Rewire is excited to announce its context programme, taking place at The Grey Space in The Middle, Page Not Found, Filmhuis Den Haag, Royal Academy of Art, the Royal Conservatoire, and The Hague’s city centre from 4 to 7 April. Situated around its music and performance line-up, Rewire’s context programme aims to provide a space for reflection and to bring the various practices of artists into conversation with one another. The programme includes conversations, workshops, audio walks, listening sessions, and assemblies, and revolves around Rewire’s research lines Instrumental Ecologies and Times and Territories, with a focus this year on the various forms of intelligence that inform contemporary music and sound practices. Inspired by Rewire’s artist in focus Annea Lockwood, the programme will examine the ways in which artists attune to local environments and invite listeners to recalibrate their relationships with their surroundings, while asking what it means to listen collectively in these troubling times.
In collaboration with students, staff and alumni from the Royal Academy of Art (Design Lectorate, Research Lab Soundscape, ArtSience), the Royal Conservatoire (Sonology, Composition, Art of Sound, Jazz), and Sandberg Instituut (Artificial Times, Studio for Immediate Spaces) Rewire launches an extensive arts education programme, Listening Within the Arts, on the opening day of the festival. The programme is a collaborative effort to foster interdisciplinary approaches to sounding and listening within arts education.
Listening within the Arts will start with audio walks by sound artist and Sonology alum Anna Khvyl in Scheveningen (Kyiv – Den Haag – Kyiv – Den Haag), current Sonology participants in the Haagse Bos (Speaker Liturgy), and sound artist Justin Bennett in The Hague’s City Centre (Rumours / Resonances). In the afternoon, students are invited for A Film About Listening and History of the Present at Filmhuis Den Haag and a masterclass with Annea Lockwood at New Music Lab. The programme continues with the public launch of the KABK’s Design Lectorate’s publication, Listening: A Research Method in Art and Design, with a curatorial performance by Salomé Voegelin and Loma Doom, and a conversation between Alice Twemlow and the publication’s contributors. The event will be followed by performances from alumni of the research lab Soundscape (Royal Conservatoire and Royal Academy of Arts), while participants from Sandberg Instituut’s Artificial Times and Studio for Immediate Spaces will host a listening session at The Grey Space in The Middle. On Saturday 6 April, students from Sonology, ArtScience, Composition, and Art of Sound will present a special edition of the CAAOSSS concert at New Music Lab in Amare.
From Friday onwards, The Grey Space in The Middle, space for fundamental creativity; Page Not Found, centre for artistic publishing; and the Royal Conservatoire’s New Music Lab at Amare; will operate as the main centres of gravity for Rewire’s context programme. At The Grey Space in The Middle, the context programme starts with the assembly When the Sound Listens Back around the theme of environmental listening with Norient, which will be followed by Fragile Minutes, a gathering around club culture and local scenes in The Hague and beyond (Laak, default, The Grey Space Scenius Residency, Liliane Chlela, Iceboy Violet), and a listening session with corecore. Each day will start with a listening session with Norient, dedicated to their experimental podcast series TIMEZONES. Over the weekend, conversations will be held around the topics of Musicking Intelligence: Modes of Improvisation (Amirtha Kidambi, Farzaneh Nouri, Laura Ortman); Veering Voices (Kristin Norderval, Stephanie Pan); Folkloric Iterations, Forms of Resistance (Saint Abdullah, Maya Al Khaldi & Sarouna); Elements of Sounding (Jlin, Jenny Hval, Atelier Impopulaire); and a panel on Music Journalism Today (Laura Snapes, Margeaux Labat, Thomas Burkhalter). On Saturday, Salomé Voegelin will enter into a conversation with Annea Lockwood on forms of urgent listening and un-finding.
At Page Not Found, the festival will host a weekend of intimate listening sessions around the theme of Times and Territories. From Pulsating Apotropaic Kisses (with Pinky Htut Aung, curated by Avita Maheen/Kalponik Rekha), 21 Ingredients (Andrius Arutiunian and Giada Dalla Bontà), and Listening to the voices from the roof of the world (Nischal Khadka), to Sounding a Livable Life (Brandon LaBelle), Khamoosh listening session (Golnoosh Heshmati, introduced by Radna Rumping), Environmental Listening in Delhi (Suvani Suri, Hannes Liechti, Norient), and Blurred waters: ambient explorations through river landscapes (Kristoffer Kjærskov (EOM) invited by Page Not Found).
Rewire is also excited to collaborate again with Radio WORM, who will be broadcasting and hosting live conversations at The Grey Space in the Middle, reflecting and reporting over the course of the festival. Record store 3345 and book store Underbelly will again open their pop-up shops at The Grey Space. Finally, together with reflection partner Norient, Rewire will publish the Online Special When the Sound Listens Back on 11 March, with essays and audio contributions around the theme of environmental listening by authors from the Norient and Rewire network.
Following last year’s pilot edition which resulted in an online publication, this year’s Rewire Reflections will invite aspiring and early-career critics, writers, and researchers to join an intensive writing workshop led by Laura Snapes (music journalist and deputy music editor at The Guardian). They will create a zine that will be launched on the last day of the festival. Read more about the workshop and how to apply by 11 March here.
Artist and composer Jlin will host a workshop called Elements of Akoma, in which together with the participants she will unpack the composition and production of tracks from her forthcoming album. Sound artist and researcher Farzaneh Nouri will host the lecture performance Diegetic Operands, on the use of non-representational data in the framework of machine improvisation. On the last day of the festival, a Deep Listening workshop in and around Amare will be led by singer and composer-improviser Kristin Norderval, followed by her lecture performance Queer Sonic Avatars.
The context programme is freely accessible.
Leading up to the festival, a series of publications will be launched on the Rewire website and in collaboration with Norient. Read an introduction by Salomé Voegelin about her upcoming conversation with Annea Lockwood.
In collaboration with the Nieuwe Instituut, Rewire organises Through Sounds x Rewire, an evening of listening, conversations, and sharing. Nieuwe Instituut’s researcher Federica Notari and Rewire’s context curator Katía Truijen explore how place, sound, and community find each other through networks of support, while also acknowledging the fragility of these temporalities and spaces. Invited guests are Ash Kilmartin (Radio WORM), Brandon LaBelle, Golnoosh Heshmati (Khamoosh) and Tjobo Kho, Jan-Pieter 't Hart, and Callum Dean (corecore). The evening marks the beginning of the listening session and assembly Fragile Minutes that will take place during Rewire on 5 April.
Norient and corecore listening stations at Page Not Found
Radio WORM x Rewire – live interviews, reports and music at The Grey Space in The Middle
Rumours / Resonances – audio walk by Justin Bennett
Rewire Reflections – music magazine workshop