Sonic Acts Biennial 2026: As We Tremble

Folk traditions hold stories that are not written down, but lived – passed through bodies, rhythm, trembling instruments, and voices. Often silenced, colonised or endangered, these sonic practices preserve memories of communal experience. As We Tremble departs from this sense of collective emotion, inviting audiences into a space where history is transmitted – and reimagined – through sound with artists such as Dylan Kerr, Laura Ortman, and the ten-people ensemble La Nòvia.

Antiphon II by Dylan Kerr is a new performance for church pipe organ, high-frequency organ pipes and moving voice, developed on site at Singelkerk. Working with ancient vocal lineages – Irish sean-nós, keening lament, and Hindustani dhrupad – Kerr folds breath and tone together until frequencies braid into beating patterns and phantom tones, turning the church into a resonant instrument.

Laura Ortman premieres a new live set where the violin becomes a ferocious, rosin-soaked engine of smoke, dust, wind and slow-motion grit. Through heavy amplification, effects, the Apache violin, whistles, tree branches, slides, guitar picks, bells and tuning fork, her scored and improvised compositions erupt into raw, physical sound. Drawing on her White Mountain Apache heritage, Ortman’s performances become tangible manifestations of emotion – honouring ancestral resilience through a form of storytelling that moves beyond words.

La Nòvia– a collective from the Haute-Loire – plunge regional folk into a dense field of drone, polyrhythm, and noise. In this one-hour concert, they extend and transform material by Conlon Nancarrow and Jessica Ekomane – the latter having collaborated with the collective – moving between string instruments, bagpipes, and electronics. Folk dances flicker, glitch and re-align; algorithmic processes meet oral tradition; and the music refuses to settle – always trembling between past and future.

Before the concert, join for a talk by the Turner Prize winning artist Jeremy Deller, who interprets folk traditions as forms of living history – channels through which solidarity, defiance, and joy endure beyond official institutions. His lecture will be followed by a Q&A with curator Zippora Elders. Tickets are available separately for Deller’s presentation.

The people at Sonic Acts have kindly offered a limited amount of free tickets for Subbacultcha members. Please make a reservation by sending an email to mailinglist@subbacultcha.nl with ‘Sonic Acts: As We Tremble’ in the subject line + your name in the email.

Registrations are open until 12.00 PM on weekdays.