Dirar Kalash & Gert-Jan Prins – Duo Improvisation
Dirar Kalash (tenor and baritone sax)
Gert-Jan Prins (drums and electronics)
Dirar Kalash (b. 1982, Palestine) is a musician whose work spans a wide range of musical and sonic practices within a variety of compositional and improvisational contexts. His performative and compositional approaches to instruments, techniques, and aesthetics are highly political as they challenge dichotomies, hierarchies, and binary logics of new/old and west/east as tools of cultural imperialism and hegemony. The methods he uses are based upon his research into the intersections and relationships of music and sound with other contexts such as language, architecture, mathematics, visual arts and further social and human sciences. His regular solo and collaborative performances include but are not limited to audio-visual performances, free jazz groups, string ensembles, solo piano, and live electronics.
Dirar is also active as a visual artist, and has participated in many group exhibitions and art festivals in Palestine, Egypt and around Europe.
Gert-Jan Prins
Gert-Jan Prins focuses on sonic and musical qualities of electronic noise and percussion and investigates its relationship with the visual. He started his career as a drummer to later incorporate other elements and means of artistic expressions such as performances, sound-installations, compositions, electronic circuits and collaborations with other composers, musicians and visual artists. He lives and works in Amsterdam, NL.
Zeno van den Broek
‘Divergence’ –audiovisual performance
“Divergence” explores tension between space and sound induced by their manipulated representation: sounds alter, calibrate and form space while simultaneously sound is formed and manipulated by the space it is placed in. The sound material is based on pure sound sources such as sine waves and white noise. These sounds are manipulated and destroyed to form pulses, interferences and new wave forms. These manipulations create a divergence between the perception of sound and space: real and digital space interacting with pure and altered sound sources. The result is an intense sensory reaction and heightened spatial awareness through four movements.
Work of Zeno van den Broek revolves around space, spatiality and time, in which he uses both the audial and the visual to influence space and spatial awareness. Originally trained as an architect, Zeno is dedicated to exploring the richness and complexity of spatiality through different modes of expression. With ‘Divergence,’ he continues to bend our tactile and mental awareness of space.
Zeno van den Broek has performed at various venues and festivals such as Mediamatic, Glow and State-X New Forms. He has exhibited work in and created site-specific work for various galleries and museums such as Gallery SANAA, Kulter and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
http:// www.zenovandenbroek.com
Ji Youn Kang
‘Untitled’ – Live Electronics
Kang has been creating live performances based on the idea to combine three different elements: Acoustic, Digital, and Analog using acoustic instrument, DIY analog synths, and computer processing. This performance is another extension of the three elements, involving a modified string instrument into a form of touch controller and sound generator, using the human body as the conductive element, a part of the electronic flow in order to create a more intuitive, yet direct relationship between the performer and the generated sound. This instrument has the central role to blend the three elements more closely together with the performer’s physical input.
Ji Youn Kang (Seoul, Korea) is a composer and sound artist based in The Hague, The Netherlands. She moved to The Netherlands in 2006 and achieved her Masters’ degree both in Sonology at The Royal Conservatorium, and in Composition at Conservatorium van Amsterdam. Her objectives and interests revolve around the creation of her own musical language that (re)presents the Korean tradition and cultural elements using materials from Korean music as well as newly created sounds. Most of her music pieces have been composed based on the rites of Korean Shamanism, and many of them were written for the WFS system (192 loudspeakers), exploring the relationship between musical and physical spaces. At the same time she has been composing Live Electronic pieces for both traditional and non-traditional instruments, ranging from a solo instrument to a large orchestra, exploring mostly the primitive, empowering rhythmical elements and the noisy sound sources that the Korean ritual music involves. http://jiyounkang.com
This event is curated by Kacper Ziemianin and Marcello Ghilardi.