With the Rewire 2021 online edition fast approaching, Rewire now reveals the full programme for the festival, taking place from 6-9 May online. The line-up for this year’s festival edition comprises an ambitious and diverse programme, with numerous special projects and commissions, including previously announced world-premiere collaborations by Elza Soares & jaimie branch, Yasuaki Shimizu & Kara-Lis Coverdale, Duma & Jesse Kanda, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe & Zeena Parkins, and dozens more.
→Check out the Rewire 2021 line-up in full here.
The final additions to the programme include a number of new formats and creative partnerships for Rewire 2021. An extensive radio programme with over 35 sound and radio works will be presented over four days. The radio programme gives the audience the opportunity to step away from the screen and experience the festival on the go. This includes pieces commissioned in collaboration with Glasgow-based art radio station Radiophrenia. The final selection of works from the open call for submissions will also make up the radio programme, as well as a daily show during the festival presented by Gonzo (circus). Online editorial platform AQNB teams up with Rewire for a podcast addressing the festival theme of (Re)setting, and a number of new radio-based works have been added to the programme. Rewire also presents an online interpretation of the Music for a Busy City project, which was originally due to take place physically across the Hague for Rewire 2020. Slagwerk Den Haag will present short performances as part of their ‘Loading Dock Sessions’ series and, adding to the film programme, there will be four short film screenings in collaboration with Norient Film Festival.
Finally, two new participatory workshops have been added to the programme. The first will be in collaboration with British artist Rian Treanor, which uses bespoke music software to enable real time remote collaboration. There will be an open call for one of the sessions to develop a new collaborative performance. Secondly, The Hague-based, artist run, community platform iii will host an instrument building workshop at the festival. Both of these workshops will require prior registration, with instructions to follow. Registrations have also opened for two previously announced workshops, Lisa Hall’s ‘Acts of Air’ and AM Kanngieser’s ‘Between Death And Dying There Is A Hum’.
Rewire x Radiophrenia
Radiophrenia is an art radio station, the station aims to promote radio as an art form, encouraging challenging and radical new approaches to the medium. Rewire have teamed up with Radiophrenia to stream a selection of their commissioned radio works from their vast back catalogue to show a broad range of radio possibilities. The works to be streamed during the festival include:
Anna Friz - How To Pack A Whale
Diacoustics - The Emptiness Of Sound
Andreas Oskar Hirsch - Early Carbophonics
Stuart Gurden - Area On Tape On Energy
Catriona Shaw - Ariel Holding Hands
Sarah Angliss - Signalman
Jason Lescalleet - Sketching An Arc
Doog Cameron - The Ongoing Drain Of The Fight Between The Wild And The Tame
Sisters Akousmatica - NM, SK
KLAYSSTAR - Faux Départ 5
Isabelle Stragliati - Nothing Here Now But - A Tribute To Elaine
Jess Worrall & Rob Kennedy - The Three Ring Circus Comes To Town
Allan Whyte & Louise Wilson - Obligate
Alicia Matthews - Click Bait
Kari Robertson - Glass Enclosed
Rena Anakwe - From My Window: Dreams, Hopes and Disappointments
Double Goocher Shop (Renato Grieco & MP Hopkins) - Radio Carrion
Nwando Ebizie - Fire Prevention Or How to sing a labyrinth Or The rebeing and the burning of the labyrinth
Ashanti Harris - OHCE
Mark Lyken - Borrowed View
DJ أمواج a.k.a. Aki Onda - Ghost Frequency
Oor_Scintilla - unknown thirds
This year, Rewire has broken away from its traditional festival format, and with it, the discourse programme’s Open Call - which usually asks for creative texts and essays - has also adapted. For our May 2021 edition, Rewire sought soundscapes, spoken word pieces, radio experiments, found sound, innovative approaches to drama and documentary, and radical and challenging new programme ideas. With over 400 excellent submissions it was a very difficult task, but below you can find the final selection:
Dominic Jaeckle & Nadia de Vries - Verse & Chorus
BLACK TO COMM - MM∞XX
Jake Muir - Cloister
Magz Hall - Waves of Resistance
Anna Friz & Emmanuel Madan - The Joy Channel
Connie Zheng - Soil Trance
Martyna Basta - Trace
Viv Corringham - Shadow-walks
Dorothy Santos - Remembering The Pulse
Francis Sosta - RITUAL /POLITICAL #2 interview w/ Franco 'Bifo 'Berardi'
In collaboration with Gonzo (circus), Dutch journalist Hugo de Emmerzael will present ‘Rewire Daily’, a daily radio show that previews and highlights the festival programme each day. Members of the Gonzo team will focus on different aspects of the Rewire 2021 programme, going in-depth about specific artists and projects, sharing music and discussion.
Approaching our festival theme of (Re)setting, Rewire teams up with online editorial platform AQNB for a special podcast as part of the radio programme. AQNB’s Reversal Agents podcast examines notions of the past and the future, human agency and healing, in music, art and online culture right now. Join AQNB’s Steph Kretowicz and Jared Davis for discussions and guest audio contributions from Evan Ifekoya, Jack Halberstam, Most Dismal Swamp, Clay AD, Zach Blas and Every Ocean Hughes. Daily topics covered by the podcast include: ‘Queer doom & futurity’, ‘On illness’, ‘Tech & magical thinking’ and ‘Embodiment, technology & psychedelics’.
Fiske / Lau / Manousakis / Pan will present their collaborative project ‘An Absurdist Archive of Isolation: a full body workout radioplay.’ This work is an immersive participatory radio play for solo audiences at home, made in collaboration by movement artists Bridget Fiske (UK/AU) and Joseph Lau (UK/AU) and sound artists Stelios Manousakis (NL/GR) and Stephanie Pan (NL/US). It unfolds and transforms your environment through music, your movement and text. This genre-blurring 26-minute trip offers a deep dive into our relationship with time and the freedom of isolation.
Peter Cusack will share a durational listening Saturday night through till Sunday morning. This live audio stream is created by a portable system (based around a small battery operated RaspPi computer) that fits into a lunch box. Two mini microphones pick up the sound and the device streams into the phone network in places such as rural wildlife sites full of birds’ song, urban green spots and city edgelands where interactions and interferences between the natural and human worlds are plainly audible. This broadcast will be shared via radio aporee ::: maps, a global soundmap dedicated to field recording, phonography and the art of listening.
Previously announced, French-Guaiana based artist Tabita Rezaire will share a sonic journey into the ancestrales realms. Rezaire is infinity incarnated into an agent of healing, who uses art as a means to unfold the soul. Her cross-dimensional practices envision network sciences - organic, electronic and spiritual - as healing technologies to serve the shift towards heart consciousness. Her sonic mediation will be streamed on our radio channel and will invite you to participate, to sit with the ancestors, to travel through the lineages who have birthed us, to honour, receive, release, and embody the gift of life.
Music for a Busy City (online version)
As part of the Rewire 2021 online edition, Rewire presents a new digital interpretation of the Music for a Busy City project planned to take place across The Hague at Rewire 2020. A series of sonic interventions take place in public space, with audiences able to access these performances online. Visitors are invited to explore a digital map of these five specific locations in The Hague, with 360 degree visuals and audio, adapting to your position on the map. Expanding our understanding of a musical experience, sound, physical and digital space, Music for a Busy City takes four composers out of the concert hall and into the urban landscape, making music for the spaces we pass every day. Taking this idea further under the current physical restrictions we face in 2021, the project questions our relationship with sound and public space, and what it means for this relationship to be digitally mediated.
Music for a Busy City features new commissioned compositions by Ain Bailey, Genevieve Murphy, Pete Harden, and Yannis Kyriakides will be presenting two new pieces.
Slagwerk Den Haag ‘Loading Dock Sessions’
Rewire will also collaborate with Slagwerk Den Haag in presenting ‘Loading Dock Sessions’. Their very own Loading Dock in The Hague inspired Slagwerk Den Haag to return to the fundamentals of their existence. The Loading Dock Sessions take you along unique sonic-landscapes, hand-picked and carefully constructed to give you a tasteful blend of Slagwerk Den Haag. These recordings take place in the Loading Dock of their home-studio, surrounded by a hardware store, garages and high tech drone manufacturers. Slagwerk Den Haag opens its doors and invites you to enter their world. During the festival Rewire will stream one of these sessions per day. The four sessions include:
Loading Dock Session #1: James Tenney & Peter Garland
Loading Dock Session #2: Nawras Altaky & Modlar Salama, Frank Wienk
Loading Dock Session #3: Fedor Teunisse & Hugo Morales
Loading Dock Session #4: Tom Johnson & Tristan Perich
Rewire x Norient Film Festival
Adding to the Rewire 2021 film programme, Rewire collaborates with Swiss-based Norient Film Festival. Norient commissioned ten artists around the world to work on short artistic media pieces. They were asked to reflect on their personal thoughts of 2021. How do they see and describe the world they live in? How do they see the present and the future? What sounds, clips, media pieces, and thoughts give hope for 2021 and for the future? What makes them angry, hopeful, depressed, suicidal, or happy? These four films, including works by Adythia Utama & Riar Rizaldi, Gabber Modus Operandi, Emma NZioka and Lechuga Zafiro & Jusomor will be screened as part of the Rewire 2021 online edition.
Workshops & registrations
iii is an artist run, community platform supporting new interdisciplinary practices linking performance, technology and the human senses. During the Rewire 2021 online edition they will present the 'Tang' Sugar Instrument workshop by Wen Chin Fu. Inspired by the historical precedent of the Fluxkits published by Fluxus Editions in the 60s and 70s, the workshop is part of the wider series by iii entitled ‘iii Sensory Kits’. Wen Chins Sugar instrument ‘Tang‘ is a musical instrument made of an everyday product – sugar. For Tang, you need the sugar at ‘hard-crack’ stage which is around 130°C. This kit will guide you through the process to discover the hidden sound in sugar. Prior registration is required for this workshop, find out more information and sign up here.
British artist Rian Treanor will also present ‘Inter-symmetric 7’, a workshop that uses bespoke music software to enable real time remote collaboration. As part of Rewire 2021 there will be an open call for one of the sessions to develop a new collaborative performance. Participants will be invited to actively engage with their sonic environment though a series of listening exercises, field recording sessions and devised musical activities. With an interest in exploring algorithmic, procedural composition and rule based systems that establish meaningful interactions and unusual musical outcomes. This workshop also requires prior registration. Find out more information and sign up here.
AM Kanngeiser’s ‘Between Dying and Death there is a Hum’ is an intimate journalling of grief, parental death and intergenerational trauma linked to wider constellations of embodiment, cycles of mourning and repair and oceanic tides and flows. There will be two closed listening sessions each day of the festival. This is an audio work with supporting close captions and transcription available. Please register in advance and inform us of any additional accessibility needs you might require. Find out more information and sign up here.
'Acts of Air' invites you to reshape your urban sonic present by enacting 14 sound works directly in urban spaces. Each work proposes a sounding out, a performance, a site specific listening or engagement in the streets, under bridges, by water fountains and extractor fans. Lisa Hall will be leading a workshop with 12 residents of den Haag to enact one of these 14 artworks outside in their local urban environment and share this back with the group. Participants will need to have a mobile device with internet and headphones in order to enact the works, or have access to a printer to print one of the scores. Participants are encouraged to read about and select an artwork before the session (http://acts-of-air.crisap.org/artworks.html). Capturing a short documentation trace of your enactment is also encouraged (a photo / video / sound) to be able to share with the group. Find out more information and sign up here.