Volante
Tender Center, Justyna Banaszczyk (FOQL), BARE-TT, Peter Fengler (De Player), Lukas Simonis, Wojtek Szustak

Grand Finale
30.11.2019, 23.00
UBIK/WORM
Boomgaardstraat 69, Rotterdam


Michał Libera (PL, 1979) is a sociologist working in the sound and music field since 2003, recently, mostly as a dramatist and librettist in sound essays and other experimental forms of radio art and opera. Recent shows include Cosmos-Cosmos based on Witold Gombrowicz’s work (with Lê Quan Ninh, Ingar Zach, and Tomasz Nosiński) and Kalkwerk/Studium based on an unwritten treatise on hearing in Kalkwerk by Thomas Bernhard (with Pete Simonelli, Hilary Jeffery, Andrea Belfi, and Ralf Meinz). He also runs the conceptual pop label Populista dedicated to mis- and over- interpretations of music and curates various concerts, festivals, and anti-festivals, and music programs for exhibitions.

Meng Qi is a pioneering synthesist, theorist, teacher, and designer, the first of his kind in China. Renowned for his distinctive devices and instruments, Meng performs with a gestural, emotional edge. Meng has built a number of experimental instruments with unique aesthetics and innovative interfaces that are played all over the world.

Bare-TT are Katia Barrett and Melissa Tun Tun. They are a duo that exists at the intersection of computer music and live electronics. Using warped field recordings with altered voices, DJ player loops, and phase distortion synthesis they create soundscapes that oscillate between micro and macro environments. In their performances, Bare-TT narrate the possibility of symbiotic regeneration and metamorphosis. Their practice is informed by spatial music and acousmatic interpretation and inspired by the promiscuity of species, horizontal gene transfer, alien morphologies, and the possibility of becoming vegetal.

DE PLAYER is a polymorphic production platform in Rotterdam (nl), which has been putting together programs on the cutting edge of performance art, experimental music and the visual arts, emphasising the importance of sound, and the performance and positioning of sound within the visual arts and contemporary experimental music. Theory, design, lifestyle and staging form a key role in this. DE PLAYER does not adhere to the usual separation which occurs between the disciplines of music and visual art, rather they show their mutual inspirations and influences.

Over the last few years Justyna Banaszczyk aka FOQL has released an impressive amount of music on different types of media, on labels such as New York Haunted, Always Human Tapes, Gooiland Elektro and Pointless Geometry. Her hypnotic and unconventional style stems from her industrial and dark roots, and thanks to her soft spot for experiments, heaviness and the most innovative corners of dance music, she avoids the obvious, what can also be heard during her live performances. The artist associated with ORAMICS collective is releasing a new record “Dumpster diving know-how” that’s coming out on CGI Records from Atlanta on the 15th March. ORAMICS was created in 2017 as a platform to empower women, non-binary and queer people in the electronic music scene, then it evolved into an independent booking agency representing FOQL, Olivia, Mala Herba, dogheadsurigeri, Avtomat, Monster and ISNT. ORAMICS mostly works in Poland but their collaborators are based in the Netherlands, Austria and France. A vital part of their activity is to support other struggling communities and also music and artists from Eastern and central Europe.

Juan-Pablo Villegas aka Humildad Sound Sistema sees filmmaking as a way to bring together his interest in images and sound. It takes as a starting point the body’s perception of external stimuli & how that influences our personal & collective experience. The tools he uses derives from audiovisual principles that allow reflection by changing the way they are conventionally used. In recent years, he has researched issues related to translation & the expansion of the sensory spectrum, the animist condition of objects & the formation of the psychosomatic.

Ryo Ikeshiro (JP/UK, 1980) is an artist and researcher whose work deals with sound, media and computation. His output explores contemporary notions of otherness as manifested through technology and sound, and he is interested in the artistic potential of computational technology and algorithmic processes as well as the cultural and political dimension of computation and media. His practice includes audiovisual performances, sound installations, interactive works, generative art, electronic music, data visualization and sonification, video, 3D prints and engravings. Recent works explore issues of diversity and net culture through the use of deep learning, computer vision, the singing voice synthesis software Vocaloid, found footage, onomatopoeia and directional audio technology. He was part of the Asia Culture Center’s inaugural exhibition in Gwangju, South Korea, and his TeleText art pages have been broadcast on German, Austrian and Swiss national TV.

Lukas Simonis is an instrumentalist and musical activist, and has his roots in the industrial music and noise rock of the 1980s. He discovered the delimited world of improvisation in the Rotterdam Jazzbunker scene, which consisted of 'heavy drug induced' punk rockers, freejazzers, early electronic musicians and pre-postrock. After that time Simonis played in several bands, (ao. Dull Schicksal, Coolhaven, Vril and Deus Cantos) and organized concerts, events and films at the Jazzbunker, Teatro Popular, Dodorama, Worm, Vrooom and InstrumentsMakePlay. Nowadays he also runs the electronic studio of WORM, which is part of this project.

Wojtek Szustak is an intermedia artist and musician from Poland. He studied Intermedia Arts at the Fine Arts Academy in Kraków, currently residing in Rotterdam, and focusing on audio, technology and interferences. Since 2010 he is present on the Kraków electronic and DIY scene. In 2016, a couple of months before leaving to Rotterdam he co-founded the gallery “Elementarz dla mieszkańców miast”. In Rotterdam he orbits around WORM sound studio and media archive (worm pirate bay) making couple of works and presenting widespread content of that archive during Explore the North Festival in Leeuwarden or Gogbot festival in Enschede. This year he also started a cooperation with Varia with the goal to make a series of instruments in workshops using recycled electronic waste only.

Tender Center (*TC) is currently eight people and a space who go by these words*: We are a collective of feminist queers who are building the beginnings of a community center for culture; or a venue for queer events; or a les university of life in Rotterdam. Tender Center is a relational infrastructure *and venue* with parties, agitation, co-learning, bodies in varying states, gardening, (s)words, conversation, workshops, food, DIY darkroom, cats, curry, and a solid sound system. Tender Center is a not-for-profit association, and we currently are running on funds from our own small pockets and the energies of those who support us in making the space and *community activities* possible, thank you! *Thank you, our lesbian trans feminist queer p.o.c friends, and wider ltqbgipq communities and allies*, for creating a space for music, art, poetry, politics, *hanging out*, and care of all queer kinds.