Prior to their performance, composer Suzanne Ciani, an icon and early pioneer of electronic music composition, and producer Darren J. Cunningham, aka Actress, will enter into a conversation with Radna Rumping. The artists will reflect upon their distinct and diverse sonic languages, the ways in which they have expanded the possibilities of their instruments, and the process leading to their collaborative performance Concrète Waves. 

Suzanne Ciani's first commercial album, Seven Waves (1982) wafted amidst the soothing and playful movements of seafoam – drawing on ocean metaphors to create a bubbling, synthesised body of work. With Concrète Waves, Actress and Ciani – with her signature Buchla synthesiser in tow – return to this concept. Cunningham's productions as Actress transport musique concrète into the twenty-first century, creating what he terms "R&B concrète" – where atmospheric scenes of twinkling ambience and furrowed noise meet sodium-lit field recordings and bassy warped drum sequences. In contrast to this practice – which is painted upon a backdrop of post-industrial urban life – Ciani evokes the natural world in her music. Although the duo offer a swell of contradictions, what they do share is a rare ability to build atmosphere and environment through electronics, texture, and timbre. It is in the overlapping middle-points between the natural and the metropolitan that their sound dwells – where roots entangle city infrastructure or, indeed, where the ocean waves crash up into modern life. 

Radna Rumping is a writer, artist, and curator based in Amsterdam. Her work is relational and collaborative, dealing with public space, experimental archiving, ways of gathering, and conditions of (in)visibility. Radio and sonic explorations have run like a thread through her practice. Her writing is often made public through sound – in the form of audio essays, mixtapes, and live readings.