Sonic Acts Biennial 2026: Heart Rests Twice #3

The third edition of Heart Rests Twice – a curated series unfolding across five Thursday nights at murmur during Sonic Acts Biennial 2026 – looks at time as memory in motion: held, carried, and passed on. Here, artists build counter-archives through improvisation and sonic practice, reaching for what remains of home.

Kween develops a new work that weaves archival material into a meditation on the meaning of home – not as a fixed location, but as an embodied experience shaped by the socio-cultural conditions of a place and the inner friction of longing for or resisting belonging. Drawing on cassette recordings exchanged between their mother and grandmother in 1990s Syria, along with collected visual and audio materials, Kween samples traditional Arabic instruments – layering, looping, and distorting them, and charging the textures with their voice. The result is a space where the tension between connection and dislocation is amplified.

Cairo-based composer and sound artist Nancy Mounir uncovers what remains of home: traces carved in stone, preserved in books, and embedded in the land, attending to what is overlooked, fragmented, or erased. Through electroacoustic composition and live performance, Mounir explores reminiscence, continuing a trajectory begun with her album Nozhet El Nofous (2022), with a focus on ‘non-existent’ memories, lost frequencies, and microtonality.

Virus2020 presents a live electroacoustic performance developed through research on handmade hybrid wind instruments in dialogue with electronic machines. Breath, noise, and electronics converge into a fractured, ritualistic sound field – reflecting on memory, transformation, and unstable futures ahead.

Heart Rests Twice draws together artists who work across discursive formats, composition, audiovisual performance to explore ideas of home, place, and belonging. Tuning into the pulse of the heartbeat – a circular rhythm – the series invites a heartfelt, hearingful mode of engagement – a way of listening that is not only receptive but relational, even transformative. The concerts will be followed by a Q&A.

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 ‘SSonic Acts: Heart Rests Twice #3′ in the subject line + your name in the email.

Registrations are open until 12.00 PM on weekdays.