TICKETS

Time fas­cin­ates because of its per­vas­ive­ness: there is no way to think around it. As with any­thing so ubi­quit­ous, it is easy to assume that time is nat­ur­al and non-nego­ti­able, but con­cepts of time are con­struc­tions, and those con­struc­tions depend strongly on social and tech­no­lo­gic­al real­it­ies. At first sight, time’s nature is lin­ear. In the Kantian tra­di­tion, future becomes present becomes past, and there is no way back. But oth­er con­cepts are pos­sible. Time can also be sim­ul­tan­eous, mul­ti­di­men­sion­al, or revers­ible. Time is a non-lin­ear way to order events in rela­tion to each oth­er, and since sound is a time-based phe­nomen­on, those pos­sib­il­it­ies are fun­da­ment­al con­di­tions for mak­ing music.

Sound and music offer a space where those aspects of this oth­er­wise elu­sive mat­ter can be made tan­gible, where we can exper­i­ment with its many facets and pos­sible approaches. Sound and music can unhinge the author­ity of clock time, by tak­ing us into a shared syn­chrony in which the social takes over, or on the con­trary offer­ing a space where an indi­vidu­al can dis­con­nect and time travel into memory or unknown futures. Music cre­ates a spe­cial moment­ary bond between musi­cians and pub­lic when listen­ers enter into some­body else’s time without neces­sar­ily know­ing its dimen­sion beforehand.

The four days of Oscillation 2023 will pro­pose dif­fer­ent set­tings to explore these con­sid­er­a­tions. Day by day, we will zoom in on aspects such as dis­place­ment in time by memory or anti­cip­a­tion; time-struc­tur­ing instru­ments like rhythm, ges­ture, pulse, repe­ti­tion or silence; dur­a­tion­al sim­ul­tan­eity in which the audi­ence can nav­ig­ate autonom­ously; and the sub­ject­ive tem­por­al exper­i­ence of impro­visa­tion which strongly draws on relationality.

Oscillation ::: o tem­po is host­ed by MILL (Needcompany) and HISK, Brussels.

FESTIVAL SPECIALS

Festival reader

With texts by Michel Siffre, Jürg Frey, Margaret Tait, Catherine Christer Hennix, ASUNA, Mansur Al-Hallaj, Ursula K. Le Guin, Clarice Lispector, Hildegard of Bingen and Huw Lemmey, Clara Lévy, George Woodcock, Rebecca Solnit, Hazrat Inayat Khan, Hito Steyerl and Anna Tsing.

21 Tracks for the 21st Century by Jessica Ekomane

A playl­ist of sounds, songs and pieces of music that will best arm listen­ers with the tools to approach what is left of this young century.

26.04
Persis Bekkering — Reading Group

Free entry upon regis­tra­tion — texts in English — no pre­par­a­tion required / 19:00 — 21:30 @ Q‑O2

Linear time is a con­struct — it is polit­ic­al, his­tor­ic­al and colo­ni­al. Linear time can be divided, con­trolled and gov­erned. That means it can be col­lapsed, too. In this read­ing group we col­lect­ively read and study two very dif­fer­ent texts that take a crit­ic­al look look at Western time — and in its wake, nar­rat­ive and music­al pro­gres­sion: Rasheeda Phillips’ Dismantling the Master Clock (2016) from the Black Quantum Futurism zine; and Simon Reynolds’ The Hardcore Continuum #1: Hardcore Rave a text on the paradig­mat­ic now’ of hard­core techno and rave cul­ture. Taken togeth­er, these fas­cin­at­ing texts sub­vert and dis­tort a blind accept­ance of time, con­nect­ing it to a cri­tique of his­tory and the mod­ern pro­ject of his­tory as progress.

Persis Bekkering is a writer cur­rently based in Brussels. She is the author of novels,essays, art cri­ti­cism and lib­ret­tos, teaches cre­at­ive writ­ing at ArtEZ in Arnhem (NL),and stud­ies philosophy.

28.04
Nur/Se — What do you expect from a DJ mix?

Registration required — English spoken — capa­city: 6 — no pri­or know­ledge neces­sary / 14:00 — 16:00 @ Q‑O2

Perhaps we are now at apo­gee of DJ mix­ing, as it becomes more and more tech­nic­ally and medi­at­ic­ally access­ible; but what is it really about? During this work­shop we’ll take time to exchange and reflect about what we expect and look for when we go out or click onto vari­ous plat­forms to see / hear a DJ mix.

The work­shop will run on know­ledge and tech­nic­al exchange.
Trial and error will be the mode of work­ing to explore and handle a few digit­al tools such as CDJ, Recordbox, Traktor, and the peri­pher­al tools of the mix­er and the sound system.

Roberta Miss aka Nur/​Se, has a long and large exper­i­ence in the sound domain, mix­ing and par­ti­cip­at­ing in fest­ivals and events since 2000. Her DJ sets are con­struc­ted through a lay­er­ing of sounds and tracks where clar­ity and con­fu­sion, heav­i­ness and light­ness, col­our and dark­ness inter­act, thus cre­at­ing nar­rat­ive or abstract stor­ies for the dance­floor or for more intim­ate listen­ing such as radio broad­cast. Roberta Miss lives and works in Brussels where she is also a found­ing mem­ber of Poxcat, a col­lect­ive with a fem­in­ist out­look, aim­ing to pro­mote DJs and musi­cians who identi­fy as female, through the organ­isa­tion of parties and monthly radio shows on Radio Vacarme.

29.04
Katharina Ernst — The Transformative Quality of Polyrhythms

Registration required — English spo­ken — capac­i­ty: 17 — No pri­or know­ledge neces­sary / 10:00 — 13:00 @ Q‑O2

The term poly­rhythm des­ig­nates a (music­al) situ­ation in which sev­er­al dif­fer­ent rhythms are hap­pen­ing at the same time, thus cre­at­ing a land­scape of diverse togeth­er­ness. In con­trast to most of west­ern pop­u­lar music that refers to a 4/4 struc­ture, poly­rhythms over­lap, diverge and there­fore allow for new open­ings, spa­cings and move­ments of body and mind. The work­shop aims to get in touch with the nature of poly­rhythms by listen­ing to poly­rhythmic music, dis­cuss­ing dif­fer­ent aspects of poly­rhythm, above all, explor­ing and prac­ti­cing them togeth­er as indi­vidu­als as well as in a group.

Berlin-based artist Katharina Ernst start­ed play­ing the drums at age nine, with an ear­ly focus on poly­met­ric, odd, and chaot­ic struc­tures. She stud­ied abstract paint­ing at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly start­ed tour­ing with music and per­for­mance pro­jects. In her work, she trans­gress­es the fields of music, fine arts, and chore­og­ra­phy, cel­e­brat­ing a hybrid notion of the term​‘com­po­si­tion’.

30.04
Valérie Vivancos — Scoring Time

Registration required  — English spoken — capa­city: 12 — per­son­al artist­ic prac­tice (or study) is recom­men­ded / 10:00 — 13:00 @ Q‑O2

This work­shop is aimed at musi­cians, sound artists, and impro­visers inter­ested in altern­at­ive scores to fur­ther the scope of music­al struc­tures. Informed by vari­ous tra­di­tions such as per­form­ance art, dance, writ­ing and gen­er­al impro­visa­tion, par­ti­cipants will work in small groups to devel­op visu­al, vocal and tex­tu­al scores focused on time.

Participants are asked to bring writ­ing and draw­ing sup­plies (paper, pens…) as well as an instru­ment or any sound gen­er­at­ing device (elec­tron­ics, com­puter, sound­ing object…)

Valérie Vivancos crée des pays­ages son­ores immer­sifs et con­crets. Actuellement basée à Paris après onze ans dans l’un­der­ground anglo-sax­on, elle se produit dans des salles, fest­ivals et événe­ments artistiques inter­na­tionaux et col­labore avec des artistes comme Carl Stone, Kamilya Jubran et Limpe Fuchs.

19:00
Limpe Fuchs & Valérie Vivancos

Fuchs and Vivancos have devised a series of music­al situ­ations fus­ing musique con­crète, rhythmic stud­ies and impro­visa­tion, tailored to their respect­ive prac­tices and instru­mentari­um: per­cus­sion, elec­tron­ics, voice and objects. Their research and per­form­ances are based on con­scious listen­ing so as to trig­ger new ges­tures and scores.

UCHS Valerie VIVANCOS GMEA Redidency 2023 Exerpt from film by Gerome BLANCHARD 02
© Gerome Blanchard

For dec­ades, Limpe Fuchs has been one of the most ima­gin­at­ive sound artists on the inter­na­tion­al exper­i­ment­al music scene. Having stud­ied piano, viol­in, and per­cus­sion in Munich, she now plays on a col­lec­tion of instru­ments made from bronze, gran­ite, and hard­wood mater­i­al, with a real-time engage­ment to the eco­logy of the space at hand.

Valérie Vivancos cre­ates immers­ive and con­crete sound­scapes. Currently based in Paris after 11 years in the Anglo-Saxon under­ground, she has per­formed at inter­na­tion­al ven­ues, fest­ivals, and art events and col­lab­or­ated with the likes of Carl Stone, Kamylia Jubran, and Limpe Fuchs. 

19:45
Juliet Fraser & Newton Armstrong perform Morton Feldman

Three Voices

Three Voices was com­posed shortly after the death of one of Feldman’s closest friends, the paint­er Philip Guston, and sets frag­ments of a poem by Frank O’Hara, who had died sev­er­al years earli­er. Feldman described the onstage loud­speak­ers as tomb­stoney’, the live voice con­vers­ing with his two friends to make a mix­ture of the liv­ing and the dead’. There is little sense of exist­en­tial angst though — we hov­er, sus­pen­ded, as if bey­ond time and space. 

11 GUIDE6 super Jumbo

Soprano Juliet Fraser spe­cial­ises in the gnarly edges of con­tem­por­ary clas­sic­al music. She reg­u­larly appears as a soloist with ensembles such as Musikfabrik, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Modern, Talea, and Quatuor Bozzini, and as a duo with pian­ist Mark Knoop. Juliet is artist­ic dir­ect­or of the eaves­drop­ping fest­iv­al in Londonand co-dir­ect­or of all that dust, a little inde­pend­ent label for new music.

Newton Armstrong is a com­poser, elec­tron­ics per­former, and occa­sion­al build­er of elec­tron­ic music­al instru­ments. Much of his work focusses on forms of music-mak­ing that emerge in the com­posed inter­ac­tions between people, tech­no­lo­gies, and their envir­on­ments. Newton teaches in the Department of Performing Arts at City University of London.

Morton Feldman
(1926 — 1987) was an American com­poser and key fig­ure of the New York School of com­posers. Inspired by devel­op­ments in abstract paint­ing, tra­di­tion­al tex­tile tech­niques, and archi­tec­ture, Feldman com­posed acous­tic music focused on repe­ti­tion, change and con­stantly-evolving senses of son­ic colour.

- break -

21:15
Hans-Christian Dany [talk]

Ode to Routine (Against the Project as a Tool of Control)

The more I treat what I do as mean­ing­less, the less I’ll be forced to jus­ti­fy it in response to the wrong line of ques­tion­ing. Being a mean­ing­less dwarf, I can just slip through, below the author­ity of a lan­guage that ques­tions my value. Superficially dilut­ing the self allows you to become one of many and of much and to grow as such. A talk about cyber­net­ic tac­tics in the field of art in a pres­ence that is reg­u­lated by cyber­net­ic post-politics.

IMG 9978

Hans-Christian Dany lives in Hamburg and writes in the morn­ing. Sometimes this turns into books like: Speed, Morgen werde ich Idiot or the upcom­ing No Dandy. No Fun. Looking good while things fall apart.

21:45
John McCowen

Duration

The mod­el is one of expan­sion and return: from tone to tex­ture and back. The motion­less line’, which lays down like a track in space’ is sus­tained through John’s per­form­at­ive, fig­ur­al ten­sion between pres­ence and with­draw­al. Its repe­ti­tion accen­tu­ates the mal­le­ab­il­ity of music­al time as a form in itself. This reit­er­a­tion sub­mits a remark­able truth in clos­ure: that along the same motion­less line’, there is always a new action’ which traces it. — Alec Sturgis

MOD 1

John McCowen is a composer/​clarinetist focused on extend­ing the pos­sib­il­it­ies of the cla­ri­net. His work has been described by The New Yorker as the son­ic equi­val­ent of micro­scop­ic life viewed on a slide’ and by The Wire as an aston­ish­ing demon­stra­tion of pure sound and human will.’ John’s mul­ti­phon­ic approach embraces drones, dif­fer­ence tones, and beat­ing har­mon­ics as a means to squeeze out the com­pos­i­tion­al poten­tial with­in an acous­tic sound source.

22:45
Felix Kubin

A live-per­form­ance based on large scores and draw­ings that are son­i­fied with the help of a cus­tom-made light scan­ner and pro­jec­ted on a screen. As a bonus track, Kubin will per­form Jane B ertrinkt mit den Pferden (Jane B drowns with the horses), a noise hom­mage to Jane Birkin, based on a loop of her song Jane B.

VA FALL FELLOWS 2022 179

Felix Kubin is a com­poser, cre­at­or of radio plays, per­former, media artist and cur­at­or. A lovech­ild of the home record­ing era (he star­ted to com­pose elec­tron­ic 4‑trackmusic at the age of 12), his activ­it­ies span futur­ist pop, elec­troacous­tic and cham­ber­orches­tra music, radio art, lec­ture per­form­ances and writing.

19:00
Felix Kubin [live radio play]

Phantom Frequencies

The record­ings of this pro­gram can­not be trus­ted. They were made unin­ten­tion­ally or occurred without any human inter­ac­tion. Some of them – like elec­tro­mag­net­ic inter­fer­ences — can be explained sci­en­tific­ally, oth­ers can­not. What con­nects all of them is their unex­pec­ted appear­ance. These sounds emerged from noth­ing­ness –like phantoms. They mani­fes­ted on old tapes, online stream­ing chan­nels, dis­rup­ted hard discs and broken stu­dio gear, record­ings played at the wrong speed o rac­ci­dent­ally con­tam­in­ated by out­er sig­nal inter­fer­ences.

It is the first time this radio play is played live.

Felix Schlafwandler Bergwerk by Marie Losier
© Marie Losier

Felix Kubin is a com­poser, cre­at­or of radio plays, per­former, media artist and cur­at­or. A lovech­ild of the home record­ing era (he star­ted to com­pose elec­tron­ic 4‑trackmusic at the age of 12), his activ­it­ies span futur­ist pop, elec­troacous­tic and cham­ber­orches­tra music, radio art, lec­ture per­form­ances and writing.

19:30
Marija Rasa

Multi-layered son­or­ity that delves into the Kintai (Lithuania) reserve. Added to the ges­tures already encoded in the record­ings that con­tain crack­ling, water gurg­ling, etc., there are new ones that are con­trac­ted by a micro-edit­ing approach in time and space (quad­ra­phon­ic sound). Gradually field record­ings begin to medi­ate with del­ic­ate har­mon­ies, noise, and voices, offer­ing immer­sion in a vivid and uniden­ti­fi­able soundscape. 

Marija Rasa kintai kitaip copy

Born in Lithuania, liv­ing in Brussels, musi­cian and sound artist Marija Rasa explores sound’s spa­ti­al­ity, tex­ture, and fra­gil­ity. In her multi-chan­nel com­pos­i­tions, she care­fully sculpts fic­tion­al sound­scapes out of del­ic­ate noise, har­mon­ies, field record­ings from quiet places, and voice, attent­ively assembled using a micro-mont­age approach.

20:00
Jessica Ekomane

Jessica Ekomane will present an untitled music­al game of rhythm per­cep­tion in space, using simple wave­forms as the main sound mater­i­al. The set explores the per­cep­tion of sep­ar­ate ele­ments which form mean­ing as they form a whole, trans­form­ing the addi­tion of simple stat­ic sound ele­ments into com­plex rhythmic and har­mon­ic structures.

© Camille Blake
© Camille Blake

Jessica Ekomane is a French-born and Berlin-based elec­tron­ic musi­cian and sound artist. Her quad­ra­phon­ic per­form­ances seek a cath­artic effect through the inter­play of psy­choacous­tics, the per­cep­tion of rhythmic struc­tures and the inter­change of noise and melody. Her music is groun­ded in ques­tions such as the rela­tion­ship between indi­vidu­al per­cep­tion and col­lect­ive dynam­ics or the invest­ig­a­tion of listen­ing expect­a­tions and their soci­et­al roots.

- break -

21:00
Katharina Ernst

Le Temps

The french term le temps sig­ni­fies both the time and the weath­er. Clouds appear on the record cov­er as a signs of change and trans­form­a­tion. Classical styles of play­ing the drums are accom­pan­ied by the use of sticks and instru­ments from tra­di­tion­al Korean music. The focus here lies on the mul­tiple use of only few objects, cel­eb­rat­ing the abund­ance of sim­pli­city with­in the con­text of a dense solo drum composition.

Bildschirmfoto 2021 09 15 um 14 39 37

Berlin-based artist Katharina Ernst star­ted play­ing the drums at age nine, with an early focus on poly­met­ric, odd, and chaot­ic struc­tures. She stud­ied abstract paint­ing at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and sim­ul­tan­eously star­ted tour­ing with music and per­form­ance pro­jects. In her work, she trans­gresses the fields of music, fine arts, and cho­reo­graphy, cel­eb­rat­ing a hybrid notion of the term com­pos­i­tion’.

21:45
Ameel Brecht

A per­form­ance in two parts: In the first, using some themes on man­dolin and har­moni­um, Ameel Brecht will explore how memory and per­cep­tion of time inter­act and influ­ence each oth­er. The second part explores sleep as a unique ter­rain of dis­so­ci­ation, time ali­en­a­tion, and vulnerability.

Ameel brecht meakusma2
© Laurent Orseau

Ameel Brecht is a com­poser and exper­i­ment­al musi­cian who explores his pas­sion for eso­ter­ic tun­ings and res­on­ances on a vari­ety of string instru­ments such as steel man­dolin, gui­tar and viol­one. He is also the founder of Razen, a music­al pro­ject he star­ted dur­ing his stud­ies at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels.

22:45
Olga Kokcharova

Mixotricha Paradoxa

For buchla 200e and field record­ings. Guided by the hands of a gold­smith, we dive into the autum­nal humus strad­dling our half-closed eye­lids. Gargling, sizz­ling, Kokhlias takes us from fig­ur­at­ive to abstract, between ant­hill and mod­u­lar syn­thes­is, from the inner deluge to the elec­tric thinning.

C2022 Johannes Berger Sonic Topologies 972
© Johannes Berger

Born in Siberia and cur­rently liv­ing in Geneva, Olga Kokcharova is a sound artist, com­poser and musi­cian. She is inter­ested in everything that is aud­ible, regard­less of the medi­um. Through her research, the artist explores sound as a tool that allows us to con­stantly rein­vent our map­ping of real­ity. She works with ana­logue mod­u­lar syn­thes­izers, pre­pared instru­ments, and phono­graph­ie to cre­ate com­pos­i­tions, soundtracks, sound­walks, multi-chan­nel elec­troacous­tic impro­visa­tions, and sound install­a­tions in pub­lic spaces.

Afternoon program

This block is made up of open-ended pieces, with long and vari­able dur­a­tions. These per­form­ances func­tion as con­tain­ers or envir­on­ments which can be moved in and out of. Five per­form­ances will take place in two par­al­lel spaces, on two floors of the same build­ing. Listeners are invited to move between pieces in their own rhythm, as they would, per­haps, in a garden. 

Room 1 [MILL]

15:00
Clara Lévy

13 Visions

13 Visions
is a series of com­pos­i­tions by Clara Lévy, per­formed by her­self on viol­in. They are con­ceived as an ima­gin­ary meet­ing between two com­posers whose music­al aes­thet­ics share many com­mon traits, des­pite the cen­tur­ies sep­ar­at­ing them: Hildegard von Bingen and Pauline Oliveros. The two com­poser’s respect­ive vis­ions are thus inter­twined in a cycle of thir­teen pieces for solo violin.

Clara Levy Portrait2
© Dimitri Djuric

Clara Lévy is a Brussels based viol­in­ist. She devel­ops solo pro­jects ques­tion­ing the dram­at­urgy of listen­ing and col­lab­or­ates with ensembles such as Hanatsu miroir, Ictus, Nemo Ensemble etc. Her cur­rent music­al pro­jects are inspired by erosion, slow­ness, the micro­scop­ic and a fic­tion­al Middle Age. 

16:30
Nur/Se performs Éliane Radigue

Σ = a = b = a + b

Σ = a = b = a + b is an exper­i­ment­al turntable work by Eliane Radigue, using two sev­en inch vinyl which are engraved across both sides.

Side A and B can be listened to sep­ar­ately or sim­ul­tan­eously, syn­chron­ously or asyn­chron­ously.
Sides A and B of the disk can be com­bined indef­in­itely at any speed: 78, 45, 33 or 16 rpm.


The com­bin­a­tion of this simple score and the two disks, gen­er­ates a work that can be infin­itely exten­ded and altered.

Σ = a = b = a + b is one of Radigue’s first sound pro­pos­i­tions. Originally, the turntables were made avail­able to the pub­lic, and vis­it­ors could there­fore com­pose their own son­ic land­scape; for Oscillation, the work is per­formed by Nur/​Se.

Scan 30 copy

Éliane Radigue is a French com­poser born in 1932. She is best known for her long-form elec­tron­ic com­pos­i­tions made on the ARP 2500 syn­thes­iser, which she has com­posed from the 1960s onwards. In these works, extremely gradu­al changes in the synthesiser’s para­met­ers gen­er­ate rich, organ­ic tex­tures. In 2001, Radigue began the the Occam’s Ocean series, a grow­ing col­lec­tion of works for acous­tic musi­cians which build from verbal con­ver­sa­tions rather than writ­ten scores. 

Room 2 [HISK]

15:00
Maria Komarova

Krɑjïnɑ

Some say, there are no places bet­ter than home. Others hope there are lands that were prom­ised or places exist­ing as gaps out of timespace, with­in the realms of the ordin­ary world. We may fall into them and find ourselves on a bound­ary between two nowheres, like on a coast without water and land lost among debris from both sides. There, things become forces and sounds become tales. There, arte­facts dance with land­forms and offer hints without mak­ing riddles. How do you feel about a waltz with a burnt piece of rock or a gentle hug with a bottleneck?

C Vera Marmelo
© Vera Marmelo

Maria Komarova is an inter­dis­cip­lin­ary artist whose prac­tice is situ­ated on the bor­ders of per­form­ing arts, sceno­graphy, sound, and install­a­tion art. By sta­ging and tech­nic­ally repur­pos­ing com­mon­place objects, Komarova’s works emphas­ise son­ic and visu­al poten­tial of the non-human world. Working with sound as a per­form­at­ive medi­um, she con­tinu­ously devel­ops DIY elec­tro-acous­tic objects and lets them tem­por­ar­ily inhab­it the sites of per­form­ances and installations.

16:00
Maia Urstad

Time Pockets

Time Pockets refers to spare time between tasks’. In this 90-minute piece the pock­ets’ offer time for listen­ing to an ambi­ent sound­scape of sound record­ings from our every­day sur­round­ings. These are sounds that often go unnoticed. Some are on the verge of becom­ing obsol­ete: mul­ti­lin­gual record­ings from announce­ments on trains, sta­tions, the radio or pub­lic speak­ers; brief inform­a­tion or instruc­tions such as num­bers, train announce­ments, dir­ec­tions, news, or inform­a­tion about time and place. Also fea­tured is their sur­round­ing sound­scape: eth­er­e­al waves, inter­fer­ence, machine noise, rail­way tracks, hiss, wind or silence, or just’ a spa­tial pres­ence. The mater­i­al is gleaned from a selec­tion of Maia Urstad’s sound install­a­tions from the last ten years. 

Time Pockets was sup­por­ted by BEK – Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts, Norway.

3 Maia Urstad photo Sharon Bailey
© Sharon Bailey

Maia Urstad is a visu­al artist, com­poser, and per­former work­ing at the inter­sec­tion of audio and visu­al art. Urstad has been an act­ive con­trib­ut­or to the inter­na­tion­al con­tem­por­ary art scene since the mid 1980s. She primar­ily makes use of found sound mater­i­als as well as radio and tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions sig­nals. Central to her works are dif­fer­ent aspects of tech­no­lo­gic­al devel­op­ment, the sound­scapes, traces, and stor­ies we leave behind when new inven­tions enter our every­day lives, often look­ing at moments when a tech­no­logy stands on the verge of obsolescence. 

17:30
ASUNA

100 KEYBOARDS

A live per­form­ance fea­tur­ing over 100 toy key­boards. This per­form­ance focuses on the phe­nomen­on of inter­fer­ence sound’: a com­plex dis­tri­bu­tion of sound pres­sure and oth­er para­met­ers when sound waves of the same fre­quency, but with dif­fer­ent propaga­tion dir­ec­tions, over­lap. Subtle dif­fer­ences in pitch pro­duce a sound phe­nomen­on like a moiré’ pat­tern. By chan­ging the dir­ec­tion of the ears and/​or while mov­ing around the key­boards, the com­plex inter­fer­ing sounds and res­on­ances in space will pro­duce dif­fer­ent sound buzzes, loops, and beats at every loc­a­tion, even between the two ears.

ASUNA 100 Keyboards 17 photo credit by Julieta Cervantes
© Julieta Cervantes

ASUNA is a Japanese sound artist who began pro­du­cing exper­i­ment­al music from a very young age in Tokyo in the late 1990s. His first major work was a sound install­a­tion called Each Organ, which recon­sidered the concept of eco­logy. Since then, he has toured extens­ively with his pro­jects 100 Toys and, more recently, 100 Keyboards.

Evening program

20:00
Jessica Ekomane [talk]

Jessica Ekomane will present a talk sketch­ing some of her recent rhythmic interests, such as the poly­rhythmic prac­tice of Pygmy music, African timeline rhythms, and the pres­ence of non-Anglo European ideas and artists with­in the his­tory of com­pu­ta­tion and com­puter music.

Photo04 Copyright Silje Nes
© Silje Nes

Jessica Ekomane is a French-born and Berlin-based elec­tron­ic musi­cian and sound artist. Her quad­ra­phon­ic per­form­ances seek a cath­artic effect through the inter­play of psy­choacous­tics, the per­cep­tion of rhythmic struc­tures and the inter­change of noise and melody. Her music is groun­ded in ques­tions such as the rela­tion­ship between indi­vidu­al per­cep­tion and col­lect­ive dynam­ics or the invest­ig­a­tion of listen­ing expect­a­tions and their soci­et­al roots.

20:30
Clara de Asís & Rebecca Lane

Distances Bending

Distances Bending is an ever-expand­ing pro­cess — a build­ing up, dis­tilling, and mir­ror­ing of mater­i­als par­tic­u­lar to each artist, respond­ing to and inhab­it­ing a space over mul­tiple hours or days. A repeated time struc­ture, a tem­por­al loop that is altered through upwardly evolving ration­ally-tuned fre­quen­cies, vari­ous flutes (whose size, timbre and shape cor­res­pond to these fre­quen­cies), elec­tron­ics, and chan­ging light, the piece cre­ates a subtle space where per­cep­tion is transformed.

Clara De Asis Le Mans 2022 g
Y05 B57bg

Clara de Asís is a com­poser-per­former who explores the nex­us of acous­tics, spa­ti­al­ity, altern­at­ive nota­tion, and the phe­nomen­o­logy of atten­tion. Her work focuses on sound per­cep­tion, incor­por­at­ing elec­tron­ics, idio­syn­crat­ic com­bin­a­tions of diverse mater­i­als and found objects. Alongside her solo prac­tice, she has cre­ated a vari­ety of works in alli­ance with oth­er artists and in ongo­ing long-term col­lab­or­a­tions, not­ably with Rebecca Lane.

Rebecca Lane is a musi­cian who explores inton­a­tion, focus­ing on exten­ded just inton­a­tion and altern­at­ive tun­ing sys­tems and the per­cep­tu­al and rela­tion­al aspects of sound­ing this mater­i­al with oth­ers. Her prac­tice is informed by ongo­ing col­lab­or­a­tions with com­poser-per­formers (such as Catherine Lamb and Clara de Asís) and with­in vari­ous ensembles. 

22:00
Younes Zarhoni

Polyphony

Younes Zarhoni presents a live per­form­ance of his research around Arabic poly­phon­ic singing, micro­ton­al­it­ies, quad­ra­phon­ic install­a­tion, poetry, and graph­ic scores.

YZ POLY 01

Younes Zarhoni is an artist based in Brussels. His work explored the inter­sec­tion of audio and visu­al art and is focused on notions of nation­al, reli­gious, and artist­ic iden­tity through elec­tron­ic music per­form­ances, sound install­a­tions, and visu­al work.

22:45
Mark Vernon

Time Deterred

Delving deep into his tape archives, audio archae­olo­gist Mark Vernon presents a spe­cially-devised quad­ra­phon­ic per­form­ance fea­tur­ing lost voices, found sounds, tape trash, small objects, tape loops, and field record­ings. By inter­ming­ling found tapes and voices of the past with memor­ies and record­ings of his own, a multi-layered tapestry of sounds is woven, blur­ring and over­lay­ing dif­fer­ent time peri­ods in what could be described as a form of son­ic time travel. Within this hiss of his­tory, fal­ter­ing mag­net­ic memor­ies fade and resur­face, bob­bing like audio flot­sam and jet­sam on a sea of white noise.

Mark Vernon live at Hideous Porta 2015 A

Mark Vernon is a Glasgow-based sound artist who works with found tapes and acous­mat­ic pres­ence. His work explores themes of mag­net­ic memory, audio archae­ology, voyeur­ism, and nos­tal­gia. A keen advoc­ate of radio as an art form, he co-runs Glasgow art radio sta­tion, Radiophrenia. His solo music pro­jects have been pub­lished through labels includ­ing Kye, Flaming Pines, Persistence of Sound, Entr’acte and Gagarin records. 

23:30
Jung An Tagen

By using syn­thes­is and sampling tech­niques Jung An Tagen builds aleat­or­ic arrays, repet­it­ive fig­ures & poly­rhythmic moirés that speak equally to the body and the mind. The gram­mar of this music is con­found­ing, the lan­guage itself imme­di­ate, oscil­lat­ing between mod­ern com­pos­i­tion and ritu­al­ist­ic techno, immer­sion, and repulsion.

Jung An Tagen2017 web

Barely adher­ing to estab­lished syn­taxes of rhythm, melody, and timbre, Jung An Tagen seems to want to rewrite the rule book when it comes to elec­tron­ic music. He’s off to a hell of a start.’ — The Wire

14:00
Will Holder & Paul Abbott

Rosmarie Waldrop’s Lawn of Excluded Middle’
Read by Will Holder (vocals) and Paul Abbott (drums).

Improvised, fif­teen minute read­ings of three verses of a dur­a­tion­al, aur­al pub­lic­a­tion of Waldrop’s 31-verse poem (1993).

The poems could all be called dia­lo­gic, reach­ing out across a syn­aptic (some­times humor­ous) gap to a pos­sible you”; and that gap’s poten­tial is too read­ily con­tam­in­ated by a grasp­ing for sen­tences with sound syntax.

69927801057 6 FC44908 7934 4 C2 D 814 C 521 AA22 B9 DC7 1

Paul Abbott is a musi­cian and drum­mer. He plays with real and ima­gin­ary drums, syn­thet­ic sounds, per­form­ance and writ­ing: explor­ing how move­ments of sounds, signs, and body grow each oth­er. Recent and ongo­ing col­lab­or­a­tions include: XT with Seymour Wright; XT+Anne Gillis; F.R.David, very good* with Will Holder; moving/​images with Keira Greene; Rian Treanor Duo; RP Boo Trio with XT; The Creaking Breeze Ensemble with Nathaniel Mackey.

Will Holder pub­lishes work both orally and in print – with con­sid­er­a­tion for the role of scores and nota­tion may have on the body as (speak­ing, social) doc­u­ment. Together with Alex Waterman, he co-edited Yes But Is It Edible? The music of Robert Ashley for two or more voices (New Documents) and is edit­or, since 2007, of F.R.DAVID, a journ­al con­cerned with the role of read­ing & writ­ing in the arts, co-pub­lished by uh books and KW, Berlin.

Rosmarie Waldrop is an American poet, nov­el­ist, trans­lat­or, essay­ist; and is co-edit­or and pub­lish­er of Burning Deck Press. Lawn of Excluded Middle was ori­gin­ally pub­lished in 1993 (Tender Buttons), and sub­sequently as part of Curves to the Apple (New Directions, 2006).

15:00
Farida Amadou, Katharina Ernst, ASUNA, Clara de Asís [durational improv]

This set will be broad­cast live on P‑Node.

Between 15h and 18h, four impro­visers are invited to play togeth­er for three hours. The con­cert is con­ceived as an open exper­i­ment, in which the per­formers are asked to meas­ure their ener­gies over an unfa­mil­i­ar dur­a­tion. What we will hear is the real-time rela­tion of the play­ers as it unfolds over the exten­ded line of the per­form­ance, bey­ond the tra­di­tion­al arc of an impro­vised set.

Oscillation improv collage

Farida Amadou is a self-taught, impro­vis­ing bass play­er from Liège, Belgium. Since 2014, she has per­formed with musi­cians includ­ing: Linda Sharrock, Steve Noble, Karl H. Bjora, Jasper Stadhouders, Onno Govaert, Eve Risser, Morgane Carnet, Philippe Lemoine, Timothée Quost, Julien Desprez, Anil Eraslan, Mette Rasmussen, Basile Naudet, Chris Pitsiokos, Alex Ward and Thurston Moore.

Berlin-based artist Katharina Ernst star­ted play­ing the drums at age nine, with an early focus on poly­met­ric, odd and chaot­ic struc­tures. She stud­ied abstract paint­ing at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and sim­ul­tan­eously star­ted tour­ing with music and per­form­ance pro­jects. In her work, she trans­gresses the fields of music, fine arts and cho­reo­graphy, cel­eb­rat­ing a hybrid notion of the term com­pos­i­tion’.

Clara de Asís is a com­poser-per­former who explores the nex­us of acous­tics, spa­ti­al­ity, altern­at­ive nota­tion, and the phe­nomen­o­logy of atten­tion. Her work focuses on sound per­cep­tion, incor­por­at­ing elec­tron­ics, idio­syn­crat­ic com­bin­a­tions of diverse mater­i­als and found objects. Alongside her solo prac­tice, she has cre­ated a vari­ety of works in alli­ance with oth­er artists and in ongo­ing long-term col­lab­or­a­tions, not­ably with Rebecca Lane.

ASUNA is a Japanese sound artist who began pro­du­cing exper­i­ment­al music from a very young age in Tokyo in the late 90s. His first major work was a sound install­a­tion called Each Organ, which recon­sidered the concept of eco­logy. Since then, he has toured extens­ively with his pro­jects 100 Toys and, more recently, 100 Keyboards.

20:00
Charlemagne Palestine [@ Église du Couvent des Pères Carmes]

trancingggouttt

A semi-ritu­al per­form­ance by Charlemagne Palestine on the pipe organ of the Église du Couvent des Pères Carmes.

NB: this con­cert occurs off­s­ite, at the Église du Couvent des Pères Carmes. Tickets for this con­cert can be pur­chased sep­ar­ately, though entry is included in the Sunday tick­et and Festival Pass.

Image001

A com­poser, musi­cian, sham­an, visu­al artist and per­former, Charlemagne Palestine is both an icon­ic fig­ure of the New York under­ground scene and an artist whose con­tem­por­ary prac­tice is always at the avant-garde. Long con­sidered a pion­eer of min­im­al­ist music, a move­ment with which he nev­er really iden­ti­fied. He prefers to describe his prac­tice as max­im­al­ist’ or spon­tan­im­al­ist.’

Oscillation bulletin
03.05.23

Oscillation Bulletin Final Episode

DSCF6790 1

𝙈𝙖𝙮 𝙢𝙖𝙣𝙮 𝙢𝙤𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙗𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙪𝙨 𝙖𝙗𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙡𝙮 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙥𝙤𝙨𝙩-𝙤𝙨𝙘𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙝𝙖𝙯𝙚

Dear post-oscil­la­tion ::: o tempo gen­er­a­tion,

As we’re writ­ing this, six stu­dents from both the Université Laval Quebec and RITCS are work­ing on their new sound pieces in the Q‑O2 HQ, cre­at­ing an unsus­pec­ted pleas­ant son­ic back­ground for writ­ing this last bul­let­in. The future waits just around the office’s corner, while at the same time the echoes of past week­end still rever­ber­ate through our heads. This fifth edi­tion will undoubtedly stand the test of time: count­less grip­ping per­form­ances, work­shops, talks, hangouts, unsus­pec­ted gath­er­ings, … a dream edi­tion it has been. But what might linger on longest in our ever time-sens­it­ive thoughts might be the micro-com­munity we’ve been part of last week­end. A micro­cos­mos of artists, part­ners (spe­cial thanks to Pieter and Maarten and the rest of the Needcompany team, Gert and the HISK crew, Père Stefano, and Charlemagne Palestine for his gran­di­ose finale!), volun­teers, interns (Sara, Marius, Han <3) and the audi­ence that cre­ated the per­fect cir­cum­stances for our cel­eb­ra­tion of sound. Time was on our side.

Head in the clouds, our hearts — the warmest,

The Oscillation Crew

30.04.23

Oscillation Bulletin Episode 4

DSCF6536

Dear tem­por­al spe­ci­men,

Is time a flat circle? Yesterday it felt more like a boun­cing sphere — sim­ul­tan­eously dron­ing, crack­ling, head-spin­ning on the HISK and Needcompany in the after­noon, aleat­or­ic elec­tron­ics, poly­phon­ic chant­ing, audio flot­sam at night. What is cer­tain is that time has no com­pas­sion: it’s already the last day of our annu­al feast. But a grand finale awaits us, start­ing with impro­vised read­ings by Will Holder and Paul Abbott, and a con­cert by organ sham­an Charlemagne Palestine as the icing on the cake of this final day (for which there are still some very last tick­ets avail­able). In between these per­form­ances there is the dur­a­tion­al improv set by Farida Amadou, Katharina Ernst, ASUNA and Clara de Asís, which will also be broad­cast on P‑Node.

To dream away one more time at all yes­ter­day’s splendor, please find an acrostic quiz report below (answers are artist’s names, or drinks avail­able at the bar) :::

𝐎ur drone of the year
𝐒pell­bind­ingly spin­nin’ since 1969
𝐂hants that we need every­day
𝐈ncred­ible magini­ary meet­ings between Hildegard von Bingen and Pauline Oliveros
𝐋et me please have one more of these at the MILL hangout
𝐋ate night aleat­or­ic arrays
𝐀udio arche­olo­gist nr. 1
𝐓ime pock­ets FM mel­an­cho­lia sum­mon­er
𝐈deas we did­n’t know we needed them
𝐎ther­worldy mini­ature mean­der­ings
𝐍ot nor­mal inton­a­tion vir­tu­os­ity

(answers: ASUNA — Nur/​Se per­forms Éliane Radigue — Younes Zarhoni — Clara Lévy — Zinnebir — Jung An Tagen — Mark Vernon — Maia Urstad — Jessica Ekomane — Maria Komarova — Clara de Asís & Rebecca Lane)


Bouncing, still,

The Oscillation Crew

29.04.23

Oscillation Bulletin Episode 3

Oscillation2023 2804 ccamillepoitevin 12
Dear exper­i­en­cer of the etern­al now,

We have reached the halfway point of the fest­iv­al, but we’re still on a total high. After all the force of the first night, the second night brought us a gentler, sooth­ing tone. In the midst of the engulf­ing expos­i­tion of sound, we’ve col­lec­ted some semi-fic­tion­al quotes from the audi­ence:

Ameel Brecht broke my heart.”

I want Jessica Ekomane to make my life choices now.”

I think Olga Kokcharova makes the per­fect per­son for the soundtrack of my biop­ic.”

I hope Felix Kubin can organ­ise my wed­ding.”

Do you know who’s the per­son­al train­er of Katharina Ernst?”

I think Marija Rasa just inven­ted fifth world music.“

Meet me half way,

The Oscillation Club
28.04.23

Oscillation Bulletin Episode 2

Oscillation2023 27 04 ccamillepoitevin 23

Dear dwell­ers of the Holocene,

The time for Oscillation ::: o tempo has arrived. A dream open­ing night it has been: Limpe Fuchs & Valérie Vivancos’s inim­it­able play­ful­ness and tex­tur­al blend­ing, Juliet Fraser and Newton Armstrong’s vir­tu­oso detail­ism of Feldman’s Three Voices, Hans-Christian Dany’s cyber­net­ic expan­sions, John McCowen’s heartwrench­ing cyc­lic­al dron­ing and Felix Kubin’s ever-sur­pris­ing ima­gin­a­tion, … Along with the ami­able atmo­sphere dur­ing the inter­me­di­ate and after-hangouts in the MILL hall, it will be impossible to take us off our cloud in the com­ing days.

Time is on our side,

The Oscillation Büro

26.04.23

Oscillation Bulletin Episode 1

Oscillation2023 27 04 ccamillepoitevin 10

Dear trav­el­lers in space and time,

Tomorrow marks the start of the fifth edi­tion of our annu­al Oscillation fest­iv­al, hos­ted by MILL (Needcompany) and HISK in Molenbeek. Disappointment awaits this year’s late deciders: all the fest­iv­al days are sold out. Only for the work­shops and the Charlemagne Palestine con­cert on Sunday even­ing, are some places still avail­able. Charlemagne’s con­cert is mov­ing to anoth­er church — our Sunday eve trance will now be summoned at the majest­ic Église du Couvent des Pères Carmes in Ixelles. Tonight, we begin the fest­iv­al with a pre-pro­gram read­ing group with Persis Bekkering, who’ll expand our the­or­et­ic­al hori­zons in anti­cip­a­tion of the fol­low­ing days.

Festival spe­cials


During the fest­iv­al, com­pan­ion pieces to this year’s themes are made avail­able. Be sure to check them out in time, since they’re dis­ap­pear­ing after the fest­iv­al :::

Music Of The Eternal Now: Post-Husserlian Temporality, Pattern Cyclic Time-Consciousness And Computer Music, asilent film by British artist Mark Fell. Shot entirely on the remote Finnish island Hailuoto, it inter­weaves Fell’s crit­ic­al writ­ing with the island’s frozen, inert and haunt­ing land­scapes.

The fest­iv­al read­er, with texts by Michel Siffre, Jürg Frey, Margaret Tait, Catherine Christer Hennix, ASUNA, Mansur Al-Hallaj, Ursula K. Le Guin, Clarice Lispector, Hildegard of Bingen and Huw Lemmey, Clara Lévy, George Woodcock, Rebecca Solnit, Hazrat Inayat Khan, Hito Steyerl and Anna Tsing.

21 Tracks for the 21st Century by Jessica Ekomane, who is play­ing on Friday and giv­ing a talk on Sunday.

Food clues


Some mod­est sug­ges­tions for refuel­ing before and dur­ing the fest­iv­al:
Parckfarm
Replica

To all tomor­row’s parties,

The Oscillation Crew