Kevin Space is keen to host and support the Sonic Acengy Listening Session VI, curated by Struma+Iodine. Under the banner of Sonic Agency, Struma+Iodine enforces a sonic activism of opposition and resistance. The curatorial team states: "The artists involved are advocating for social and political transformation. Their sounds lend themselves to global emancipatory struggles, and fights for freedom and equality. The featured sounds aren’t complicit in the silence that surrounds us. They are furious, desperate, crying, paralysed, compassionate and rebellious like us. There is a message in sound that cannot be negated."
You can read the full curatorial statement below or here. The admission for the evening will be on a donation basis, and the revenue from the entries and the bar will be made available for donation.
PROGRAMME
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Listening to the contributions of Neo Geodesia, Atheer Soot, Ariel William Orah, Hui Ye, and Morast
Open discussion moderated by Samo Zeichen and Shilla Strelka
9:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Live DJ-set by DJ Shinsekai
* All contributions released via Struma+Iodine's Website & Soundcloud
NEO GEODESIA – Elite Death Mask
Neo Geodesia is Saphy Vong, a Cambodian audio visual artist born in a Thai refugee camp after his parents fled the Khmer Rouge, and grew up in the suburbs of Nancy, northeastern France. His unique musical outlook fuses the experimental and DIY ethos that can be found in both the local Nancy Hardcore and Grindcore scene that embraced him as a teenager, and the sounds broadcasted from Cambodia into his home through his parents pirated tapes and videos of Khmer pop, karaoke, monk chants and movies.
ATHEER SOOT – Cluster Ornaments
Atheer Soot (أثير صوت) is a Helsinki-based visual artist and theatre-maker. Moe Mustafa was born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents, moved to Amman-Jordan after the Gulf War. Alongside art and theatre, he has been honing his skills in sound design and composing for the past several years. Atheer Soot, an Arabic phrase, means a sound that resonates in the void. The project focuses on creating an interconnection between memories and sound, where Moe goes back in time to explore the past, his childhood. And translate these memories into an atmospheric and drone sound. Moe sees the process of sculpting the sound as a therapy, where you open up to your devices and instruments and dive deep into the subconscious and let the mind and intuition wander around.
HUI YE – The Last Shot
Hui Ye (born in Guangzhou, CN) is an artist and composer based in Vienna. She works with different media including experimental documentary, video and audio installation, and often focuses on the socio-political aspects of sound and music culture with the intention of exploring the diverse correlations between sonic culture and contemporary societies. In her live sound performances, Ye uses computer-generated noises as well as TTS (Text-to-Speech) speeches which are produced by programming errors and AI-based voice synthesis. These will be triggered erratically and subsequently assigned to an multi-channel audio system in order to form an impulsive, spatial soundscape. Hui Ye is laureate of the Kunsthalle Wien Prize 2018 and her works have been recently presented at Kunsthalle Wien (AT), Museo Palacio Dionisi (ARG), WRO Media Art Biennial (PL) and Times Museum (CN).
ARIEL WILLIAM ORAH – Jika-Lau
Ariel William Orah is a musician,sound artist, and cultural practitioner. He was born in Bandung, Indonesia and has been living and working in Berlin, Germany for the past 13 years. As part of his artistic practice, Orah works with various sound constellations,media,techniques and formats. After regularly composing music for theater, dance, and film, Orah also began to conceptualize, compose and direct his own experimental theater music pieces. Orah has released numerous solo albums and performed under the pseudonym ravenative and is actively involved in various sound constellations such as grau&, soydivision ensemble, böseblick ensemble, RANGKĄ, and OKNUM.In addition to his work as an artist, he is also active as a curator and artistic researcher, especially in the field of performing art and sound.
MORAST – See No Evil
Morast is the solo-project of Viennese artist and musician Moritz Morast, that explores the melting continuum of noise, industrial rhythms and free musical forms. Coming from a background as a designer of musical electronics and his activities in the viennese free-improv-scene, as a member of the free-jazz-noise-bands FS Massaker and Mozo Mozo, Morast combines approaches from sequenced electronics with the immediacy and unpredictability of hardcore improvisation. His debut record “Drawing Figures into Negative Space” was released by Czech imprint Baba Vanga in 2020 and captures Morast vision of raw sounds melting into fluid motion. It got critical acclaimed by the Quietus for: “pushing away techno tropes and ushering in as many spontaneous and thought- provoking inquiries into rhythm and colour as possible.”
DJ SHINSEKAI dj-set
DJ Shinsekai doesn’t think in genres or bpm. Her signature sound serves as a clear testament to provoke a visceral and transformative response of achieving sensory overstimulation. Her DJ Sets constitute an exploration of hard drum, jungle, breakcore, hardcore, gabba, and other sonic vortexes generating a thrilling intensity of sound, catapulting participants into a matrix of hard-hitting club-adjacent rhythms and fast-changing musical juxtapositions.
CURATORIAL STATEMENT by Struma+Iodine
…being together, in community
Spurred on by the acuteness of current global events, we are raising our voices in solidarity with the oppressed, the tortured, the silenced, and the unheard. While humanity is at stake, and our values are on trial, in moments of despair, rage and endless grief, acts of solidarity are needed more than ever. The events that shake Palestine and Israel are resulting in an ever-tighter spiral of violence and desperation. They are a horrific wake-up call that brutally brings the precarious situation on our planet to the fore. The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, and Israel’s collective punishment of Palestinian civilians are intolerable. On top of that, the military actions threaten the lives of the remaining hostages in the Gaza-Strip, and even more innocent people in Gaza.
Looking at armed conflicts and acts of systematic oppression around the globe, taking into account what’s happening in Russia/Ukraine, D.R. Congo, Myanmar, Sudan and Haiti, China/Taiwan/Hong Kong, Iran, Turkey, and so many more places, it becomes clear that fascist, violent regimes, and repressive, reactionary, imperialist, authoritarian forces are on the rise. In Austria and elsewhere, extreme right-wing movements are rapidly gaining power, while racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, and nationalism become even more overt.
As we have always dealt with sound as a political category, our activism is based on listening and focuses on the revolutionary potential that is inherent in the sonic. Under the banner of Sonic Agency we want to enforce a sonic activism of opposition and resistance. The artists involved are advocating for social and political transformation. Their sounds lend themselves to global emancipatory struggles, and fights for freedom and equality. The featured sounds aren’t complicit in the silence that surrounds us. They are furious, desperate, crying, paralysed, compassionate and rebellious like us. There is a message in sound that cannot be negated.
Listening is not neutral.
Listening shapes the reality we live in.
Listening is shaped by ethics and politics and leads back to it.
Listening is directly linked to memory and identity.
Listening is as important as speaking.
Listing is an active act.
We want to establish new ways to think and act collectively via sonic means. Sound’s ability to touch the listener, to involve them via emotional and physical affection, turns the sonic into a partner in the fight for a more just world. Sonic Agency is led by urgency and the pressing need for articulation. It is an effort to enable and reinforce transformative processes in our societies, while critically questioning hegemonic systems. Sonic Agency opens up space for a caring community of equals. Sonic Agency is grounded in the sonic’s ability to introduce the feeling of connectivity, and the possibility of community – a community yet to come.
We stand in global solidarity with the part of our societies that has no part.
We are raising our voice for those who are silenced, unheard and rendered invisible – dehumanised.
We are advocating for peace, justice, equality, and freedom for every human being on this earth.
We protest collectively against oppressive systems and systems based on exploitation, authoritarian regimes, fascist ideologies, and reactionary governments everywhere on this planet.
Sonic Agency privileges the acoustic to create a platform for further exchange. We endorse the emergence of new ideas, new alliances and the crystallisation of direct action. The politics we are supporting are based on dialogue and mutual respect. Dialogue is enabled when speaking and listening are valued equally. By enabling activist listening, entering dialogue and taking seriously the plurality of voices involved, we want to run counter to the continuous monologues of dominant narratives, and acknowledge and amplify the multifaceted reality we are living in. Sonic Agency is promoting the sounds of resistance, compassion, empathy, care, grief, and hope.
