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.
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.
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'.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.