Conflux festival offers a variety of innovative experimental music, live audio visual performances and performance art. Experience a cross-section of internationally renowned artists hailing from the front lines of digital culture and adventurous music.
The program invites the audience to enter abstract and digital worlds through numerous screen setups and analogue light spaces. By presenting genre-defying performances the artists within this program will put our senses to the test and explore the relation between live audio visual composition and the festival theme: 'Exit Human'.
Fri 3 | 23:00 at WORM
In their latest collaboration Klara Lewis and Nik Colk Void explore the outer edges of the space occupied within their respective solo projects. Guitars, synths, euro rack modular systems, voice, sampling and outboard processing are presented uncompromisingly when Lewis and Void's single approaches unite in a playful collage of sonic U-turns intertwining Pop and Noise bringing together their versions of tender techno and brutal ambient. Presenting their latest collaboration live, Lewis and Void are accompanied by the live visuals of Pedro Maia, following his 16mm analogue film manipulations as a point of departure, pushing the possibilities of materiality and form of the analogue and live medium.
Klara Lewis is a critically acclaimed sound sculptor from Stockholm who has been presenting her audio-visual shows in clubs and art galleries around the world and has been selected as a highlight of such festivals as Atonal, Mutek, Sonar and Semibreve. Lewis builds her work from heavily manipulated samples and field recordings creating a unique combination of the organic and digital. She has released numerous well received albums via Editions Mego - Ett, Too, Ingrid, Ingrid Live at Fykinggen and Live in Montreal 2018. In tandem with her solo works, she has active collaborative projects with Simon Fisher Turner and Peder Mannerfelt.
Nik Colk Void is an electronic musician and artist with a vast reputation in experimental shapeshifting and collaboration. UK based, Void has produced eight acclaimed studio albums with her musical groups Factory Floor (Gabriel Gurnsey & Dominic Butler), Carter Tutti Void (Chris Carter & Cosey Fanni Tutti) and NPVR with the late Peter Rehberg, releasing via Mute, DFA, Blast First, Editions Mego and Industrial. Her debut solo album Bucked Up Space will be released this year (April 8th) via Editions Mego. Key live performances, solo and with collaborators include: CTM - Unsound - Incubate - Pitchfork (NY, Paris & Chicago) - Moog - Coachella - GRM Paris - Club2Club - LEV - Semibreve, Rewire. Art residencies at the Barbican - London ICA - Zabludowicz Gallery - Lisson Gallery - Art Basel - Fiorucci Trust (Stromboli Island) - Galleriapiû Gallery (Bologna) - Semibreve (Portugal).
Pedro Maia is a Portuguese filmmaker (Berlin Based) working predominantly with 16mm and 8mm film, pushing the boundaries and aesthetic of analog cinema by manipulating the raw materials and challenging the traditional process. His work has been presented and exhibited at renowned film festivals, Institutions and galleries, including The Barbican Center, Serralves Museum, Tokyo Contemporary Art Museum, Armenian Centre for Contemporary Experimental Art, amongst others. Maia has contributed to projects to Patti Smith, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lucrecia Dalt as well as collaborative projects with musicians such as Vessel, Shackleton, Visionist, Shapednoise, Jacaszek, Lee Ranaldo, Fennesz, presenting live at festivals such as Sonar, Unsound, Berlin Atonal and Mutek.
Sat 4 | 21:15 at Arminius
In 2020 Helm released the 'Saturnalia' digital album release on ALTER, and created a sold-out performance at the ICA in London in collaboration with visual artist Tatsuya Fujimoto. During Conflux festival Helm will present new material from his ‘Axis’ album which was recently released on Dais Records. The visuals shown during this performance will be by Tatsuya Fujimoto.
Helm is Luke Younger, a sound artist and experimental musician based in London, working with a vast array of revolving instrumentation and abstract sound sources. Younger’s compositions build dense aural landscapes that incorporate elements of musique concrete and industrial music alongside hallucinatory drones and various acousmatic phenomena.
Helm has released five studio albums and three EPs of textural experimental music, exploring a relationship between acoustic, electronic and real-world sounds. His first album ‘To An End’ was released on his own label ALTER in 2010.
Influenced by 20th century electroacoustic music and Britain’s esoteric post-industrial underground, the record contained two long-form pieces that mixed haunting, respiratory-themed tape music with warm meditative ambience. ‘Cryptography’ followed a year later via Graham Lambkin’s KYE as a five-part suite of glacial drone, reconfigured gamelan clusters and searing metallic resonance. Warmly received by the press and underground community alike, it helped to establish him as a serious new voice in experimental music.
Younger is a resident DJ on NTS Radio where he has presented his monthly show ‘After Dark’ since 2016. He has also engaged in collaborations with visual artists. A performance at the opening of the Tate Modern’s Tanks space saw Helm perform with video artist and film maker Charles Atlas’ during his ‘Charles Atlas and Collaborators’ series.
Sun 5 | 21:15 at WORM
Flora Yin Wong is a producer, writer and DJ from London. Her debut album was released on Modern Love in 2020 as a 2x gatefold vinyl, and previously released on labels like PAN, Circadian Rhythms, Archaic Vaults, and Danse Noire. She has performed live at Atonal Berlin, Unsound Festival, Semibreve, MUTEK in Peru, Buenos Aires, and Montreal, New York’s ISSUE Project Room, Volksbühne Theatre, The V&A Museum, Somerset House, and Cafe OTO in London, as well as DJed at Boiler Room, Berghain, Razzmatazz, WWWB Tokyo, Cakeshop Seoul, Garage Noord Amsterdam, Macau Milan, Mutabor Moscow, and Hyperreality and 3HD Festival etc. Her first book ‘Liturgy', exploring abstract fiction and non-fiction across themes of religion, mythology, paradoxes and delusions was released in 2021 on PAN x Primary Information. She regularly guests on radio shows for NTS Live, Noods, LYL, Know Wave, Balamii, BCR, Red Light and Refuge etc, and has been commissioned on mixes for Resident Advisor, FACT Mag, and The Wire.
Thu 2 | 21:15 at V11
Mark Fell and Will Guthrie will present one of the opening performances on Thursday the 2nd of June at V11. The duo delivered two innovative releases, 'Infoldings' and 'Diffractions', for Koshiro Hino's (Goat, YPY) newly minted Nakid label with extended, astonishing rhythmic inventions that mess with meter and space through interlocking, polyrhythmic and polymetric variations inspired by Gamelan and South Indian Carnatic musics. This man versus machine performance aligns perfectly with the festival theme 'Exit Human'.
Mark Fell is a multidisciplinary artist based in Sheffield (UK). After studying experimental film and video art at Sheffield City Polytechnic he reverted to earlier interests in computational technology, music and synthetic sound. In 1998 he began a series of critically acclaimed record releases on labels including Mille Plateaux, Line, Editions Mego and Raster Noton. Fell is widely known for exploring the relationships between popular music styles, such as electronica and club musics, and typically academic approaches to computer-based composition with a particular emphasis on algorithmic and mathematical systems. Since his early electronic music pieces Fell’s practice has expanded to include moving image works, sound and light installation, choregoraphy, critical texts, curatorial projects and educational activites. He has worked with a number of artists including Yasunao Tone, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Okkyung Lee, Luke Fowler, Peter Gidal, John Chowning, Ernest Edmonds, Peter Rehberg, Oren Ambarchi and Carl Michael Von Hausswolff.
Will Guthrie is an Australian drummer / percussionist living in France. He works in many different settings of music: live performance, improvisation and studio composition using various combinations of drums, percussion, objects, junk, amplification and electronics.
His music has been released on labels such as Gaffer Records, Erstwhile, Clean Feed, 23five, Editions Mego, Ipecac and his own label Antboy Music. Regular collaborators past and present include Oren Ambarchi, James Rushford, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Mark Fell, Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Pateras, Chulki Hong, Jérôme Noetinger, Keith Rowe, David Maranha, Ava Mendoza, the film maker Hangjun Lee and choreographer/dancer Mette Ingvartsen.
Sat 4 | 22:45 at Arminius
CACHE/SPIRIT Live A/V with both its frenetic and contemplative character, combines Animistic Beliefs other-worldly sounds with a unique visual language of techno-spirituality. It is a warm invitation into the minds of three distinct artists that passionately try to make sense of the visible and invisible world.
CACHE/SPIRIT is the alien love child of Animistic Beliefs and media artist Jeisson Drenth. Originally conceived in an evening of collaborative writing exercises in Rotterdam, this project now lives as a digital collection of ideas and audio visual files that manifest in different configurations and (live) presentations.
Animistic Beliefs are inventing a new, creole musical language. The Rotterdam-based duo of Linh Luu and Marvin Lalihatu repurpose forms from techno and IDM to create exhilarating hybrids, applying a fresh perspective that is both deeply personal and political.
‘Animism’ is the idea found in indigenous belief systems that all objects, creatures and places possess a spiritual essence. Pre-colonial thought, traditions and music connected with Marvin’s Moluccan and Linh’s Vietnamese-Chinese heritage are key inspirations behind the Animistic Beliefs project, and tools through with the duo explore their experience as people of colour living in the Netherlands, a historical centre of colonial power. Electro, gabber and punk formed the initial backbone of their sound, but as the duo rediscovered traces of culture that conventional history had erased, South-East Asian tonality, tribal rhythms, even texts and poetry have become central components.
Parallel but distinct from their releases, the duo have honed a fast-paced and ritualistic live sound. As performers Animistic Beliefs have been able to transcend the club circuit, and are as comfortable sharing the bill with techno mainstays like DJ Stingray and Helena Hauff, as they are alongside artists like Lotic, Rian Treanor and Jlin. Increasingly, sights are set beyond music, as Linh and Marvin broaden their output to alternative fashion and new media art.
Consultant, Media and performance artist Jeisson Drenth works on a wide range of different projects that -all in their own unique way- explore the possibilities and limitations of technologies for people to shape their past, present and future.
In the years after finishing his studies at the Willem de Kooning Academy (Rotterdam, 2015) he worked internationally as a live video artist and designer for M_HKA (Museum of Modern Art, Antwerp), Together Festival (Boston), Vision (Berlin, Ghent), Amsterdam Dance Event and Reaktor (Amsterdam), Draaimolen (Tilburg), Museum TENT (Rotterdam) Atlas Electronic (Rotterdam, Marrakesh), NEXUS Europe Summit (Rotterdam), Untitled (Toronto) and La Bacchanale (Montréal).
Fri 3 | 22:15 at WORM
During Conflux festival Lichun Tseng and Robert Kroos will present the immersive AV performance ‘Ebb and Flow’ using 16mm film projectors and analogue generated waveforms.
‘Ebb and Flow’ is inspired by the 'I-Ching', the book of change, Chapter 42 – Yi (Increase). Yi is a message about expansion and fullness. It is simply another cycle of life as it flowers, decays, and achieves rebirth. Ebb and flow, darkness and light, life and death… ‘What is’ springs from ‘what is not'. Lichun and Robert use 16mm film projectors and analogue generated waveforms to create an immersive, trance-inducing journey. Through layering, constructing, and deconstructing visual and auditory textures they strive for a sense transcending experience where the spectator is no longer consciously watching nor listening. Just being.
Lichun Tseng is a Taiwanese artist based in the Netherlands. In her works, she is interested in searching for the experience of the vital dimensions of life, absorbing and partaking in it, grasping its wholeness; in which exploration and reflective contemplation are profound mental drives. She approaches her research and practice mainly with 16mm film, installation, and performance in the last years. She is a member of Filmwerkplaats Rotterdam.
Robert Kroos is a musician, sound designer, and field recordist based in Rotterdam. He explores music and sound in all its manifestations and prefers to use his skills to support film, animations, and installations. His interests focus on sine-waves, the proximity of sound, binaural recording, and brainwaves.
Sat 4 | 22:00 at Arminius
On Saturday the 4th of June the longstanding experimental music project Dadub will work together with visual artist FAX to present their collaborative 'Hypersynchronous' AV performance at the Conflux festival. Dadub's newest live AV performance is purposefully a corporeal experience. Dadub developed a technical ecosystem made of analog gear and an outboard that they use as an instrument (faithful to the duo's Dub roots). Through them, Dadub engineers feedback chains between pedals, bass guitar, frame drums and drum machines, creating a mass of sound that they make perceivable as a 3D object deploying particular spatialization and acoustic techniques. Aesthetically speaking, the live set traverses Bass Music, Abstract Dub, Noise, Downtempo, Metal.
Andrea Familari, also known as FAX, is a multimedia artist who has collaborated with Dadub for a long time. For their new live set he uses real-time data analysis of their sound machines to generate distorted landscapes, surreal forms and abstract scenery with his original signature, bringing the audience deeper into the vibrational imaginary of Dadub's sound world.
Dadub is a project formed by Daniele Antezza and Marco Donnarumma, dedicated to combine Sound Design and Audio Engineering Experimentation with the aesthetic and musical heritage of Bass Music, Voodoo, Ancient Alien Rituals and Chaos Magick. Daniele and Marco have recently been evolving the signature Dadub sound into a new auditive universe of ‘Post Apocalyptic Dub’.
Sun 5 | 22:15 at WORM
The festival will be concluded with 'Corpus Nil', a raw, physical performance by media and performance artist Marco Donnarumma. The solo performance illustrates the force field between humans and machines, aligning with the festival theme 'Exit Human'.
Human bodies and identities are continuously categorized, online and offline, by artificially intelligent algorithms and machines. But what if, by contrast, artificial intelligence could be used to contaminate human bodily experience? How does a body defiled by algorithms look and move like?
'Corpus Nil' is a performance for a human body and an artificially intelligent machine. A naked body, partly human and partly machine, lies on stage. It is an amorphous cluster of skin, muscles, hardware and software. Biophysical sensors attached to the performer’s limbs capture bodily electrical voltages and corporeal sounds and feed them to the machine.
Marco Donnarumma (DE) is an artist, performer, stage director and scholar weaving together contemporary performance, new media art and interactive computer music since the early 2000s. He manipulates bodies, creates choreographies, engineers machines and composes sounds, thus combining disciplines, media and emerging technologies into an oneiric, sensual, uncompromising aesthetics. He is internationally acknowledged for solo performances, stage productions and installations that defy genres, and where the body becomes a morphing language to speak critically of ritual, power and technology.
Donnarumma’s latest cycle of dancetheater productions, performances and robotic installations is entitled 7 Configurations. It dissects the conflicts between AI and body politics through human-machine choreographic methods aimed at experimenting with the corporeal and psychological relationships of four human performers and six AI prostheses. In 2019, he co-founded the performance artists group Fronte Vacuo with Margherita Pevere and Andrea Familari. Their series Humane Methods consists of hybrid live art events as social experiments, where human performers and audiences, non-human organisms and AI-driven machines expose the violence of today’s algorithmic societies.
Touring consistently for the past fifteen years across major and independent theaters, concert halls, festivals and museums worldwide, most recently Donnarumma’s work has been shown, among others, at Volkstheater Wien (AT), Münchner Kammerspiele (DE), Romaeuropa Festival (IT), Ming Contemporary Art Museum (CN), Chronus Art Center (CN), Ars Electronica (AT), Donaufestival (AT), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (DE), NRW Forum (DE), Nemo Bienniale/HeK Basel (FR), LABoral (ES), musikprotokoll (AT), CTM Festival (DE), tanzhaus nrw (DE), Laznia Center for Contemporary Art (PL), and Kontejner (HR).
His repertoire received numerous acknowledgements, most recently: Autonom Grant 2020-21 by Fonds Darstellende Künste and Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe for ∑XHALE; Digital Award at Romaeuropa Festival 2018 for Eingeweide; two awards at the Bains Numériques Biennial 2018, as well as the Award of Distinction (2nd prize) in Sound Art at Prix Ars Electronica 2017 for Corpus Nil; Artist of the Science Year 2018 by the German Federal Ministry of Research and Education for Amygdala.
Donnarumma holds a Ph.D. in performing arts, computing and body theory from Goldsmiths, University of London. In 2020-21 he was a Research Fellow at the Akademie für Theater und Digitalität, Dortmund. Previously, in 2016-18, he was Research Fellow at Berlin University of the Arts in partnership with the Neurorobotics Research Laboratory. He was funded by European Commission, Goethe-Institut, Berlin Senate, Fonds Darstellende Künste, Rockefeller Foundation, British Council and New Media Scotland. His writings are published by MIT Press, Oxford University Press, Routledge, ACM and Springer.
Fri 3 | 21:15 at WORM
The world, as it is shown to us by Google Earth, is intriguing… The shapes’ imperfections, the textures’ distortions, the suspended time, are all attributes of a new kind of universe, a hybrid one, looking more like an algorithmic fiction than our tangible reality. 'Earthsatz' tries to amplify the cold and oppressive poetry generated by this « pocket world », where life doesn’t exist and particles are replaced by pixels. Maybe we should try to contemplate it for what it really is: a fictional universe that mimics the one we are living in, developing its own autonomy. With photogrammetry, we scanned some parts of the Google-generated world. We built 3D landscapes from them and tried to highlight their surreal characteristics, playing with mysterious lights, impossible distortions and moving points of view. 'Earthsatz' is a ride in this corrupted world, celebrating all its fictional, artificial and irrational aspects.
Dylan Cote and Pierre Lafanechère are two media artists and designers based in Paris, mainly working on moving images, sound and installations. They pursue researches by experiencing and diverting various techniques from their initial use, using the aesthetic potential of digital media. Through 3D, code, sound, object or light, they strive to set up poetical and critical spaces. It creates fragments of fiction which give us a view on current issues of techno-social changes.
Thu 2 | 22:00 at Plein 1940
Issız, is an experiential landscape generated in real-time. Comprised of a cyberpunk looking sculpture in combination with sound and a stroboscopic choreography. A new site-specific installation made especially for the Conflux Festival.
The work is composed from custom lasers, strobes, LEDs and smoke machines as well as a long tube that functions as the spine of the work. An assembly of many wires runs throughout the installation. Issız is a machinery of chaos designed to interplay with the perception of the space itself.
This alien machinery increasingly starts bombarding with stimuli. Through a complex stroboscopic choreography a vivid dialogue is established between the observer and the work. Issız is not merely intense chaos but a merging of opposites, both fear and calmness.
The work tries to offer a multi-layered narrative, showing that every emotion can travel through any given space.
The audience has to break through all the stimuli in order to collectively arrive at a brief moment of calmness right at the center of the mayhem generated, to offer space for contemplation.
For the sound composition Nikki Hock is working with Torus.
This project is part of the Conflux commissioning program and made possible with the generous support of Mondriaan Fund, Creative Industries Fund NL and the City of Rotterdam.
Nikki Hock is a multidisciplinary artist who sculpts spaces and environments around us to create experiential landscapes. He does not merely focus on representation, but rather engages with the present moment to create abstractions of memories and lived experiences. His work moves between reality and the metaphysical —in search of other worlds and new dimensions.
Hock is drawn to performance as a live medium, researching and developing spatial installations in which the audience becomes part of the work—creating a collective experience that simultaneously touches each spectator individually. His ensembles of light, colour, shape, sculpture, and space create an immersive journey, with the totality of elements forming the complete experience. Engaging in a journey with the spectator through the use of different mediums, Hock searches for aesthetics that cultivate direct and uninterrupted communication so that the audience can fully surrender to the work and its environment. Through a layered process, in which he appeals to each sense individually, he explores the interplay between the (in)tangible and its perception.
Nikki Hock currently lives and works in Amsterdam. He graduated in 2014 as a theatre maker and performer from the Mime department at the Amsterdam Theatre School. Over the course of his practice his work has transitioned from engaging with the body as a tool for performance to engaging with light, objects, and space as performers within an environment. He has shown his work at the SXSW Festival, Athens Digital Art Festival, Scopitone Festival, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, W139, Stadsschouwburg and the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ in Amsterdam, Nest, TodaysArt festival and Rewire Festival in Den Haag, and AQB Art Center in Budapest.
Sat 4 | 20:45 at Arminius
For the Saturday night concert BJ Nilsen will present a new sound piece for the monumental Arminius Church.
BJ Nilsen (SE/NL) is a composer and sound artist based in Amsterdam. His work primarily focuses on the sounds of nature and how they affect humans. Recent work has explored the urban acoustic realm and industrial geography and mining in the Arctic region of Norway and Russia. His original scores and soundtracks have featured in theatre, dance performances and film.
Thu 2 | 22:30 at Plein 1940
Acidic Male, AKA the performer name of Puck Schot, will be composing a sound piece for the opening of Conflux Festival 2022 (and will perform it accompanying Joanie Lemercier's 'View From the Moon'). For this year’s theme ‘Exit Human’ she will be searching for an abstract link between sonic representations of a fictive earthquake and self-abjection. On what grounds do these two elements meet? Between variations in motion, nausea, and sensorial stress: this embodiment is attempted to be reached by her through recordings of vibrations and vibrating objects, field recordings, synthesis, fragmented whispers and power vocals.
Sat 4 | 20:30 at Arminius
Panspermia is the scientific hypothesis that human DNA evolved from alien DNA delivered to earth through an asteroid crash billions of years ago. Especially in our space travel and AI age we tackle the urgency to resurface the conversation around panspermia and humanity's more than ever hunger to question our origins. This work is also the world’s first AI, guided by humans, made music video for the enigmatic artist Aski’s SE song. Panspermia is made possible thanks to the generous contribution of Richard Thomas Foundation.
Pinar Demirdag
Pinar is a multidisciplinary artist, technologist, and a creative director. In 2020, she had a spiritual awakening and left her career as an independent artist (Pinar&Viola artist duo) to co-found Seyhan Lee, a creative development and production company that brings science and spirit together in their creative works for brands, films, and NFTs.
Her work resides in exhibitions, permanent collections at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Fur Gestaltung Zurich, The New Museum New York, and Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara. Pinar worked with world leading brands including IKEA, Beko, Airbnb, Google, and Nike, while passionately writes and speaks about consciousness, technology and the future of humanity (2022: SXSW, Eyeo, NFT Expoverse).
Sofia Crespo
Sofia Crespo is an artist working with a huge interest in biology-inspired technologies. One of her main focuses is the way organic life uses artificial mechanisms to simulate itself and evolve, this implying the idea that technologies are a biased product of the organic life that created them and not a completely separated object. Crespo looks at the similarities between techniques of AI image formation, and the way that humans express themselves creatively and cognitively recognize their world. Her work brings into question the potential of AI in artistic practice and its ability to reshape our understandings of creativity. On the side, she is also hugely concerned with the dynamic change in the role of the artists working with machine learning techniques. She’s also the co-founder of Entangles Others Studio.
The exhibitions show artworks and installations that emerge at the intersection between science, art and technology. In some of the works, technology is being used to give us a dark glance on how our future could evolve. Other works experiment with new forms of sensory perception and strive to activate the imagination that arises when encountering abstract fields of light and sound. These installations explore the limits of our senses by using fast rotating mechanisms, stroboscopic light and multichannel speaker setups.
Opening times exhibitions at V2_, UBIK and Slash Gallery:
Thursday 19:00h - 22:00h, Friday till Sunday 14:00h - 21:00h
Opening times exhibition at Plein 1940:
Friday till Sunday 22:00h - 00:00h
Thu 2 | 19:00 at V2_
The video installation Drifting Towards the Unknown is a meditation on the feeling of drifting aimlessly, of experiencing the loss of direction in your own work or life. The spatial experience of the installation – the screen removed from the wall to leave room for the smoke coming out from behind it and the ensuing immersion in the slowly drifting smoke – adds another layer to the general experience of the show. The video installation mirrors the screen printing process used in the other works. The waves and the smoke are pushing down, slowly falling to the ground. The digital video and the physical smoke go hand in hand, making the digital traces more visual and translating them into a spatial experience. Engulfed in the clouds of the smoke, one gets a feeling of being lost, of being in a polluted yet beautiful environment.
Carla Chan obtained her Bachelor of Arts Degree from the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. She works with a variety of media including video, installation, photography and interactive media. Much like the never-ending development of new technology Chan considers media art as a medium with infinite possibilities for artistic expressions.
Minimal in style and form Chan’s works often toys with the blurred boundaries between reality and illusion, figure and abstraction. Her recent work focuses on the ambiguity in nature. Bridging natural transformation and unpredictable computer algorithms, her work is consolidated with a cohesive dynamic between form, means and content.
Thu 2 | 22:30 at Plein 1940
The spectator can see from far away the silhouette of a planet, projected on a large wall. This image seems familiar: a crescent of light on a perfect sphere, it must be the moon. As he gets closer, he discovers details of craters, irregularities made of fine shadows and reliefs. Once close and observing attentively, he recognizes the contours of continents, seas and oceans. What remains are traces of disasters, the monochrome reveals the absence of an atmosphere, the disappearance of the oceans. It is up to the viewer to imagine what lies behind this view of an inert planet. The artist invites us to think about a possible future.
Joanie Lemercier (b. 1982) is a French visual artist and environmental activist whose work explores human perception through the manipulation of light in space. Working primarily with light projection and computer programming, Lemercier transforms the appearance of everyday objects and forms, bending reality to his imagination. His work transcends the flat surface, extending dimensionality through the interplay of light and shadow on materials such as wood, glass, paper, ceramics, textiles and water.Lemercier was first introduced to the process of creating art on a computer at agefive by attending classes on pattern design for fabrics that were taught by his mother. This early education grounded his interest in physical structures: geometry, patterns, and minimalistforms. As Lemercier’s work evolved, he began to explore these elements through the physics and philosophy of how light can be used to alter perceived reality.
Much of Lemercier’s practice is inspired by nature and reflects onthe representation of the natural world through mathematics, science, and technology. Abstract environments rendered as refined grids, lines, shadows, and volumes give way to majestic landscapes assembled from these same minimalist forms. In recent years,Lemercier has become increasingly concerned with climate change and environmental degradation, lending his projection skills and artistry to activist causes and groups such as Extinction Rebellion, meticulously tracking and publishing his studio’s carbon footprint, and supporting initiatives like #CleanNFT to encourage other digital artists to reduce their own environmental impact. His latest video installation, The Hambach forest and the Technological Sublime, premiered at Fundación Telefónica in 2021 on the occasion of the artist’s first major solo show, looks at the devastating effects of coal mining on one of Europe’s oldest forests.
Creation by Joanie Lemercier
Production by Juliette Bibasse
Thu 2 | 19:00 at V2_
The AOR-200 is a DIY consumer system designed to protect any personal oil reserve. The device is screwed easily into a standard oil barrel and once fired-up it protects the barrel (and its contents) from theft. A personal oil reserve is a necessity in the current timeframe where production of this precious liquid is under constant pressure and an oil shortage is not inconceivable.
Marnix de Nijs (1970) is a Rotterdam based installation artist. Graduated as a sculptor in 1992, he focused his early career on sculpture, public space and architecture. Since the mid 90's, he has been a pioneer in researching the experimental use of media and technologies in art.
Impelled by the idea that technology acts as a driving force behind cultural change and therefore capable of generating new experiences where societal habits and communication are rethought, his work thrives on the creative possibilities offered by new media, while critically examining their impact on contemporary society and human perception.
Thu 2 | 19:00 at V2_
For Conflux festival Cocky Eek is working together with Joris Strijbos to create an immersive environment which eliminates the visual senses and increases the focus on the sonic experience. The installation consists of a large scale sphere in which a rotating speaker is placed which plays with the round acoustics of the environment and the perception of the spectator.
This project is part of the Conflux commissioning program and made possible with the generous support of Mondriaan Fund, Creative Industries Fund NL and the City of Rotterdam.
Cocky Eek is a spatial artist and creates physical experiences in which our inner landscape interferes with the landscape that surrounds us. She likes to immerse her participants in spatial compositions to induce the feeling that you are not moving through space, but where space moves through you. Her work connects with the deeper layers of ourselves and of our surroundings.
Thu 2 | 19:00 at UBIK
'Cylinders' is a new installation by the Macular Collective. The work is the result of a longer running research between moving light sources and a cybernetic approach to composition. Physically the work consists of five rectangles spinning rapidly through each other's field of rotation resulting in a dynamic shape of light.
This project is part of the Conflux commissioning program and made possible with the generous support of Mondriaan Fund, Creative Industries Fund NL and the City of Rotterdam. Cylinders was co-produced by Highlight festival Delft.
Macular is an initiative of a group of artists who share a collective interest in art, science, technology, and perception. The members of the collective collaborate on the creation and production of multi-sensorial artworks that are presented at media arts festivals, galleries, and other arts institutions around the world. An important part of the initiative is that the collective functions as a nomadic lab in which the members do research and develop the technology and theory that’s needed in order to create their works.
Thu 2 | 19:00 at UBIK
For Conflux festival Mariska de Groot is creating a new version of her work 'Hidden Patterns', an optical sound installation that plays with the hypnotic and sacred properties of extremely high shutter speeds and spinning patterns.
Audible frequencies are being projected by light through a perforated spinning tone wheel. The interference between the patterns causes optical fragmentation of the wheel design. The projection patterns are picked up and made audible.
This project is part of the Conflux commissioning program and made possible with the generous support of Mondriaan Fund, Creative Industries Fund NL and the City of Rotterdam.
Intrigued by the phenomena and history of optical sound, Mariska de Groot (1982, NL) makes, performs and composes for comprehensive analogue light-to-sound instruments and installations which explore this principle in new ways. Her work often refers to media inventions from the past, with which she aims to excite a multi-sensorial and phenomenological experience of light, sound, movement and space.
Thu 2 | 19:00 at S/ash Gallery
The Open Loop is a collaborative project between visual artist Marco Broeders and sound artist Julian Edwardes.
The Open Loop can be seen as a high impact audio visual entrainment (AVE) spa. The installation combines the necessary principles of brainwave stimulation which guides the visitor safely and effectively into various states of consciousness. Besides being a relaxing experience, The Open Loop can also be beneficial as you explore heightened states of consciousness and personal awareness.
Through the use of strong stroboscopic lights, visual patterns are projected on the retina resulting in color pallets. The light patterns are combined with electronic soundscapes to create a full synesthetic experience. The Open Loop is non-invasive and no electrical current is passed through to the user. All resulting effects are produced in the brain solely by audio/visual stimuli. The installation is designed to activate and create an interaction between various areas of the brain.
This project is part of the Conflux commissioning program and made possible with the generous support of Mondriaan Fund, Creative Industries Fund NL and the City of Rotterdam.
Marco Broeders (NL '70) graduated as an architectural designer from within the safe and institutional walls of the monastery building of the St. Joost Academy (Breda, The Netherlands). Marco Broeders, now under the monicker Co2RO, turns contrasts such as ‘light and heavy’ and ‘light and dark’ into manageable tools. Add these tools to an arsenal of obscure and rarely available analog projectors and lamps and behold the prism, or better yet, the realm where Co2RO breathes life into otherwise bloodless spaces. Always within a new and self-contained environment. Always under—let’s call ’em—‘adventurous’ circumstances. And always using a method that is absolutely unruly. As every Co2RO installation is explicitly laborious. Like a birth operation performed under extremely difficult circumstances, throwing even the most experienced doctor off balance. A metaphor not as far-fetched as you might think as each time Co2RO sets up his control room, an autonomous and authentic consciousness is born and for the first time will see the light.
Julian Edwardes (UK/NL ‘79) is an artist and electronic musician from the Netherlands. He is a trained visual artist with a background in Fine Art at AKV St Joost in Breda and at the Sandberg Institute Amsterdam. In his music sonic entities are playfully sculpted and positioned in gritty landscapes of shifting symphonic drone. Form, language, identity and existence are assayed within a compositional network pullulated from a modular synthesizer, utilizing unstable systems and disrupted resonant bodies.
Fri 3 | 14:00 at V2_, UBIK, S/ash Gallery
The exhibitions show artworks and installations that emerge at the intersection between science, art and technology. In some of the works, technology is being used to give us a dark glance on how our future could evolve. Other works experiment with new forms of sensory perception and strive to activate the imagination that arises when encountering abstract fields of light and sound. These installations explore the limits of our senses by using fast rotating mechanisms, stroboscopic light and multichannel speaker setups.
Sat 4 | 14:00 at V2_, UBIK, S/ash Gallery
The exhibitions show artworks and installations that emerge at the intersection between science, art and technology. In some of the works, technology is being used to give us a dark glance on how our future could evolve. Other works experiment with new forms of sensory perception and strive to activate the imagination that arises when encountering abstract fields of light and sound. These installations explore the limits of our senses by using fast rotating mechanisms, stroboscopic light and multichannel speaker setups.
Sun 5 | 14:00 at V2_, UBIK, S/ash Gallery
The exhibitions show artworks and installations that emerge at the intersection between science, art and technology. In some of the works, technology is being used to give us a dark glance on how our future could evolve. Other works experiment with new forms of sensory perception and strive to activate the imagination that arises when encountering abstract fields of light and sound. These installations explore the limits of our senses by using fast rotating mechanisms, stroboscopic light and multichannel speaker setups.
Fri 3 | 22:00 at Plein 1940
The exhibitions show artworks and installations that emerge at the intersection between science, art and technology. In some of the works, technology is being used to give us a dark glance on how our future could evolve. Other works experiment with new forms of sensory perception and strive to activate the imagination that arises when encountering abstract fields of light and sound. These installations explore the limits of our senses by using fast rotating mechanisms, stroboscopic light and multichannel speaker setups.
Sat 4 | 22:00 at Plein 1940
The exhibitions show artworks and installations that emerge at the intersection between science, art and technology. In some of the works, technology is being used to give us a dark glance on how our future could evolve. Other works experiment with new forms of sensory perception and strive to activate the imagination that arises when encountering abstract fields of light and sound. These installations explore the limits of our senses by using fast rotating mechanisms, stroboscopic light and multichannel speaker setups.
Sun 5 | 22:00 at Plein 1940
The exhibitions show artworks and installations that emerge at the intersection between science, art and technology. In some of the works, technology is being used to give us a dark glance on how our future could evolve. Other works experiment with new forms of sensory perception and strive to activate the imagination that arises when encountering abstract fields of light and sound. These installations explore the limits of our senses by using fast rotating mechanisms, stroboscopic light and multichannel speaker setups.
In a time in which our societal freedom is heavily under discussion, a space for escapism becomes more and more important. Since the dawn of time humans felt the need to immerse into dance rituals where sound and the human body interact. Club culture caters for this need and provides a space where escapism, trance and full body immersion in sound and light relate to technology.
Conflux explores the current state of electronic dance music by inviting a few of the most innovative electronic and techno-driven musicians and local talents who experiment with the boundaries of club culture and dance floor rituals. With these nights Conflux strives to push the limits of the sonic pallet, combining the worlds of nocturnal sound with mind-bending visual experiments.
Fri 3 | 02:00 at WORM
While running his own imprint Pessimist Productions and co-founding UVB-76 music, Pessimist has also released on labels such as Blackest Ever Black, Osiris Music, Ilian Tape & legendary Drum & Bass labels such as Cylon Recordings & Renegade Hardware. You can expect a hybrid of Drum & Bass / Jungle, Techno, Ambient Interludes and back-to- the-90’s TripHop all within his DJ sets, a true translation of his productions and influences.
Pessimist, real name Kristian Jabs has been releasing music since 2010. Previously one third of the Bristol trio Ruffhouse, his constant development over the years has gained him a respected reputation throughout the electronic music industry. With firm roots in Drum & Bass & Jungle, Pessimist has not only made an impact within the Drum & Bass scene but also the wider electronic music community. With his critically acclaimed debut self titled album released on Blackest Ever Black turning many heads and garnering a clear non-conformist vision, Pessimist has carved out a stand-alone status and has influenced a whole new generation of experimental Drum & Bass producers and DJ’s.
Sat 4 | 01:15 at WORM
As a producer hailing from the underground rave scene of the 90’s, Umwelt has gone through the ages without ever feeling the need to follow the hype. Author of an important discography including releases on his own Rave Or Die and New Flesh Recordings labels, his productions always contain an energetic cross-over electro-techno sound.
With his DJ sets, always faithful to vinyl to the point of cutting his own copies, Umwelt delivers a fierce, dark and cinematographic sound at the crossroads between the classics and an assumed modernity.
Sat 4 | 04:15 at WORM
Samuel Kerridge, with his signature sonic arsenal, stands alone in the worlds of rhythm and noise. A singular artist, his music is to be appreciated on its own terms. His productions find a strange poetry in illegible communications, stripping meaning down to raw emotional response. Each track is a visceral slab of power, aiming to deconstruct any preconceived notions by means of a cross pollinated methodology. Whether experienced via his releases on Downwards records, Blueprint, Horizontal Ground, and his own imprint (and esteemed Berlin event series) Contort, or live, the listener is subject to overwhelming waves of hyper-sensory stimulation. Whatever form his music takes, Samuel Kerridge continues to evolve, always pushing the limits of sound and space.
Sat 4 | 00:15 at WORM
Unit Moebius’ ‘Panta Rhei’ was the first ever release on the legendary Bunker Records in 1992 and immediately sold out. Since then many more cult classics have followed, from the Status and Work EPs on KK Records to albums like Disco, and have taken in minimalist machine music, jackin acid and pounding industrial. Through carefully built loops and unexpectedly penetrating waves and pulses, this godfather of The Hague scene will attempt to alienate you from preconditioned states of consciousness and lead you to be reborn in blackened clubs, cut off from visual stimulation.
Unit Moebius Anonymous is the 2007 rebirth of legendary band Unit Moebius, with key player Jan Duivenvoorden now the lone driving force. His interest in alienating sounds started with a tape recorder aged nine. Constantly hitting the rewind button and looping the same words to sounds he quickly learn to appreciate the power of reception. Experiences at militant Belgian festivals, unintentionally playing Severed Heads records at the wrong speed, gabber, pirate radio stations, 808 State and Underground Resistance all followed and lead him to where he is now.
Sat 4 | 02:45 at WORM
Based in Amsterdam, mad miran is a DJ who emerged from Amsterdam's underground scene, expanding her reach to take over dance floors all across Europe and eventually landing a residency at De School. This long-time music fanatic started her journey behind the booth as part of the Strange Sounds from Beyond crew, where she built up her tastes in an even wider array of different electronic styles.
Her first physical format mixtape was released on the Italian ever-rising label Art-Aud in January 2019 and is a 90mn trip of old-school madness, very symbolic of Miran's own rave spirit! Mad miran played on multiple well-respected festivals, from Primavera Sound to Waking Life, Lowlands or Dekmantel Selectors.
Fri 3 | 23:00 at WORM Foyer
In under a year, Rotterdam-based Genyten has blazed a bright trail through the Dutch music world. With a sharp sense of music honed through years of working in nightlife across London & Rotterdam and currently being one of the brains behind Pinkman Records, she does not shy away from challenging the audience with her selections.
Shapeshifting between radio shows that feel like intricately-planned journeys, and banging club sets that leave little air in the room, Gentyen is comfortable in many settings. Refusing to be put into a box, she oscillates between genres, using her time at record stores, radio stations, and her wide artistic endeavours as tools and vast archives to feed both the style and body of her sets.
Fri 3 | 23:45 at WORM
As a linchpin of Rotterdam's dj culture, one can hear technoid elements of his homebase fluctuate along an axis of Detroitesque electro. Naming afro-futurism as a major source of influence, his releases and DJ sets will lock you into RAFF's world through its emotional touch and technical precision.
Fri 3 | 02:45 at WORM Foyer
When it comes to commitment to underground electronic music, you’ll struggle to find anyone more dedicated than Marsman. Since moving to Rotterdam in 2011, the DJ, radio host, record label and store owner (Pinkman records) has become one of the hardest working figures in the city’s long-established underground electronic music scene.
It was 2015 when Marsman decided to quit his day job and devote his life to music, establishing the Pinkman and Charlois labels to champion artists – both new and established – whose music moved him emotionally. From the start, he wanted both labels to operate without boundaries, instead focusing on quality electronic music – most aimed squarely at dancefloors, of course – from the margins.
So far Marsman has DJ’d across Europe, toured the U.S.A, Mexico and Colombia, and cites a first stint behind the decks at legendary Berlin institution Panoramabar as one of his most special DJing experiences. In the months and years ahead, he plans to share his electronic music vision – that fluid, futurist Pinkman sound – with more dancers around the World.
Fri 3 | 02:00 at WORM Foyer
Das Ding is Rotterdam’s most hidden gem. Starting off with his cassette label Tear Apart Tapes in the 80’s, he’s been playing, designing and producing since. A few years ago great attention came to his early work through the famed imprint Minimal Wave.
As a key figure of the true Dutch underground and being one of the most exciting live sets Das Ding is an unmissable act for any dancer or dedicated electronica freak.
His live-set is and has been expanding, shrinking and evolving over time. An example of this ongoing journey is the ‘Sequencer’ tape on Dehef from August 2014, containing some fine modular based techno tracks.
This effectively means there are 2 sets, one strictly song-based, another consisting of improvised modular jams. Besides the highly acclaimed Das Ding project, he explores the darker side of experimental music through ‘Schedelvreter’ which is available through us as well under the right conditions.
Sat 4 | 02:30 at WORM Foyer
Rita Maomenos is the Portuguese-born and Rotterdam-based producer and DJ. Her sound strikes as being sombre and sinister, where harsh unusual drum patterns are layered with eerie atmospheres. She is inspired by visions of doom, post-apocalyptic scenarios, and the darkness within humanity. Her music is a response to modern-life anguish, replete with political and environmental concerns. It is often a social critique, sometimes a vulnerable admission of defeat, and others hedonist escapism. Her work has been released in Ōtomo, Kepler live records, Elberec, LXVIII, she is a regular at Perron, made appearances in Basis, BAR and MONO and also recorded mixes for Operator Radio, Future Intel, Derailed Radio, Radio Tempo Não Pára among others.
Fri 3 | 03:30 at WORM
90’s rooted industrial beats and atmospheric tracks that reminds a bit of early Reload and Afx tracks and even some Sahko. Produced by Amsterdam based Dj Zohar who is debuting on her own DIY Zohar label with a wide spectrum of sound structures and complex moods that variates from club driven breaks, experimental electronics, ambient and dub.
Fri 3 | 00:30 at WORM Foyer
Salamanca label boss, CBS / IntergalacticFM veteran and Pinkman affiliate Slick Chick has a long-lasting track record through numerous music scenes. Combining multiple genres of electronic music such as techno, house, italo, disco, new wave and electro, her sets are diverse and adventurous. Over the years she has built her own style in which these different elements all find a place within her dance floor focused DJ sets.
Fri 3 | 01:00 at WORM
With roots in the underground tekno/acid scene, his style evolved over the years towards the bassminded styles like dubstep, 160 bass, abstract hiphop beats and breaks. His DJsets are full of energy, raw, with the right timing and ahead of the hype. As co-founder of Dstruct Collective, Lowriders Collective and Lowriders Recordings he has a reputation as the guy with a nose for talent. He shared the stage with names as Starkey, Hudson Mohawk, Eprom, Take, 6Blocc, Shackleton, Bibio, Akira Kiteshi, Lvis1990, Teebs, Bibio etc.
Sat 4 | 23:00 at WORM
Inge K is a true selector in the darker genres and blends electro and techno with experimental bass driven styles of electronic music. She has strong roots in Dutch underground sound system culture and was an active member of the illustrious TDK system with whom she travelled most of Europe. Besides her DJ sets and believing in a true combination of the senses, Inge K also focussed on visual backdrops and adventurous sculptures during these parties. Her DJ sets are a true reflection of her explorations within the sonic pallet and an embodiment of her vision on club culture.
Thu 2 | 20:00 at V11
Expect a variety of grime, bass, techno and experimental breaks from the Portuguese-born and Rotterdam-based Blondewednesday.
"Grime and macabre are named for her nursery-rhyme preference though the sweet-natured side could not be hidden. The ears never turn-off. So she hunts sounds to revive in the dark again. There is a kind of serenity. She found herself the way she wants to live."
Sat 4 | 01:00 at WORM Foyer
Acidic Male has an interest in industrial sounds, hypnotic drum patterns and experimental vocals. Having her performer name as a revenge title, she searches to “other” herself into the position of a poetic perpetrator. Her sounds have been described as “elegant industrial”, yet in her selections she attempts to showcase her love for genre-wide experimentalism.
Thinkers, artists and performers reflect on the festival theme: 'Exit Human'. Through lectures, talks, and discussions the conference will focus on the transformation of nature and society by reflecting on current social developments within art, technology, and science.
We are slowly but surely moving towards the post-Anthropocene. How will humans adapt to the constant changing world around us? What changes will we see on both a global level and on a biological level?
Fri 3 | 12:00 at Cinerama
Stefan Lorenz Sorgner is Chair of the Department of History and Humanities and a philosophy professor at John Cabot University in Rome and is director and co-founder of the Beyond Humanism Network, Fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), Research Fellow at the Ewha Institute for the Humanities at Ewha Womans University in Seoul and Visiting Fellow at the Ethics Centre of the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena.
He is editor of more than 10 essay collections, and author of the following monographs: Metaphysics without Truth (Marquette University Press 2007), Menschenwürde nach Nietzsche (WBG 2010), Transhumanismus (Herder 2016), Schöner neuer Mensch (Nicolai, 2018), Übermensch (Schwabe 2019), On Transhumanism (Penn State University Press 2020), We have always been cyborgs (Bristol University Press, 2022). In addition, he is Editor-in-Chief and Founding Editor of the “Journal of Posthuman Studies” (a double-blind peer review journal, published by Penn State University Press since 2017). Furthermore, he is in great demand as a speaker in all parts of the world (World Humanities Forum, Global Solutions Taipei Workshop, Biennale Arte Venezia, TEDx) and a regular contact person of national and international journalists and media representatives (Die Zeit, Cicero, Der Standard; Die Presse am Sonntag, Philosophy Now, Il Sole 24 Ore).
Sat 4 | 12:00 at WORM
Lisanne Buik is a multidisciplinary artist and futures designer operating at the intersection of ecology, technology, spirituality and somatics. In her speculative installations, films, lectures and publications she combines emerging science with ancient wisdom to explore the shift from the age of the machine to a new age of symbiosis between living systems, the human bodymind, and technology.
Her, by Next Nature Network commissioned, project Next Senses was exhibited at van Gogh Museum (2019) and Labyrinth of the Senses (2019). She has taught at universities and design schools like Gerrit Rietveld Academy and Erasmus University and does commissioned projects in partnership with organisations like Next Nature Network, Baltan Laboratories, Province of Zeeland and Philips.
"I wholeheartedly believe that the polarity of our current day provides an opportunity to find grace within ourselves. To rise up to protect a future that serves all (of life) by prototyping new operating ecosystems for society and self that emulate the laws of nature."
Sat 4 | 13:00 at WORM
Matthew Fuller is a cultural theorist who works on art, science, politics and aesthetics. His books include 'How to Sleep: The Art, Biology and Culture of Unconsciousness' (Bloomsbury 2018), 'How to Be a Geek: Essays on the Culture of Software' (Polity 2017), with Olga Goriunova, 'Bleak Joys: Aesthetics of Ecology and Impossibility' (Minnesota 2019) and with Eyal Weizman, 'Investigative Aesthetics: Conflicts and Commons in the Politics of Truth' (Verso 2021). He is Professor of Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Fri 3 | 13:00 at Cinerama
‘Geocinema’ considers planetary-scale sensory networks - cell phones, surveillance cameras, satellites, geosensors - as a vastly distributed cinematic apparatus: a camera. Sensing fragments of the earth their operations generate terabytes of raw data, infrastructural architectures, obscured labour, dissonant weather, governmental policies, scientific management, environments and situations each participating in the changing of the earth’s fabric through their own sets of scales and temporalities. Here, the representation of earth is the sum of a decentralized editing process with its image anything but whole.
The project unfolds as a series of episodic research into geocinema through experiments in moving image, narration and collective thinking. Each probes into ways of understanding and sensing the earth while being on the ground, enmeshed within vastly distributed processes of image and meaning making.
The project traces the physical infrastructures and abstracted processes which make up the supply chains of perception, attentive to the situated histories of sensing techniques which frame movements of the cosmos, atmospheres, oceans, and surveil flows of bodies and their congregations, in order to unstitch and restitch given narratives about earths.
Sat 4 | 17:00 at WORM
The ‘Climate Futures’ program by the Visual Methodologies Collective is an experiment in collaborating with AI to shed light on and contribute to climate future imaginaries. In the artistic research project, AI functions as a co-author, who has (machine) learned about climate imaginaries on the basis of training sets of climate fiction literature and climate-themed visual arts, and Hollywood ‘climate disaster’ film trailers.
We design queries to prompt the trained algorithms to create new climate imaginaries, in text and in visual form. Subsequently, we edit these machine-generated cli-fi narratives and translate them into short stories, podcasts, video, and artwork. These cli-fi stories are narrated by a human voice that sends back messages from imagined futures, like postcards from the post-anthropocene.
Fri 3 | 17:00 at Cinerama
Dr.ir. Roel Dobbe is an Assistant Professor working at the intersection of engineering, design and governance of data-driven and algorithmic control and decision-making systems. Roel holds a PhD in Control, Intelligent Systems and Energy from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California Berkeley. He was an inaugural postdoc for the AI Now Institute at New York University. Roel has gained extensive experience working with industrial, public and societal partners, through working as a consultant, a data scientist and doing engaged scholarship.
Roel’s research addresses the integration of data-driven technologies in societal infrastructure and institutions, with a focus on safety, sustainability and justice. His research strands include:
* Data-driven methods for design and control of complex systems and services
* Integrating design and governance for the responsible integration of data-driven and algorithmic systems
* The political economy of advanced learning and control systems and their information technology infrastructures
* The environmental implications of “artificial intelligence”
* Safety of AI systems in sociotechnical design and policy contexts
Roel’s research is motivated by problems in energy (intelligent planning and operation of electric power distribution) and public administration.
Sat 4 | 15:45 at WORM
Marco Donnarumma (DE) is an artist, performer, stage director and scholar weaving together contemporary performance, new media art and interactive computer music since the early 2000s. He manipulates bodies, creates choreographies, engineers machines and composes sounds, thus combining disciplines, media and emerging technologies into an oneiric, sensual, uncompromising aesthetics. He is internationally acknowledged for solo performances, stage productions and installations that defy genres, and where the body becomes a morphing language to speak critically of ritual, power and technology.
Donnarumma’s latest cycle of dancetheater productions, performances and robotic installations is entitled 7 Configurations. It dissects the conflicts between AI and body politics through human-machine choreographic methods aimed at experimenting with the corporeal and psychological relationships of four human performers and six AI prostheses. In 2019, he co-founded the performance artists group Fronte Vacuo with Margherita Pevere and Andrea Familari. Their series Humane Methods consists of hybrid live art events as social experiments, where human performers and audiences, non-human organisms and AI-driven machines expose the violence of today’s algorithmic societies.
Touring consistently for the past fifteen years across major and independent theaters, concert halls, festivals and museums worldwide, most recently Donnarumma’s work has been shown, among others, at Volkstheater Wien (AT), Münchner Kammerspiele (DE), Romaeuropa Festival (IT), Ming Contemporary Art Museum (CN), Chronus Art Center (CN), Ars Electronica (AT), Donaufestival (AT), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (DE), NRW Forum (DE), Nemo Bienniale/HeK Basel (FR), LABoral (ES), musikprotokoll (AT), CTM Festival (DE), tanzhaus nrw (DE), Laznia Center for Contemporary Art (PL), and Kontejner (HR).
His repertoire received numerous acknowledgements, most recently: Autonom Grant 2020-21 by Fonds Darstellende Künste and Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe for ∑XHALE; Digital Award at Romaeuropa Festival 2018 for Eingeweide; two awards at the Bains Numériques Biennial 2018, as well as the Award of Distinction (2nd prize) in Sound Art at Prix Ars Electronica 2017 for Corpus Nil; Artist of the Science Year 2018 by the German Federal Ministry of Research and Education for Amygdala.
Donnarumma holds a Ph.D. in performing arts, computing and body theory from Goldsmiths, University of London. In 2020-21 he was a Research Fellow at the Akademie für Theater und Digitalität, Dortmund. Previously, in 2016-18, he was Research Fellow at Berlin University of the Arts in partnership with the Neurorobotics Research Laboratory. He was funded by European Commission, Goethe-Institut, Berlin Senate, Fonds Darstellende Künste, Rockefeller Foundation, British Council and New Media Scotland. His writings are published by MIT Press, Oxford University Press, Routledge, ACM and Springer.
Fri 3 | 15:45 at Cinerama
Klara Lewis is a critically acclaimed sound sculptor from Stockholm who has been presenting her audio-visual shows in clubs and art galleries around the world and has been selected as a highlight of such festivals as Atonal, Mutek, Sonar and Semibreve. Lewis builds her work from heavily manipulated samples and field recordings creating a unique combination of the organic and digital. She has released numerous well received albums via Editions Mego - Ett, Too, Ingrid, Ingrid Live at Fykinggen and Live in Montreal 2018. In tandem with her solo works, she has active collaborative projects with Simon Fisher Turner and Peder Mannerfelt.
Nik Colk Void is an electronic musician and artist with a vast reputation in experimental shapeshifting and collaboration. UK based, Void has produced eight acclaimed studio albums with her musical groups Factory Floor (Gabriel Gurnsey & Dominic Butler), Carter Tutti Void (Chris Carter & Cosey Fanni Tutti) and NPVR with the late Peter Rehberg, releasing via Mute, DFA, Blast First, Editions Mego and Industrial. Her debut solo album Bucked Up Space will be released this year (April 8th) via Editions Mego. Key live performances, solo and with collaborators include: CTM - Unsound - Incubate - Pitchfork (NY, Paris & Chicago) - Moog - Coachella - GRM Paris - Club2Club - LEV - Semibreve, Rewire. Art residencies at the Barbican - London ICA - Zabludowicz Gallery - Lisson Gallery - Art Basel - Fiorucci Trust (Stromboli Island) - Galleriapiû Gallery (Bologna) - Semibreve (Portugal).
Pedro Maia is a Portuguese filmmaker (Berlin Based) working predominantly with 16mm and 8mm film, pushing the boundaries and aesthetic of analog cinema by manipulating the raw materials and challenging the traditional process. His work has been presented and exhibited at renowned film festivals, Institutions and galleries, including The Barbican Center, Serralves Museum, Tokyo Contemporary Art Museum, Armenian Centre for Contemporary Experimental Art, amongst others. Maia has contributed to projects to Patti Smith, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lucrecia Dalt as well as collaborative projects with musicians such as Vessel, Shackleton, Visionist, Shapednoise, Jacaszek, Lee Ranaldo, Fennesz, presenting live at festivals such as Sonar, Unsound, Berlin Atonal and Mutek.
Fri 3 | 16:30 at Cinerama
Dylan Cote and Pierre Lafanechère are two media artists and designers based in Paris, mainly working on moving images, sound and installations. They pursue researches by experiencing and diverting various techniques from their initial use, using the aesthetic potential of digital media. Through 3D, code, sound, object or light, they strive to set up poetical and critical spaces. It creates fragments of fiction which give us a view on current issues of techno-social changes.
Sat 4 | 14:15 at WORM
Cocky Eek is a spatial artist and creates physical experiences in which our inner landscape interferes with the landscape that surrounds us. She likes to immerse her participants in spatial compositions to induce the feeling that you are not moving through space, but where space moves through you. Her work connects with the deeper layers of ourselves and of our surroundings.
Sat 4 | 14:45 at WORM
Pinar is a multidisciplinary artist, technologist, and a creative director. In 2020, she had a spiritual awakening and left her career as an independent artist (Pinar&Viola artist duo) to co-found Seyhan Lee, a creative development and production company that brings science and spirit together in their creative works for brands, films, and NFTs. Her work resides in exhibitions, permanent collections at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Fur Gestaltung Zurich, The New Museum New York, and Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara. Pinar worked with world leading brands including IKEA, Beko, Airbnb, Google, and Nike, while passionately writes and speaks about consciousness, technology and the future of humanity (2022: SXSW, Eyeo, NFT Expoverse).
Sat 4 | 16:15 at WORM
Consultant, Media and performance artist Jeisson Drenth works on a wide range of different projects that -all in their own unique way- explore the possibilities and limitations of technologies for people to shape their past, present and future.
In the years after finishing his studies at the Willem de Kooning Academy (Rotterdam, 2015) he worked internationally as a live video artist and designer for M_HKA (Museum of Modern Art, Antwerp), Together Festival (Boston), Vision (Berlin, Ghent), Amsterdam Dance Event and Reaktor (Amsterdam), Draaimolen (Tilburg), Museum TENT (Rotterdam) Atlas Electronic (Rotterdam, Marrakesh), NEXUS Europe Summit (Rotterdam), Untitled (Toronto) and La Bacchanale (Montréal).
As his studio transformed into a space that critically brings together a growing amount of creative disciplines including performance Jeisson set up his art practice.
His first solo-exhibition (2019) presented his research into the rise of commercial DNA-testing companies and the ethical considerations around genetic selection and genetic modification - specifically from a perspective of queerness and from his perspective as an adopted person with a history of migration.
In 2020 Jeisson started working as a consultant to advise cultural organisations on matters of diversity, inclusion and access. In line with this he articulated a new goal for his art practice which is to study image production techniques from an intersectional point of view.
Fri 3 | 14:15 at Cinerama
Sinofuturism (1839 -2046 AD) is a video essay exploring the parallels between portrayals of artificial intelligence and Chinese technological development. Lek combines elements of science fiction, documentary melodrama, social realism, and Chinese cosmologies in order to delve into and critique the present-day dilemmas of China and the people of its diaspora. The essay is structured around seven stereotypes found within Chinese society: Computing, Copying, Gaming, Studying, Addiction, Labour and Gambling.
Sinofuturism is the first part of The Sinofuturist Trilogy by Lawrence Lek.
The Sinofuturist Trilogy by Lawrence Lek 陆明龙 is a series of speculative fiction films that explore the relationship between artificial intelligence, nonhuman agency, and the geopolitics of East Asia. Begun in 2016 with ‘Sinofuturism (1839-2046 AD)’, a hybrid manifesto and conspiracy theory linking Chinese technological development with ideas of non-Western Futurism, Lek continued the trilogy with ‘Geomancer’ (2017), a CGI portrait of an AI satellite wanting to become an artist, and ‘AIDOL’ (2019), a science fiction musical about a fading superstar who collaborates with an AI songwriter to produce her new album.
Lawrence Lek (陆明龙) is a London-based artist, filmmaker, and musician working with virtual worlds, simulation, and architecture. Often set within a Sinofuturist cinematic universe, his work explores worldbuilding as a form of collage, incorporating historical and imaginary elements to develop speculative fictions based on the perspective of the Other. Recent exhibitions include Farsight Freeport, HeK, Basel (2019); Ghostwriter, CCA Prague (2019); Nøtel, UKR, Essen (2019); 2065, K11, Hong Kong (2018). Soundtrack releases include Temple OST (The Vinyl Factory, 2020) and AIDOL OST (Hyperdub, 2020). In 2021, he received the LACMA Art + Technology Lab Grant and the 4th VH Award Grand Prix. Lek holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art, and is represented by Sadie Coles HQ, London.
Fri 3 | 18:15 at Cinerama
Geomancer is a computer-generated animation by Lawrence Lek about the creative awakening of artificial intelligence. Set in Singapore on the eve of the island nation’s centennial in 2065, the film tells the story of an environmental satellite that wishes to become an artist. Geomancer imagines the crisis that might happen when the world has become a techno-industrial complex run by a posthuman intelligence, and creative originality is no longer be considered that special.
“Is irrationality the main characteristic of consciousness?” asks the film’s narrator, proposing art as the last refuge of humanity in an otherwise automated world where an artificial intelligence dedicated to copying and studying massive amounts of data has appropriated every human trait that can be used to produce profit. The film uses ‘art’ to symbolize humanity's appreciation for creative thought and beauty, asking what will happen when an emotionally aware AI gains the power of self-expression, and creative genius is no longer the domain of humanity. Rendered within a video game engine and featuring a neural network-generated dream sequence and synthesized vocal soundtrack, Geomancer explores the implications of post-human consciousness.
Geomancer is the second part of The Sinofuturist Trilogy by Lawrence Lek.
The Sinofuturist Trilogy by Lawrence Lek 陆明龙 is a series of speculative fiction films that explore the relationship between artificial intelligence, nonhuman agency, and the geopolitics of East Asia. Begun in 2016 with ‘Sinofuturism (1839-2046 AD)’, a hybrid manifesto and conspiracy theory linking Chinese technological development with ideas of non-Western Futurism, Lek continued the trilogy with ‘Geomancer’ (2017), a CGI portrait of an AI satellite wanting to become an artist, and ‘AIDOL’ (2019), a science fiction musical about a fading superstar who collaborates with an AI songwriter to produce her new album.
Lawrence Lek (陆明龙) is a London-based artist, filmmaker, and musician working with virtual worlds, simulation, and architecture. Often set within a Sinofuturist cinematic universe, his work explores worldbuilding as a form of collage, incorporating historical and imaginary elements to develop speculative fictions based on the perspective of the Other. Recent exhibitions include Farsight Freeport, HeK, Basel (2019); Ghostwriter, CCA Prague (2019); Nøtel, UKR, Essen (2019); 2065, K11, Hong Kong (2018). Soundtrack releases include Temple OST (The Vinyl Factory, 2020) and AIDOL OST (Hyperdub, 2020). In 2021, he received the LACMA Art + Technology Lab Grant and the 4th VH Award Grand Prix. Lek holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art, and is represented by Sadie Coles HQ, London.
Sat 4 | 18:00 at WORM
Lawrence Lek’s first feature-length film, AIDOL 爱道, is a CGI fantasy that revolves around the long and complex struggle between humanity and Artificial Intelligence. Set against the backdrop of rising human-machine tensions, AIDOL follows Diva, a fading superstar who enlists the help of an AI songwriter for her comeback performance at the 2065 eSports Olympics. Fame – in all its allure and emptiness – is set against the bigger contradictions of a post-AI world, a world where originality is sometimes no more than an algorithmic trick and where machines have the capacity for love and suffering.
AIDOL is the last part of The Sinofuturist Trilogy by Lawrence Lek.
The Sinofuturist Trilogy by Lawrence Lek 陆明龙 is a series of speculative fiction films that explore the relationship between artificial intelligence, nonhuman agency, and the geopolitics of East Asia. Begun in 2016 with ‘Sinofuturism (1839-2046 AD)’, a hybrid manifesto and conspiracy theory linking Chinese technological development with ideas of non-Western Futurism, Lek continued the trilogy with ‘Geomancer’ (2017), a CGI portrait of an AI satellite wanting to become an artist, and ‘AIDOL’ (2019), a science fiction musical about a fading superstar who collaborates with an AI songwriter to produce her new album.
Lawrence Lek (陆明龙) is a London-based artist, filmmaker, and musician working with virtual worlds, simulation, and architecture. Often set within a Sinofuturist cinematic universe, his work explores worldbuilding as a form of collage, incorporating historical and imaginary elements to develop speculative fictions based on the perspective of the Other. Recent exhibitions include Farsight Freeport, HeK, Basel (2019); Ghostwriter, CCA Prague (2019); Nøtel, UKR, Essen (2019); 2065, K11, Hong Kong (2018). Soundtrack releases include Temple OST (The Vinyl Factory, 2020) and AIDOL OST (Hyperdub, 2020). In 2021, he received the LACMA Art + Technology Lab Grant and the 4th VH Award Grand Prix. Lek holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art, and is represented by Sadie Coles HQ, London.
Fri 3 | 12:00 at Cinerama + WORM
Eric Parren (NL/US) is an interdisciplinary artist operating out of Shanghai. His practice is situated at the intersection of art, science, and technology. Using a combination of digital and analog media, he investigates our understanding of the ideas and technologies that shape the future. Eric's works are often visceral, sensory experiences exploring modes of perception and the physics of light and sound. Informed by a deep knowledge of the histories of media arts, electronic music composition, and expanded cinema, his work makes links between the past, the present, and what is to come.
Eric is an Assistant Arts Professor in Interactive Media Arts at NYU Shanghai where he conducts research and teaches courses on programming and electronics for artists, realtime audiovisual systems, and kinetic light art. He is a founding member of the art collective Macular and runs the experimental music show La Force Sauvage.
Eric studied at the Interfaculty ArtScience of the Royal Academy of Art and Royal Conservatory in The Hague, where he received his BFA in 2009. He went on to study at the Design Media Arts department of the University of California Los Angeles, where he was awarded his MFA in 2012. His works have been shown at galleries and festivals across Europe, North America, and Asia.
Fri 3 | 12:00 at Cinerama + WORM
Holly Dicker is a Rotterdam-based freelance writer, journalist and radio host with over 10 years of music industry experience. She has written for a wide range of UK publications, including The Wire, Mixmag, The Guardian and Resident Advisor, where she was a former staff writer.
Her specialist subject is hardcore and '90s Dutch gabber culture. She has written extensively about Thunderdome, and in 2020 was commissioned by The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision to curate the online multimedia exhibition “A Brief History of Gabber” for Google Arts & Culture. She has moderated artist talks and panels at TodaysArt, Rewire, Worm, FIBER at Muziekgebouw and Amsterdam Dance Event.
Holly studied BA (Hons) in Interactive Arts at the Manchester School of Art. She currently works for PRSPCT Recordings in Rotterdam and Bang Face in the UK, previously working for Rewire in the Hague, with Speedy J and Electric Deluxe in Rotterdam, and for Tresor Records, Stattbad nightclub and Boiler Room in Berlin.