ with new compositions.

Iona Fortune & NYX Iona Fortune is a Glasgow-based composer and producer whose musical works are inspired by Eastern philosophy. Wielding a unique blend of instruments, including the Guzheng, Gamelan and a portable synthesiser known as the EMS Synthi AKS, she creates a singular palette of meditative sounds that fuse the tradition with the electronic. At Rewire 2019, she’s joined by electronic drone choir NYX. Re-embodying digital instrumentation and live electronics, Iona Fortune & NYX conduct a liminal ceremony in which they channel the sonics of the I Ching, it’s symbology, energy and cosmological significance into euphoric collective experience.

Ipek Gorgun Lush, organic, joyous and terrifying, Ipek Gorgun’s experiments in sound abandon

the conventions of classic ambient. Drawing from musique concrète, noise and field recordings, the Turkish electroacoustic composer and sound artist infuses her works with microscopic detail before zooming out to reveal a winding, cinematic narrative. Released by the iconic Touch in September, the critically-acclaimed ‘ECCE HOMO’ oscillates between small movements and grand gestures, and captures our unique human ability to both create beauty and destroy it to devastating effect.

Jennifer Walshe & Memo Akten present Ultrachunk At once surreal, spellbinding and deeply alarming, ‘ULTRACHUNK’ is a new live ­im­provisational duet between a classicallytrained musician and her AI doppelganger.

Over the course of a year, award-winning Irish vocalist and composer Jennifer Walshe engaged in a daily ritual of performing solo improvisations in front of her webcam.

Collecting the hours of footage on the other end, Turkish artist Memo Akten used the video and audio material to create and train an AI that can mimic the key components of Walshe’s identity — her voice and face. Taking the stage together at Rewire 2019 for the Dutch premiere, the original and the virtual Walshe sing, improvise, listen and respond to each other in real time as they render the Uncanny Valley in reality.

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John Bence

(Other People at Rewire)

The works of Bristol-based composer and producer John Bence tackle epic narrative themes and uncompromising sonics with a trembling emotional punch. Trained in classical composition, he employs a unique cyclical technique of scoring, recording, manipulating, re-scoring and re-recording to combine prepared cello, home-recorded percussion, and his own voice. The result, released on Nicolas Jaar’s Other People and Yves Tumor’s Grooming, is an intoxicating blend of harmony and noise that is fuelled by and navigates devastating emotions.

honed her distinctive brand of surreal, otherworldly electronics over the course of 6 solo albums and a host of dazzling EPs. A geotechnical engineer in a past life, she now combines acoustic and electronic sounds with sampling and traditional songwriting to map the motions of geological time. At Rewire 2019, she unveils a new live audiovisual collaboration with visual artist Alessandra Leone that’s inspired by her most recent release, ‘Anticlines’. A journey through speech and song, Dalt weaves vocal processing, spoken word, mercurial ambient and South American rhythms with Leone’s volumetric beams of light to explore space, boundaries and human consciousness.

Mark Fell presents Hominin

(World premiere)

Lucrecia Dalt & Alessandra Leone

(Other People at Rewire) Lucrecia Dalt is a Colombian-born sound artist and experimental composer who has

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From his early explorations of minimal club music to his critically-acclaimed experiments in algorithmic systems and computational technology, Mark Fell has carved out a legacy at the frontlines of electronic music innovation that is distinctly his own.

Extending his interrogation of themes explored in earlier works — recordings, performances, installations, and educational projects — the British electronic musician will present a new piece for electronic music, light, kinetic objects and human ­ movement. Entitled ‘Hominin’, the work constructs and investigates procedural

r­elationships between technical and nontechnical elements. Drawing on K ­ aren Barad’s agential realism and the “open-ended, entangled material practices” within which the “social and the scientific are co-constituted”, ‘Hominin’s’ distinctive non-unilinear topology is based upon algorithmic approaches to temporal-structures and emerged from a series of exploratory workshop sessions called “Permutations” that Fell recently delivered in Japan and Europe.

Nicolás Jaar & Group

(World premiere)

Mark IJzerman Mark IJzerman is a Dutch media artist whose practice is focused on installations and audiovisual works that explore human perception and the interconnectedness of the senses, often starting from sound. At Rewire 2019, IJzerman will present ‘Cantus Viscous’, an a/v performance inspired by the concept of pareidolia in which an emergent video synthesiser is fed found footage, eventually listening and reacting to a sonic palette of field recordings that are performed using tape-loops. The result is an audiovisual experience that toes the line between the abstract and the figurative.

Nicolás Jaar’s second performance at Rewire 2019 embodies the full extent of his explorative, process-based approach. Taking the stage as Nicolás Jaar & Group, the Chilean producer and composer will present new works for an ensemble consisting of percussionist Valentina Magaletti, who will play custom-built metal and wood instruments created by Turin-based artists Marzio Zorio and Anna Ippolito, saxophonist Mette Henriette, pianist Johan Lindvall, and Hamlet Nazaretyan and Ivane Mkirtichyan on duduk, an ancient double-reed woodwind instrument that is indigenous to Armenia.

The performance is commissioned by Rewire.

Patrick Higgins

(Other People at Rewire) Patrick Higgins is a visionary guitarist, composer and producer whose divergent output Sunday, 31.3. — 85

has seen him reinterpret the works of Bach, compose for all shapes and sizes and serve as a core member of New York avantgardists Zs. Known for his unique approach to classical acoustic and electric guitar, he uses extended technique and electronic processing to craft electro-acoustic soundscapes that are at once intensely emotional and strikingly alien. He will present his latest effort, ‘Dossier’, a new record in four movements that engages with the politics, erotics and violence of contemporary digital life.

Pierre Bastien & Tomaga

(Other People at Rewire)

The unique musical setup of French ­composer and multi-instrumentalist Pierre Bastien has garnered him a cult-like following. Dubbed the ‘mad musical scientist’, his self-built machineries sit at the nexus of music and visual art and poetically blend live trumpet sounds with screen projections of his own mechanical sculptures.

Having previously collaborated with the likes of Robert Wyatt and Aphex Twin, Bastien is now joined by Tomaga, the darkly psychedelic, London-based duo of Valentina Magaletti and Tom Relleen.

Refree A leading proponent of the so-called ‘new flamenco’ movement, Barcelona-based musician and composer Raül Refree is one of the most acclaimed Spanish producers of the last decade. Spread across six solo albums, film soundtracks and a wealth of other genre-defying projects, his solo work is driven by mesmerising acoustic and electric guitar explorations. Merging these foundations with a unique spectrum of sound that includes sampled street recordings, haunted voices and hushed electronics, Refree will conjure his new album, ‘La Otra Mitad’, into an immersive solo performance at Rewire 2019.

Sosena Gebre Eyesus Sosena Gebre Eyesus is an Ethiopian artist whose soulful, life-affirming incantations are guided by the gentle strums of her

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­ egena, otherwise known as King David’s B Harp. One of the world’s oldest and most beguiling instruments, the Harp of David has been employed as a soother of evil and disturbed spirits since ancient times, and has long been the central instrument used to accompany Ethiopian Orthodox hymns.

Sosena Gebre Eyesus is one of its most captivating practitioners, playing the instrument in an utterly entrancing manner as she softly sings songs of devotional reflection.

Yona ft. Ash Koosha (live AI) (World premiere)

Xiu Xiu Xiu Xiu is the ever-evolving, shape-shifting musical experiment of LA-based multi-instrumentalist Jamie Stewart. Uncompromising and unnervingly personal, Xiu Xiu’s music has veered from damaged avant-pop to artfully orchestrated rock, black-hearted noise and almost everything in between over the course of a dozen fulllength albums. Returning to the festival following their critically-acclaimed interpretation of the Twin Peaks soundtrack in 2016, Xiu Xiu head to Rewire 2019 as a trio starring Stewart, former Swans percussionist Thor Harris and multi-instrumentalist Jordan Geiger to perform their new album ‘Girl with a Basket of Fruit’.

Yona is a first generation ‘Auxiliary Human’ — Auxuman for short — a new, virtual people who function as digital and performative companions to the human creative process. The work of London-based technologist and producer Ash Koosha, Yona uses artificial intelligence and CGI to write, sing and perform her own music while synthesising the ideas of human producers and songwriters, and connecting them to their human audience. Teaming up with her creator, Ash Koosha, Yona takes the stage for her world premiere.

Sunday, 31.3. — 87

SPECIAL EVENTS In addition to the music and discourse programmes, ­Rewire offers several special events throughout the ­festival weekend. All special events are open to Rewire 2019 ticket holders, some require registration in advance, while others are free for all. Show your Festival or Day Pass wristband to guarantee entrance.

Central Imaginary District: A sound walk by Justin Bennett

not need a Rewire 2019 ticket to attend the sound walk, but registration is required.

Saturday and Sunday — Starting point: Stationsweg 32

Creative Sound Lab Saturday, 30 March — Koorenhuis (foyer)

Known for his unique combinations of spatial recordings of environmental sound and the resonances of buildings and materials, British-Dutch artist Justin Bennett has created a specially commissioned sound walk experience for Rewire 2019. Entitled, ‘Central Imaginary District’, the sound walk responds to The Hague’s metropolitan area development project, ‘Central Innovation District’, incorporating field recordings of the area, archival material and electronic (musical) sounds to create a soundtrack that reacts to the key points along the walk.

Interlaced with interviews with individuals residing in the development area, it shares fragments of their dreams and fears for the future of their city.

In this all-ages workshop, The Haguebased and Studio Loos-affiliated collective Crab Music invites you to the Creative Sound Lab, a buzzing sound laboratory where you can discover and mix your very own sound. You will be able to try a variety of hands-on electronic instruments such as the Hermit Crab and Victorian Synthesizer and spend as much time as you’d like exploring the ways in which different connections change your sound. Once you’ve tinkered to your heart’s content, you can share your mix with the other successful sound experiments around you. In short, a chance to work with sound in an accessible, fun and educational way.

The sound walk takes approximately 45 — 60 min and starts at Stationsweg 32. You do

The workshop is free and open to all ages and level’s of music experience.

88 — Special events

3345 Weekend — Paard This year, we’re expanding our on-site record shopping with the addition of 3345.

Newly opened in The Hague, 3345 is an onand offline independent retailer of new and second-hand music in every physical format imaginable but specialised in everyone’s favourite: vinyl. Stocking a wide array of music, from the more traditional likes of pop, rock, soul and funk to the more contemporary sides of electronic music, their Rewire 2019 shop will be selling releases by each and every artist performing at Rewire 2019.

Rewire DJs

throughout the festival weekend. Drop by as you weave your way through the Rewire 2019 programme.

Underbelly Books & Vinyl Weekend — Paard A staple of Rewire festival, underground and avant-garde curio shop Underbelly will present their unique offering of books, music, noise toys and films throughout the festival weekend. Whether you’re looking for serious sounds or funny noises, avant-garde films or crazy movies, critical writing or playful observations, and fancy art books or handmade zines, Underbelly’s carefully curated selection has it all.

Weekend — Paard Setting up shop in the Paard Foyer on Friday and Saturday, the Rewire DJ will showcase some of The Hague’s finest selectors Special events — 89

PRELUDE On the eve of this year’s festival, Rewire, the Konrad Boehmer Foundation and the Royal Conservatoire present a special prelude concert at the conserva­tory’s Arnold Schönbergzaal. An extension of the Visiting Professorship at the Royal Conservatoire, which invites im­portant composers and thinkers in the field of electroacoustic and modern music, the prelude at Rewire 2019 sees French-­ Argentinian composer Daniel Teruggi and American electronic music composer Nic Collins perform works of classical and contemporary music on a spatially-distributed loudspeaker installation.

This is followed by an improvisational performance for trumpet, electronics and piano

by Collins and Gabriel Paiuk.

The prelude on Thursday, 28 March can be visited free of charge and starts at 19:30.

Daniel Teruggi

Gabriel Paiuk

Director of the French Ina-GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales), Daniel Teruggi has focussed his creative output on the creation, research and development of new tools for electro-acoustic composition. Having received his PhD in Art and Technology at the Paris VIII University, he currently teaches at the Paris I Sorbonne University and directs a seminar on new technology at the Paris IV University.

Gabriel Paiuk is a composer and sound artist whose work explores the way listening is entwined with material conditions, protocols and notions of sound mediation. His work takes the form of sound installations, compositions for instruments and electronics, and collaborations with other disciplines. A faculty member of The Hague’s Institute of Sonology and a PhD candidate at Leiden University, Paiuk’s theoretical work has lead to notable lectures, paper presentations, and workshops.

Nic Collins Born in New York City, Nic Collins has been composing and performing since the early 1970s. As the artistic co-director at Stichting STEIM and resident composer at Berlin’s DAAD, he has developed a distinct practice that utilises self-made electronics and traditional acoustic instruments. Collins is a pioneer in the use of microcomputers in live performance, and makes extensive use of radio, found sound material, and transformed musical instruments.

Prelude — 91

FILM PROGRAMME This year’s programme extends into the cinematic realm, e­x­ploring the festival themes and artists through the lens of four short films and a documentary. The screenings will take place at the Filmkluis in Het Nutshuis on Saturday and Sunday.

All Sounds Considered

ful inventory, ‘Geomancer’ is a provocative stimulation for both the eye and the mind.

Produced and directed by sound artist Goran Vejvoda and curator Florence Müller, ‘All Sounds Considered’ explores the state of Sound & Silence without dogmas and preconceived theories. The film shows the various facets that make up this fascinating domain, and lends an open ear to the stories, innovating postures and approaches of the actors — be they artists, researchers or inventors — of the versatile world of contemporary sonic media.

No history in a room filled with people with funny names 5

Saturday, 30 March (13:00 — 14:30)

Geomancer

Sunday, 31 March (13:00 — 13:50)

Heralded by the futuristic computer-generated cityscapes that have become a signature feature of his work, Lawrence Lek’s ‘Geomancer’ summons the spirit of our dawning age. Set in Singapore on the eve of the city-state’s centennial in 2065, the film’s lead is an AI determined to escape its subservient role by becoming an artist.

Part philosophical reflection and part play92 — Film programme

Sunday, 31 March (16:30 — 17:00)

‘No history in a room filled with people with funny names 5’ is part of a series of diaristic video conversations between the artist and fictional, part drone-camera, part-spirit character called Chantri. A collaboration between Korakrit Arunanondchai and Alex Gvojic, the videos try to represent the plurality and metaphysics of the experience of being human, and starts with the idea of bodies “touching” each other through other means than physical contact.

Party on the CAPS

Sunday, 31 March (16:00 — 16:30) Moroccan artist and filmmaker Meriem Bennani mixes the languages of reality TV, advertising, documentaries, phone footage, and high-end commercial aesthetics to explore the potential of storytelling through

magical realism and humour. Her film, ‘Party on the CAPS’, serves up a unique sci-fi using augmented reality, h ­umour and a heavy dose of frenzied Chaabi music to tell a story of displacement, biotechnology and privacy. Taking place in a world that has been reshaped by biotechnological progress and teleportation, a crocodile called Fiona tells of life on an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where refugees and immigrants “illegally” crossing oceans and borders are held by the state.

Walled Unwalled

Sunday, 31 March (13:50 — 14:10)

Originally a single-channel performancevideo installation, ‘Walled Unwalled’ is a film

by Lebanese artist, and audio investigator Lawrence Abu Hamdan. Set in the Funkhaus studios in East Berlin, it explores the perception of sound through a series of interlocking narratives of court cases where evidence was heard or experienced through walls.

All films are screened at the Filmkluis in Het Nutshuis — Riviervismarkt 5.

Film programme — 93

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Dessner (The National) onderzoekt het controversiële werk van fotograaf Robert Mapplethorpe.

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April Wed 3 Fri 5 Sat 6 Sat 6 Tue 9 Wed 10 Sun 14 Mon 15 Tue 16 Thu 18 Sat 20 Mon 29

Todd Rundgren These New Puritans Mekons + Eton Crop The Comet is Coming Julia Jacklin Amyl and the Sniffers Teenage Fanclub Giorgio Moroder Nilüfer Yanya Cherry Glazerr Outlet Drift Weyes Blood

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Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Altin Gün Kap Bambino Omar Souleyman Rat Boy Jacco Gardner’s Somnium Mild Orange Men I Trust Kneebody London Calling met o.a. Still Corners, Hotel Lux, Gently Tender, Anemone, Body Type Methyl Ethel

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Cass McCombs The Good, The Bad & The Queen Meat Puppets Kevin Morby

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Rhye - 18 jun Ni k las Paschburg - 12 sep Archive - 26 sep King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - 6 okt Ni l s Frahm - 9 okt Ni k Bärtsch Ronin - 12 okt Carla Bley Trios - 16 okt The Sisters of Mercy - 20 okt Le Guess Who? festival 7 t/m 10 nov Kronos Quartet - 22 nov

Helen Dowling Stranger on display t/m 02.06.2019

WO 3 T/M ZO 7 APRIL 2019

A mind expanding transcendental trip

108 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; General Festival Info

GENERAL FESTIVAL INFO Rewire Ticket & Info Centre

Night trains

Street address: Riviervismarkt 5

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.

Het Nutshuis is home to the Rewire 2019 Ticket & Info Centre. If you have purchased a ticket online, you can exchange your e-ticket for a Rewire 2019 wristband at Het Nutshuis. Press registration and other festival-related information can also be found here. After closing hours on Friday and Saturday, you can exchange your e-tickets at Paard. Please see timings below.

Opening hours

From midnight on, trains run every hour from Hollands Spoor. This train passes through Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam, Leiden and Schiphol.

Friday 17:00 — 00:00

(from 0:00 at Paard)

Saturday 11:30 — 00:00

(from 0:00 at Paard)

Sunday 12:00 — 23:00

General Festival Info — 109

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10 9 11

1 Koninklijke Schouwburg

2

Korte Voorhout 3

2 West Den Haag

1

Lange Voorhout 102

3 Oude Katholieke Kerk

Juffrouw Idastraat 7

4 Korzo

Prinsestraat 42

5 Grote Kerk

Rond de Grote Kerk 12

6 Het Nutshuis Riviervismarkt 5

7 Koorenhuis Prinsegracht 27

8 Paard

Prinsegracht 12

9 Lutherse Kerk

Lutherse Burgwal 7 — 9

10 Het Magazijn Grote Markt 10

11 The Grey Space Paviljoensgracht 20

12 Starting point: Central Imaginary District Stationsweg 32

12 Venues — 111

CREDITS Director, Funding & Development

Supervisory Board

Bronne Keesmaat

Dunja Colman, David Kenselaar, Remco de Valk

Programme

Thanks

Bronne Keesmaat (Head of Programme), Martijn Buser (Co-curator Music), Jo Kali (Curator Discourse), Henk Koolen (Adviser Music), Gerben de Louw (Curator Film)

Marketing & Communications

Bas de Beer (Marketing & Communications Manager), Phil van der Krogt (Content Manager), Pieter van Vliet

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 2019 is organised and presented by Stichting Unfold

Production

© 2019 Rewire Festival / Stichting Unfold

Education

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.

Symposium

E-mail pr@rewirefestival.nl

Elizabet van der Kooij (Festival Producer), Daan Jonkers (Assistant Technical Production), Joya de Bock (Transport & Artist Hospitality + Volunteers), Rik ’t Jong (Paard) Zoe Kate Reddy Gregory Markus

Visitors Programme Stacie Sueko Lyons

Editorial

Phil van der Krogt (Editor-in-Chief), Jo Kali

Design

Anja Kaiser & Jim Kühnel (Campaign & identity) Dinamo (Type)

Web Development Basten Stokhuyzen

112 — Credits

Disclaimer

Mail P.O. Box 243 2501 CE Den Haag

Funding & Institutional Partners

Sponsors

Creative Partners

THE PAST AS NEVER HEARD BEFORE

Media Partners

Partners â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 113

NEXT EVENT

REWIRE X KORZO MATMOS + more to be announced Korzo, The Hague Fri, 14.06. + more events to be announced in the upcoming months.

See rewirefestival.nl for the latest info and tickets.

115 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Partners

Partners â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 115