A conversation with singer and composer-improviser Kristin Norderval and voice artist and composer Stephanie Pan on the poetics and politics of working with what could be considered the first instrument: the voice. From expanding the possibilities of working with the voice as an instrument, to addressing questions around silencing and amplifying voices, and how voices can channel grief, translate histories, and hold emancipatory power.

Stephanie Pan is a The Hague–based voice artist, composer, performer, and interdisciplinary maker who will be presenting her latest work The Art of Doing Nothing: a feminist manifesto (2024), a performative music piece in collaboration with Ensemble Klang at Rewire 2024, addressing themes as doubt and vulnerability, while celebrating intuitive choices and the transformative processes that can happen when one is lost.

Kristin Norderval’s career has been twofold; as a singer of contemporary music working with composers such as Philip Glass, Pauline Oliveros, Tania Leon, Annea Lockwood, and many others, and as a composer-improviser working with technology. At Rewire 2024, she will lead a Deep Listening workshop, and will give a lecture performance using her Expanded Vocal Improvising Instrument (EVII) for gestural vocal processing.

Radna Rumping is a writer, artist and curator whose work is relational and collaborative, dealing with public space, experimental archiving, ways of gathering, and conditions of (in)visibility. She is co-founder of Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, an online radio platform dedicated to the arts, and partner at Loom, a practice for cultural transformation. Voice, text, and sound come together in her audio essays that are presented in exhibitions, public space, and the digital realm.