Rewire is excited to announce the context programme for its 15th edition, taking place at Page Not Found, The Grey Space in The Middle, West Den Haag, Radio WORM, and The Hague’s city centre from 9 to 12 April. Situated around its music and performance line-up, Rewire’s context programme aims to open a space for collective reflection, and to bring the various practices of its artists into conversation with one another. Revolving around the politics and poetics of staging sound, further listening, times and territories, and instrumental ecologies, each day – through conversations, lectures, audio walks, workshops, and listening sessions – will examine different listening positions and forms of sonic sensibility in times of ongoing war, colonialism, and environmental collapse. Nearly all of Rewire's context programme is accessible for free, meaning a Rewire festival ticket is not required for entry.
Staging Sound: Interdisciplinary approaches to sounding and listening at West Den Haag
Starting on the opening day of the festival, the Staging Sound programme is a collaborative effort to foster interdisciplinary approaches to sounding and listening within and beyond the arts and academia. Organised by and with students, staff, and alumni from KC (Sonology, ArtScience, Collaborative Music Creation), KABK (ArtScience, Non Linear Narrative, Graphic Design), UvA (Artistic Research and Cultural Analysis), and Sandberg Instituut (Studio for Immediate Spaces), the programme invites students, autodidacts, and those who want to (un)learn together, to join the audio walks, concerts, performance routes, conversations, and listening sessions. The programme is presented in collaboration with West Den Haag.
Staging Sound will open with a special concert, CHORDIAL, by participants from the Collaborative Music Creation Course (KC), combining forms of improvisation with composed elements. Outside, festival visitors are invited to engage in the sound walk In Transit by participants from the Sonology MA (KC).
Non Linear Narrative (KABK) participants will present a collective exploration of sound, storytelling and interaction during the Aurality & Orality Sessions #1, activating invisible forms of communication, radio waves, frequencies, and signal hierarchies. Together, the 10 projects create an environment where sound is not only heard but seen, touched, and activated in space.
The sound installation Remnants of Conversations by participants from the Cultural Analysis MA (UvA) explores the embodiment and disembodiment of sound based on interviews with artists performing at Rewire. Participants from the Artistic Research MA (UvA) will perform with Sensing Sound, combining voice, breath, and movement in an act of co-creation, followed by Who Goes There?: A Procession for Sonic Imaginaries, which will lead Rewire visitors from West Den Haag to Amare, where the festival’s opening concerts take place.
Organised with the collective Wastewaves, Sandberg Instituut’s Studio for Immediate Spaces Department’s participants collaborate for a listening session, approaching listening as a method to engage with space and its rhythms, infrastructures, and embedded stories.
Meanwhile, participants from ArtScience (KC/KABK), will activate the in-between spaces of West Den Haag during their performance route Attentive Alleys.
Marking the opening of the exhibition Proximity Music: The Ongoing Hum, artists Aernoudt Jacobs, Anaïs Lossouarn, Johannes Kreidler, Koenraad de Groot, Lena Kuzmich, and Mariska de Groot, and iii’s Ezequiel Menalled will speak with Rewire’s context curator Katía Truijen about their work and ways of attuning to the inaudible rhythms, vibrations, and radiations that surround us.
The session will be followed by Rewire’s opening assembly on the politics and poetics of Staging Sound – from the role of the body, the voice, gender, different senses, institutions, and interspecies listening – with contributions by artists and researchers Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman, Mattia Papp, Mariëtte Groot, meLê yamomo, Renata Mirón, Yağmur (Yago) Sağlam, and Yuri Tuma.
And finally, preceding their performance Concrète Waves at Amare, composer and early pioneer of electronic music composition Suzanne Ciani and producer Darren J. Cunningham (aka Actress), will enter into a conversation about their collaborative work with artist, curator and writer Radna Rumping.
Further Listening: From artificial ears to environmental sound
From Friday onwards, The Grey Space in The Middle and Page Not Found will operate as the main centres of gravity for Rewire’s context programme. Friday’s programme, Further Listening, invites visitors to engage with different listening practices. Sound artist KMRU will speak about his ways of attuning to environmental sound, including different field recording spectra and electromagnetic sounds in conversation with artist and researcher Yuri Tuma, which will be followed by a workshop on field recording practices led by the artist.
Multidisciplinary artist Tianzhuo Chen (Asian Dope Boys) will give a talk about his new durational and collaborative performance PHYSIS, and how his work blurs boundaries between performance, theatre, concert, and rave. Chunky Move’s artistic director Antony Hamilton will speak about the cybernetic performance U>N>I>T>E>D, the possibilities and limitations of the choreographed body and machine, and ways of embodying speculative futures. Their talks will be followed by a special conversation with artists Beverly Glenn-Copeland and Elizabeth Copeland, about their recent collaborative work and new album Laughter in Summer.
On the occasion of Rewire’s 15th festival edition, Rewire and Page Not Found launch the new book Further Listening, which brings together myriad artistic voices that have and continue to shape adventurous music and sound. The book holds conversations with artists, researchers, writers, and organisers, poetic texts, critical essays, archival fragments, text messages, and personal reflections. The book will be launched at Page Not Found with contributors – including authors Aniketh Khutia, Ash Kilmartin, Brandon LaBelle, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Giada Dalla Bontà, Heloisa Amaral, Laura Snapes, Mayssa Jallad, Richard Foster, Yağmur (Yago) Sağlam, and Zahra Malkani; designers Bart de Baets, Dayna Casey, Jim Kühnel, Jonathan Castro, and The Rodina; and editor Katía Truijen – with readings and reflections on the book’s contributions.
Poet, actress, visual artist, and performer Katalin Ladik and composer and experimental sound artist Svetlana Maraš will enter into a conversation about their intergenerational collaboration, and the roles of radio, language, and vocal experimentation in their work.
It will be followed by a listening session and conversation hosted by Lebanese artists Sary Moussa and Abed Kobeissi, and a talk with singer-songwriter and urban researcher Mayssa Jallad about resonating urban histories in Lebanon. Finally, Steve Goodman (aka Kode9) will share from his ongoing research on artificial ears and machine listening, and the instrumentalisation of vibration involved in sonic warfare.
Times and Territories: From sonic testimonies to folkloric iterations
Rewire’s continuing programme Times and Territories explores the ways in which artists collaborate with each other across time and space, creating new relationships between past and present. It discusses the ways in which music and sound cultures travel and influence new music practices, while asking how to practice intergenerational forms of listening, and how to establish forms of solidarity between different time zones.
The programme continues its focus on listening as witnessing and sonic testimonies with a talk by artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan, who presents the world premiere of a new audiovisual performance with avant-garde improvisers Supersilent on 12 April. Hamdan will speak about his work with Earshot – which leads sonic investigations for communities affected by corporate, state, and environmental injustice – focusing on its investigations in Palestine and their research into the targeting of journalists and livestreams by Israeli forces.
Saturday’s programme also presents a new edition of the series of conversations Folkloric Iterations, inviting artists Sacred Lodge, Park Jiha, and Milkweed to elaborate on how their various musical heritages inspire novel ways of sounding. The talk will be followed by a conversation with Argentine actress, composer, and cult performer Juana Molina on the process of making her new album DOGA, which she will perform the day after at Rewire. Radna Rumping will enter into a conversation with artists Ash Kilmartin and Emiddio Vasquez on radio as an artistic space. And experimental composer Ege Şahin presents the premiere of the participatory sound walk Phones – The Hague 2026, composed for the audience’s mobile phones to sound together, resulting in a living collective soundscape in the city centre.
At Page Not Found, Alejandra Cárdenas will read from her poetry chapbook that accompanies her recent album A Body Like a Home, and will speak about the album’s tangled realms of trauma, recovery, and love through its autobiographical soundscapes. Following their performance Facing the Spills, artists Polina Medvedeva and Andreas Kühne will elaborate on their research in Northern Norway on Indigenous Sápmi land since 2022, their methods of assembling film live and “feedback improvisations,” and how to be sensitive to the interconnectedness of histories, memories, and imaginaries within an alienated landscape.
Artist and writer Brandon LaBelle will also return with a new lecture Drumming X (anarchic magic) and a public installation The Other Family, which pays homage to circles of friendship as other families that give support in times of struggle and that expand individual imagination. Finally, together with artist and researcher Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, guests will read together select passages from his forthcoming book Sonic Perspectives from the Global Souths: Unheard Reciprocity, Resonant Relationality, and Aural Confluence, as a shared concern for a planetary equity.
Instrumental Ecologies: On music infrastructures and modes of circulation
Rewire’s last day of the context programme focuses on Instrumental Ecologies, inviting artists to share about working with and making new instruments, and the changing role of technology in music and performance practices. From musical applications of AI to the ways in which traditional instruments and analog and low-tech tools and instruments are used today in experimental music production.
Sunday’s context programme will open with a third iteration of Fragile Minutes, in collaboration with Nieuwe Instituut’s Federica Notari. Alongside the audience, artists james K, Jennifer Walton, and Malibu will explore how digital networks and platforms shape not only what we listen to but how, where, and with whom listening happens, and how presence and participation are continually reconfigured as the boundaries between online and offline realms increasingly collapse. The listening-led session Kalponik Rekha invites artists Kasimyn (Hulubalang) and Avita Maheen (two4.41139) to share personal memories on the origins of their practice and subcultures in Indonesia and Bangladesh.
Music editor of The Guardian Laura Snapes will lead a session on the ever-changing landscape of music journalism and independent publishing practices, accompanied by music writers Aida Baghernejad and Jasper Willems. Participants of the Rewire Reflections music magazine workshop will join too, and launch the festival’s own freshly printed music zine.
Departing from Amare’s foyer at Spuiplein, multidisciplinary artist Martin Hurych’s Takeaway project aims to experience the urban environment and its functional architecture differently, inviting participants to listen to their surroundings while using a headset as real-time processor of the sonic environment, blurring the boundaries between listening and composing, and between performer and audience.
In collaboration with Stroom Den Haag, and curated, introduced, and moderated by Rachael Rakes, Universal Language: Feedback Static invites artists, musicians, and researchers Ash Fure, DeForrest Brown, Jr., domingo castillo flores, and Victoria Keddie for a sequence of talks and listening sessions around sound’s spatial and bodily responsiveness and music’s non-linear social histories, drawing from the artists’ practices.
In the meantime, Rewire’s context programme winds down at Page Not Found with Stories to Sleep to, an ongoing performance series hosted by artist Mayomi Basnayaka, inviting artists to tell sonic and narrative tales for overworked and under-rested audiences to rest. For this edition, Basnayaka will tell the great tale of කුරුඳුල්ලා (Kurundulla) – the Sri Lankan cinnamon bird. The programme closes with the book launch of Open Field Listening Station by artist and musician Loma Doom (real name Femke Dekker), that will take shape as a listening set that materialises the book’s research, followed by a public dialogue on listening as practice, method, and politics.
Radio WORM
For their fourth year as broadcast partner for Rewire’s context programme, Radio WORM returns to The Grey Space booth to host conversations, and to share and archive threads of the festival: live events will be livestreamed on radio.worm.org, along with broadcasts by Rewire Transmissions workshop participants, and yet-to-be-announced appearances by Rewire artists and audiences.
Thursday 9 April: Staging Sound
– Installation: Remnants of Conversations by Isobel Nicholl, Yağmur (Yago) Sağlam, Elen Zhou, and Niklas Ehret (Cultural Analysis, UvA)
– Who Goes There?: A Procession for Sonic Imaginaries, with Julia Visser, Mila Narjollet, and Sieve Bonaiuti (Artistic Research, UvA)
– Performance: Sensing Sound with Gabbi Lieve, Maja Petani, and Emily Read (Artistic Research, UvA)
– Listening session: Studio for Immediate Spaces (Sandberg Instituut) & Wastewaves
– Performances: The Aurality & Orality Sessions #1 with with Abdulrahman Al-Ward, Bárbara Fernandes Fonseca, Reina Hasbini, Anna Lebedieva, Oriane Perino, Ennie Petersen, Justinas Prekeris, Janina Schröter, Li Xinglin, and Stefan Zondervan (Non Linear Narrative, KABK)
– Concert: CHORDIAL with with Alberto Berera, Ashim Tamang, Clara Cozzolino, Emilio Casaburi, Gianluca Delfino, Hana Kozma, Hayden Potter, Johanna Littger, Lisa Kolonovits, Max Quardt, Nicolas Speda, Parvin Diyanati, Sina Mousavi Fard, and Sergio Sanchez Perera (Collaborative Music Creation, KC)
– Sound walk: In Transit by Eva Aguilar, Jekaterina Viltšenko, Laura Häberli, Laura Spichtig, Paul Schmidt and Yonca Yildirim (Sonology, KC)
– Performance route: Attentive Alleys with Anna Lora, Anton Kondratov, Barbara Mise, Dominik Staszak, Ilva Nieuwstraten, Jim Schalke, Leà Yordanov, Nils Bousseau, Robin Bollé, Tom van den Berg and Vidya Chagan (ArtScience, KC and KABK)
– Conversation: Proximity Music: The Ongoing Hum with Aernoudt Jacobs, Anaïs Lossouarn, Johannes Kreidler, Koenraad de Groot, Lena Kuzmich, Mariska de Groot, and Ezequiel Menalled, moderated by Katía Truijen
– Conversation: Concrète Waves with Actress and Suzanne Ciani, moderated by Radna Rumping
– Conversation and listening session: Staging Sound with Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman, Mattia Papp, Mariëtte Groot, meLê yamomo, Renata Mirón, Yağmur (Yago) Sağlam, and Yuri Tuma, moderated by Katía Truijen and Zeynep Oral
Friday 10 April: Further Listening
– Conversation: Environmental Sound with KMRU, moderated by Yumi Tuma
– Workshop: Encounters with Field Recording with KMRU
– Conversation: Staging Ritual with Tianzhuo Chen (Asian Dope Boys), moderated by Ceola Tunstall-Behrens
– Conversation: Embodied Futures with Antony Hamilton (Chunky Move), moderated by Giada Dalla Bontà
– Conversation: Beverly Glenn-Copeland and Elizabeth Copeland, moderated by Radna Rumping
– Conversation: Machine Listening with Steve Goodman (Kode9), moderated by Federica Notari
– Conversation: Performing Gender in Music Technology, with Katalin Ladik & Svetlana Maraš, moderated by Ash Kilmartin
– Conversation and listening session: Sary Moussa and Abed Kobeissy
– Conversation: Resonant Histories with Mayssa Jallad, moderated by Katía Truijen
– Book launch: Further Listening: On Adventurous Music and Sound with contributors Aniketh Khutia, Ash Kilmartin, Brandon LaBelle, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Giada Dalla Bontà, Heloisa Amaral, Laura Snapes, Mayssa Jallad, Rachael Rakes, Richard Foster, Yağmur (Yago) Sağlam, and Zahra Malkani; designers Bart de Baets, Dayna Casey, Jim Kühnel, Jonathan Castro, and The Rodina; and editor Katía Truijen
Saturday 11 April: Times and Territories
– Conversation: Radio as an Artistic Practice, with Ash Kilmartin, Emiddio Vasquez, and Radna Rumping
– Conversation: Sonic Testimonies with Lawrence Abu Hamdan, moderated by Giada Dalla Bontà
– Conversation: Folkloric Iterations with Sacred Lodge, Milkweed, and Park Jiha, moderated by Joe Leonard-Walters and Molly Cosgrove
– Conversation: Elements of Sounding with Juana Molina, moderated by Laura Snapes
– Workshop: Text Scores for Improvising Performers by Ege Şahin
– Lecture: Drumming X (anarchic magic) by Brandon LaBelle
– Installation: The Other Family by Brandon LaBelle
– Conversation: Facing the Spills with Polina Medvedeva and Andreas Kühne, moderated by Katía Truijen
– Conversation: A Body Like a Home with Alejandra Cárdenas, moderated by Giada Dalla Bontà
– Reading Aloud: Sonic Perspectives from the Global Souths with Budhaditya Chattopadhyay and guests
Sunday 12 April: Instrumental Ecologies
– Audio walk: Takeaway by Martin Hurych
– Conversation and listening session: Kalponik Rekha with Kasimyn (Hulubalang) and Avita Maheen (two4.41139)
– Conversation: Music Journalism Today and Rewire Reflections launch, with Aida Baghernejad and Jasper Willems, moderated by Laura Snapes
– Conversation and listening session: Universal Language: Feedback Static
with Ash Fure, domingo castillo flores, Victoria Keddie, and DeForrest Brown, Jr., and an introduction and moderation by Rachael Rakes
– Tactology Lab: MOTION with Alessandro Miele, Nina (Alex) Buurman, Anna Bielska, Atser Damsma, Cris Mollee, Demi van Kuijk, Junying Wu, katarina kadijević, Kinga Molinska, Maisie Palmer, Niek van der Veer, and Rachit Puri, curated by Vincent Schoutsen and Dianne Verdonk (Sounds Like Touch)
– Conversation: Instrumental Ecologies with Dianne Verdonk and Vincent Schoutsen (Tactology Lab) and Robin Koek (Environments)
– Conversation and listening session: Fragile Minutes with james K, Jennifer Walton, and Malibu, moderated by Federica Notari
– Listening session: Stories to Sleep to by Mayomi Basnayaka
– Book launch: Open Field Listening Station with Loma Doom (real name Femke Dekker)
Throughout the weekend
– Radio WORM x Rewire – live interviews and reports at The Grey Space in The Middle
– Rewire Reflections – music magazine workshop and zine launch
– Rewire Transmissions – radio-making workshop and broadcasts