Sonic Acts Festival Focus

Text by Emma Smit

From 21 until 23 February Sonic Acts will take you to another sphere and submerge your mind in – breath in – experimental audio-visual illustrations, performative art, conferences, and cutting edge artistic voices from many different corners of the world – breath out -. Partnering with locations such as Paradiso, De Brakke Grond, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and OT301 are converted into experimental magnetic spaces. The festival is inspired by fluctuations in the ecological, political, technological and social perspectives that affect our daily lives. Sonic Acts gives you the opportunity to deepen your knowledge of all progressive growths within this highly mediated era. Yep, overwhelming. To navigate you through these mind-boggling three days, we cut the cream of the crop and highlighted five artists that struck our minds.

Progress Bar is throwing a special edition of their club night for Sonic Acts Academy, featuring Holly Herndon, DEBBY FRIDAY and SHYBOI. There are limited free spots available for Subbacultcha members. To secure a free spot, shoot an email to mailinglist@subbacultcha.nl with ‘Sonic Acts’ in the subject line + your full name in the mail. First come, first served!

Not a member yet? Become a member here: http://bit.ly/subbamembers ♥

Holly Herndon

Artists challenge the way we think about the world, and that’s exactly what Holly Herndon does. The Berlin-based composer blurs the lines of Artificial Intelligence as a metaphor for the way computers rule our day-to-day. Through her work, Holly questions what the role of the body and a human performer have within a concert experience. Working simultaneously with social and computerized voices, her use of audiovisual material crashes violently through the barriers of our imagination. She usually performs with an assemble of highly creative individuals who share the same inventive visions as she does. (We see you, Lyra Pramuk). Their A.I baby, named ‘Spawn’, that drives the development of ‘thinking’ computer systems forward, pushes Holly to bring her performance to a whole new parallel.

“I know I’m known as ‘laptop girl’,” she states. “but I’m always asking myself: where does the human performer fit in to this? How do we continue to develop without automating us off the stage? This frees us up to be more human together.”

Kali Malone

Kali Malone’s intensely meditative organ pieces are a story within themselves. Kali takes a highly religious instrument, presented out of their normative context, and launches us on a trip of no return. The opening track, “Spectacle Of Ritual”, from her latest album titled, The Sacrificial Code is an amalgamation of forgiving sounds, acoustic instrumentation, and traditional sonic characteristics. Kali is an American artist living and working in Stockholm since 2012. Her main medium of making music is through the use of instruments such as pipe organs, strings, flute, and gong, and to experiment with their tuning systems. Chin-rubbing technicality, but highly emotionally rewarding. Check the Sonic Acts program here to see when Kali Malone is performing.

DEBBY FRIDAY

“musics may conspire with or against particular bodies, they may constrain and or enable particular desires and forms of conduct.” Electronic punk music and its performance act upon our bodies by compelling us to gather together…” – an excerpt from one of FRIDAY’s multidisciplinary writing projects.

DEBBY FRIDAY (a female solo-version of Death Grips?) is an experimentalist at heart. Her tribal beats make you feel like dancing in a steamy basement. You know, if that’s your thing. She encapsulates the perfect medium between electronic R&B and poetic justice. Musician, sound theorist, performer, poet, video-artist, film director and punk idol. The girl has no limits. Putting the bar sky-scraping high, DEBBY also ventures her creativity into essay writing. Cracking Closer is a blog she designed to explore her philosophical thoughts within the realms of emotional depth, erotic potential, and sound. Read and listen.

SHYBOI

SHYBOI is a Jamaican born, New York-based multidisciplinary artist. SHYBOI is the nickname she uses to cause sonic disorder. As a creative situated between both Caribbean and American culture, she submerges her music in layers of audible complexity and fluidity. Using sound as a base for these viewpoints, SHYBOI plays with the notions of identity, power and preconceived histories. You might know her from femme DJ collective and talent agency Discwomen. Amplify each other!