Surround sound of eighteen speakers will resound on Wednesday 28th of November at the opening of the festival of contemporary music NEXT in A4 – space for contemporary culture in Bratislava. Special sound equipment was delivered for the occasion from Amsterdam. The opening of NEXT festival in A4 will also host three world premieres of electronic projects by musicians from Slovakia, Korea and Mexico.
At the opening of the 19th edition of the festival NEXT on Wednesday 28th of November the viewers will find themselves enveloped by eighteen speakers of the sound system “The Pentacle”. They were brought from Amsterdam based organization STEIM – Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music – that had for decades supported artists at developing electronic music instruments and multimedia installations. Unconventional opening evening will introduce four concerts with international line-up.
The new works ordered by the A4 and the Netherlands’ festival Sonic Acts came to life as a part of the project of international artistic cooperation Re-Imagine Europe supported by European Union in the program Creative Europe of which A4 is a part of with nine different partnering organizations and festivals for years now. The project is focused on the support of new experimental creation that uses new technologies in arts inventively and critically reflects on the contemporary social and technological development as well as the difficult global themes such as migration or climate change.
Berlin based Slovak musician and DJ Nina Pixel tells stories that go beyond ritual rhythms looped in infinite soundscapes and dirty dark techno. Her Bias Loop is a new sound poem which the author described as a choreography for “dance on the edge of paradox” attempting to capture the fleeting feeling of diving into the invisible field of reality that we are trying to understand. “Escaping the loop is like unplugging the cable of the matrix and seeing the different layers from above, even though the loop never stops”.
Another Berlin resident, Mexican electro musician Hugo Esquinca creates intensive music in which he applies accidental processes. During his performance that will take place in complete darkness he works with ways to spread music in space through vibrations to resonate the concert hall in A4.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR2LtIOs_4
The Korean composer Ji Youn Kang often gets inspired by local rituals and shamanistic traditions. Nowadays she teaches at the Institute of Sonology in Haag and leads lectures composition with spacial sound. In her new live set she promises exotic mix of using specifically crafted bamboo pieces, small Korean gong and analogue electronics connected with the body of the performer. All these “instruments” create individual rhythmical voices with own character that gradually fills in the space with their joint “vocal and breath”.
Besides the premieres of the opening night the potential of the unconventional sound system will be also filled by Fedde ten Berge from the Netherlands, who is also one of the creators of the system. He devotes his work to composition and creation of interactive sound installations and objects.
https://soundcloud.com/ftenberge/pentacle-153-surround-live-performance-steim-connector-ix
New pieces that will resonate and premiere at the NEXT festival in Bratislava will also be presented in February at the Sonic Acts Festival in Amsterdam. Festival NEXT takes place in A4 and other venues from 28.11. till 1.12. Detailed program full of concerts, audiovisual performances, lectures and workshops can be found on the website www.nextfestival.sk.
Supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council