MANIFEST:IO 2025

Program

JOIN US FOR THE THIRD EDITION OF MANIFEST:IO, THE SYMPOSIUM FOR NEW MEDIA AND ELECTRONIC ART
OVERVIEW

Schedule

A full weekend of workshops, talks, performances, and an exhibition hosting works from interactive installations to spatial sound experiences. Below is a brief overview of what to expect at MANIFEST:IO 2025

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FEB 21

FEB 22

FEB 23

11 - 13: Workshop 1, Letters Without Borders

(Pre-event: create an interactive installation to beexhibited at MANIFEST:IO! See details below.)
10 - 13hr: Workshop 2, Autolume, Day 1
11 - 13:hr Workshop 3, Scripts to Read the City
13hr: Exhibition Part 1 opens
13hr: Ambient Stage Opens
14hr: Keynote, Conversations Stage opens
15hr: Talks series begins
16hr: Ambient Stage Performance
16hr: Exhibition Part 2 opens
19hr: Main Stage Performances begin
21hr: Talks end, Conversations Stage closes
21hr: Main Stage Performances
01hr: End of Day 1
10 - 13hr: Workshop 2, Autolume, Day 2
12 - 13hr: Artist talk with Tanween and slowfuture
14hr: Lecture-Performance with Forensis, Ambient Stage
15hr: Conversations Stage opens
16hr: Ambient Stage Performances begin
16hr: Exhibition Part 2 opens
19hr: Main Stage Performances begin
19hr: Ambient Stage Opens
20hr: Townhall with Alte Muenze, Oyoun, Tehran Contemporary Sounds, Fluctuating Images
21hr: Talks end, Conversations Stage closes
21hr: Main Stage Performances continue
01hr: End of Day 2

FEB 21

11 - 13: Workshop 1, Letters Without Borders

(Pre-event: create an interactive installation to be exhibited at MANIFEST:IO! See details below.)

FEB 22

10 - 13hr: Workshop 2, Autolume, Day 1
11 - 13:hr Workshop 3, Scripts to Read the City
13hr: Exhibition Part 1 opens
14hr: Keynote, Conversations Stage opens
15hr: Talks series begins
16hr: Ambient Stage Performance
16hr: Exhibition Part 2 opens
19hr: Main Stage Performances begin
21hr: Talks end, Conversations Stage closes
21hr: Main Stage Performances
01hr: End of Day 1

FEB 23

10 - 13hr: Workshop 2, Autolume, Day 2
12 - 13hr: Artist talk with Tanween and slowfuture
14hr: Lecture-Performance with Forensis, Ambient Stage
15hr: Conversations Stage opens
16hr: Ambient Stage Performances begin
16hr: Exhibition Part 2 opens
19hr: Main Stage Performances begin
20hr: Townhall with Alte Muenze, Oyoun, Tehran Contemporary Sounds, Fluctuating Images
21hr: Talks end, Conversations Stage closes
21hr: Main Stage Performances continue
01hr: End of Day 2
KEY PARTNERS
SUPPORTING PARTNERS
CREATE TOGETHER

Workshops

Three unique workshops inviting you to create with the artists. Delve into AI, create an interactive experience, or join a guided walk.

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CONVERSATIONS STAGE

Talks Schedule

Talks from artists, designers, researchers, from around the world gathering in Berlin. From topics of heritage, to the climate crisis, and between DIY technologies to XR tools, listen and engage with new perspectives and applications of new media and electronic art.

All talks on the Conversations Stage are livestream. Purchase a Digital Pass for access. Made possible thanks to:

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FEB 22

2:00 PM      OPENING / KEYNOTE

Re(emerging) Pasts: Heritage Futures in the Global Heritage Industry

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Robert Parthesius and Alia Yunis

Heritage is a highly interdisciplinary field and a foundation for numerous artistic practices. However, it has also become a commodity. As heritage increasingly intersects with socio-economic issues, nation-building, ethnicity, race, religion, and gender, its protection and promotion have taken center stage in the agendas of political leaders, environmentalists, and tourism planners.

This talk provides an overview of heritage studies, questioning whether heritage can be managed objectively or equitably. It examines how heritage connects cultures and subcultures as shared history, while also serving as a source of conflict and contestation, as seen in various memorials, archaeological sites, and expressions of collective memory.

We will explore how archaeologists, heritage professionals, and community activists are adopting more holistic approaches to interpreting and safeguarding the past, with a focus on erased and fragmented heritage. The talk concludes by reflecting on our HeritageLab’s manifesto, Re-emerging Pasts.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Robert Parthesius is the founder of the Amsterdam-based CIE – Centre for International Heritage Activities, a UNESCO-accredited NGO. He is also the former Program Head and Professor of Heritage and Museum Studies, as well as the founding director of Dhakira – Center for Heritage Studies at New York University Abu Dhabi. A maritime historical archaeologist and museum curator with extensive international experience, focussing his research on how heritage is shared, contested, used, and misused.

He has pioneered the innovative HeritageLab research concept—an interactive platform that invites researchers, artists, students, and communities to engage in multidisciplinary projects that rethink the concept of heritage and its applications.

Parthesius has published extensively, authoring scholarly books, academic papers, exhibition catalogues, and publications for general audiences. Additionally, he has organized numerous international heritage conferences and is an accredited UNESCO expert, serving on various expert committees for ICOMOS and ICOM.

Alia Yunis works at the intersection of environmental and transoceanic heritage, with a particular focus on the Muslim and Arab worlds and their diasporas. As a scholar, journalist, author, and filmmaker, her work has been translated into ten languages.

Her recent publication, Heritage Futures: Stories in the Global Heritage Industry, co-edited with Robert Parthesius and Niccolò Cappelletto, is a ground breaking volume centred on the Global South and serves as a unique pedagogical contribution to Heritage Studies (Routledge, London, 2024).

Her feature documentary, The Golden Harvest,explores the heritage and future of the olive tree and the people of the Mediterranean. The film continues to screen at festivals and events worldwide, including a recent showing at the Smithsonian Museum of Asian Art. The Golden Harvest inspired Tree Routed, an interactive platform that globally connects personal heritage stories about trees (currently in production). She is also in the early production stages of films examining the complex heritage of the date palm.

Alia Yunis recently co-edited book Re-Orienting the Middle East: Film and Digital Media Where the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean Meet (Indiana University Press, 2024). Her critically acclaimed novel, The Night Counter (Random House, 2010), received praise from The Washington Post and other notable publications.

In 2010, she co-founded the Zayed University Middle East Film Festival (ZUMEFF), which has since become the longest-running film festival in the Gulf.

15:15 PM     MAKING VISIBLE / Moderated by Dr. Rene G. Cepeda

Uncovering Maximalism

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Marta Torres

There is a gap in analyzing vernacular elements from the Latin American and Central American region, especially from a social and non-Western standpoint. It is a relevant topic in El Salvador under the current government of Nayib Bukele, which has eliminated programs for social inclusion and decreased any opportunity for LGBTQ+ rights and reproduction rights. There is heightened censorship, mass incarceration, and specific gentrification to make the country desirable for international investors. This is reflected in aesthetics, the loss of spaces, and elements sold in these spaces, such as the phenomena, electro-domestic coverings, and street sellers. Losing an already fragile and mixed identity, deviancy through maximalism and identity becomes an act of resistance. As this paper was written, identity elements have been displaced, which will probably grow throughout the following years.

The phenomena of maximalist covers for appliances, toilets, and aprons sold and used in certain parts of El Salvador. These are loud and include lace, prints, and bold colors; they change how a home is perceived by covering appliances. These coverings are usually seen as “tacky,” “kitschy,” and “excessive,” contrasting with elements in a house that is seen to have “good taste” or houses with a higher income. The country has a significant wealth disparity, creating a confrontation in social dynamics where there’s a clear division. With imperialism and colonialism, there is this sense of taste that Salvadorans tend to navigate towards; it can be inferred from the influences that the population wants to identify with upper-class Europeans or Americans from the US, where things are seen in fewer colors, fewer elements, an interpretation of cleanliness, a simplicity that does not connect to the culture that is already fractured by colonization and imperialism.

The aesthetics of the government's new construction pleases a more minimalistic aesthetic to parts of Europe and the USA. It dismisses any element that is incompatible with the reality that’s been trying to be built, and that includes excess that comes from the mixture of Indigenous culture, pop culture, identity building, and how objects can have a more intimate connection to individuals that hold on to what they can. As with other stories, crafts, and styles in other parts of the global south, these parts can be heightened, further conserved, and appreciated through new media, especially hybrid media, where various mediums can elaborate important stories and give space. New technologies can serve as a tool to conserve these elements representing this mixed identity by creating an archive or world-building, creating utopias, and speculating a more inclusive reality. It also can enhance the materiality, the phenomena, and the treasuring of everyday objects in these homes through metaphors and interpretations. The case studies in this research provide examples of how each lens can be transformed and create a meaningful discourse through contemporary and new media art. New media is also in itself a deviating art form that opens opportunities to create new realities.

Lifting the Veil: Memory, Identity, and the Politics of Erasure

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Elyana Shams

Identities do not form in isolation—they are constructed from stories inherited, histories shared, and defining moments that shape perception. But what happens when those narratives are censored? When entire voices, faces, and histories are erased, leaving only fragments of reality?

Elyana Shams interrogates these urgent questions through her artistic practice, exposing how the deliberate erasure of a generation’s moments doesn’t just silence—it distorts, fractures, and reshapes the way individuals and societies understand themselves and one another.

Borrowed from her own girlhood in Tehran, her explorations in new media art peel back layers of omission to reveal the invisible forces that manipulate individual, collective, and cultural memory and identity. In this talk, she shares how new media art can challenge censorship, expose the mechanics of erasure, resurrect lost narratives, and claim what was forced to be forgotten.

Beyond Walls: Rethinking Museums

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Jens Blank

Over the past several years, Jens Blank has collaborated with some of Berlin’s most prominent cultural institutions—such as the Humboldt Forum, the Pergamon Museum, the James Simon Gallery, and key government sites like the Reichstag and the Finanzministerium—to help bring their spaces and collections into the digital realm. This work has provided a unique perspective on how cultural institutions can navigate the challenges and opportunities of the digital age.

Jens asks, what is the continued justification for physical museum spaces in a world increasingly shaped by digital experiences? Should immersive, all-access digital experiences become a required standard for museums and cultural institutions, much like barrier-free access is for individuals with physical disabilities?


These questions delve into the broader implications of digitization for the democratization of cultural heritage. What role can digital spaces play in providing access to learning materials for people who might never have the chance to physically visit a museum or cultural site?

Additionally, Jens will discuss practical considerations and creative possibilities for designing these digital resources. Do they need to replicate the physical experience of a museum, or can they offer something entirely new? How can cutting-edge technologies, such as augmented reality, virtual reality, or interactive media, be leveraged to enhance accessibility and engagement without diluting the authenticity of cultural heritage?

By sharing insights from real-world projects and raising thought-provoking questions, Jens aims to spark a meaningful conversation about the intersection of digital innovation, cultural preservation, and equitable access. This is not just about bringing museums into the digital space—it’s about reimagining what these spaces can be in the digital age and what they can bring to a wide audience across the planet.

www.jensblank.com

5:30 pm

Wandering Through Critical Futures

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RMIT Architecture Immersive Futures Lab

This talk will critically present the work of the emerging RMIT Architecture Immersive Futures Lab that explores the role of gaming environments, technologies and allied immersive media in spatializing, engaging, teaching, designing and constructing speculative futures through the lens of the architecture discipline. It will discuss, through projects developed in teaching and research, how speculative virtual gaming environments can serve as critical and imaginative provocations to contemporary planetary concerns such as ecological crises. Immersive, open-world experiences provide opportunities for audiences to reflect on the impacts of environmental change while envisioning speculative futures for our cultural and built environments.

These speculative environments utilize game engine technology to design and construct layered and interactive worlds that challenge traditional architectural representation. They operate as experimental spaces, where participants can engage with ecological narratives, cultural histories, and imaginative futures. By navigating these virtual landscapes, users may encounter hybridized ecosystems and provocative scenarios that challenge binary conditions—natural versus artificial, virtual versus real—and encourage reflection on the dynamic relationship of human and non-human systems.

Grounded in themes of ecology, climate crisis, and radical imagination, these speculative environments investigate the relationship between disappearing landscapes, the residues of their transformation, and the imaginative futures we might construct in response through architecture and cities. How can we preserve and reinterpret remnants, histories and stories to envision hopeful trajectories? Through an interdisciplinary approach, these speculative worlds integrate ecological data, cultural storytelling, technological simulations, and imaginative design. These platforms encourage dialogue, foster collaboration, and provoke discourse on the socio-political and ecological questions surrounding contemporary concerns.

The presentation will examine how virtual environments can redefine architectural and creative practice in the context of the New Media Age, moving beyond static representation to embrace hybridized and interactive forms of communication. These dynamic worlds challenge conventions of drawing, representation, and audience engagement, proposing new methods for exploring complex systems and narratives.

This presentation invites participants to reflect on the fragility of our landscapes, the resilience of our cultures, and the transformative potential of critical imaginings. It positions speculative virtual gaming environments as vibrant, immersive propositions—not distant utopias or dystopias, but critical and hopeful visions that inspire action. By navigating these worlds, audiences are encouraged to engage in dialogue, discover new constellations of ideas, and imagine futures where creativity meets the challenges of our ecological and cultural crises.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Vei Tan is co-founder of the RMIT Architecture Immersive Futures Lab that explores the potentials of gaming technologies and immersive media for architectural design. The lab's interdisciplinary approach explores gaming environments and technologies to develop new immersive and real-time design processes, visualisations, applications and pedagogies. It posits that understanding possible “now, near, and future” visions and realities, require innovative hybrid methods for making, curating, engaging, and imagining our cultural and built environments. The lab has exhibited projects at various international events such as Melbourne Design Week (2021), Venice Architecture Biennale (2021), Barcelona Architectures Festival (2023) and more. It has worked with various cultural and education institutions such as Melbourne Recital Centre, Federation Square, ACMI, MPavilion, Jacques Rougerie Foundation and more. The lab is part of the RMIT School of Architecture and Urban Design where she is an industry staff member and design studio leader.

Vei Tan is also the co-founder of Superscale, a research-led and speculative multidimensional creative practice that amplifies our architectural training to permeate disciplinary boundaries - unearthing new realities, possibilities, techniques and imaginings for architectural speculation, pedagogy and design.

6:00 pm

From Sputnik to Starlink: Why we should talk about satellites

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Quadrature

From earth satellites are visible only in the rare case that they are in the perfect angle to reflect the sun. All necessary data about the positions and paths of (most) satellites is publicly available, constituting a dynamic data source for creative processes. The lecture will dive into Quadrature`s artistic practice about this rather new layer of infrastructure, its meaning for our technology driven society and the recent exponential increase in satellite launches.

6:15 pm

Space Art and Ancestrality

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Nahum

Nahum will explore how artists throughout history have envisioned humanity's connection with the Cosmos. From ancestral cultures to contemporary practices, Nahum will discuss how art continues to shape and expand our understanding of the universe, offering new imaginaries through poetic and critical lenses.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Nahum is an artist and musician. His works craft unconventional perspectives and narratives to evoke wonder and deepen our understanding of cosmic existence. In his oeuvre, Nahum orchestrates a diverse array of media, including performance, installation, video, music, painting, and storytelling. Nahum frequently incorporates space technologies, illusionism, and hypnosis to transport audiences on otherworldly journeys that spark critical dialogues about existencehood.

In 2011, Nahum founded the KOSMICA Institute, a space organisation with a mission to create a platform for critical, cultural, and poetic discourse about our relationship to the Universe, space activities, and their impact on Earth. The Institute develops initiatives that bridge the arts and humanities, the space sector, and broader society.

His work has been internationally exhibited at prestigious venues, including the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Germany; The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Southbank Centre, The British Library, and FACT Liverpool in the UK; Garage Museum and Polytechnic Museum in Moscow, Russia; Galerija Kapelica in Ljubljana and Kiblix Slovenia; Ars Electronica in Linz, Switzerland; SESC in São Paulo and Casa Firjan in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, California, Rubin Center in El Paso, Texas, and the Chicago Architecture Biennial in the USA; Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm, Sweden; National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung, Taiwan; Hong Kong Arts Centre; Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Museo Jumex, and Centro Nacional de las Artes in Mexico City; and Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Jalisco in Mexico.

8:00 PM     CURATORIAL PRACTICES AND COMMUNITY / MODERATED BY HARSHINI J. KARUNARATNE

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IKLECTIK

Founded in 2014, IKLECTIK is a nonprofit creative organisation based in London.

IKLECTIK focus on experimentation within sound, art, new media, emerging technologies and cross disciplinary works. Their research initiatives and collaborations with academic institutions inform their curation and event selection. Through this, they explore processes and techniques whilst addressing social, political and cultural issues.

Their dynamic programme spans sound and music events, workshops, residencies, talks, panel discussions, installation work, film screenings and readings aiming to catalyze education, growth and transformation within our community both in-person and online.

Over the last 10 years IKLECTIK has hosted live performances from over 3000 emerging and established international artists across 1600+ live shows, 21 festivals and 23 fundraisers.

Herding Cats with AVJam: Theory and Practice of Curating Experimental Video and Audio Art

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Eric Medine

Sound, Space, and Community: Building Resonance in the sonic landscape of the UAE and wider GCC

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Safeya Alblooshi

In this presentation, Safeya reflects on the complex terrain of curatorial practices and community building within the UAE and broader GCC region, where art spaces often face unpredictable challenges in securing long-term venues. With limited physical infrastructure, we explore how collaborations with cultural institutions and the use of temporary pop-up spaces have become vital tools in creating alternative platforms for art. The presentation delves into Resound UAE, a pioneering initiative that amplifies the often-overlooked sound art scene in the region, examining its origins and vision for the future. Additionally, Safeya addresses the pressing need for comprehensive documentation of sound art practices, given the scarcity of resources and visibility for sound artists in the region. Through a focus on inclusive, free gatherings, the presentation highlights how building a supportive, accessible community for creative exchange and growth can be achieved while navigating the expectations of governing art institutions and balancing institutional support with grassroots initiatives.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Safeya Alblooshi is a sound artist who experiments with found sound via participatory performance and installation. Her work extends to being presented and performed at the Expo 2020 Dubai, Louvre Abu Dhabi, Alserkal Avenue, IRCAM Forum, London Design Biennale, Festival X, Sharjah Art Foundation, and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. She was part of the second cohort of Numoo in 2023 at the NYUAD Arts Center, where she recently curated the 4th edition of ElectroFest, and the founder and organizer of Resound UAE supported by the National Grant Program for Culture & Creativity. Safeya just completed her 3 year tenure as a Research Fellow with the Music and Sound Cultures research group at NYU Abu Dhabi.

FEB 23

* INDICATES NOT BEING LIVESTREAMED

12:00 pm

*How am I here?

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slowfuture + Tanween + Mey Seifan

We live in an age of collective trauma. Millions are displaced because of war and are forced to leave their homes. “But where is the protecting shelter when returning home becomes a nightmare?” asks choreographer Mey Seifan in advance of her new performance “How am I Here?” based on documented nightly dreams that express fears of homecoming. It splits into three spheres. In collaboration with Basel Naouri and studio slowfuture, the first sphere employs VR technology, AI, and choreographed enactment of the dreams to reflect an audio-visual immersive journey and an emotionally charged experience.

2:00 pm

* Polyphonies of Dispossession

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Tobéchukwu Onwukeme (Forensis)

A new cargo port expansion ushers in a new wave of noise pollution across commemoration sites in Shark Island, Namibia. This new research highlights, and expands on Chord Intervals at the brink of erasure, highlighting a continuum of material, and immaterial disposessions in Namibia today. The experience will expand and inflect on these same Chord Intervals and their use within other contexts across the Black Atlantic.

3:00 pm

Inter(mediate) Spaces: Storytelling with Generative AI and Co-Creating Immersive Experiences with Communities

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Chloé Lee, Present Futures

This talk looks at the intersection of generative AI and community-driven storytelling. Through projects like "Inter(mediate) Spaces", funded by Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg, and "Temporal World" (SXSW 2023), Berlin-based artist, Chloé Lee, shares her process as she explores ways new technologies, like AI tools XR, can be used in creative and accessible ways, particularly within communities that are often underrepresented in tech spaces.

Through a series of case studies — including Living Labs held at the Lee Association community center in Montreal, Chinatown, New York City and Silent Green, Wedding, Berlin—Chloé will delve into the process of co-creating with individuals from diverse backgrounds, using generative AI to empower them to tell their own stories and imagine new worlds. We will reflect on how this approach can foster empathy, inclusivity, and social change.

3:15 pm

AI as mirror, AI as canvas: From reflecting societal paradigms to envisioning utopian futures

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Theresa Reiwer

This talk explores the dual role of AI—first as a mirror of societal structures, then as a tool for speculative futures. Beginning with the spatial video essay Decoding Bias (2023, Ars Electronica, Lumen Prize Gold Award 2024 a.o.), Theresa highlights how AI reflects and perpetuates discrimination and marginalization, emphasizing its entanglement power structures of human society. The focus then shifts to her latest piece Lasting Generation (2024, Hauptstadtkulturfonds, Hebbel am Ufer), which envisions an AI not shaped by profit-driven tech corporations but one that fosters solidarity, advocates for non-human intelligence, and seeks more-than-human alliances. Through this transition, the talk questions AI’s role in shaping the world—not just reflecting what exists, but imagining what could be—while also shedding light on the ambivalences inherent in future-oriented technologies.

5:00 pm

M(ol)AR, HYBRID LANDSCAPE: Radio waves as an extended ecology

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Esteban Agosin

This research addresses fundamental questions: What role does technology play within the Anthropocene paradigm? How can we speculate about future possibilities by understanding and learning from nature's intelligence?

This research investigates the use of organic materials in radio antenna construction, specifically focusing on handmade antennas using seawater electrolytes and salt crystals as electrical conductors. Although this technology is functionally effective, it presents limitations when considered on a larger scale. Within this context, these devices serve as speculative antennas, offering an alternative perspective on social and technological development in the Anthropocene era.

The research culminated in a site-specific, durational installation born from an exploration of speculative antenna design, radio signal experimentation, and machine listening (AI). The resulting artwork creates a fictional, hybrid landscape where technological elements converge with natural ones: objects, sounds, sculptures, plastic, wires, speakers, computers, rocks, creatures, fluids, motors, and sensors. It juxtaposes electricity with water, plastic with salt, copper with sand, and sound with objects, exploring the tension between the inaudible and the invisible.

This paper documents and reflects on the entire research process, examining it from technological, technical, and philosophical perspectives.

5:15 pm

DIY process and exploring Fragile States

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Technologies of Consciousness

Driven by the spirit of DIY, their projects embrace a radical and popular point of view of non-expertise, demystifying the organic world in relation to the healing of the body, and the processes of decomposition and the notion of the end of the cycle. Fragile states of body is explored where the body is ill, burnt out, or has reached its' end cycle - where does this state inhabit - Is the body the place where consciousness becomes, Defining consciousness is akin to grasping a fleeting dream—it slips through our fingers as we attempt to maintain our grip of it. Is consciousness intimacy? Awareness?  When did we understand the concept of consciousness as a young human?

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Motivated by the porous and undefined intersections between art, media and science, the collective seeks to define our biological consciousness through our shared potential to feel a deep and meaningful communion with the sphere of Nature. Driven by the spirit of DIY, their projects embrace a radical and popular point of view of non-expertise, demystifying the organic world in relation to the healing of the body, and the processes of decomposition and the notion of the end of the cycle.

6:00 PM     DESIGNING COLLECTIVE FUTURES / MODERATED BY MAJA STARK

A More Perfect Future: Performing the Archive in Theater Mitu’s Utopian Hotline

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Alex Hawthorn

As a company member with Theater Mitu, Alex Hawthorn co-authored their 2021 piece, Utopian Hotline, which was borne from the question: “how do you imagine a more perfect future?” They interviewed everyone from philosophers to schoolchildren and, in partnership with SETI (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) and Arizona State University’s Interplanetary Initiative, astronauts, physicists, and futurists. To collect a wider array of responses, we set up a telephone number so that people could leave us voicemails about how they imagined a more perfect future. The resulting research became a performance, an installation, an album, and a digital archive.  The piece is currently touring as an installation and performance, and the phone number is still active, collecting voicemails, adding to the archive.

Alex will share images, video, and audio from the performance while talking about the process of creating the piece from a growing archive. Alex will explore how disparate voices from around the globe can contribute equally to an archive and how difference in opinion or outlook doesn’t make the archive weaker but in fact creates a more potent space for co-imagining and co-creating our more perfect future. Far from the billionaires funding private missions to Mars, what do the thinkers and dreamers of today have to say about our possible futures? And how can we take an active role in choosing our future?

Artistic Democratization

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XR Ensemble (Clara Francesca & She's Excited!)

Giving up artistic control, to empower audiences to safely become the featured experience.

From Hostile to Hospitable

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Martin Binder

A more inclusive Berlin: Using interactive Web-AR technology, the app visualizes utopian urban spaces and addresses issues of discriminatory design in public space. The project was developed in the framework of the Aurora School for Artists at HTW Berlin.

8:00 PM     TOWNHALL at manifest:io / MODERATED BY cornelia lund, fluctuating images

AMBIENT + MAIN STAGES

Performance Schedule

Two stages hosting artists from around the world with performances that blend the ritual with the audiovisual, and expansive media with critical themes.

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All performances on the Main Stage are powered by:

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FEB 22

STARTING 4:30 PM - Ambient Stage

Andriy K. and pryvyd

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‘Poetry of the Vanished Territories’ is an audiovisual exploration of central and southern Ukraine’s landscapes, capturing memories of fading places that linger between what was and what remains. Using open source data and field recordings from the corresponding locations, Andriy K. and pryvyd layer abstract compositions with fragments of reality, blending nature and memory. An archive of the transient, ‘Poetry of the Vanished Territories’ invites you on a journey through the spaces in-between.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Andriy K., a Shape+ artist, is well known for his immersive live performances, which focus on sound design experiments and delve into ambient, IDM, and textured shoegaze aesthetics. Some of the key festivals and events where he has showcased his sound spectrum: ICKPA Berlin (DE), 100ve (IT), Bukolica (CZ), ∄(Kyiv), Garage Noord (Amsterdam), Ankali (Prague), Jasna 1 (Warsaw), WORM (Rotterdam), Fitzroy (Berlin), Arkaoda (Berlin), and Kwia (Berlin).

pryvyd, is a multidisciplinary artist and VJ. With a background in motion design and postproduction, he explores the subtle aspects of temporality, tension-relief, and physical/mental stimuli by creating various generative systems that incorporate visuals, light fixtures, and sound for site-specific performances and installations. He is a member of Kyiv’s new media artist collective ‘Photinus’ and has exhibited
at Dovzhenko Centre and Mystetskyi Arsenal (Kyiv). He has performed at Closer, Otel', 2c1b, 8 (Kyiv); MCAO (Odesa); HAU, LobeBlock, KVS, Fitzroy (Berlin); and Bike Jesus (Prague).

STARTING 8:30 PM - MAIN Stage

Nilgün Özer

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Broken Patterns represent our ritualistic patterns and the contrast they have to the atrocities happening around an individual. It tells the stories of how through breaking these patterns, one find themselves in the hands of different mindsets and places they have never been before. It's the contrast we desperately try to hide in our capitalist society. These broken pieces end up taking us to fragmented places where we start to acknowledge the cognitive dissonances we live in. A simple act of brushing one's teeth becomes uncomfortable. These unmatched different worlds collide and result in glitches and cuts. Broken Patterns represents the collisions of two worlds, electronic/ acoustic, east/west, and realities/dreams and results in fragmented realities.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Raised in the Black Sea mountains, Nilgün Özer is a multidisciplinary artist from Turkey, currently living in Berlin. Starting her music journey as a singer-songwriter, today she values experimenting and running on the edges of different genres from electroacoustic, ambient to experimental-folk.
Nilgün Özer's diverse artistic expressions underscore her dedication to exploring her mountain roots and pushing boundaries in both visual arts and music. Everything on this planet revolves around patterns. Currently, she is keen on discovering, creating or breaking these patterns.

Technologies of Consciousness

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Numinous Machines is an audiovisual performance that explores the enigmatic threshold experienced during near-death. Drawing inspiration from these profound moments intertwined with Yantras (sacred geometry), the performance delves into the convergence of the natural world, technology, and the ethereal more-than-human realm. Utilizing macroscopy, modified turntables, and biodisks, the synthesis of sound and images becomes a captivating journey through a graphical notation governed by the innate law of decomposition. Exploring the connection between touch, sound reproduction, and materiality, the performance delves into the physicality of sound, bridging the tactile art of "turntablism" and techniques that transcribe sound into tangible forms.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Motivated by the porous and undefined intersections between art, media, and science, Technologies of Consciousness seeks to define our biological consciousness through our shared potential to feel a deep and meaningful communion with the sphere of Nature. Driven by the spirit of DIY, their projects embrace a radical and popular perspective of non-expertise, demystifying the organic world in relation to the healing of the body, and the processes of decomposition and the notion of the end of the cycle. Recently, Castonguay and Stefan completed the short film SENTIENT BEINGS, featured in competition at RVCQ and the International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA). They have also been artists in long-term residence at the Biosphere of Montreal, in partnership with C.A.M. and REPAIRE. Their research is infused with a critical approach, addressing circular economy, democratization of knowledge, and evolving materiality.

Stephanie Castonguay led by an insatiable curiosity for experimentation, explor sonic matter through sound installation, performance and experimental electronic instrument making. In an approach rooted in materiality and processuality, theytransforms discarded machines into vessels of resonance, glitch and latent sonorities. By translating the nuances of the sensory world, their work seeks to reveal the hidden facets of our subtle environment, bridging the realms of perception and the imperceptible. Their work has been presented at LAB30 (DE-BY), Instruments Make Play & STEIM (NL), MUTEK (CA, PE), Tsonami Sound Art Festival (CL), Athens Digital Arts Festival (GR), Musica Ex Machina (ES-PV), Festival Klangmanifeste (AT), FIMAV (CA) and more recently at Instrument Inventors Initiative iii (NL).

Sonya Stefan blends analog methods, intertwining 16mm film with touch designer to craft her visual landscapes, while also employing contact printing techniques, DIY eco-processing, and macro nature image capture. Additionally, Stefan delves into the realm of dance documentaries, gaining acclaim for her film "The Truss Arch," which earned her an IRIS nomination and the prestigious Best National Medium-Length Film award at both the Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal (RIDM) in 2021 and the Rendezvous Québec Cinéma in 2022. Her creative journey extends further through collaborations with the multimedia dance company Animals of Distinction, Petrikor Danse, and the Newton Moraes Dance Theatre.

Rahul Sharma + Kei Watanabe

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Integrating 3D scans of spaces from a recent return to India with cherished objects from home—including childhood keepsakes and Hindu idols—the performance transforms these fragments into a real-time, generative audiovisual composition. Algorithmically driven visuals and sound evolve, distort, and reassemble, mirroring the selective and fluid nature of memory.

By translating tangible artifacts into digital and sonic forms, the performance questions the boundaries between the sacred and the virtual, permanence and impermanence. The glitches and distortions inherent in the process become metaphors for memory’s shifting landscape, highlighting the evolving relationship between human experience, technology, and cultural preservation.

Peter Kirn

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Produced in collaboration with Wonder Cabinet, Bethlehem

Sounds of Places residency

Sounds from Palestine with musical reflections

Fragments of sound workshop in East Jerusalem, Al Ma'mal Foundation

Additional sounds from Jordan, Lebanon

Visuals: Video loops, 3D scans

An immersive live performance and sound art/musical improvisation, performed using collaborative source recordings from our collective and friends (see notes). In opening moments, the Mediterranean Sea resonates in Beirut; the framing sound of the border crossing in Jordan. Palestine: transit sounds through occupation and checkpoints, Bethlehem and East Jerusalem city streets, Cremisan Valley, from water to the children playing in the interfaith space of the Cremisan monastery, olive trees, fire, hills. Field recordings are woven with live connective musical threads, on electronics, water, and microphone.

Until liberation. And all the hills echo’ed.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

PETER KIRN is a composer/sound artist and journalist with Lebanese-American background; he writes the daily site cdm.link and has conducted collaborative performance laboratories around the world (including with MUTEK Montreal, JP, MX, and AE, SONAR, Sonic Territories, CTM, and Nusasonic). He has collaborated with the Beirut Synthesizer Center and Irtijal and worked with Radio AlHara and Wonder Cabinet, including a residency in Bethlehem for Sounds of Places that led to the production of this live work. He studied composition with Tania León at the City University of New York Graduate Center. His music has been released on FLASH Recordings, Force Inc., Industrial Complexx, Kotä, and his own Establishment.

Toumba

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Faysh is an extension of research on the musical traditions of southern Jordan, tracing fishermen’s chants and songs along the coasts of the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea—from Aqaba to Egypt, Yemen, and the Gulf. This project explores how music serves as a means of survival, companionship, community, and documentation. Through intricate yet repetitive rhythms in both percussion and lyrics, these songs mirror the lived experience of life at sea. They capture the challenges of fishing through wailing chants and intense lyrics, narrating each step of the journey—from departure to the catch and return.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Yazan Zyadat (AKA Toumba) is a producer and sound designer from Amman, Jordan. His music delves into often-overlooked elements of Arab musical heritage, reinterpreting them through intricate sound design, contemporary production techniques, and razor-sharp percussion. With releases on renowned underground labels like Hessle Audio and Nervous Horizon, he has established a distinctive sonic identity. He has performed at prestigious festivals across Europe, including Dekmantel, Primavera, Unsound, and Lunchmeat.

FEB 23

STARTING 4:00 PM - Ambient Stage

Timjune Tianjun Li

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Free As Birds is an interdisciplinary ongoing project that parallels the migratory journeys of birds and human from 2024. Through video, photography, and vocal experimentation, the project explores displacement, adaptation, and the search for home.

As ecosystems destabilize and political crisis, birds lose habitats while immigrants face barriers and the home cannot be returned to. Inspired by this shared fragility, I imagined myself as a bird on its way finding a new homeland, wearing wings crafted from fragmented maps. I performed scenes set against natural backdrops: gazing at nests in trees, tracing water pathways guided by moonlight and stars, dancing with birds, and finally confronting the border—the stark divide between the freedom of birds and the restrictions imposed on human migration.

Using AI language models, I translated the traditional Chinese folk songs about birds’ migration into bird-like vocal structures, echoing the mechanical and repetitive efforts of technology to understand complex human themes. The melodies, composed with elements of Finnish vocalization—a language I am learning as a new comer—were performed alongside symbolic field recordings. The slow, deliberate process of mastering this “new bird language” mirrors the immigrant experience of adapting to unfamiliar environments.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Tianjun Li, also known as Timjune, is a Helsinki-based interdisciplinary artist whose work spans photography and voice.

Li’s practice reimagines a dual narrative of fantasy and reality in the human-nature relationship within contemporary social contexts such as immigration, identity, and deforestation. Born with synesthesia, Li perceives visuals within sounds. With a vocal range spanning more than four octaves, Li’s vocal experiments reflect natural movements and social landscapes. Through reconstructing images, sound, and voice, Li creates surreal, fable-like utopias grounded in the harsh realities of the Anthropocene in the forms of photographs, installations, and audiovisual performances.

Li's work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as the Northern Photographic Centre (Solo, FI), Contemporary Image Museum (CN), Kotka Biennale (FI), PhotoSCHWEIZ Festival (CH), Der Greif  (DE), Tree Art Museum (CN), Photometria International Photography Festival (GR), Kuca Legata Museum (RS), Paris Photo Day (FR), M. Žilinskas Art Museum (LT), and MuCAT Museum (CI), and have performed and showcased their project at Crypt Gallery London (UK), Kotka Art Biennale (FI), Design Museum of Barcelona (ES), Myymälä2 Gallery (FI), Stockholm Fringe Festival (SE), Outsider Art Festival (Fi), Kulturhus Cyklopen (SE), Skissernas Museum (SE), Helsinki International Artist Programme (FI), Helsinki City Museum (FI), Forum Box (FI), and the Finnish Museum of Theatre (FI).

Jason Snell

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This sound performance employs the mechanics of audio feedback to mirror the precarious dynamics of climate change's heat feedback loops. By constructing a sonic system of carefully balanced send-and-return effects, I will create an immersive auditory experience that illustrates the fragile equilibrium of natural systems and the tipping points that lead to irreversible change.

The work draws inspiration from my years of climate advocacy with the Sunrise Movement (starting in 2019) in Iowa, where I worked to advance climate policies and raise awareness of feedback loops like those described in David Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth. This performance bridges the gap between these hard-to-comprehend shifts in planet-scale systems and the visceral experience of hearing how such loops spiral out of control.

Heat feedback loops are central to understanding climate change: as rising temperatures melt polar ice, reflective white surfaces are replaced by heat-absorbing dark water, accelerating warming in a self-reinforcing cycle. Once systems cross their thresholds, they spiral into chaos—a phenomenon akin to an avalanche triggered by a single tipping point.

In this performance, the audience will experience a sound design pushed to its compositional limits, emphasizing the fragility and responsiveness of feedback. Delicate echoes and reverberations will evolve into uncontrollable sonic avalanches, creating a compelling auditory metaphor for the moment when climate balance is lost and the planet’s habitability shifts irreversibly.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Jason Snell is an electronic musician and composer whose work explores themes of ecological transformation, systems in flux, and the human connection to our rapidly changing planet. As a performer, programmer, and producer since the mid-1990s, he has developed innovative approaches to sound design and composition that reflect the fragility and resilience of natural systems. His climate-focused work often draws on his background as a climate advocate with the Sunrise Movement (2019–2022), where he led impactful campaigns during the Iowa Caucuses to advance climate policy and raise awareness of tipping points in environmental systems.

Jason’s music career spans nearly three decades and includes over 180 performances, 16 albums, 33 EPs and singles, and contributions to 45 compilation albums, alongside scoring several films. His compositions often use dynamic, self-balancing sonic systems to mirror natural feedback loops and explore the precarious balance between control and chaos.

He has presented his music at renowned venues such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Hirshhorn, MIT, Imperial College London, and the University of Europe in Berlin. In 2023, Jason earned a Master’s in Interactive Media Studies from NYU, with studies in New York, Berlin, and Shanghai. Currently, he teaches electronic music in the Collaborative Arts program at Tisch School of the Arts.

In addition to his creative work, Jason has received over $125,000 in arts and innovation grants and has contributed extensively to public arts and STEM programs in K-12 schools. His efforts include developing interactive media curricula that inspire students to connect sound and science, fostering a deeper understanding of our interconnected world.

Arshia Sobhan + Josh Rodenberg

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Reprising Elements is an audio-visual performance that unites the art of Persian calligraphy, the innovation of generative AI, and the creativity of sound art. This performance is a co-creative exploration among three distinct agents: a calligrapher, a real-time generative AI system, and a sound artist, all interacting through intricate audio-visual feedback loops. Reprising Elements is an artistic endeavour that celebrates the fusion of time-honoured techniques with modern advancements. It invites the audience to witness an interplay of art and technology, where the past and future converge, creating a space where tradition is both preserved and transformed.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Arshia Sobhan is a Vancouver-based interdisciplinary researcher and artist. Currently, he is a PhD student at Simon Fraser University's School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT). His research explores the intersection of non-Western art practices and generative AI, uncovering new creative possibilities.

Joshua Rodenberg is a sound artist and educator based in Doha, Qatar, where he serves as Head of Innovative Media Studios and Assistant Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts Qatar. His work spans various forms of sound art, from live performance and improvisation to formal recorded media, reflecting a dynamic approach to sonic expression and experimentation.

Alex Hawthorn

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Using the archive of voicemails collected as part of Theater Mitu’s 2021 piece, Utopian Hotline, I will perform a piece of experimental electronic music combining synthesizers with layers of recorded answers to the question “how do you imagine a more perfect future”.  People from around the world have called the hotline over the past three years to add their thoughts, hopes, and dreams to the growing archive of voices.  This performance will combine hardware synthesizers and effects with an Ableton set of voicemails from the archive.  The voices will be passed between software and hardware to enable live looping and sampling, glitching, and bending.  As this will be a semi-improvised performance developed for the festival, I am able to easily tailor its length to fit a given slot, though around 20-30 minutes would probably be ideal. And ideally, this performance could occur after the talk that I proposed, so that there can be more context in place for this piece.

By weaving these voices together, sampling them, looping them, layering them, we are able to subvert the dominant narrative pushed by late-stage capitalism about our collective future.  We are able to queer the narrative and push for a messier, multi-faceted future, bringing in both voices in agreement and voices in dissent at equal value.  The resultant bed of vocals sits in a meditative state over and through the ambient soundscape beneath it.  This combination of meaning and feeling creating a space for reflection, for queer joy, and for unbridled hope. This performance embraces the potential in each voicemail, using looping to create mantras of hope and underline themes of resilience, while also revealing that the sum of our hopes is so much greater than each person’s component part: that our true strength is in community and shared imagination.  That a more perfect future is one we dream of together.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Alex Hawthorn is an artist, composer, and technologist whose work flows between performance, installation, object-making, and sound-making. As a non-binary interdisciplinary artist, Hawthorn is most comfortable outside prescriptive boxes, allowing their research and intuition to shape the form and medium of their projects. They use their work as a lens through which to investigate the natural world, specifically focusing on time: how we experience it, how we have codified it, and how we exist within it.  Hawthorn’s recent research has focused on extremely long timescales: from the geological to the galactic.

Alex Hawthorn (they/them) received an MFA in Art and Technology & Composition and Experimental Sound Practices from the California Institute of the Arts and a BFA in theater from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.  They have performed at sound art festivals in the United States and internationally, most recently as part of the opening of the Floating Transmissions festival in Hamburg, Germany.  Hawthorn’s work in theatrical sound design has garnered them an Obie award, LA Ovation Awards, and has been heard across North and South America, Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Middle East.  Their work has been featured in Live Design Magazine, Stage Directions Magazine, and Performance Research Journal and they contributed to Imagining Transmedia, published by MIT Press.

As an artist with the Brooklyn-based experimental performance company, Theater Mitu, for over 15 years, they have co-authored works that explore death, religion, and futurity, including Mitu’s 2021 piece, Utopian Hotline, which is included in the Lunar Codex, an archive of contemporary art deposited on the Moon.

Hawthorn has been a guest lecturer at Yale School of Drama and Emerson College and is adjunct faculty at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and special faculty at the California Institute of the Arts.  They are currently based in Berlin, Germany as part of their Fulbright Fellowship for artistic research in Installation Art.

STARTING 7:00 PM - MAIN Stage

Parus (Anton Anishchanka + Hanna Silivonchyk)

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In the ‘Zara’ performance, the ethno-ambient project Parus creates immersive soundscapes at the intersection of traditional culture and contemporary sound art. It combines Belarusian pagan songs performed by Hanna Silivonchyk with a mixture of synthesizers and field recordings made by Anton Anishchanka in Belarusian national parks.

Parus invites audiences to reflect on how the songs of the past articulate a sense of place and belonging in today’s world, where disconnection and forced migration have become commonplace. Each track serves as an auditory exploration of both personal and collective experiences, addressing themes such as love, loss, and the passage of time. Highlights include ‘Soniejka,’ which celebrates the cycles of life, and ‘Zara,’ a mythic tale of celestial love, each emphasizing the deep connections between environment, emotion, and memory.

By reimagining traditional music within the contemporary contexts, Parus seeks to reclaim lost narratives and tell about the importance of cultural continuity in an era of rapid change. Moreover, it shows that through the lens of folk culture, we can envision alternative ways of connecting with our surroundings and with one another.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Parus is the project by electroacoustic music producer Anton Anishchanka in collaboration with folk singer/ethnographer Hanna Silivonchyk. While Anton curates Belarusian music label and creative space, works with field recordings and archive sound pieces, Hanna manages ethnographic association and performs in several folk groups. The artists met during an expedition in July 2023, when its members gathered around a campfire to sing folk songs together. Anton heard Hanna's voice and thought that he had never heard anything so deep. A few days later, back in the town, they started working on the album. It was the beginning of the Parus project.

Since then, Parus has released the debut album ‘Zara’ in August 2024, and has showcased the project in tours across Europe during presentations, live performances and festivals.

Santa Cecilia + Semionauta

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Transumanza is an immersive sound and body performance that investigates the tension within ancient rituals and contemporary experiences, activating a dialogue between heritage and innovation. The work tackles the themes of displacement, adaptation, and the power of story-telling through sound. By merging Mediterranean folklore with contemporary soundscapes, the act of migration, both physical and symbolic, becomes a ritual shared by performers and audience, drawing the latter into a dense, evocative, and oneiric landscape.

Rooted in on-site research carried out in Sicily, Transumanza draws from a rich heritage of oral traditions, pastoral rituals, and the sonic memory of rural life. Traditional instruments like hand-crafted tambourines, zampognas, and cowbells—symbols of transhumance and cultural resilience—are reimagined alongside experimental electronic sounds and monodic singing, creating a multilayered auditory experience steeped in minimalism and the improvisational ethos of drone music.

Archaic sounds, relentless drones, the chime of cowbells, and muted drum strikes, are fused with extended, guttural, and melismatic vocalizations. These chants, with their visceral power, respond to the vastness of open spaces, piercing the silence with their raw humanity. The sonic structure of the performance, through free tempo and improvisation, evolves organically, creating rarefied spaces for meditation and collective trance.

Light also plays a critical role, sculpting the space and oscillating between the sacred and the profane, the mystical and the everyday. Each iteration of Transumanza is site-specific, transforming the location into an integral part of the work. Architecture becomes a natural amplifier for sound, a vibrating body interacting with the real-time experience. The audience’s presence is essential—they are not mere spectators but participants in a collective migration, a shared ritual where sound becomes a medium for memory and resistance.

The term "transumanza," referring to the seasonal migration of shepherds and livestock, here becomes a metaphor for traversing temporal and cultural dimensions. The relationship with Mount Etna, with its primal energy and constant metamorphosis, profoundly influenced the work, symbolizing resilience and coexistence with uncertainty. This connection to nature is not just aesthetic but deeply symbolic, embodying humanity’s timeless struggle with the elements.

The urge driving the work is to push common understanding of tradition and its potential to foster ritualistic and collective, transcendental states, whilst embracing sound as a medium for spiritual catharsis and cultural resistance. Sounds are reactivated, awakening dormant memories and tracing invisible routes of migration, both human and cultural, along with the ghosts of cultures and traditions trapped in liminal spaces. Transumanza is an evolving, open-ended project which reclaims and reimagines the spaces we inhabit, tackling ancestral memories while forging new connections between sound, space, and the body.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Santa Cecilia and Semionauta’s work intricately merges the organic with the technological, bending tradition and experimentation in immersive, site-specific performances, installations, and real-time compositions. In their practice, music, light design, body, space and technology come together to create sensory landscapes where common frameworks are re-synthesised. Their work is a continuous research process, exploring cultural memory and collective transcendence through cross-disciplinary contamination and layered dramaturgy where heterogeneous codes interpenetrate, constructing new narratives.

Santa Cecilia, performer, vocalist, and director, blends cultural references and diverse artistic languages. Through physical exhaustion and electronic amplification of bodies in altered states, she provokes reflections on themes such as human action, power dynamics, and the secret codes that bind them. Over the last decade, Semionauta has explored multiple approaches to sound composition, from UK Bass Music to abstract experiments in Sound Design and Noise Music. His artistic practice is multifaceted, having developed over time a research in the field of self-built technology and musical instruments.

Their work has been exhibited in relevant institutions and underground settings such as Fabbrica Europa Festival, Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Associazione Culturale Dello Scompiglio, Museo Ibleo delle Arti e Tradizioni Popolari, Time Zone Festival, Salon De Ijzerstaven and The Bath House. Their debut record ”Tell Me To Sin” was released by Strange Therapy in 2024, and acclaimed by international magazines such as The Quietus and T-Mag.

Amir B. Ash + Safeya Alblooshi

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Periphera is a sonic evolution that mirrors a shifting atmosphere, reflecting both physical and emotional transitions. It represents the sensation and tensions of moving from expansive, open spaces into confinement. The set begins with spacious, ambient soundscapes, evoking the feeling of open air with wide, atmospheric synths and rhythmic pulses, before progressing into dense, distorted, and claustrophobic textures accompanied with real-time visuals evolving dynamically with the sound. Beginning with fluid, open landscapes, they mimic the expansive, atmospheric tones, using organic forms and gentle, sweeping motions. As the music intensifies and grows more distorted, the visuals shift in response, fragmenting into chaotic, jagged patterns.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Amir B. Ash is a new media artist and art director specializing in real-time generative visuals and interactive installations. With over 14 years of international experience, his work explores the dynamic interplay of light, interactivity, and real-time visuals, spanning live performances, light sculptures, and data-driven installations. His journey began with a foundation in Graphic Design and Film, evolving from traditional painting through animation and film before embracing the limitless possibilities of new media art. Driven by a deep passion for music, Amir has extensively experimented with live visuals and stage design, collaborating with renowned musicians and composers worldwide, including creating content for artists such as Lionel Richie, Bastille, and America's Got Talent. His work has been showcased at prestigious festivals including MUTEK (Montreal, JP, AE), TCS Berlin, Mawaheb (St. Petersburg), Art Dubai, and Festival X (UAE). Beyond his artistic practice, In late 2009 Amir co-founded CODON Interactive Media, a design and technology collective specializing in real-time simulations, interactive systems, and large-scale video mapping.

He is also a co-founder of SET Experimental Art Events, fostering cross-cultural collaborations with platforms like CTM Berlin, MUTEK Barcelona, and Sled Island Festival. Currently, he serves as co-director of MUTEK AE in Dubai and as Partner and New Media Artist at OVVO studio in Paris.

Safeya Alblooshi is a sound artist who experiments with found sound via participatory performance and installation. Her work extends to being presented and performed at the Expo 2020 Dubai, Louvre Abu Dhabi, Alserkal Avenue, IRCAM Forum, London Design Biennale, Festival X, Sharjah Art Foundation, and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. She was part of the second cohort of Numoo in 2023 at the NYUAD Arts Center, where she recently curated the 4th edition of ElectroFest, and the founder and organizer of Resound UAE supported by the National Grant Program for Culture & Creativity. Safeya just completed her 3 year tenure as a Research Fellow with the Music and Sound Cultures research group at NYU Abu Dhabi.

Makoto Inoue

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ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Berlin-based new media artist, techno producer, and award-winning theatre and film director from Tokyo, Japan. Raised in a Buddhist temple, he was influenced by both Buddhist philosophy and the vibrant music scene of Toyko. After obtaining his monk's license, he transitioned to acting and stage director, gaining recognition across Europe for his non-verbal stage productions.

In 2018, Inoue moved to Berlin, where he began releasing techno music and quickly established himself in the European electronic music scene. His 2019 Wall EP reached the top 10 on Beatport. From 2023 He has since expanded his work to include audiovisual performances, installations, and exhibitions. His art often explores the parallels between fractal structures and the Buddhist concept of reincarnation.

In March and April 2024 he got the big success from the first solo exhibition in UrbanSpree Berlin. In October 2024 he joined in BLINK Cincinnati, one of the biggest light event in USA as Projection Mapping artist and in November joined in Blend BCN, DA Z festival and Mutek Tokyo.

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