Synergic Encounters: Heleen Blanken & Aho Ssan

Alberta Balsam released an EP on Dekmantel Records and a mini-LP on Clone Dub. She played both as a live act and a DJ at festivals like Dekmantel Festival, Best Kept Secret and Wildeburg and in venues like Paradiso, Tresor, C12 and De School.

Alberta Balsam released an EP on Dekmantel Records and a mini-LP on Clone Dub. She played both as a live act and a DJ at festivals like Dekmantel Festival, Best Kept Secret and Wildeburg and in venues like Paradiso, Tresor, C12 and De School.

Bogna Konior is an Assistant Professor of Media Theory at the Interactive Media Arts (IMA) department at NYU Shanghai, where she also co-directs the AI & Culture Center. She is also a Research Fellow in the Antikythera Program on Speculative Computation at the Berggruen Institute, and a mentor in the Synthetic Intelligence program at Medialab- Matadero Madrid. She is the author of The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet (Flugschriften, 2019), currently being developed into a book-length project exploring the implications of Liu Cixin's theory of communication to the internet.

Together with Anna Greenspan and Benjamin Bratton, the editor of Machine Decision is not Final: China, and the History and Future of AI (Urbanomic, 2024). Her work on digital culture, philosophy of new media, and posthumanism has been presented internationally, recently including the Cambridge Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, e-flux, and the Ljubljana Biennale. She is currently working on two projects. One is on female Christian mystics are early thinkers of machine erotics and nonhuman personhood, and the other on the future of technology as an existential project, in dialogue with Polish sci-fi writer and intellectual Stanislaw Lem.

C. Lavender (Lavender Suarez) is an interdisciplinary sound artist, sound healing practitioner, and educator based in New York City. Bandcamp asserted that "C. Lavender makes music with curative powers, but it's also confrontational, primed to change you whether or not you want it to." She is the author of the insightful book "Transcendent Waves: How Listening Shapes Our Creative Lives." C. Lavender has albums and recordings featured on Editions Mego, Ecstatic Peace!, and RVNG Intl. Her latest album "Rupture in the Eternal Realm," (iDEAL Recordings) explores her varied meditative practices through the use of Buchla synthesizer, gongs and field recordings.

Casimir Geelhoed (NL, 1995) is an electronic musician, composer and software developer who explores expressive relations between software and sound.Recurring themes in his musical work are overstimulation, introspection and fragility. Often making use of self-developed software, he is interested in the poetic potential of sound material transformed through digital means.

Geelhoed has created performances and installations for various festivals, including CTM Festival, Sonic Acts, Rewire, Fiber Festival, SPATIAL and Aural Spaces. He released music on the labels Janushoved, Posh Isolation & Post Hoc.

Casimir Geelhoed is also the main software developer of 4DSOUND, an Amsterdam-based studio exploring spatial sound as a medium. He has also been technical director of spatial sound venue MONOM in Berlin.

Anni Nöps is a sound artist, electronic composer and DJ based in the Netherlands.
Her sonic palette is visceral, interlacing ghostly drone, floating melodies, hard hitting percussions and tactile noise.

With a sound that bridges warm elements of classic house and rave genres with dark gritty basslines and high-intensity percussive rhythms found in global club sounds, Shahmaran crafts a dynamic sonic experience that captivates audiences. Hailing from the Rotterdam queer scene, DJ Shahmaran understands the power of music to provide both escape and hope, a sentiment evident in their performances at iconic venues like De School, POING, and Garage Noord, as well as festivals such as Down The Rabbit Hole and Draaimolen. Having made a name for themselves in the underground, DJ Shahmaran continues to leave an indelible mark as a rising star in the industry, tapping into the collective soul of their audience in order to elicit sweat and tears on the dancefloor.

LSP is a research trajectory resulting in a series of works that explore the relationships between sound and three-dimensional image in physical space. Elements present in the sound have a direct visual counterpart (and vice versa). By creating these relationships, the research focuses on composing signals that have both a structural musical quality and a time-based structural visual quality. Different relationships between sound and image are used throughout the sections of the work. The result is a work in which image and sound play equally important roles instead of one supporting the other.

The three-dimensional image in space is realized by combining laser light with a thin layer of smoke. The smoke makes it possible to project in space, instead of (only) on a surface. This gives the work bodily and almost tangible qualities that happen in front, around, behind and at the audience. The architectural quality of the projection builds upon, and simultaneously intersects with, the spatial perception of sound. The resulting environment challenges the audience to explore and change their perspective while being inside of the work. It is a sensory experience in which the work and its experience seem inseparable.

Edwin van der Heide is an artist, composer and researcher in the field of sound, space and interaction. He extends musical composition and musical language into spatial, interactive and interdisciplinary directions. His work comprises installations, performances and environments. The audience is located in the middle of the work and challenged to actively explore and interact with the artwork.

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, South America, and Asia.

feedbacksociety, founded in 2001, is a collective for audiovisual experiments. The work takes shape in several forms such as; audiovisual performances and installations, kinetic sound sculpture’s, site-specific environments, live-cinema and digital art with the emphasis on the inner character of the media, physical movement and human interaction.

Feedbacksociety performances and installations have been shown at several international cutting edge new media festivals and venues such as:

Machinista (Glasgow), Sonic Acts (Amsterdam), Garage festival (Stralsund), Sensoralia (Rome), Video Dance (Athens), State-X/New Forms (The Hague), Dis-Patch (Belgrade), Light Forms (Rotterdam), Saal Biennaal (Tallinn), Rokolective Festival (Bucharest), and many more.

The main character is the Deer, a female human figure with the behavioural and physical traits of a male deer. Throughout the long walk it holds a pair of antlers with only the strength of its neck and nothing else. It is a living statement of queerness: in nature, mostly male animals produce antlers. The second character is the Officiant, a master of ceremonies. A masked, thin body without a face or expressions, his tasks are to accompany the sacred Deer with a ritualistic choreographic prayer and attract followers from the surroundings. The third character is the Shadow. A black body with an operatic bass voice, it accompanies the group while singing and murmuring for hours and hours, marking the rhythm of each step and the passing of time. Its powerful voice is gently amplified through portable speakers and digitally manipulated in real-time by his own body, whose muscular effort is captured and analysed by a custom interactive music system.

The performance will take place in two parts across two consecutive days, each part lasting approximately 6 hours. Audiences are invited to witness the trio departure at iii and their arrival at Conflux Festival at dedicated locations, and more excitingly, to join them along the walk for whatever amount of time one may feel suitable. The trio will invite more people along the way and whoever can join the group and leave at any time. Yet the piece expands beyond the physical realm of the streets into the data world. The entire performance is continuously filmed live by a walking crew, transforming the performance into a cinematic, surrealist audiovisual experience that is streamed in real time online, as well as at dedicated venues in The Hague and Rotterdam, making it accessible worldwide, minute by minute, step by step.


FRONTE VACUO

Fronte Vacuo is a transdisciplinary performance group founded by artists Marco Donnarumma, Margherita Pevere and Andrea Familari. It combines body art, dancetheater, audiovisual performance and emerging technology to create pieces that are “rarely seen in conventional theaters” (Neu Wiener Theaterkritik). The group’s practice is defined by unexpected methods of audience interaction, radical bodily performances and rigorous work on symbolism. Their materials are human and nonhuman bodies, organic symbionts, artificial intelligence machines, spatial sounds and images interwoven into tumultuous biomes.

Fronte Vacuo’s repertoire tours state and independent theaters, galleries, festival and parking lots, including so far among others, Münchner Kammerspiele (DE), Radialsystem (DE), HAU Berlin (DE), Donaufestival (AT), Volkstheater Wien (AT), tanzhaus nrw (DE), CTM Festival (DE), KONTEJNER (HR), PACT Zollverein (DE), Romaeuropa Festival (IT), Centre des Arts Enghien-les-Bains (FR).

The main character is the Deer, a female human figure with the behavioural and physical traits of a male deer. Throughout the long walk it holds a pair of antlers with only the strength of its neck and nothing else. It is a living statement of queerness: in nature, mostly male animals produce antlers. The second character is the Officiant, a master of ceremonies. A masked, thin body without a face or expressions, his tasks are to accompany the sacred Deer with a ritualistic choreographic prayer and attract followers from the surroundings. The third character is the Shadow. A black body with an operatic bass voice, it accompanies the group while singing and murmuring for hours and hours, marking the rhythm of each step and the passing of time. Its powerful voice is gently amplified through portable speakers and digitally manipulated in real-time by his own body, whose muscular effort is captured and analysed by a custom interactive music system.

The performance will take place in two parts across two consecutive days, each part lasting approximately 6 hours. Audiences are invited to witness the trio departure at iii and their arrival at Conflux Festival at dedicated locations, and more excitingly, to join them along the walk for whatever amount of time one may feel suitable. The trio will invite more people along the way and whoever can join the group and leave at any time. Yet the piece expands beyond the physical realm of the streets into the data world. The entire performance is continuously filmed live by a walking crew, transforming the performance into a cinematic, surrealist audiovisual experience that is streamed in real time online, as well as at dedicated venues in The Hague and Rotterdam, making it accessible worldwide, minute by minute, step by step.


FRONTE VACUO

Fronte Vacuo is a transdisciplinary performance group founded by artists Marco Donnarumma, Margherita Pevere and Andrea Familari. It combines body art, dancetheater, audiovisual performance and emerging technology to create pieces that are “rarely seen in conventional theaters” (Neu Wiener Theaterkritik). The group’s practice is defined by unexpected methods of audience interaction, radical bodily performances and rigorous work on symbolism. Their materials are human and nonhuman bodies, organic symbionts, artificial intelligence machines, spatial sounds and images interwoven into tumultuous biomes.

Fronte Vacuo’s repertoire tours state and independent theaters, galleries, festival and parking lots, including so far among others, Münchner Kammerspiele (DE), Radialsystem (DE), HAU Berlin (DE), Donaufestival (AT), Volkstheater Wien (AT), tanzhaus nrw (DE), CTM Festival (DE), KONTEJNER (HR), PACT Zollverein (DE), Romaeuropa Festival (IT), Centre des Arts Enghien-les-Bains (FR).

HELEEN BLANKEN
Heleen Blanken is a visual artist based in Amsterdam. She levitates across the fields of installation art, new media, cinematography, scenography, and sculpture. Influenced by the complex exchange between humanity and the natural environment, her artistic practice explores the different layers of our aesthetic perception of the natural world while defining traditional artistic dichotomies like the organic vs. artificial and analog vs. digital. In her work, she raises questions on how we contemplate ideas of nature.

Heleen’s work has been shown internationally in curated shows at institutes such as Nxt Museum, Stedelijk Museum, Kunstkerk Dordrecht, Floriade World Expo 2022, Gropius Bau Berlin, La Gaîté Lyrique, Gallery Ron Mandos, Musée d’art Contemporain, and Ars Electronica. She has collaborated with institutes such as Naturalis Leiden, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, and the Institute for Geosciences Utrecht.

AHO SSAN
Aho Ssan, key player of French experimental music, is the artist name of Paris based Niamké Désiré. Who has garnered wide international attention for his felt, yet richly philosophical approach to sound assemblage. His last album, positively reviewed, Rhizomes, was released on Nicolas Jaar’s Other People Label.

With a background in graphic design and cinema, he ended up composing electronic music and creating his own digital instruments. He got on Subtext Recordings, in 2020 with his debut LP Simulacrum. Based on the concept of Jean Baudrillard, the LP navigates through society’s presentation of inclusivity and equality against his own experience of growing up black in France.

Subsequently his work has been presented in various institutions across Europe and the United States such as the Lincoln Center (New York), La Maison de la Radio (Paris), CTM (Berlin), MACBA (Barcelona), Muziekgebouw (Amsterdam) and Krakow Philharmonic (Krakow).

Her artistic practice, influenced by the intricate relationship between humanity and the natural environment delves into the various layers of our perception of nature. She explores traditional artistic dichotomies such as organic vs. artificial and analog vs. digital, raising questions about our contemplation of nature and presents potential futuristic narratives.

Heleen’s work has been exhibited internationally in curated shows at institutes such as Nxt Museum, Stedelijk Museum, Kunstkerk Dordrecht, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Floriade World Expo 2022, Gropius Bau Berlin, Gallery Ron Mandos, Musée d’art Contemporain, and Ars Electronica. She has collaborated with institutes such as Naturalis Leiden, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, and the Institute for Geosciences Utrecht.

Jeroen Alexander Meijer is an interdisciplinary mindscape artist who navigates psychology, philosophy and cognitive science to create interactive experiences that help us become aware of the mysterious properties of our attention.

His fascination begins with his own attention deficit disorder (ADD) clashing with the hyperdistracting world of today. By practicing the ancient technique of Vipasssana meditation he regained awareness over the subtle and immeasurable power of the mind, inspiring the objective of his work to help audiences all over the world get into similar meditative states and bend their attention back on itself. He achieves this by composing multi-sensory installations that focus deeply on perceiving your own perception, with the ultimate goal of creating a profound sense of how our inner realms intimately influence our outer worlds.

Klara Ravat

Klara Ravat is an olfactory artist an experimental filmmaker based in Berlin. By opposing the division between the realm of memory and the realm of experience, Ravat absorbs the tradition of remembrance art into daily practice. By investigating the concept of landscape in an adventurous and exploratory way, she wants to amplify the wonderment of the spectator by creating compositions or settings that generate tranquil poetic images that leave traces and balances on the edge of alienation and recognition.

After studying qualitative trend research in Barcelona Klara moved to The Netherlands where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (ArtScience at The Royal Academy of Arts). At the same time, she started studying Psychology at the Open University of Catalonia. Klara is the co-founder and the director of the Smell Lab, a platform for olfactory art and inter-disciplinary practices that relate to scent as a medium for expression and communication, in Berlin and in an international context. The Smell Lab main mission is to co-produce, host, educate, innovate and support artistic practices that involve the sense of smell and olfaction.

Saåad

After touring across Europe with I Pilot Dæmon, Romain Barbot founded Saåad in 2009, a project-laboratory whose music revolves around the notion of reminiscence: music of memories or memories of music, soundscapes that play with a hypnagogic state conducive to introspection. Simultaneously luminous and nocturnal, light and massive, soft and abrasive, it hypnotizes with its apparent simplicity before losing us in the infinite variations of its spectrum. With a very rich discography (more than twenty releases in 12 years) on labels such as Hands In The Dark, Opal Tapes, In Paradisum, or Nahal, and appearances in various forms (concerts, performances, installations, videos, improvisations...), along with multiple collaborations, including some with renowned artists (Mondkopf, Siavash Amini), Saåad is above all a life-long endeavor, a total art encompassing the spiritual and musical wanderings of its founder Romain Barbot, dedicated to a music still largely unknown in our country.

C. Lavender has performed, lectured, and hosted workshops at MoMA, The Whitney, The Guggenheim, Hirshhorn Museum, The Rubin Museum, The Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Fridman Gallery, Cafe Oto, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, among other venues.

Perenially fascinated by old and battered noise-making machines, his dizzying output is defined by analogue textures and classic values as well as an ever-roaming sense of sonic investigation that veers from techno to freaky house deepness via old school acid. A producer with a rare sense of humor, Legowelt’s productions come thick and fast but always retain high levels of quality assurance. They land on labels like Clone, L.I.E.S., Peoples Potential Unlimited and Crème Organization in the form of myriad EPs but also well received full lengths like The Paranormal Soul and Crystal Cult 2080.

Of course, Danny Wolfers records under myriad aliases but Legowelt is his most celebrated ever since he hit the charts with 2002’s ‘Disco Rout’, a track that really put him on the map. The ensuing years have seen him forever tweaking his mystical, misty and mystic forest techno sounds and have seen him grow in demand as a live performer. When playing in clubs around the world he creates captivating sound tracks on the fly, soundtracks that force listeners to play imaginary films in their heads and dance non stop. Legowelt, then, is a true performer, creator and innovator with a fierce work rate that puts the rest of the world to shame.

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.

One of the ongoing research topics is the creation and manipulation of emergent systems and the possibilities for composition that arise from them. Besides showing these systems as installations, they can also be seen as instruments for live performance, where the performer and/or the audience becomes part of the system. Another field of interest is the notion of musical thinking and the way concepts of musical theory can be inserted into other media in order to create generative compositions in movement, light, and sound.

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.

Intrigued by the phenomena and history of optical sound, Mariska de Groot (1982, NL) makes, performs and composes for comprehensive analog light-to-sound instruments and installations which explore this principle in new ways. Her work often has a reference to media inventions from the past, with which she aims to excite a multi-sensorial and phenomenological experience in light, sound, movement and space.

Mariska obtained her BA in graphic design in Arnhem (2000-2005) and received her masters diploma at the ArtScience interfaculty in 2012. In 2009/2010 Mariska received a Startstipendium from Fonds BKVB. She won the BNG Workspace12 Project Prize in 2012, in 2014 she won the O68 Price for German/Dutch artists and in 2016 she received Creatives Industries Talent development grant.

Dieter Vandoren (°1981, Belgium) is an artist, performer and creative tech developer. His work draws from diverse backgrounds in music, IT and experimental architecture and revolves around the creation and play of spatial audiovisual instruments and environments with a focus on embodiment, immersion and primary sensory experiences.

Dieter has a masters degree from the ArtScience Interfaculty (Royal Academy of Art & Royal Conservatoire The Hague) and a bachelor in Digital Communication (University of Applied Sciences Utrecht). His works have been featured at Ars Electronica (AT), Club Transmediale, Akademie der Künste Berlin (DE), NIME/Goldsmiths (UK), Artefact/STUK (BE), Medialab Prado (ES), Electrochoc (FR), Sound Around Kaliningrad (RU), Sin Pin Pier Gallery (TWN), Gaudeamus Muziekweek, November Music, Rewire, TodaysArt, STEIM, STRP, Glow, FIBER (NL) and more.

Mint Park is a Seoul-born sound and new media artist who works at the intersection of music, technology, science, and art. Her audiovisual practice focuses on bringing speculative and virtual spaces into a physical environment through sound, light, and apparatuses.

In recent years, she has been researching the phenomenon of turbulence and building various instruments and performances with sound, air, and lights. By designing her own audiovisual systems and instruments that are spatial and site-specific, she creates live performances and compositions to question and understand the constantly fluctuating existential qualities in today’s binary space and machine-quantified time. Besides her own projects, Mint has been running Unheard Records, an electronic music label focusing on experimental music and sound practices of femme, queer, and POC artists. She is currently based in Amsterdam.

The collaborative works of Rotterdam-based artists Assmann and Strijbos are the result of empirical, ongoing research in the fields of kinetic art, expanded cinema, and experiments in perception.
In their installation series such as 'Moiré Studies', 'Fading Shadows' and 'Parallel Strata', they develop multi-sensory machines that invoke visual distortion and play with the senses through kinetic light sculptures. Their work emphasizes synaesthetic relationships between light, sound, space, time, and motion. Acting as instruments for light and sound compositions, these pieces can be seen as a form of visual music and expanded cinema, experimenting with different elements of the cinematic apparatus. Assmann and Strijbos construct their own light projectors and screens from diverse materials, creating compositions for light, sound, and kinetic sequences. These abstract cinematic interventions evolve through time and space, directly influencing the senses.

If you are sensitive to flickering lights, please be advised that this installation contains stroboscopic effects!

'Parallel Strata' was commissioned by the ZERO Foundation in 2018. The 2024 iteration was co-produced by Llum Barcelona and will be exhibited during the Conflux Festival.

Nkisi has performed at countless festivals throughout Europe such as Semibreve, Terraforma and Unsound, and at respected nightlife venues such as De School, The White Hotel and Inkonst. She has travelled extensively as a touring artist, performing at New York’s Dweller Festival and Montreal’s MUTEK. With a richly embedded and multilayered practice, Nkisi has worked with and inside esteemed institutions such as Palais de Tokyo, Callie’s Berlin and Wysing Arts Centre.

NVST's growing reputation is built on sharp, powerful, and deeply committed sets. Taking her audience by surprise, she doesn't hesitate to put them in uncomfortable situations to lead them into a trance. Breakbeats, industrial, techno, and acid are just a few of the strings to her bow. Her style draws from all genres in order to transcend them and create moments of collective communion.

The values that drive NVST's approach to DJing are far from conventionalism and commercial approaches. As an advocate for a more open and inclusive electronic music scene, she is part of the Female:Pressure family and fights for better representation in the nightlife industry. In addition to her already impressive schedule, she co-directs the Big Science label with Warzou, a sound experimentation laboratory focused on marginal electronic music. She is also a resident DJ on LYLRadio and Rinse FM.

With the installation “Portaal”, Renzo van Steenbergen and Kristjan Pütsep created an evolving environment in which several standalone sculptures are controlling the vibrations of audio and image (light) in the space. Together the vibrations emitted by the machines form harmony and disharmony that will fill the entire space.

Resina is alias of Karolina Rec, a composer and cellist based in Warsaw. In 2016, after signing with FatCat Records/130701, she released her album "Resina”, "Traces” and an EP with remixes of tracks from "Traces" by Ben Frost, Abul Mogard, Lotic and Ian William Craig.

Her latest album "Speechless," which includes compositions for a 24-person choir was released in November 2021. She also writes for film, theater, video games. Resina builds her personal musical language with blurring the boundaries between seemingly different musical genres, playing with tension between the biological/animalistic aspects of performance versus electronic and amplified sound world. Removed from classical contexts, the processed voice and cello brings amalgamation of noise, heavy drumming (by Mateusz Rychlicki), ambient and choral elements, moving from delicate beauty to incandescent undercurrent of danger, from pulsating minimalism to unbridled explosions.
Resina is currently working on her fourth solo album and a collaboration - Ego Death with French electronic music composer Aho Ssan.

ROLY PORTER
Known for being one half of Vex`d during UK’s dubstep golden era, Bristol-based Roly Porter composes epic, atmospheric electronic music alongside his fellow of Subtext Recordings. LPs, such Aftertime, Life Cycle of a Massive Star and Third Law, sonically portray the awe inspired by our inner and outer universes. 2016’s Third Law, released on Triangle Records, is a stunning mass of choral voices, strings, and synthesizers punctuated by pulverizing percussive bursts, almost attacking the listener at the most tension-filled moments, as if emanating deep from within the planet’s core.

In June 2020, Subtext released Porter’s fourth solo studio album, ‘Kistvaen’, exploring ancient burial rites from the moorlands of southwestern England, which features the work vocalists trained in local singing traditions. ‘Kistvaen’ contrasts primordial motifs with that of the 21st-century life in designed environments and an evolving virtual existence. The music blurs boundaries between field recording, folk instrumentation and digital processing, which although beatless creates a profound effect using dark ambiance, deep electronics, and immersive sound design.

FLORALIA
Inspired by the writings of Donna J. Haraway, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Greg Egan, the work plunges us into a speculative future, where samples of then extinct plant species are preserved and displayed in a virtual archive room. Through editing and visual strategies, this archive room is sporadically transformed under the effect of interference caused by the memory emanating from the listed plants, revealing traces of a past that continues to haunt the place. Floralia is a simulation of ecosystems born from the fusion of technology and organic matter, where past and future coexist in a perpetual tension of the present.

SABRINA RATTÉ
Sabrina Ratté is a Canadian artist based in Montreal. Using tools, such as 3D scans, analog video synthesizers, and 3D animation, her formal approach serves as the foundation for the creation of ecosystems that manifest across various platforms, from interactive installations to series of videos, digital prints, sculptures, or virtual Reality. Exploring the convergence of technology and biology, the interplay between materiality and virtuality, and the speculative evolution of our environment, her work is influenced by the realms of science fiction, philosophy, and theoretical writings. Ratté portrays worlds devoid of humans, where forgotten remnants continue to evolve and forge new relationships with the ecosystem.

Her work has been exhibited in institutions such as Laforet Museum in Tokyo, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Centre Pompidou in Paris, the PHI Center in Montreal, the Max Ernst Museum in Brühl, and the Museum of the Moving Image in New York. She has presented solo exhibitions at Gaîté Lyrique in Paris, Fotografiska in Shanghai, and Arsenal Contemporary Art in Montreal and New York. Notably, her work is part of the collection at the Montreal Contemporary Art Museum. Ratté was longlisted for the Sobey Art Award in Canada in 2019 and went on to receive the award in 2020.

The Berlin-based sound artist, vocalist, and DJ Sara Persico started experimenting on the fringes of Naples's fiery underground noise scene, developing a technique integrating her voice with analogue electronics, field recordings, and samples, while finishing her academic music studies.

Sara presented her work in festival and clubs such as Ballroom Blitz Beirut, CTM Festival, Nyege Nyege, Ormside Projects, Roter Salon, Berghain Kantine, Documenta fifteen, Dancity Festival among others.

As improviser and performer, she has collaborated with a wide spectrum of artists, joining Evelyn Saylor’s vocal ensemble for Caterina Barbieri’s acclaimed “light-years” show at Rewire Festival and London’s Southbank Centre, and worked on projects alongside Elvin Brandhi, Chrisman, The Ex’s Andy Moor, Tony Elieh, Ludwig Wandinger, Dirar Kalash and many others.

When Guy hasn’t locked himself in the studio, or isn’t tending to one of his labels, he loves engaging with the dance floor during one of his tireless DJ or live sets. Finding a home at Amsterdam institutions like (the now closed down) Trouw, Dekmantel and De School has given him the opportunity and freedom to connect with fellow travelers, and continue on his fascinating musical journey.

Thomas Moynihan is a historian of ideas and writer. He holds a PhD from Oriel College, Oxford University, and is currently a Affiliate Researcher at Cambridge University's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, alongside being a Research Affiliate at the Berggruen Institute's Antikythera think tank. Primarily, he studies how worldviews transform over time, in often radical ways, as more is learnt and revealed about the cosmos and our placement within it. Thomas is author of X-Risk: How Humanity Discovered Its Own Extinction (MIT Press, 2020) and Spinal Catastrophism: A Secret History (MIT Press, 2019). Aside from lecturing at institutions ranging from Stanford to the Edinburgh Royal Society, Thomas's writing has appeared in publications such as the BBC, The New Scientist, The Guardian, Aeon, Noema Magazine, The Independent, and Tank Magazine.

Zalán Szakács

Zalán Szakács is an artist who brings together immersive art, scenography and media theory research.

Through his work, Szakács explores the relationship between space, body and technology, resulting in multi-sensory experiences that include elements such as light, sound, smell, tactility and movement.

Based on the research of media theory and media archaeology, his artistic work brings forgotten analogue technologies – such as 17th-century optical experiments and 18th-century phantasmagoria – to the contemporary context, unfolding as experiential art installations. For each project, Szakács closely collaborates with scientists and researchers as well as filmmakers, artists, sound designers, and local communities.

He has been exhibiting, performing, and screening at CTM Festival (DE), Ars Electronica Festival (AUT), International Film Festival Rotterdam (NL), Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL), Het Nieuwe Instituut (NL), V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media (NL), Kunsthaus Graz (AUT), MU Hybrid Art House (NL), Instrument Inventors Initiative (NL), TENT Rotterdam (NL), Zsolnay Light Festival (HU), and Light Art Museum Budapest (HU), among other places. Szakács is a core teacher at Utrecht University of Arts and an affiliated researcher at Utrecht University.

Teresa Winter

Yorkshire based composer and musicologist, Teresa Winter, is a mainstay on prism-pushing experimental labels Night School, Death of Rave, Kashual Plastik, and Boomkat’s in-house Editions imprint. With a doctorate on the vitally important English composer and electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire, her work exists in conversation with the sonic and technological legacies of modernism, post-structuralist theory, and esoteric ritual practices.

Through his work, Szakács explores the relationship between space, body and technology, resulting in multi-sensory experiences that include elements such as light, sound, smell, tactility and movement.

Based on the research of media theory and media archaeology, his artistic work brings forgotten analogue technologies – such as 17th-century optical experiments and 18th-century phantasmagoria – to the contemporary context, unfolding as experiential art installations. For each project, Szakács closely collaborates with scientists and researchers as well as filmmakers, artists, sound designers, and local communities.

He has been exhibiting, performing, and screening at CTM Festival (DE), Ars Electronica Festival (AUT), International Film Festival Rotterdam (NL), Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL), Het Nieuwe Instituut (NL), V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media (NL), Kunsthaus Graz (AUT), MU Hybrid Art House (NL), Instrument Inventors Initiative (NL), TENT Rotterdam (NL), Zsolnay Light Festival (HU), and Light Art Museum Budapest (HU), among other places. Szakács is a core teacher at Utrecht University of Arts and an affiliated researcher at Utrecht University.

ZOHAR
Cutting-edge sonics as the shifting of storms. Percussive and pulsating, Zohar is known for a razor-sharp and highly dynamic club-signature. With years of formative experience controlling dancefloors, the artist behind Zohar has been treading a diverse and eclectic musical path in which rattling low-end and rhythmic tension can be regarded as the common denominators. Known for technical refinement and mixing witchcraft, Zohar now intuitively seeks innovative and surprising connections, both disorienting and exciting listeners in the process.

JEISSON DRENTH
With his work, media and performance artist Jeisson Drenth explores the possibilities and limitations
of technologies for people to shape their past, present and future. His practice brings together experimental video, live performance, text-based work and, since recently, music and sculptures. In his hands these media become embedded with queer perspectives and his lived experience as an
adopted person with a history of intercontinental migration. His collaborations with musicians and DJ’s inspire new combinations of multiple creative practices and breathe life into the subjects he is so fascinated with.

Jeisson has performed and exhibited work at CYNETART, Mira Digital Arts Festival, Trauma Bar und Kino, Unsound, Dekmantel, Fiber Festival, Tresor at Kraftwerk, Sonorama Medellín, DGTL FMNSM, Katharsis, Club Kompass, Gessnerallee Performing Arts Theatre Zürich, Museum TENT Rotterdam, M_HKA Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp and BOZAR/Centre for Fine Arts Brussels.