TodaysArt 2019: Consciousness by TodaysArt

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TodaysArt Festival 2019

Welcome to Consciousness by Olof van Winden (Director TodaysArt)

#TodaysArt 2019 #TodaysArt.nl #19-22 September

Since the first edition in 2005, we at TodaysArt have seen it as our mission to transform the festival landscape, pushing boundaries by creating something that isn’t yet just another music festival. As technology has evolved in the past 15 years, so has the festival industry: in 2019, we see electronic music headlining all major festival stages. TodaysArt has always been looking for something beyond immediate trends, interchangeable lineups, and the next spectacle for Instagram. It has carved its niche as a unique hybrid-artmusic experience, one where visually immersive art and music share a common ground. By finding new venues each year, and looking at new technology-driven ideas in the ether, the festival becomes its own beast, constantly inspiring new contexts in which artists perform and create new meaning. In 2019 we have woken up in a world where humanity, society and technology are radically different from where it all started. Rather than looking back, the 15th edition anticipates opportunities for humanity in our digital future, manifested in this year’s Art and Context program. #TDA15YRS We have invited a cast of artists closely connected to the history and identity of our festival. This includes various emerging pioneers across all disciplines, familiar and new faces, and some of the most progressive artists that are defining our culture today. Those who have experienced the festival before, know that TodaysArt’s special, monumental and sometimes crazy festival locations have always been the true curators of the festival: defining what is possible and what is not, leading our creative path to yet another inspiring edition. This year, the locations range from industrial heritage to a full-scale theatre, a club designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and legendary underground spaces for the night program. #CONSCIOUSNESS Our program is always embedded in a larger narrative. This year, this is centred around the theme ‘CONSCIOUSNESS’, a topic with which we leave dystopian scenarios on conflict, ‘black boxes’ and artificial intelligence from previous years behind. Instead, we will focus on the possibilities of digital technology, on topics like artificial emotions, digital consciousness, machine hallucinations and meditations, and the oppor-

tunities for humanity in the digital age. What is going to be humanity’s role and relevance in our digital future? What role will philosophy, ethics, and creativity play? Do we choose nature over technology? How fine is the line between them, if there is a line at all? This September, we will try to answer some of these questions during our festival, together with our artists, speakers — and of course with you as well. #ART Our Art Exhibition will arise in the monumental, raw and enormous Electricity Factory in The Hague. Together with our participating art ists, we will transform the building into a spaceship full of conscious machines, learning computers, Artificial Intelligence, lasers, projectors and LEDs — providing a visually immersive and global snapshot that reflects the vitality and diversity of contemporary art and audiovisual creation. Many of the presented works have been developed especially for this venue and our festival, turning our expo into a unique experience that you have to come and see for yourself. #CONTEXT In our enriching Context Program full of panels, discussions, keynotes and workshops, we will zoom out and focus on humanity again. While our digital future may seem daunting from time to time, it also offers new opportunities for our creativity and intelligence. Together with our speakers, we will explore future scenarios and discover how a new consciousness can give meaning and relevance to the human mind in a digital world. #AV/TECH SHOWS Today is also the time to foster the technology we have and to be amazed by what it can do for the arts and culture. Our AV and Tech Shows, brought by emerging talent, will immerse you into mesmerizing, innovative and often surreal universes of light, sound and illusion, including many premieres. #MUSIC For our Music / Club Program, we are constantly in search of tomorrow’s headliners, remaining true to our underground roots and tradition as pioneers, even as the scene is shifting towards mainstream stages and large festival crowds. We don’t invest our budget in those that you can already see at any other festival every weekend: instead, we carefully select a mix of emerging and pioneering artists from our network, partners, ecosystem and local community; as well as changemakers of movements, genres and technology; or music we just like and would like to share with you. Get ready for four days and nights of music, art and technology to remember. Welcome to: TodaysArt 2019: CONSCIOUSNESS.

Ryoichi Kurokawa â&#x20AC;&#x201C; subassemblies AV-piece based on 3D data of ruins, nature-invaded buildings and architectures in disrepair. Philip Beesley â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Anthozoan Veil A living sculpture populated with colonies that communicate with movement and light.

TodaysArt 2019

#Tech/AV #Ryoichi Kurokawa #Saturday 21 September #Theater aan het Spui #Art #Philip Beesley #19-22 September #De Electriciteitsfabriek

fuse* – Dökk Groundbreaking interactive live-media opera that lays bare the perception of reality by the subconscious. Ralf Baecker – Putting The Pieces Back Together Again A kinetic installation that investigates non-hierarchical communication and collective behaviour.

TodaysArt 2019

#Tech/AV #fuse* #Friday 20 September #Theater aan het Spui #Art #Ralf Baecker #20-22 September #De Electriciteitsfabriek

‘‘You can use your body as a resistance, a battlefield and a weapon of war.”

Proud ‘tranny fag’ Linn da Quebrada dances in the flames of Brazil Brazil is burning, both literally and metaphorically speaking. Last January, the far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro was inaugurated as president, with a government owning one of the largest militaries in the Americas. In this political climate, women, queer people, indigenous Brazilians and other minorities are under increasing attack.

movement at the same time. For example, here in São Paulo, we recently got our first transvestic state deputy. What I realize is that our advances frighten the conservative system. Their representatives are spoiled and do not accept losing territory. This is why they attack us and the rights we fought for. They are trying to pull us back.

Bolsonaro is the living embodiment and icon of the Latin-American machismo, and anyone who doesn’t conform to this heteronormative white norm has to pay the price. “You are too ugly to rape”, he once snarled to a female parliamentarian. ‘‘I’ve got five kids. On the fifth, I had a moment of weakness and it came out as a woman.’’ Since he took office, the number of raped and murdered women has soared by over ten percent.

“That is what Brazil is like at the moment: we face a scenario of political backlash that’s trying to disrupt our community. A scenario of a dispute between old traditions and the new contradictions that our bodies and lives represent. So for me, living in Brazil today means being resistant, fighting for what is mine, and what is ours. Now, more than ever, it is important not to retreat and to keep moving forward. The regime trembles at our achievements and the movement we’re pushing for.”

Especially the LGBT+-community in the country is under a lot of pressure, but amidst this chaos, artists and musicians find a way to bring marginalized identities in the spotlight using their art. Linn da Quebrada, a Brazilian activist, rapper, actress and singer, uses her body as a political weapon. Her goal: to empower Brazil’s queer community with her witty song texts, as well as her productions and live shows that burst with her endless energy. She injects her political manifesto and call for sexual tolerance with a mix of funk carioca, vogue beats, hip hop and electronic music. ‘Tranny fag’, she calls herself, a witty reference to the insults trans people and homosexuals deal with on a daily basis. Linn sings, yells, dances and raps with inspirational artistry. And although her performances may be confronting and subversive at times, she leads her revolution with a wide smile on her face. On Saturday, 21st September, she will perform at TodaysArt Festival. Linn da Quebrada: ‘‘We’re currently living in a very complex political time. While our country is ruled by Bolsonaro, a person who is completely unprepared to do so, we have also made a lot of progress with our LGBT+-community and black

Linn gives shape to her ideas through protest, giving a physical shape to an otherwise intellectual fight. ‘‘Protesting gives us a dimension of movement and articulation, it helps us to see ourselves as a group and to understand that we have common goals. Those are the moments to connect with one another and think of new strategies. It’s when I started to realize how my body is increasingly becoming a battlefield, and how important it is that it has been conquering not only this space but several others as well. The TV show I have here in Brazil, the Bixa Travesty documentary; all these spaces serve as a political weapon in this place and at this moment.” She is refers to a different term she used to name herself with: ‘bixa molotov’. ‘‘You can use your body as an explosive, a resistance, a battlefield and a weapon of war. That’s why I identified myself as a bixa molotov. But to be honest, I don’t know where I am in my identities catalogue today. I do believe that there is still some violence in me. Just as there are many other frequencies, there is also anger. And I believe in anger as a motor that can cause movement within this bankrupt social structure.”

by Eelco Couvreur #Music #Linn da Quebrada #DJ Pininga #Saturday 21 September #PAARD #TodaysArt2019

On YouTube, there is a short documentary by DAZED magazine, in which Da Quebrada talks about the things that drive her. How she finds the motivation - even in the daily verbal and physical violence she experiences - to keep going. “I need this to be alive!” she exclaims confidently. “I’m talking about my shows, about my performances and my meetings with my audience. It’s from these meetings and the connection with my stage partners and audiences that I maintain my sanity. During my shows, I produce new forces. They function as healing spaces, in a way.” “My desire is to be heard, and that’s why I started composing and singing. My music serves as a dialogue, which I use to invent new narratives.” She makes a living as an artist because she works extremely hard. “That’s mainly how I survive financially. I work with music, movies, television, and I know what’s necessary to sustain an artist’s life. And I mean, not just the whole ‘being in front of the spotlight thing’, but how to understand life as a work of art. Sometimes you have to live artistically to get around the system and survive.” Does she follow any rules in order to survive as an artist? And does she have a motto she uses as a coping mechanism? “When I need to be less anxious and more present, I trust my body. I don’t only address sexuality and gender, I’m also talking about the body. By understanding my body materially, my territory and my shelter, I form a kind of rituals. They connect me to my body and give me strength, make me realize my powers, but also my weaknesses and limits. And when I blur these limits to conquer new spaces, I gain new strengths as well.” Linn da Quebrada performs Saturday, 21 September at PAARD. Before and after her performance, DJ Pininga plays a 15-minute set

2009 Daito Manabe

2010 Spuiplein

2009 Hiroaki Umeda

2015 Helmut Smits

2010 CONTAINER

2008 Pablo Valbuena

2011 Chico McMurtrie

2018 Tarik Barri

2011 Gabey Tjon-a-Tham

2017 Philip Vermeulen

2007 Lust

2017 Fausto Bahia

2018 ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

2006 Sis Jossip & TU Delft

2016

2008 Companie Retouramont

2013 Chris Salter

2012 Szilvi Toth

2016 ZUS / Collective Works

2013 Collective Works

2012 Pantha du prince

2009 Jonathan Schipper

2018 C ellF & Jaap Blonk

2013 Onno Dirker

2012 Elise Morin and ClĂŠmence Eliard

2005 Harold de Bree

2017 Jacob Tonski

2017 Legowelt

2014 Guy Tavares

2018 Spuiplein Dome

2012 Raumlabor / Refunc

2007 Onno Poeisz

2018 Carolien Teunisse

2016 Iris van Herpen

2013 Ryoji Ikeda

#Context #Srećko Horvat #Pia Klemp #Saturday 21 September #De Electriciteitsfabriek #TodaysArt2019 #Context #Daan Roovers #Friday 20 September #Zaal 3 #TodaysArt2019

Horvat (1983) is a European philosopher without a permanent address. He is travelling across continents giving lectures, visiting refugee camps and protests, and advocating radical democracy as one of the founders and figureheads of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25). He wrote a number of books, and will never waste any occasion to address the bankruptcy of capitalism. Or xenophobia in Europe. Or climate change. Or plastic in the sea. Saturday, September 21st, he will discuss the current refugee crisis we’re facing at the southern borders of Europe with Pia Klemp and the TodaysArt audience.

“Be like Sisyphus” Interview with Srećko Horvat by Karel Feenstra

“A compelling vision, an urgent necessity, and not beyond reach.” The commentary by Noam Chomsky on Srećko Horvat’s new book ‘Poetry from the future’ leaves no question: a must-read. Horvat is one of the busiest left-wing political activists in Europe. Aside from DiEM25, the movement to reform the EU into a “realm of shared prosperity, peace and solidarity”, he is a founder of the Subversive festival, an annual jamboree in Zagreb of radical thought that has featured the likes of Oliver Stone and Antonio Negri, he set up the Philosophical theatre in the same city, whose contributors have included Adam Curtis, Vanessa Redgrave and Thomas Piketty. I first met Srećko October 2018, at Insomnia Festival in Tromsø, Norway. “What if the apocalypse already happened?” he asked rhetorically. It was the kind of brainwashing keynote that sticks in your head for a while, both dystopic and hopeful. “I gave that lecture in the Arctic, precisely to show that the Apocalypse is already here - look at the Arctic and you will see the future,” he says today. “But not in a banal sense, not even as ‘the end of the world’, but in the eschatological meaning of a ‘revelation’. We are obviously living in the ‘end of times’, and the question, beyond the fright or fascination, is what this ‘revelation’ is telling us, and, more importantly, how we are going to react to it. The point about the Apocalypse is not so much that something will come to an end, but our reaction to it - even if there is an end.”

transformed. What happens when hundreds of millions of refugees will start coming to the EU because of rising sea levels and climate change? Is the current approach to this crisis really working? Building walls, castles and shelters as if we’re back to feudal times? The current militarization is not only tragic with dire consequences for the refugees themselves, but also for the future of Europe. Instead of retreating to xenophobia and authoritarianism, Europe should be leading in democracy, solidarity and vision from the future, not from the past.”

Capitalism appears not to be ‘the end of history’, the winning system, creating equal chances for all. What’s the alternative? “It is precisely the ideology of ‘the end of history’, the belief in ‘liberal democracy’, without facing its own contradictions and its lack of real democracy and solidarity, that has led us to our current mess. Don’t forget Viktor Orban, one of the representatives of so-called ‘illiberal democracy’ in 1989, the year when Fukuyama published his notorious article on the ‘end of history’, received a scholarship from Soros to study political science at Oxford. Today, the boomerang of the ‘end of history’ is coming back, precisely because ‘liberal democracy’ obviously isn’t the true response to the crisis of capitalism. What’s the alternative? Certainly not a system that is already calculating the profits from the coming end. Instead of post-apocalyptic capitalism, we need post-capitalism.”

In the Mediterranean, we face a humanitarian crisis. Is that part of a European or a global problem? “The European refugee crisis is not only a humanitarian crisis, but it is also an organised crime against humanity that is being led by our governments. Not only because they want to protect the borders and their power, but also because the current European Union lacks any sustainable vision for the 21st century, no profound vision how to react and act in a rapidly changing and re-aligning world in which the very meanings of sovereignty, citizenship, nations, etcetera, are being

In your book ‘Poetry from the future’, you address the issue of refugees firmly: Europe will face millions of them. “If Europe wants to survive, not only as an idea but as a reality, it has to urgently get its act together. According to all the predictions and scientific studies, only in a few decades we will live in a radically worse situation globally - new wars and climate crises will produce millions of refugees worldwide and our current reaction certainly is not

‘‘Imagining and dreaming is not enough, organising our selves is crucial’’ a proper answer - even those who push these politics, certainly must know that or they are simply stupid. And I think they are not stupid. Europe has a historical responsibility not to fall into the trap of 20th-century politics, with all its atrocities and tragedies.”

At TodaysArt, you’ll be on stage with Pia Klemp, captain of the Sea Watch 1, accused of facilitating illegal immigration in the Mediterranean. Are rescue teams like Sea Watch becoming part in a perverse system? “People like Pia Klemp are true heroes of the early 21st century because they do the only right thing. When a system is not only turning a blind eye to the miseries of thousands of refugees - like the ones camping in the middle of minefields in Bosnia as we speak -, but actively participating and organising the current catastrophe, it is our duty not only to react but to act. We need thousands of Pia Klemp. It is certainly not her to blame or the refugees themselves, but a system that is perpetuating arm sales and wars, then ‘outsourcing’ the problem to Libya and other states, while turning Europe into a walled neo-feudal fortress and the Mediterranean Sea into a graveyard.”

In The Netherlands, we have an institute called ‘the national philosopher’. Daan Roovers, the current bearer of the title, is at TodaysArt, Friday, 20th September. ‘We are politics,’ is

her statement: acting together in the public sphere. Everybody should be involved. - Utopia? “Utopia still seems to be a bad word. But it is precisely the ability to imagine and dream that can lead us out of the current dystopia. Yet, imagining and dreaming is not enough, organising ourselves is crucial. Get connected to other people. Do whatever you can.”

CONSCIOUSNESS is the festival theme of TodaysArt Festival 2019. In what way would you encourage people to be ‘conscious’? “What we need today is ‘hope without optimism’. As Camus famously put it, we have to imagine Sisyphus happy. And we have to climb that mountain, every day, even if we know that we will have to do it again and again... Be like Sisyphus. The realization of the absurd requires revolt. It is during the return, when the stone falls back the mountain, that consciousness arrives. The truly tragic moment is when the hero becomes conscious of this wretched condition. He does not have hope, but there is, as Camus says, ‘no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.’”

Srećko Horvat and Pia Klemp (Captain Sea-Watch) will have a dialogue on the Birth and Death of Europe on Saturday, 21 September at De Electriciteitsfabriek (Turbine Hall), during TodaysArt 2019.

#Music #EwaJustka #Friday 20 September #PAARD #TodaysArt2019

Ewa Justka: Hand-made doomcore without pretence by Eelco Couvreur

‘‘The MotherFucker 2 is a super versatile audio synth or effect pedal, perfect for noise musicians and doomcore lovers, AS WELL AS FOR NORMAL PEOPLE who play guitars. Or sing. Not sure what normal people do.” Welcome to the wondrous world of Ewa Justka, producer, live artist, teacher, researcher and instrument builder. In her online store, she uses this quote – including capitalization – to pitch one of her products. Google ‘Optotronics + Etsy’ and you will find Justka’s digital candy store filled with small, square black boxes. They are covered in LED lights, switches and buttons, are not bigger than a cookie jar and carry names like Doominiser, Optodeafener and Motherfucker 2. She builds these analogue synthesizers herself and sells them online to anyone pursuing a life full of cathartic sound. At the Do It Yourself-school, she learned how to solder electronic circuits to create sounds, and how to make the gabber kickdrums she now uses to decorate her compositions. But her mission encapsulates more than just making music: with her workshops, she wants to share her knowledge too. Because in her opinion, the world of electronic music is making life unnecessarily complicated. “Imagine, when

basically anyone with an internet connection could build synthesizers themselves”, she tells us over a Skype connection with Krakow, a smile on her face. Over the past years, she has been testing this hypothesis at the world’s most prestigious festivals, including Mutek, Unsound and CTM. Now, she will join us for a live show at TodaysArt. Her discography roughly breaks into two sections. Firstly, there are her conceptual releases, like Kick Studies, in which she studies the relationship between gabber parties and traditional African trance rituals. Or EVERYTHING IN MINOR, an EP with classical music pieces by Chopin, Schubert and Beethoven, but played with a Roland JP-8080, the synthesizer behind the progressive trance sound we know from artists like Lorenzo Senni. Justka: ‘‘I was very sad in that period and was listening to dramatic music a lot. I used that trance synthesizer to make pathetic, classical pieces from works by famous composers. Just to have fun, to channel my sadness into something useful. If it helped? Sure. To me, making music works like therapy, as I process emotions in my productions. It works like this: when you have a problem in your life, even if it’s something like back pain, it helps to put your mind on something else, and to me, that was

a trance synthesizer. It was an easy distraction that helped me past that ‘dead point.’ Synthesizers can suddenly make all your problems manageable.” She builds these projects thoughtfully and works on them with a great eye for detail. But her second type of work, her club music, arises in her subconscious. “For that work, I mostly use the ‘Roland family’”, she points out, referring to the brand of synthesizers and drum computers she prefers. “But I do use my selfmade effects. In the records you’re referring to, that was mostly the Motherfucker 2.” Apart from doomcore, her work also has a clear, Dutch gabber-DNA. “I am a great fan of gabber and its ravy, ultra-fast kick drums and acid melodies. The 90’s in general are a big musical inspiration to me. Gabber, acid techno: they’re all music genres averse to pretence.” A nerdy, DIY-ethic can easily go hand in hand with a healthy dose of self-mockery, judging from the way Ewa promotes her products. Online she introduces her Optodeafener synthesizer as follows: “Optodeafener will provide you with opto-sonic ultimate terror flashing into your face pink brutal LEDs synchronized with industrial throbbing vicious

hypnotizing noises pulsing into your defenceless soul, so powerful that they burn your retina out and blow your ears up.” In previous interviews, Justka makes it no secret how she thinks about male gear-fetishists, taking themselves a bit too seriously. She describes the world of analogue and modular synthesizers as “intimidating”, and tells us, laughing: “They’re all very good at navel-gazing. It’s all about the ‘artists’, about their music, about ‘me, me, me!’” It is exactly that whiff of pretentiousness that motivates her to demystify more of her knowledge on these topics in her workshops. “That makes everything much less of an ego trip, in my opinion. But the question is how far you want to take that. I am convinced that anyone can build a simple sound source or effect, but you can also geek out and make something a lot more complex and extreme. There is so much information to find online. It was liberating to see that I could also pick it up myself. By now, I have gathered a lot of sources, and I hope to combine them one day in a nice book or publication. You know what? I will send you my list of links that helped to get me started. Share it with anyone who is coming to TodaysArt!’’ Check it out at: todaysart.nl/program/ewa-justka/

“They’re all very good at navel-gazing. It’s all about the ‘artists’, about their music, about ‘me, me, me!’”

15 years: TodaysArt

15 years: TodaysArt

15 years: TodaysArt

Shedding light on Matthew Schreiber by Laura Cabiscol and Luka Kueter

Sketch for Untitled, 2019

05 01

#Art #MatthewSchreiber #19-22 September #De Electriciteitsfabriek #TodaysArt 2019

Matthew Schreiber will be at TodaysArt 2019 presenting a currently untitled work conceptualized specifically for De Electriciteitsfabriek. With this visual story, he shares a bit of insight on his references, inspirations and what our visitors can expect from experiencing his piece.

Where do you draw inspiration from? Right now, I am on a trip around central Florida where you can find fresh cold-water springs, and Manatee swimming around. This is amazing and will influence my work. And the book I’m reading right now called The Holographic Universe. So for me inspiration is constantly changing, daily.

When did your fascination with light start? When I was around 5. My family would take me to Ontario Place in Canada, a Science Center where they would demonstrate technologies like lasers cutting steel, etc. I also really liked fun houses, amusement parks and novelty stores like Spencer’s Gift Shop. All of these things would have a spectacular or magical presence that attracted me.

You work with light, what is then the position of darkness? To control light, you have to have an equal amount of control of darkness. It’s the only way it works. I also like the idea of darkness, specifically in popular culture.

What are you trying to explore with your work? When did you start building laser installations? When I was about 7 years old, I investigated building my own HeNe Laser, but it was too expensive and difficult. Later, when I was around 16, I made my first laser installation in my physics class in high school, using dried ice and music from Wendy Carlos. In college (image 01) I started to specialize in holography. I still have a very fine holography lab in my studio, and this really is the center of my work. The holograms I make are true “wave-front reconstruction holograms” that are made with lasers. My more refined laser installation comes out of my work with holography.

Currently, I am trying to clarify my early childhood influences and interests. I grew up in a lower-middle-class family in Cleveland, Ohio in the 1970s. It was a very dirty, grey, rusty sort of time and place. Early video games, amusement parks, tv, movies, fantasy, fun houses, sci-fi…all low pop cultural influences are where I would escape to. Since then I have learned about and worked within the highest refined culture, but I realize the low is where I come from and I happily embrace this. More specifically, I think that “light art” tends to drift towards the sublime, exalted, or the spiritual. In situations where I consider myself a “light artist”, I think I come from a different place.

How has your process evolved during the years? And the technology available to you?

What was your approach for your work for this show?

When I started to go to art school, I studied a lot of art history. This is an endless process that continues to evolve and inform my work. “Technology” is not that interesting to me, except for its cultural significance. On the other hand, “science” is very central to my work..

I tried to take a look at the De Electriciteitsfabriek and find some context I could work from. I read as much as I could find about Adam Schadee, the factory architect. The space is beautiful, and I did think about the piece as a sculpture in its form based on the site. But in the end, it was the theme of consciousness that really did it for me.

Tell us a bit about the piece you’ll showcase at TodaysArt. Untitled, 2019 is part of an on-going series of manipulated video work. This piece consists of a corridor made of LED panels and sound where subjects walk into an extreme compressed space and experience strobing video and light. The video consists of manipulated footage of dolphins swimming at EPCOT Theme Park (Part of Disney World), that I worked on this summer with my son Willem Schreiber. The imagery is completely abstracted by the video strobing, the participants proximity to the LED panels and the very low resolution of the video footage. The sound, heard with headphones, is a binaural sine-wave sweep synchronized with the video strobe. I have been reading a lot about sensory deprivation or isolation tanks, and most specifically about the work of John C. Lilly (image 02). He developed the first isolation tanks in the 1950’s and 60’s, which led to the study of human-dolphin communication (image 03) along with prolonged LSD experimentation. I have personally worked in a large isolation room at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for several years making holograms. And I developed the software and programming of James Turrell’s Perceptual Cells. Most specifically I produced a programming method that uses brain-wave “entrainment” through strobing light and binaural audio to approximate a forced meditative state. An earlier light work of mine, Pipeline (Tokyo Blue), 2006, (image 04) was a 120’ long curving deep blue corridor that was directly influenced by the Corridor works of Bruce Nauman (image 05). I am very interested in how Nauman was forcing an oppressive physical condition on participants in these works. Untitled, 2019 is combining the physical state forced by the corridor, the entrainment forced meditation programming, and the subliminal dolphin imagery, to over-stimulate participants senses.

Underground Resistance & TodaysArt: 15 Years of Mutual Love ‘How often do you dream while you’re awake?’’ Cornelius Harris asks me, talking via a Skype connection out of Detroit, his voice low and dense as a dark energy bassline. The Underground Resistance label manager and vocalist earned his stripes with the much-respected Detroit techno label and collective but is also a frequent attendee and close friend of TodaysArt. As an outsider/insider, we’ve asked him to reflect on fifteen years of TodaysArt and ended up talking dreams, inspiration, accessibility and intercontinental friendship. ‘‘A love affair’’, that’s how Harris describes the Detroit-The Hague connection. Underground Resistance, the pioneering techno collective founded by Jeff Mills and Mike Banks in the late 1980s, have graced the TodaysArt flyer more than a handful of times. Legendary performances by UR, Galaxy 2 Galaxy and Scan 7, to name but a few, hard-wired our collective consciousness. But according to Harris, there’s way more to this ongoing relationship than the mutual understanding of the power of music. Harris: ‘‘There’s this phrase that came to me in a class I attended at university. We were talking about dreams and someone said: ‘Sometimes you have got to wake up so you can dream.’ We all know that life can be a struggle at times. I’ve had rough times as well, was so caught up in the day-to-day, that it’s really all I was thinking about. You can’t envision anything beyond the day-today, so you are kind of stuck. You have got to break free from that. It’s kind of like waking up, breaking out of that, so you can dream. Olof (van Winden, TodaysArt director ed.), has the ability to make you dream while you’re awake. He helped me get back on my feet. In the light of TodaysArt, he’s the one who’s always thinking about the next

Conversation with Cornelius Harris, Label Manager, UR by Eelco Couvreur

steps. How can we push this further? How can we get more people involved? Even if we have to get them over and across all the way from Detroit.’’ ‘‘The majority of people in the metropolitan Detroit area truly experienced the power of music and the collective culture that orbiting it. When we were young, there was one thing they kept saying. Things will be better in the future. We heard that so often, that at some point we thought: we don’t want to wait for the future any longer, let’s do this now. I always thought that was one of the cool aspects of techno, it was music from the future that pulled us into the here and now. We all had the feeling: this is needed right now.’’ ‘‘We listened to The Electrifying Mojo, a visionary artist who ruled the Detroit airwaves while radio was still unrestricted. But he was way more than a radio DJ. He turned this very basic thing of being a radio DJ into this inspirational experience for everybody. He opened people up to all different kinds of ideas and possibilities - not only music-wise. TodaysArt strikes me in similar ways. It’s a festival that tries to push a lot of different possibilities. It’s not, and never has been a purely a music festival. Of course, there’s a ton of music, but it was never in my mind as a music festival, rather a celebration of culture. It’s art and science and technology, it’s all of that, presented in such a way that it’s, to me at least, incredibly satisfying. To be able to enjoy technology and science and how it plays into the arts and becomes part of the fabric of what makes life enjoyable. It’s amazing because there’s so much creativity going on there and I think it’s something more people need to be exposed to.’’ Harris addresses the subject of accessibility.

How do we make sure that more people can actually enjoy art and music festivals when they don’t have direct access? A matter they have always struggled with in Detroit. ‘‘It’s an ongoing battle. There are so many different constraints. If I hold TodaysArt as an example, to see how they’ve taken the festival to different cities and other countries, that’s a fantastic thing. Model 500 played TodaysArt in 2007 and we took two dancers from Detroit with us. They were Jit dancers, a form of dance that comes from Detroit. For them, it was the first time out of the country. This exchange is a wonderful thing I’d like to see more of. On top of that, there’s the accessibility to art and culture in the city itself. You have to be very intentional. My question is always about accessibility. Is it something that everybody can participate in? It’s around race, it’s around ethnicity, it’s around income levels, it’s around age. It’s looking at all these different factors, and asking: is this something only people with a lot of money can participate in, or is this something that’s for anybody? That’s a thing I took from TodaysArt as well because a large part of the program is always accessible for everyone, it’s in the public space. You don’t need to pay entrance to see great stuff, because it’s just out there on the streets.’’ ‘‘Let me say this, and this isn’t about Underground Resistance, this is about me. Olof has been a great friend. He has done stuff in terms of his generosity, that has been incredibly inspirational and helpful for me. Music is what made this happen. I feel blessed to be able to say that there is this person on the other side of the planet you can call a real friend. This is what I want to take away from this culture. This feeling of having an extended, intercontinental family, connected through music.’’

#Music #Sentimental Rave #Friday 20 September #PAARD #TodaysArt 2019

Sentimental (Political) Rave by Laura Cabiscol

Sentimental Rave is the DJ-ing persona of Soraya Daubron, a twentysomething from “a tiny city in the middle of France”. During our brief email exchange to arrange a video call for this article, she gives me a heads-up on the fact that expressing herself through words is not her forte and that she is not sure a video call is all that good of an idea. Nonetheless, she is willing to give it a go. She seems to be someone with very clear ideas and values, a feeling I get merely through the previous online stalking I conducted as research for this feature. Maybe partly due to her being not so fond of speaking, she found a way to charge everything she does with meaning and a strong political message very early on. Asides from her career as a DJ, which she never really intended, Soraya is also a photographer, used to run a queer night and is now part of the organization of ‘Comme Nous Brûlons’, a feminist festival in Paris. Once we are past the mandatory technical difficulties, the brief initial awkwardness is quickly resolved as we move on to topics she feels really strongly about. Soraya has a deep sense of appreciation for the hidden - or not so obvious - beauty that there is to be found in the world, the beauty of that which is different and therefore marginalized and too often forgotten. That feeds her photography and ventures in music and nightlife. Techno clubs are home to a very particular, raw type of beauty, which is maybe one of the things that drew Soraya in so much. Her story will be familiar to many: coming from a rather small place, she first started exploring the club scene upon moving to Paris to attend university, aged 17. “I was very shy when I started going out. Then I started speaking some more, meeting more people… and in a way became more comfortable with myself.” Recent years have seen the proliferation of independent party-collectives that present an alternative to the traditional club institutions and the still very much male-dominated music industry. For many, including Soraya, the queer scene is where the real subversion in club culture is happening; “I think that right now, the club scene is most interesting in the real queer, political nights. It’s where I find the most interesting people. When I talk with them, I feel like they are there for more than just looking at some DJ play techno with dark visuals in the background and taking lots of drugs.” She is all about real, meaningful human connections, a sometimes-rare phenomenon nowadays as we inhabit virtual spaces ruled by invisible and opaque algorithms and where a non-existing perfection is venerated. “I’m so lucky and so privileged to have this life. But it’s not always all good. I’m not asking people to necessarily share their anxiety, but to be fair, this stuff is not always easy, there’s always the feeling of so much competition. If you open your Instagram, there are so many DJs, and society forces you to see them all as competitors. They want you to feel like there is no space for everyone, but there is space for so many artists today.” She feels strongly about what role the arts and artists should play in society, and she carries it with her in her DJ name. “Rave is a way to be, a way to be political. I don’t believe that you can make music and make art without hav-

ing a political mind. I mean, if you do that, please explain to me how, because I want to know. There are so many people dying, so many people suffering from discriminatory violence, so many refugees, so many people in deep crisis. Years ago, it used to be awful and we’ve come a long way in some aspects, but it is still awful nowadays. So, if you don’t see that, I also don’t see the point of making something.” Today, in the hyper-connected reality we exist in, everything you do and put out as an artist is political, as it will be seen by other people, and she understands that symbolic acts can have real power. “You don’t have to talk about these things every time, it’s more like as a queer woman, making techno is already something political for me, standing in front of the people is already something political, taking my place is already something. I think it’s not about talking, it’s the way you make music, the way you find your place in this society, the way you think about it.” “At my level, I can make people come together, create a community and give them the chance to try new things. And I don’t know that much, but if I can share what I know, I think it’s a good thing. At this year’s Comme Nous Brûlons festival, for example, I will host a free workshop for girls that want to learn to produce and to make music with hardware.” A common mistake many people and so-called activists make is getting stuck complaining about the dimensions of the problem, or get overwhelmed by only looking at the grand scheme of things and become unable to tackle things little by little, therefore not engaging in any action at all. Soraya might not be much of a preacher, but instead, she leads by example. Things like carefully selecting the parties she plays at and associates herself with, even cancelling gigs when something that she can’t agree with or support happens, show her level of awareness and commitment. This already denotes a certain amount of privilege, starting with the economical factor; not everyone is in a position to select where their paychecks come from, especially at the start of their careers. But it’s important that once one is there, one makes use of that privilege sensibly. When talking about the future, she says she doesn’t really think about it, as “it’s scary”. “I think there is a lot of good and interesting stuff going on in club culture and the music scene but I can’t imagine how it will evolve. I think when people were creating techno in the 90s, they never imagined it was going to be this huge. I think we just don’t know what we are creating, but something is happening for sure. We are just there now, so it’s complicated to see it with perspective.” There are a certain beauty and excitement to be found in uncertainty; it means you, alone or together with other people (maybe those with whom you shared the dance floor last time) have a real chance at influencing the outcomes. When I ask her if there is something she finds on every dancefloor she plays, she smiles as she replies: “The feeling I get is that everywhere you go, there is always someone almost like you and who you can relate to. Everywhere I go, there is always at least one person with whom I can share something nice.” At moments like these, expressing herself through meaningful words, just like in this interview, becomes a forte in the end.

Playing for Team Human with Douglas Rushkoff by Karel Feenstra

Autonomous technologies, runaway markets, and weaponized media seem to have overturned civil society, paralyzing our ability to think constructively, connect meaningfully, or act purposefully. It feels as if civilization itself were on the brink, and that we lack the collective will power and coordination necessary to address issues of vital importance to the very survival of our species. It doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to be this way. Chapter 1, Team Human, Douglas Rushkofff

#Context #Douglas Rushkofff #Koert van Mensvoort #Friday 20 September #Theater aan het Spui #TodaysArt2019

It was during the early nineties, at the dawn of the internet, when Douglas Rushkoff wrote his book ‘Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace’. It took the publisher two years to overcome his hesitation. Electronic mail and internet were obscure topics, unlikely to gain traction. In 1994, the first edition of ‘Cyberia’ was a fact. The rest is history. Recently, Rushkoff delivered a totally different book. Not because his perspective shifted, but because the world has changed. It’s a call upon arms to “remake society together. Not as individual players, but as the team we actually are: Team Human”. Named one of the world’s ten most influential intellectuals by MIT, Douglas Rushkoff is an award-winning author, broadcaster, and documentarian who studies human autonomy in the digital age. The host of the popular Team Human podcast has written twenty books, including the bestsellers ‘Present Shock’ and ‘Program or Be Programmed’. Rushkoff coined such concepts as ‘viral media’ and ‘social currency,’ and has been a leading voice for applying digital media toward social and economic justice. Being social may be the whole point, he says. It’s time for us to face it. We’re in the same team. Because “humans are weird and interesting and deserve to be treated as such. Human beings have more than utility value, we’re more than inputs and outputs. And if we try to autotune people, through technology or capitalism, we will lose the most valuable thing about ourselves and about our environment.”

Like Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative: always treat human beings as the purpose itself… “Yes. You can be human for its own sake. We’re often told that we have to earn our place here - that we have to justify our right to exist, and define our purpose as if we were primarily workers or machines. But the highest purpose of existence is not functional. This question reminds me of the discussions in the Talmud, where the rabbis were asked to come up with the highest reason for reading Torah: to understand history, or to behave ethically in the future? And the rabbis decided it was neither. “The best reason to read Torah is for its own sake.” In your book ‘Team Human’, you talk about figure-ground reversals: they’re easy to spot once you know how to look. Money was the medium for the marketplace’s primary function of value exchange. Money was the ground, the marketplace is the figure. They’ve switched positions. In social media, humans and AI did the same thing. It seems to be a pattern. Which is strange in a way, because humans should be inclined to keep control. How come that’s apparently not the case? “The human urge to control eventually becomes desire to control others, through slavery, colonialism, or exploitative capitalism. We don’t look at other people as people anymore. We look at them as if they are part of the landscape to control - as data to extract or value to mine. Only now, the colonial urge to control indigenous populations, we now apply to ourselves. We are colonizing ourselves. The objective of ‘Team Human’ is to try to reframe being human as a team sport. We’re part of a collective. It may sound like hippie talk, but it also is science. We have succumbed to an intentional misinterpretation of Darwin. We think we are in competition with one another, when evolution is actually a collaborative act - more like the cells in an organism. If don’t recognise our social structures better, we will not survive. We’re at the brink. The world is on fire, literally. And that’s partly a result of this way of thinking that things are not connected to other things.”

Still, people are collaborating a lot, inventing loads of technology to help, but then technology makes this U-turn… “Technology certainly has the potential to connect us and to make us more aware of our connections to one another. But the problem is – and I wrote about it in the early nineties – that this increased sense of intimacy that tech brings us also leads us to want to resist it. It’s scary to know that everybody is connected.” Will Artificial Intelligence ever become our ‘evolutionary successor’, in terms of gaining consciousness? “I don’t believe that consciousness and awareness are just emergent properties of complex matter. Scientists think if they are atheists this means they are free of superstitions. But at the same time they wave their hands and use the word emergence to cover up for the fact that they have no idea how life or consciousness came to be. It’s just as likely or even more likely that consciousness is a pre-existing condition that gives rise to matter as to say that consciousness emerges from matter.” The theme of TodaysArt festival this year is CONSCIOUSNESS. We need more consciousness on several levels. How can digital technology help to achieve these goals? Or do we have to do this ourselves? “We are living in a digital media environment. And that doesn’t just mean that we have digital tools. It means that our inner senses and our experience of the world are influenced and contextualised by living in an environment where everything is digital. I was raised in a television environment, so I tend to look at the world through the lens and biases of television. Today, a digital sensibility colours our experience of everything. So one can’t just disconnect oneself from the greater digital environment, unless you don’t want to participate in society and what’s going on. It’s hard, because the digital has many drawbacks. It’s not as compassionate. But even if we like the global spirit of the television era, it still won’t fix climate change. The television sensibility led to

globalism and the extractive, advertising-based reality that we’re living in. The digital sensibility, appropriately used, leads to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) or Greta and Extinction Rebellion for instance. AOC may appear too strident on television, but she looks just right on a Facebook live stream. It is an example of how we can inhabit these digital media in very positive ways.” TodaysArt shows liberal arts, technology, cross overs. What role can art play to lift TEAM HUMAN? “Art can contribute to human betterment in many ways. Art often feels like a luxury. I often feel guilty when I work on a piece of theatre instead of a nonfiction essay about climate or social justice. As if making theatre is somehow self-indulgent when we’re in an ‘all-hands-ondeck’ moment in society. But on the other hand, art celebrates our very reason for being. Real art highlights the things we can’t resolve. It’s the opposite of the kind of entertainment you see on TV, which always has an ending, an answer. In mere entertainment, you pay your money and you get your release and you get to go to sleep. Real art keeps you up at night.” That’s cool, TodaysArt never sleeps… “Real art is open-ended. It celebrates the human ability to engage with paradoxes and to sustain paradoxes over time. That’s why I love the work of someone like David Lynch, whose movies and tv shows are incomprehensible on a certain level. You have to be open to openness, to the fact that you will not get an answer. And that’s such a healthier way for people to move through life. Not looking for answers and closed endings. If you need a closed ending, the world is about to give us one: extinction is a nice closed ending. Can we tolerate not going extinct?” Can I take that as a statement of an optimist hiding in a style figure? “No, I’m not an optimist. I know too much about probability to be an optimist. But I’m hopeful. I still have hope that the human spirit will survive this next century.”

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