TodaysArt 2016
Welcome to TodaysArt 2016, the 12th edition of our festival for contemporary experiments in music, art and digital culture. Founded in 2005, TodaysArt returns to The Hague every year for an adventurous weekend of performances, club nights, installations and interventions. For the fourth year running, we’ve found ourselves a new home. Trading in the Dutch seaside of the past two editions, we’ve followed the strong westerly winds and landed on the Spuiplein. A homecoming of sorts – the old-timers among you will recall this was our headquarters for the first eight editions – this year’s festival takes place at Theater aan het Spui and Filmhuis Den Haag, and also boasts a daring and divergent program on the square itself. Since its inception, TodaysArt proudly offered stages to rising talent and daring pioneers who boldly explore the possibilities of new and often controversial forms of expression. This year’s main festival program is no different. Straddling the full expanse of TodaysArt disciplines, it features the reliable quota of world, European and Dutch premieres of immersive audiovisual wonders and spellbinding sonic explorations.
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TodaysArt 2016
On the following pages, you’ll find a complete guide to TodaysArt 2016. The obvious: how to get around, where to see who, what and when. And the less obvious: what we mean by work, performance, club and symposium, what to make of those strange Spuiplein structures, and why we’ve come back to where we started. Naturally, we‘d recommend every last artist and speaker, but if we were to boil it down, at this very moment, here’s what we’d say: make sure you secure a seat for the premiere of Entropy; bear witness to new performances by Myriam Bleau and Pantha du Prince; lose your mind to Paula Temple and SØS Gunver Ryberg; and immerse yourself in the works of Ali Eslami and Christian Falsnaes. While you’re at it, experience it all. Enjoy TodaysArt 2016.
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TodaysArt 2016 For your information
For your information In keeping with TodaysArt tradition, this year’s festival promises a rich and diverse program, from confronting spoken word displays and immersive virtual reality environments to ancient Sámi chanting and brutal noise techno. To make things a little easier, we’ve broken the program up into five ‘distinct’ categories: works, performance, club, film and symposium. Below you’ll find a brief description of each.
Works TodaysArt has always been a platform for established and upcoming artists and makers. Hosting a hybrid selection of contemporary arts and digital culture, this year’s works program boasts breathtaking audiovisual installations, immersive environments, performative experiments and public interventions. The majority of these Works tap into the festival theme, Public under Construction, and will therefore be displayed on the Spuiplein. The remaining works – save for Pedro Reyes’ Disarm (Mechanized) which is at Pulchri Studio – can be viewed and experienced at the main festival venues, Theater aan het Spui and Filmhuis Den Haag, from 11.00 to 24.00 on both Friday and Saturday.
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TodaysArt 2016 For your information
Performance For each edition, we invite a selection of pioneering and cutting-edge musicians and artists in contemporary electronic music and audiovisual art to showcase their latest creations and configurations. Promising the world premieres of Dopplereffekt and Antivj project Entropy and Julien Bayle’s sig.term, and Dutch premieres for Paul Jebanasam and Tarik Barri’s Continuum and Pantha du Prince’s The Triad, this year’s mesmerizing performance program takes place almost exclusively at Theater aan het Spui on the festival Friday and Saturday.
Club Ushering TodaysArt 2016 deep into the night, this year’s club program presents some of the finest developments in electronic music and club culture. Helmed by Nathan Fake on the Friday night and Paula Temple on the Saturday, with a supporting cast of local and international newcomers, the club program at Theater aan het Spui serves up two nights of adventurous exploration into the furthest realms of techno, house, acid, footwork and everything in between.
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TodaysArt 2016 For your information
Symposium Bringing together leading creative thinkers, policymakers, technologists, entrepreneurs, artists and researchers, The symposium provides a stage for forward-thinking ideas and creative solutions. A meeting point with a cross-sector focus aimed at promoting transdisciplinary talent, ideas and opportunities, this year’s symposium comprises a series of panels, workshops and talks that address the festival’s main theme, Public under construction, as well as a number of related topics. In another festival first, we’ve opened this year’s symposium to all TodaysArt ticketholders. Whether you’ve purchased a single Day Ticket or Festival Pass, you can attend any of the symposium events at Theater aan het Spui and Filmhuis Den Haag or on the Spuiplein.
Film We’ll also be presenting an exclusive film program at Spuiplein residents, Filmhuis Den Haag. Displayed on a loop throughout the Friday and Saturday of the festival, the film program comprises a series of short films that all address the notion of both the public and public space in the broadest sense. Whether it’s the reincarnation of a mythological prophetess, a snapshot of Moroccan youths, a dusty drive into the Sinai or drones whizzing overhead, the mix of
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TodaysArt 2016 For your information
films by upcoming and emerging filmmakers and artists from the Netherlands and beyond showcases the myriad of ways in which individuals interact with their surrounding public space.
Networks As you flick through the pages of this guide, you’re likely to come across a few sporadically placed logos. These refer to our partner networks, We are Europe and SHAPE, associations of European festivals that aim to promote, create and produce innovative cultural practices and innovative music and audiovisual art, respectively. If you spot one or both of these logos next to a program element that means it’s presented by the corresponding network and supported by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. More info on these networks see page 93.
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TodaysArt under Construction
TodaysArt hasn’t always been a nomadic endeavour. Forever in The Hague, the first eight editions of our festival for contemporary experiments in music, art and digital culture were set firmly in the heart of the city. The Spuiplein was our home and its surrounding institutions – from the City Hall Atrium to the Filmhuis and Theater aan het Spui to the Dr. Anton Philipszaal – played host to countless unforgettable performances. But for the past three years, we’ve been without a permanent location. With each new edition, we’ve taken up residence in a new public space and a new context. We’ve begun to call ourselves roving, not because we’re wandering aimlessly, but because we’re not exactly sure where we’ll end up next. Driven by the desire to engage with public debate and contemporary societal issues, we’ve sought out locations that have a controversial standing; public spaces with a checkered past and a hotly debated future. In 2013, it was the abandoned Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken. The year after, we moved to the Zuiderstrandtheater. And last year, we took the Pier in Scheveningen. This year the onus has fallen on our old home. The Spuiplein has become embroiled in a complex discussion about the use of public space and that which determines it. Our birthplace is already just a shell of its former self. Its social-political context has changed, the (cultural) debate surrounding it has shifted and the political visions for it have (once again) been revised. The Dr. Anton Philipszaal is gone. The old Ministry of Justice tower is a distant memory. And all that remains of the Lucent Danstheater, Rem Koolhaas’s infamous The Hague
contribution, is a single, rear facade. The Spuiplein is, for the most part, a construction site; destined to become the new ‘educational and cultural heart’ of The Hague, but for now caught in a whirlpool of open ends.
The Future of Public Space The essence of good public space lies in its ability to connect. Its spatial qualities can generate connections between an individual and their environment or produce forces by connecting different kinds of people, ideas and experiences. Good public space is space where we can freely run into each other, strike up a conversation or come into conflict. It’s a place where the abstract principles of the public domain – debate, discussion, decision-making, regulation, trade and interaction – begin to attain a physical form. In this way, public space facilitates the public domain. The foundations of our democratic society are, however, trembling. There is paralysis, a tendency towards indecision and the erosion of shared goals. On the one hand we are incapable identifying with a single group, and on the other overwhelmed by the complexity of modern decision-making processes. As we head towards this post-democratic reality in which fully functional democratic systems become progressively limited in their ability to act or put something into operation, it is plain to see
that the forces that define the public domain are adrift. Our sense of ‘public’ is under construction. It used to entail common goals and shared values (the public), but as they become more and more entangled with the market and individualism (the private), we cannot separate the one from the other; public, private, commercial, cultural, democratic or technocratic, it now all goes hand in hand. As a result, opinions have become abundant and interchangeable, and need to be hyped, branded or sold to be relevant. The result is a polarized landscape and a confused form of sensitivity. Confused by a flood of ideas, plans, opinions and directions, all that remains is an empty feeling. The notion of ‘public’ is trapped by the forces it produces. Its central principles of openness, liberty and debate are so all-consuming that every shared opinion increases the numbness. The interaction between people is changing and so too the character of the space in which they do so. The public domain as an abstraction isn’t the same thing as the physical experience of a space that is considered public. A communal garden, a park or a public square can still have the unique quality of spontaneously provoking interaction or exchange. But change is in the air and at some point the developments in the public domain will, one way or another, start to affect the quality of the public space we currently still take for granted. The next technological inventions, stricter safety measures, populism and political complacency are in conflict with each other and cause inherent tensions. These tensions translate to spatial questions. What is the future of public space? What could an updated meaning
of public space look like? What is the democratic value of public space? Will algorithms determine how we move forward or will we appropriate a new kind of power made possible by new technological tools? How inclusive or exclusive will the future public space (need) to be? What is a common collective society and what does it mean in terms of the systems with which we engage?
TodaysArt 2016: Public under Construction This brings us to today and to TodaysArt 2016. We return to our humble origins, the Spuiplein, in exciting and challenging times; on the eve of the construction works that are set to transform the square into the ‘cultural temple’ of The Hague. We return armed not just with an adventurous program, but with all of those questions. Questions that warrant answers. And answers that demand open and transparent public debate. We want to stimulate and generate new insights into democracy, the public domain and public space that will foster that debate. With this in mind, we developed a plan for the Spuiplein together with ZUS [Zones Urbaines Sensibles], Collective Works and Refunc that sets this whole machine in motion. A plan that operates within the temporal, legal and spatial bounds of formal urban processes, but triggers and facilitates the discussion we so desperately need.
The response is RUIMTE op het Spuiplein, an overarching strategy to reclaim the square and activate it as a social and public residence. A project that intends to actualize a public space owned by the people and for the people for the coming years. TodaysArt 2016 is the first part of this larger project, the first step in claiming the Spuiplein as a stage for new ideas and new debates.
A Testing Ground Turning back the clock to the ancient Greek city-state, the RUIMTE team draw inspiration from the birthplace of our Western democracy and the ancestral home of public space, the agora. Nestled in the heart of each city-state, the agora was the center of athletic, artistic, spiritual, mercantile and political life. It was a gathering place, an assembly, where citizens would report for military duty and merchants kept their stalls, and where the people shared ideas. It was an open place where individuals could interact, exchange and connect. With RUIMTE, we’ve taken the notion of the agora and dropped it in the 21st century. Envisioned as a ‘square within the square’, the team transforms the Spuiplein into life-size maquette, the centerpiece of which are four life-size, amphitheatre-like agora prototypes designed by ZUS. Each prototype is a testing ground with its own distinct design and corresponding name – platform, arcade, forum and stepwell. Placed on the Spuiplein and in the festival heart, these agoras serve as the TodaysArt 2016
assembly. They will play host to talks, debates and performances. And, in keeping with the ancient tradition, may also become bars and miniature outdoor clubs, or places to relax and catch your breath. The debate surrounding public space extends to the remainder of the program on and around the Spuiplein. We have placed installations and interventions that further challenge your relationship with the public and public space. Works by James Bridle, Nora Turato, Christian Falsnaes and a few (collaborating) collectives of designers/artists featuring LaJetée, Parasite 2.0 and more. In the Filmhuis across the street, we’ll be screening a looping film program of short films by filmmakers and artists that collectively showcase a myriad of ways in which individuals interact with their surrounding public space. And in the Theater aan het Spui next door, you’ll bear witness to several performances and club nights. Events that don’t explicitly tap into the larger debate, but serve as an eye-opening respite and captivating contrast. The current manifestation of RUIMTE at TodaysArt 2016 is just a start. Come Sunday, when the festival has come to a close, the Spuiplein, the agoras and the ideas shared within them will be all that remain. But what will become of the square from here on out? The prototypes could result in a larger, more permanent structure. One that works for all of the surrounding partners, inhabitants and visitors. A place where socratic discussions and debates can spontaneously occur between government officials, loitering ‘hangjeugd’, security guards and anyone passing by. It could sometimes transform into a marketplace, and other times host a political rally, theatre, dance or music. It could be a place where people
come together to interact, exchange and connect and where the overlap between combining functions come about organically or not. In this period of transition, the Spuiplein can become anything. But in order to realize this, we need to keep posting questions and to keep seeking answers. We must ensure that the debate about our public space and our public domain does not stop, and that we critically reflect on our Public under Construction.
TodaysArt 2016 Works
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Francisco López + iii Ali Eslami + Ash Koosha Christian Falsnaes Floris Kaayk + Ine Poppe + Machinefabriek James Bridle Matthias Oostrik Mike Rijnierse + Rob Bothof NONOTAK P. Calderón Salazar, R. Kiesewetter, La Jetée, Marginal & Parasite 2.0 La Jetée - P aolo Patelli & Giuditta Vendrame Pedro Reyes Mark Bain ZUS [Zones Urbaines Sensibles] + Collective Works + Refunc
TodaysArt 2016 Works
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Filmhuis 23+24 September 2016 Café
Francisco López + iii audio-DH With no fewer than 200 releases to his name, Spanish-born experimentalist Francisco López has proved himself to be a man of boundless creativity and one who doesn’t shy away from a challenge. His latest endeavour, audio-DH: sonic manifestations defies all expectations. With the help of fellow composer Barbara Ellison and artist platform iii, López collected the sounds of 250 of The Hague’s most creative minds and stitched them together into a sonic collage that stretches the full and adventurous expanse of the city’s musical landscape. Following its live premiere at Korzo Theater on the eve of TodaysArt 2016, audio-DH will be presented as an installation for the duration of the festival, combining and recombining the submitted works in a myriad of constellations.
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Filmhuis 23+24 September Studio A
Ali Eslami + Ash Koosha SNOW VR Iranian computer artist Ali Eslami is a rising star in the burgeoning field of virtual reality. Having honed his skills as a 3D artist and architectural assistant, Eslami now constructs elaborate, farflung worlds and alternate realities typically reserved for your wildest dreams. His latest work, SNOW VR, is a collaboration with fellow Tehran-born artist, Ash Koosha. The London-based composer and producer, who released his Ninja Tune debut I AKA I to critical acclaim earlier this year, crafts mind-bending electronic music by squeezing, stretching, distorting and moulding his own field recordings into powerful sonic movements. For SNOW VR, the pair have transformed Koosha’s compositions into an immersive virtual-reality experience for the HTC Vive. Put the headset on and you’re instantly transported to the inner-depths of the duo’s imagination, a surreal universe designed and developed by Eslami in which Koosha’s sonic palette forms the bedrock of this alien landscape.
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Spuiplein 24 September
Christian Falsnaes Justified Beliefs Christian Falsnaes is a Danish artist whose works deal with invisible structures like social mechanisms and group dynamics, hierarchy and authority. His experiments are interactive affairs that play with the codes of exhibition openings and museum or gallery visits and turn his unwitting audience into the centerpiece of his performance. At TodaysArt 2016, Falsnaes presents Justified Beliefs. First debuted at Art Basel in 2014, Justified Beliefs is a performance piece in which audience members are invited to put on one of 5 wireless headphones. Each participant then receives a steady stream of instructions delivered by Falsnaes himself. Although each instruction is unique to the headphone, they are synchronised in such a way that the actions and behaviours of submitting participants is transformed into an intricately choreographed display.
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Filmhuis 23+24 September Studio B / Zaal 5
Floris Kaayk + Ine Poppe + Machinefabriek The Modular Body The Modular Body is Dutch multimedia artist and filmmaker Floris Kaayk’s latest foray into the realm of online storytelling. Created in collaboration with journalist and artist Ine Poppe and scored by Machinefabriek, The Modular Body recounts the story of bio-technologist Cornelis Vlasman and his very own, miniature Frankenstein, OSCAR, the world’s first living organism built from human cells. Told through an intricate web of 56 interconnected videos, each clip, whether video blog update or news report, reveals another intimate detail of the OSCAR puzzle. For TodaysArt 2016, Kaayk, Poppe and Machinefabriek bring The Modular Body to life in two steps. First as an immersive multi-narrative installation in the Filmhuis, and then on the festival Saturday as a hybrid performance and presentation in which Machinefabriek performs an adapted live set of the original score, Ine Poppe interviews Floris Kaayk, and Ellen ter Gast explores the ethical implications of the project.
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Spuiplein
James Bridle Drone Shadow With little more than a white painted outline, London-based artist, writer and creative technologist James Bridle swiftly brings the devastating and very real consequences of military drone technology back down to earth. Presented at the Spuiplein in the run up to TodaysArt 2016, his open source work Drone Shadow is an immense, 1:1 silhouette of the notorious Reaper drone, a remotely controlled, unmanned aerial vehicle used to carry out strikes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. In outlining the shadow of these clandestine forces in unexpected public spaces, Bridle not only pulls back the veil on the invisible technologies that obscure and distance us from political and moral responsibility, he also sheds light on the impact that they have on our daily lives.
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Theater aan het Spui 23+24 September Foyer
Matthias Oostrik plplpl.pl::scrutiny Amsterdam-based artist and software developer Matthias Oostrik creates audiovisual installations that question technological developments and their impact on our lives. Combining elements of digital art, installation art and film, his works explore the interaction between humans and machines. plplpl. pl::scrutiny is his latest endeavour. A mechanical cluster of wires, displays and cameras, plplpl.pl is an interactive antiÂ-surveillance machine that could very well have originated from the set of La JetĂŠe, Blade Runner of THX 1138. Using the latest technologies from the surveillance industry, the machine observes and records its audience, analyzing and judging their actions to route out any unusual or deviant behavior. plplpl.pl::scrutiny is the first in a series of four related audiovisual installations Oostrik intends to present over the coming year.
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Filmhuis 23+24 September Studio B
Mike Rijnierse + Rob Bothof CUBE It wouldn’t be TodaysArt without Mike Rijnierse. Known for his large scale site specific installations, in which the audience is incorporated into the context of the work, Rijnierse is an interdisciplinary artist whose works have been an integral part of the TodaysArt evolution. From last year’s bungy jumping bell and 2014’s artificial gatekeeper to 2008’s Station to Station and his very own international airport the year before, Mike Rijnierse’s installations and performances are unique in character, scale and execution. At TodaysArt 2016, Mike Rijnierse teams up with long time collaborator Rob Bolthof for CUBE. Although operating on the kaleidoscopic principle of multiplied reflections, CUBE inverts the classical kaleidoscope and instead embodies the light inside, projecting its inner multiplication outwards into space. It is choreographed by an autonomic algorithm that directs the synergy between light and sound.
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Theater aan het Spui 23+24 September Foyer
NONOTAK Verticales
Experimenting with light, sound and space, French-Japanese duo NONOTAK creates immersive, dreamlike audiovisual environments. Whether devised as visual art installations or live performances, the works of artists and musicians Noemi Schipfer and Takami Nakamoto fuse glitchy, melodic techno with strobe-based lighting design and multi-screen geometric structures to create dazzling universes that envelop both artist and audience and blur the boundary between reality and the virtual. No stranger to TodaysArt, NONOTAK’s Daydream V0.03 and Late Speculation stole the show at our 10-year anniversary in 2014. Returning for a second time this year, the duo will debut a new work at TodaysArt 2016.
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Spuiplein 23+24 September
P. Calderón Salazar, R. Kiesewetter, La Jetée, Marginal & Parasite 2.0 The Politics of Queuing and the Architecture of Queues We line up in railway stations, shops and theme parks. At clubs. border controls, museums and festivals. Queues are an increasingly dominant spatial phenomenon that present us with a powerful metaphor for the ambivalence of the Western notion of public space as we encounter it today. At TodaysArt 2016, artists, designers, curators and researchers La Jetée, Marginal, Pablo Calderón Salazar, Parasite 2.0. and Rebekka Kiesewetter experiment with collective dynamics and movements to raise questions about the democratic qualities of public space and the agency of the ‘public’. Through a series of four public interventions, each deploying a set of rules, layouts and instruments, their project will explore both the spatiality of queuing systems and the experience of queuing itself.
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Spuiplein 24 September
La Jetée Paolo Patelli & Giuditta Vendrame Friction Atlas
No public space is without its own set of rules and regulations. They exist for picnicking in a park in New York City, for group dancing in Sweden, for kids returning home from school in Iceland, and for demonstrating in front of the White House. Keep an eye on the next related media report and you’ll notice a single file line of no more than fifty individuals. While they may be invisible to the naked eye, laws and constraints always regulate the circulation of citizens within urban space. With Friction Atlas, La Jetée – the Eindhoven-based collaborative practice of designers and researchers Paolo Patelli and Guiditta Vendrame – visualize these implicitly present regulations. By taping 1:1 diagrams on the pavement of the Spuiplein and activating these during a performance on the Friday, La Jetée’s TodaysArt 2016 work reveals the invisible forces that determine our behaviour on and around the square.
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Pulchri Studio 26 Augustus - 25 September Hardenbergzaal
Pedro Reyes Disarm (Mechanized) In a country notoriously ravaged by drug cartels, civil conflict and gun violence, Mexican sculptor and visual artist Pedro Reyes is an impassioned force for good. An outspoken pacifist and activist at heart, Reyes creates large-scale projects that are inspired by and aspire to social and psychological transformation. Disarm (Mechanized) is his response to the death and destruction brought about by gun culture and illicit arms trafficking. Built from weapons seized and destroyed by the Mexican government, Disarm (Mechanized) is an interactive, sonic art installation comprising six kinetic sculptures that double as musical instruments. Recognizable as shotguns, pistols and rifles, these former arms now hum, ring, crash and vibrate at different volumes and intensities to express elaborate compositions. The result is an inspiring and symbolic redemption song for the once destructive metals and a requiem for the countless lives lost to their preceding states.
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Spuiplein 23+24 September
Mark Bain Burden of Proof, The Sonic Suitcase Mark Bain is a Dutch-American artist with a keen interest in vibrational mechanisms and experimental sound. His work zeroes in on the interaction of acoustics, architecture and physical/mental reactions to infrasonics – sounds thats sit below the human hearing threshold. For StartEndTime, Bain used specially-designed technologies to transform seismographic data recordings in the area of New York State during the collapse of the WTC buildings at 9/11 into sound waves, in effect ‘listening’ to the geological implications of the tragedy. With the Spuiplein as his canvas, Bain has created a new sound piece for TodaysArt 2016. In Burden of Proof, The Sonic Suitcase, a heavy and seemingly abandoned suitcase produces a loud, but muffled siren when brought into motion. The work is a reflection of the hysteria that comes to pass when an unidentified object is encountered in public space.
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Spuiplein 23+24 September
ZUS [Zones Urbaines Sensibles] + Collective Works + Refunc RUIMTE RUIMTE is an overarching strategy to reclaim the Spuiplein and activate it as a public space owned by the people and for the people. Envisioned as a ‘square within the square’, RUIMTE transforms the Spuiplein into a life-size maquette, the centerpiece of which is four life-size, amphitheatre-like prototypes that draw inspiration from the birthplace of our Western democracy and the ancestral home of public space, the agora. Each prototype is a testing ground with its own distinct design and corresponding name – platform, arcade, forum and stepwell. Placed on the Spuiplein and in the festival heart, these agoras serve as the TodaysArt 2016 assembly. They will play host to talks, debates and performances, and, in keeping with the ancient Greek tradition, may also become bars and miniature outdoor clubs, or places to relax and catch your breath. Led by Elma van Boxel and Kristian Koreman, ZUS [Zones Urbaines Sensibles] is a Rotterdam and New York-based architecture studio that moonlights as a collective of provocative urban activists. Rebelling against the market forces that increasingly marginalize the public role of architecture, ZUS develops solicited and unsolicited architectural interventions
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Spuiplein 23+24 September
for urban districts, parks, public spaces and buildings that address social challenges and contribute to a collective and sustainable future. Collective Works is a The Hague-based collaborative work-structure that specializes in research-based design. Founded by Karin Mientjes and Peter Zuiderwijk. Most work, either commissioned or self-initiated, relates to socio-spatial questions. Collaborative answers, questions and insights are embedded in activist campaigns, analytical reflections, situational identity branding, spatial proposals or social interventions. In doing so, Collective Works develops strategies in a broader perspective, with projects that supersede the traditional field of graphic design. During the festival Collective Works will also collaborate with media artist Carolien Theunisse. Refunc is a The Hague-based laboratory for design founded on the principle that everything can be used to create another thing. The brainchild of Denis Oudendijk, Jan Kรถrbes, Damian van der Velde and Bart Groenewegen, Refunc operates on the fringes of architecture, art and design, and creates experimental structures that are based on local material waste flows and provide a second life for found or thrown-away objects. Derived from their history, composition, local and social context, the designs for each creation are found in the objects themselves and often lend themselves to unpredictable results.
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TodaysArt 2016 Performance
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Ă nde Somby bRUNA & Wooky + Alba G. Corral* Dopplereffekt + Antivj + Scientists + Artist-Coders* Hiroaki Umeda* Julien Bayle Klara Lewis Limpe Fuchs Masayoshi Fujita Myriam Bleau* Nora Turato Pantha Du Prince* Paul Jebanasam + Tarik Barri Piotr Kurek TCF
* Please note that all performances in Zaal 1 of Theater aan het Spui have a limited capacity. As such, the doors to each performance will be opened 15 minutes prior to start. We’ll try our best to accommodate everyone, but full = full - so be on time!
TodaysArt 2016 Performance
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Theater aan het Spui 24 September Zaal 2
Ánde Somby Yoiking with the Winged Ones Yoiking is an ancient chanting practise of the Sámi people - the indigenous peoples of Northern Europe. Deeply rooted within that tradition, Ánde Somby is a Norwegian artist and associate professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Tromsø who specialises in Indigenous Rights Law. Traditionally sung slowly and deep within the throat, yoiks are emotionally charged narratives, often dedicated to nature, animals or people. Somby’s technical skill has impressed globally, and, without eroding tradition, he has formed a characterised style that is expressive and quite magical to witness. His many animal yoiks take their inspiration from pre-Christian Sámi religion in which a person could transform into an animal and then back into a human. This goes some way to explain his embodied performances which extend the expectations of the human voice.
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Theater aan het Spui 24 September Zaal 1
bRUNA & Wooky + Alba G. Corral Archives As individuals bRUNA and Wooky are both pillars of Spanish electronic music, regularly seen throughout the European festival scene. Together, they co-direct Lapsus, a multidisciplinary project founded with three lines of activity: a radio, avant-garde festival and record label which has supported acts such as Dalhous and Plaid. Yet the melodic electronica of their new collaborative album Archives marks a new adventure for them both. Unfolding as an improvisation, the versatility of the collaboration is a sensory experience that explores the many divergences of ‘ambient’ in sound. Presenting it as a live performance they have teamed up with Alba G. Corral, an exciting, visual artist who cinematically translates the work into multiple digital media installations that encompasses the entire stage; spectacular lights and overwhelming video abstraction.
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Theater aan het Spui 24 September Zaal 1
Dopplereffekt + Antivj + Scientists + Artist-Coders Entropy Entropy is one of those truly unique projects that only comes around once in a lifetime. Conceived by Dopplereffekt founder and Drexciya member Gerald Donald, Entropy is an immersive hour-long audiovisual performance that is part sonic exploration, part visual odyssey and part scientific lecture. Taking you on a cosmic journey through time and space, Entropy weaves talks by astronomers Dr. Dida Markovic and Dr. Zazralt Magic, visualizations of real astronomical data by digital arts collective Antivj and creative coder Elie Zananiri, and a live musical score by sonic pioneers Dopplereffekt into a gripping trans-disciplinary narrative. It pieces together the latest discoveries in cosmology and stellar astrophysics to tell the epic life story of the universe and its stars.
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Theater aan het Spui 23 September Zaal 1
Hiroaki Umeda Intensional Particle
Hiroaki Umeda is a multidisciplinary artist who focuses on movement and is recognised as one of the leading figures of the Japanese avant-garde. In 2000 he started his own company ‘S20’ and has since developed his works with an intimate quality that requires physical attendance of an audience. His work is often minimal, but expansive. Using projections and motion sensors Umeda is able to become one with his creative environment, controlling light and sound with his movements. Returning to TodaysArt for a third time, Umeda now presents Intensional Particle, an experience of digital reality saturated with ‘unstable stability’. A breathtaking visualisation that embeds Umeda’s kinetic language within a luminous architecture of lights and curvatures, Intensional Particle explodes upon a canvas before abruptly vanishing. It’s an abundance of information that yields the universe as a living, dancing organism.
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Theater aan het Spui 23 September Zaal 2
Julien Bayle sig.term The work of French independent artist, Julien Bayle, depicts the emptiness of a world saturated in information. Located at the juncture of sound and visuals, and of art and science, Bayle addresses questions of a disrupted continuum, interferences, and the representation of concepts by using physics of sound and error/artifact magnification. At TodaysArt 2016, he premieres sig.term, a hypnotic live audio-visual performance which continues to ask these questions. Inspired by data transmissions and communication protocols, sig.term stages the overwhelming uncertain trajectory found in a generation of audio signals constantly disturbed. His concept of continuum vs interruption densely resonates with a state of suspension and restlessness.
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Theater aan het Spui 24 September Zaal 2
Klara Lewis
Collecting sounds is a habitual endeavour for Swedish sound sculptor, Klara Lewis. Using recorded sound as her raw material, Lewis detaches it entirely from it’s source and reconstructs it through a series of electronic processing. Her distinctive texture rich tracks secretly blend the everyday sounds of her journeys, home and encounters into a world of fragile instability. Her productions are emotionally charged with a resounding duality of expression; excitement and anxiety, joy and melancholy, anger and grief. Yet, mastery over her medium comes with an intuitive human warmth despite her impressive technical acuity. Signed to Viennese label Editions Mego, she has recently released her second album, Too, which marked a shift from heavily droning soundscapes towards a more rhythmic narrative.
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Theater aan het Spui 23 September Foyer
Limpe Fuchs Limpe Fuchs is a sound artist who has found her focal concepts in simplicity and emotion. Her sound material ranges from ringing bronze, skin covered drums, bamboo flutes, granite stone rows and violins, allowing her to interpret each improvisation in resonance with the performance space. Best known as half of the husband-wife duo, Anima, Fuchs’ solo work develops a greater flexibility and intuition. Verging on sound installations, her work engages with a greater ecology of the space and materials at hand. Her astonishing performances present sound, silence and improvisation as playful concepts that an audience can reflect on. The thoughtfulness of these shows lean towards a meditative, if not therapeutic quality.
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Theater aan het Spui 23 September Zaal 2
Masayoshi Fujita Masayoshi Fujita is a Japanese vibraphonist and composer based in Berlin with a penchant for charting new territories in sound. While both his collaboration with German experimentalist Jan Jelinek and his El Fog solo project were often filtered by electronics, Fujita’s latest work rejects the modern inference. Released on Erased Tapes, Apologues, instead evokes a classical purity, offering us a portrait of his glistening musicianship. Fujita’s compositions have foregrounded the vibraphone, which is traditionally a supportive instrument. His experimentations which have seen the instrument prepared with strings of beads and strips of foil draw focus to its materiality. Without abandoning its intrinsic character, the distortions expand the instrument’s repertoire to new depths. The pursuit is rippling serenity, fleeting harmony and fluid recollections located in vast soundscapes.
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Theater aan het Spui 23+24 September Zaal 1
Myriam Bleau autopsy.glass + Soft Revolvers Montreal native Myriam Bleau is a composer, multimedia artist and performer who creates mesmerizing audiovisual systems that transcend the screen. Taking the shape of sound installations and performance specific musical interfaces, her works explore the limits between musical performance and digital arts, and are infused with a hybrid practice that integrates hip hop, techno and the more experimental fringe of electronic composition. At TodaysArt 2016, Bleau showcases two of her latest projects, autopsy.glass and Soft Revolvers. The first of these, autopsy.glass is an audiovisual performance that explores the sonic, visual and symbolic potential of the wine glass. Through increasingly violent manipulations of amplified glasses, Bleau composes a musical and luminous scene made out of resonances and debris. For the second, Soft Revolvers, Bleau commands four clear, illuminated spinning tops that double instruments of electronic music composition. composition. Myriam Bleau’s autopsy.glass is co-produced with the support of ENCAC.
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Spuiplein 24 September
Nora Turato
Nora Turato is a uniquely, versatile artist. A graphic design graduate of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and Werkplaats Typografie, who’s on her way to a prestigious Rijksakademie residency this December, Turato is also a skilled writer and has been making music since the ripe old age of 15. In fact, recording as Turato91, she released her debut Girls Gotta Look Out For Each Other Thats All just last year. But it’s as a performer that the Croatian-born multitalent has received most acclaim. From her perch in the middle of the room, Turato unleashes powerful salvos of poignant spoken word that challenge all manner of social convention. Dubbed ‘verbal vomit’ by herself and ‘avant-garde hip hop’ by admirers, her absorbing displays explore rhythm, cadence and flow, and harness language as sound to blur the line between contemporary music and performance art.
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Theater aan het Spui 23 September Zaal 1
Pantha du Prince The Triad
Pantha du Prince is the solo moniker of Berlin-based producer and DJ Hendrik Weber. Renowned for his characterically lush and atmospheric fusion of minimal techno, shimmering house and shoegazey electronica, Weber’s music – from his Dial Records debut This Bliss right through to 2010’s “Black Noise” – has always had the distinct honour of suiting equally to the comforts of home as it does the darker recesses of the club. While his latest release, The Triad, shows no intention of bucking that trend, it does see Weber share his most private of affairs with fellow musicians, Bendik Kjeldsberg of the Bell Laboratory and Scott Mou, a.k.a. Mr. Queens. Performing the full album as a trio at TodaysArt 2016, Weber and co. have transformed The Triad into a grandiose audiovisual display replete with costumes, masks, a light show and more.
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Theater aan het Spui 23 September Zaal 2
Paul Jebanasam + Tarik Barri Continuum Continuum is the ambitious second full-length from experimental producer, Paul Jebanasam, through the Subtext label he operates alongside James Ginzburg and Roly Porter. Its aim is bold; to explore the potential for a cohesive ecology of conditions that support life, and the digital and atomic mechanisms that surround it, in the face of dynamic and unpredictable change. The poetic masterpiece is steeped in textural energy, emotion, and chaos. The live performance comes to life through partnership with audio-visual artist, Tarik Barri - responsible for the astounding visual compositions of Thom Yorke, Nicolaas Jaar, and Monolake. Barri’s customized software pushes visual materials to the edge of possibility with a governing level of detail. Their improvisation and interaction on stage unfolds an immersive narrative through sound and vision.
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Theater aan het Spui 24 September Zaal 2
Piotr Kurek Piotr Kurek is a Warsaw based experimental musician with an inspiringly novel approach to music. A firm characteristic of his work is diversity; from his usage of analog tape and croaking organ patterns to synthesisers and loosely improvised guitars. He’s built a reputation for himself as a qualified inventor of hypnotic worlds drenched in theatrical arrangement. His recent album on Dunno Recordings, AHH-OHH, released under Heroiny (one of his many monikers) was a warm success of house drum machine jams and vocal extensions. Kurek is also known for his work with pioneering breakcore group Slepcy, which at times explains his uses of jazz, krautrock, and classical art music as the foundations to of his dramatic soundscapes.
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Theater aan het Spui 24 September Zaal 2
TCF TCF is the latest moniker of Norwegian contemporary artist and musician Lars Holdhus. With breathtaking control of electronic software, he constructs ultra-modern, trance-inducing compositions out of his interests in intervening with machine-human relationships via A.I., algorithmic composition, and cryptography. Holdhus doesn’t hide his enthusiasm for encryption. Every track title is written in a coded cypher text, a chain of numbers and letters, and serve as a direct allusion to the experimental nature of his music, which remains a locked box to much of his audience. His work as TCF sits somewhere between art exhibition and musical performance, his abstracted blocks of sound and explicitly arranged synths an entry point to a world suspended of structure and choked with frenetic tension.
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TodaysArt 2016 Club
BAKK presents: The Voice Charlotte Bendiks DJ Earl w/ Sirr Tmo + Dre Elias Mazian Nathan Fake Paula Temple SØS Gunver Ryberg We will fail DJ Skurge El Rik Lukasz Żywna Pangani Zahed Sultan
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TodaysArt 2016 Club
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Theater aan het Spui 24 September Foyer
BAKK presents: The Voice Forged in the hallways of The Hague’s premier art academy, BAKK is the creative and musical outlet for hometown boys Handsome Thomas, Nick Nicely and Steve Motto. Starting out as a KABK party crew, BAKK have evolved into a nightlife stronghold (BAKK Militia), record label (BAKK Records) and radio show (Odd Beat Radio). Hosting a steady stream of performances and releases by legends and underdogs alike, the trio pay tribute to the fabled acid jams and electro rhythms of their city’s squat scene past while charting new territories for the West Coast sound. Returning to TodaysArt for a second time, BAKK follows up 2014’s Club 2 closing set with a little something different. Taking control of Theater aan het Spui’s Foyer on the festival Saturday, BAKK present The Voice, an eclectic collection of local heroes and emerging DJ talent. The complete lineup includes Safe Swim, Nimbus 3000, Noodlebar, Haron, 751, Marsdiep, Mata Hari, Mark Minkjan and De beet.
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Theater aan het Spui 23 September Zaal 2
Charlotte Bendiks
Dance is a key element of Charlotte Bendiks performances. Heavily influenced by her roots in Norway’s techno capital, Tromsø, Bendiks has been DJing since her early twenties, developing a style that integrates her electronic background with a widespread love for any music that begs for movement. Her DJ sets use the body as their starting point. Inspired by African groove, Latin beats and everything in between, her trademark focus is in creating euphoric, hot and sweaty dance floors, busy with blissful moments. Live vocals and impromptu percussion are frequently integrated into her shows, an addition which further pushes them into the realm of human sensuality.
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Theater aan het Spui 24 September Zaal 2
DJ Earl w/ footwork dancers Sirr Tmo + Dre Steeped in Windy City lore, Chicago-born producer DJ Earl is the latest to don the footwork mantle. A for dancers by dancers movement founded by RP Boo and popularized by the late, great DJ Rashad and his TEKLIFE crew, footwork emerged in the 90s as a mutation of house, ghetto house and juke. With a blistering 160 bpm pace, looped vocals, drum fills, handclaps and snares, footwork was made to match a battling dancer’s step. Twenty-four year-old TEKLIFE affiliate DJ Earl has developed his own unique approach to the infamous genre. Whipping crowds into a frenzy with his high-octane sets, Earl crosses over into jungle, hip hop and even ambient noise. His newly-released Warp Records album Open Your Eyes, for which Earl teamed up with Oneohtrix Point Never and TEKLIFE crew members DJ Manny and DJ Taye, is both a testament to the strength of the genre’s lifeblood and the force Earl’s own creative expression. For his TodaysArt 2016, DJ Earl is joined on stage by dancers and fellow footwork devotees Srr Tmo and Dre, treating The Hague to the full footwork experience.
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Theater aan het Spui 23 September Zaal 2
Elias Mazian
Amsterdam based DJ Elias Mazian swerves between cult classics and contemporary tracks, mixing them together with a bold thread of emotion and sensitivity. Mazian ticks all the boxes of an ace DJ; he has the a great selection of records, the passion to find them, and the know-how to spring them to life. He takes his inspiration from the vibrant music of his childhood; Michael Jackson, Prince, Stevie Wonder, as well as modern masters such as Moodymann and Pepe Bradock. The music he plays is full of soul, and when he plays his attention is focused on creating the perfect atmosphere for his dancing crowd.
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Theater aan het Spui 23 September Zaal 2
Nathan Fake Nathan Fake has a reputation for deviating from the norm. Characterized by versatility and progression, the UK electronic producer is undoubtedly a pioneer of our generation. Fake’s career set off in 2003 with the memorable Outhouse EP on James Holden’s Border Community Label; an intense techno-based album heavy with melodic synths and confidence. He’s since co-founded the label Cambria Instruments, and released material which has paced further into cerebral warmth and inventive rhythms. His music radiates on the dance floor, and it’s with his DJ sets that his ability to master sound and the crowd really take shape.
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Theater aan het Spui 24 September Zaal 2
Paula Temple
Sound is powerful in Paula Temple’s capable hands. It becomes tangent and openly present within the room, something you can feel throughout your entire body. Self described as a noisician, she’s a true veteran of the UK techno scene. Emerging in the early 90’s, she took an unexpected break to mentor music tech to underprivileged kids before upturning our ears in 2013 with her Colonized EP on R&S, her forceful return behind the decks. Temple has an unparalleled expertise for pristine sound designs and an intense craft for grinding industrial rhythms. She has cemented herself and inspired countless females within a scene that’s still so inherently masculine, shifting the brutality of techno into a more refined mass of energy that forms the dynamic ‘hybrid’ techno DJ/Live set she bring to TodaysArt 2016.
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Theater aan het Spui 24 September Zaal 2
SØS Gunver Ryberg
SØS Gunver Rydberg’s music deserves to be experienced live. The Danish contemporary composer and sound artist performs with an endless energy that audibly challenges your state of consciousness. Her characteristic style is weird, experimental and often terrifying: frenetic drum machines, murky drones, and walls of chaotic overdrive. Her work embodies her rich production history which stems within performance art and has guided her through sound installations, computer game soundtracks and audio walks. She’s quickly become renown for delivering music with an undeniable ‘live’ quality. These performances are, in her words, ‘site specific’; exploring the potential of the acoustic space. Her debut release, AFTRYK, on Contort Records was meticulously designed to induce internal torment, seemingly dark, but easily forgiven for her talent at creating intense journeys through sound.
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Theater aan het Spui 24 September Zaal 2
We will fail
We will fail is a project by audio performance artist, Aleksandra Grünholz. The Polish artist has a sound that’s highly original with its contrasting energy and atmospheric power. Following on from her 2014 two-part debut album, Verstorung, Grünholz has recently released her latest album, Hand That Heals / Hand That Bites, on Monotype Records. Grünholz’s work is a steady cascade of rhythmic patterns, full of intricate details and oddities. Drones lean into manipulated field recordings and towards industrial techno as her fragmented samples create an anxious tension itching for eruption. Even within the club space, her work is made to be listened to, with each encounter bringing forth a new revelation of sound.
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Theater aan het Spui 23 September 2016 Foyer
DJ Skurge Steeped in Detroit techno lore, Milton Baldwin aka DJ Skurge earned his stripes DJ’ing for the tough East Side “Cabaret” crowd before being enlisted by Mad Mike to join legendary Detroit outfit Underground Resistance. A founding member of UR’s The Aquanauts, as well as DJ, keyboardist and producer for Galaxy to Galaxy, Interstellar Fugitives, Jeff Mills’ Something in the Sky project and Juan Atkins’ pioneering Model 500, DJ Skurge has become one of the mainstays of the current UR Camp. Stepping out from his role as “tall guy in the back, in the shadows,” DJ Skurge reclaims his spot behind the decks at TodaysArt 2016, treating the Spuiplein to an infamous Detroit techno set.
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Spuiplein 23+24 September 2016
El Rik The Hague-based DJ and Espresso Records founder El Rik collects, plays and sells vinyl in all genres, ranging from world music, psych, wave, cosmic dub, funk, jazz to all kinds of electronic music, new, old and more. From a young age, El Rik started playing classical music and collecting world music on all imaginable formats – tapes, cd’s, digital and vinyl. After the tragic death of his beloved computer, on which he produced music, he started selling records to buy new ones and soon a travelling recordshop was born. Eight years on, El Rik plays endless vinyl sets, floating between all kinds of genres, styles and BPMs.
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Spuiplein 24 September 2016
Lukasz Żywna Lukasz Żywna is a The Hague-based musician, DJ and event organizer who explores the deeper and harder realms of techno. Confined to a wheelchair and with a limited range of movements, Żywna uses specially-developed instruments and tools that were designed by Amsterdam-based electro-instrumental studio STEIM for artists with unusual artistic needs. Together with media artist and composer Marije Baalman and Bunker Records affiliate and producer Kassen, Żywna has adapted the code and sound of the new instruments to suit the club environment and his heavy hitting, acid techno sets.
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Spuiplein 23 September
Pangani Swiss DJ and producer Pangani fuses psychedelic dub, storytelling and live electronics to construct sonic adventures. Field-recordings and sounddesigned puzzle-pieces meet the ‘foleyboard,’ a self-built percussive synthesizer that uses a sound reactive wood board on which all kinds of objects – seeds, sand or brushes – flow together to generate manipulated, shape-morphing sound sculptures. The setup allows Pangani to play in the moment and bring theatrical elements into his live shows.
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Theater aan het Spui 23 September Foyer
Zahed Sultan Zahed Sultan is a Kuwaiti multimedia artist, social entrepreneur, cultural producer, and filmmaker. A founder of REUSE festival and El Boutique Creative Group (EBCG), a multi-disciplinary organization devoted to social development and creativity, Sultan’s own talents extends the world of live audiovisual performances that integrate music, visuals and light. A stalwart of the Kuwaiti music and art scene, and a DJ from the ripe old age of 14, Sultan takes his place behind the decks at TodaysArt 2016, helming the Theater aan het Spui Foyer on the festival Friday.
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TodaysArt 2016 Symposium
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VPRO Medialab Meet Up New Emergences #4 Art, Astrospace and MoonMars Public under Construction Novel Tools for Sonic Manifestations Emerging Artists hosted by the SHAPE network Decentralize! City Sondols
TodaysArt 2016 Symposium
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Filmhuis 23 September
VPRO Medialab Meet Up Moderated by: Rob van Hattem Presentations: Nicolaas Boritch + Elie Zananiri (Entropy), Floris Kaayk (The Modular Body), Ali Eslami (SNOW VR) With the onset of social media and an ever evolving media landscape, the act of storytelling is continuously and dramatically changing. No longer confined to print, TV, radio or even the internet, stories can now be found everywhere: on your body, in the train or on your phone. With travelling dialogue ‘VPRO Medialab Meet Up’, VPRO Medialab are going up and down the country to find out what the future of storytelling holds. TodaysArt 2016 marks the first stop for the travelling dialogue. Moderated by the VPRO’s ‘Mind of the Universe’ host, Rob van Hattem, the first Medialab Meet Up focuses on non-fictional stories and begs the question, how does one imagine and tell non-fictional formats differently? Joining van Hattem on stage are the team behind Entropy, the transdisciplinary epic that recounts the history of our universe and its stars, as well as fellow TodaysArtists Ali Eslami and Floris Kaayk. Following the talks, the audience will break off into small groups, each joined by one of the artists, to dissect and analyze how each artist’s medium influences the story being told.
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Filmhuis 24 September Studio A
New Emergences #4 Moderated by: Mariette Groot Keynote: Ruth Timmermans Panel: Anne La Berge, Ruth Timmermans and Florian Cramer New Emergences is an ongoing The Hague-based lecture and discussion series hosted by a group of composers, improvisers, performers, researchers and sound artists all working in the field of electronic music. Inspired by Doreen Massey, the series is a Safe Space where dialogue can emerge and debates are encouraged. At TodaysArt 2016, the group present their fourth session of the series. Entitled New Emergences #4: How numbers speak for themselves, it will highlight the current debates around gender in electronic music. The session opens with a keynote by Gonzo(circus) Managing Director Ruth Timmermans, and will be followed by a panel discussion and audience Q&A moderated by Underbelly’s Mariette Groot and featuring Ruth Timmermans, Anne La Berge and Florian Cramer.
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Filmhuis 23 September Studio A
Art, Astrospace and MoonMars Moderated by: Bernard Foing Presentations: Bernard Foing (VU Amsterdam, ILEWG / ESTEC), Dida Markovic + Elie Zazaniri (Entropy), Angeliki Kapglou (Stanford U./ILEWG), A. Kolodziejczyk (ESTEC) What do artists, space researchers and astrophysicists have in common? The urge to explore new domains, find new tools, create awareness, and expand life and humanity beyond our limits. At TodaysArt 2016, researchers from ESA European Space Agency join members of the Entropy team to survey the latest discoveries in cosmology and astrophysics, address the human and social aspects of space exploration, and examine possible human MoonMars habitats. After opening the session with a keynote address, Bernard Foing moderates a series of presentations by Dida Markovic of the Entropy team, Angeliki Kapglou, Agata Kolodziejczyk and Sarah Jane Pell. The session concludes at night by relocating to the Spuiplein, transforming one of the agoras into a MoonMars village replete with a hands-on demonstration of remotely-controlled astrospace instruments and interstellar musical entertainment.
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Spuiplein 24 September
Public under Construction Moderated by: Peter Zuiderwijk (Collective Works) Monologues: Michiel van Iersel (Failed Architecture), Elma van Boxel + Kristian Koreman (ZUS), Koert van Mensvoort ( Next Nature), Paolo Patelli + Giuditta Vendrame (La Jetée), Ruimte voor de Stad, Christiaan Fruneaux (Monnik) More than half of the world’s population lives in urban spaces and the need to address the formation, design and (un)spontaneity of future spaces grows stronger each day. The (re)construction of The Hague’s Spuiplein brings this case home and raises questions about the public space of now and what it could be in the future. What powers and forces concerning the future and decision making of the environment are involved? Who actually ‘owns’ the city? Taking place in and around the RUIMTE installation, the Public under Construction sessions take the form of a series of monologues that collectively discuss the conflicts and opportunities surrounding urban areas in transition, and aim to spark new perspectives on designing, using and experiencing our public space and built environment. The monologues will be delivered by, among others, Elma van Boxel and Kristian Koreman of ZUS [Zones Urbaines Sensibles], Koert van Mensvoort of Next Nature, Failed Architecture’s Michiel van Iersel, LaJetée’s Paolo Patelli and Giuditta Vendrame, Joris Wijsmuller and Ruimte voor de Stad. Moderated by Peter Zuiderwijk of Collective Works. p.69
Filmhuis 24 September Zaal 5
Novel Tools for Sonic Manifestations Moderated by: Jose Luis de Vincente Keynote: Francisco López + Andre Vogrig, Darien Brito Presentations: Marije Baalman (STEIM), Myriam Bleau, Paul Jebanasam + Tarik Barri. With Novel Tools for Sonic Manifestations, TodaysArt 2016 explores new technologies, formats and trans-disciplinary collaborations, and the increasingly novel ways in which they can be employed to push the boundaries of creating, presenting and experiencing music and sound. Joined by HARING programmers Andrea Vogrig and Darien Brito, audio-DH: sonic manifestations mastermind Francisco López opens the session with a keynote address that showcases the specially-developed software at the heart of his latest endeavour. The keynote is followed by presentations by STEIM’s Marije Baalman and festival artists Myriam Bleau, Tarik Barri and Alba G. Corral who discuss the instruments, tools and technologies used in each of their performances.
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Filmhuis 23 September Studio A
Emerging Artists hosted by the SHAPE platform Moderated by: Jonathan Reus (iii) SHAPE presentation by: Gaute Barlindhaug (Insomnia Festival) Presentation by: Charlotte Bendiks, Masayoshi Fujita, Matteo Marangoni (iii), Aleksandra Grünholz (We will fail), Julien Bayle Founded in 2015 as part of the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, SHAPE is a platform for idiosyncratic music and sonic art from all over the continent. Comprising a network of 16 festivals and art centers, the platform aims to support, promote and exchange innovative and aspiring musicians interdisciplinary artists with an interest in sound. Each year, the 16 involved associations collectively choose 48 creatively strong artists and musicians to participate in a mix of live performances, residencies, workshops and talks across festivals. At TodaysArt 2016, Gaute Barlindhaug of SHAPE founding-member Insomnia Festival presents a keynote discussing the platform and its ambitions. The keynote will be followed by a panel of SHAPE 2016 participants moderated by iii’s Jonathan Reus and featuring iii-member Matteo Marangoni, Charlotte Bendiks, Masayoshi Fujita, Aleksandra Grünholz and Julien Bayle.
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Filmhuis 24 September Studio A
Decentralize! Moderated by: Jonathan Looman + Daniel Erlacher Presentations: Joachim Lohkamp (Jolocom), Lars Holdhus (TCF), Maurice Mikkers + Beer van Geer + Roeland Landegent. The Internet of 2016 isn’t the free and open place the pioneers of Web envisioned in the 90s. Instead of a space composed of millions of independent and interconnected nodes, the digital life of hundreds of millions of users passes exclusively through 4 or 5 services, where they produce and consume conversations, images, songs or videos. This centralization also affects musicians, filmmakers and artists, who are tied to certain conditions by their owners, sometimes with creative consequences. As a part of the We are Europe project, TodaysArt, Sonar+D and Insomnia explore new ways of cultural entrepreneurship that seek to answer the urgent question: How can we decentralize the Internet for citizens and creators again? Using the Blockchain as the jump off, this session will explore alternatives for hosting, distributing and making digital culture accessible in an autonomous and safe way. The session comprises presentations and talks by Joachim Lohkamp, Lars Holdus, Maurice Mikkers, Beer van Geer and Roeland Landegent, and will be moderated by Jonathan Looman + Daniel Erlacher.
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Spuiplein 24 September
City Sondols Workshop by: Matteo Marangoni (iii)
City Sondols is an ongoing series of public interventions presented by iii that explores architecture and public space, and employs performative practices and mobile audio devices to induce perceptual shifts within the built environment. Performers, equipped with self-made, mobile musical instruments, lead an audience on a walk through the city while probing the surrounding space with sound. Aural impressions of sites are conveyed by using echolocation techniques and feedback processes. Combining aesthetic contemplation, physical engagement and urban guerrilla tactics, the walk proposes a form of active perception that temporarily modifies the surrounding environment.
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TodaysArt 2016 Film
Liz Magic Laser The Thought Leader Margaret Haines The Stars Down To Earth PWR Foreign Drive Randa Maroufi Le Park Shadi Habib Allah Dag’aa Superflux Drone Aviary
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TodaysArt 2016 Film
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Filmhuis 23+24 September Zaal 5
Liz Magic Laser The Thought Leader
Before there was Upworthy and Buzzfeed and IFLScience, before your Facebook feed was an endless stream clickbait hyperbole and #viral content, there was TED, a global series of ‘inspiring’, ‘beautiful’, ‘informative’ and ‘fascinating’ 15-minute motivational talks proposing idealistic solutions to contemporary issues and other utopian visions. Gleaming the powerful oratory style and format, The Thought Leader is a satirical and sinister take on the TED Talk courtesy of rising New York-based performance artist and filmmaker Liz Magic Laser. In it, a 10-year-old child cheerfully delivers a dreary monologue adapted from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground about an individual on the margins of modern society and the effects modern life has on the human condition. Duration: 09.00min
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Filmhuis 23+24 September Zaal 5
Margaret Haines The Stars Down To Earth The Stars Down To Earth is a dystopic vision from the mind of L.A. installation artist and filmmaker, and current Rijksakademie resident Margaret Haines. Drawing on various sources from Hollywood thriller to Susan Miller to Chelsea Manning’s letters, The Stars Down To Earth reimagines the tragic tale of Apollo and the mythological prophetess Cassandra. Reincarnated in modern day Los Angeles, Apollo and Cassandra, whose divinations are doomed to never be heard or believed, endlessly roam through urban sprawl as a chorus of astrologers from the Carroll Righter Astrological Foundation prophecy actual events for 2015 and 2016. Duration: 23.00min
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Filmhuis 23+24 September Zaal 5
PWR Foreign Drive
Foreign Drive is a short film by PWR, a cloud-based design, research and production studio run by Hanna Nilsson and Rasmus Svensson. We’ll let their words speak for themselves: “Foreign Drive takes place on the flat surface of the interface, on the thin line where one meets another, where U meet I. The interface is a membrane that permits or prevents passage according to a logic unknown to the user. The hands and eyes of the user are driven to roam over its surface, tracing lines that portray distant algorithms. Infrasonic vibrations disrupt the user’s thoughts, calling for attention and demanding action. The body is shaken by a surge of fear and hope in equal measure. We need this connection – but we also crave isolation. We wish to be apart and a part, inside and outside, all at the same time. The interface is the stage for this drama.” Duration: 12.20min
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Filmhuis 23+24 September Zaal 5
Randa Maroufi Le Park
Randa Maroufi is a voracious and versatile talent. Educated at art academies in Morocco and France, her works examine the use of public space and gender issues through a diverse range of media, from film, photography and installations to audio and performances. Le Park is her latest short film. A series of mesmerizing tableaux vivants that look like frozen snapshots and cinematic sculptures, Le Park is a portrait of urban youths in Casablanca. As the camera steadily and ever so slowly pans across their home turf, an abandoned amusement park, Le Park reveals a powerful intersection between public space, identity and social media. Duration: 14.00min
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Filmhuis 23+24 September Zaal 5
Shadi Habib Allah Dag’aa
With his latest short film, Dag’aa, Palestinian contemporary artist and filmmaker Shadi Habib Allah takes us on an incredible and unimaginable journey of discovery through the heart of the Sinai Peninsula. A dusty drive through an unmapped terrain, we are led by a group of armed Bedouins whose only signposts are the brief anecdotes and conversations that recount the stakes of living, dying and moving across this mysterious space. Allah’s Dag’aa is an adventure behind the lines of military checkpoints and far off the political, economic and historical grid, where the only rule for the desert outlier is to remain completely invisible and utterly intangible. Duration: 19.00min
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Filmhuis 23+24 September Zaal 5
Superflux Drone Aviary
Imagine a world where drones are as common as birds. Where the flurry of a flock of pigeons in a central city square is drowned out by the hum of little propellers whizzing by overhead. Where every step across public space is accompanied by an unmanned aerial vehicle, observing, recording, analyzing and reporting our every move. And where the collective network they form begins to gain physical autonomy, making decisions about our world and influencing our lives in profound but enigmatic ways. Such is the world envisioned by London-based design studio Superflux in their short film, The Drone Aviary. Part of a larger project that investigates the social, political and cultural potential of drone technology as it enters civil space, The Drone Aviary places the drone front and center, following five robotic protagonists as they go about their day. Duration: 06.34min
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TodaysArt 2016 Partner program
audio-DH Just Peace Festival The Creators Project CoderDojo Werner Herzog
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Partner program 22 September Korzo
audio-DH Francisco López + iii We are honoured to be presenting the premiere of Spanish-born experimentalist Francisco López’s audio-DH: sonic manifestation together with our friends at Korzo Theater and artist-run platform iii. A sonic exploration of epic proportions, audio-DH is a colossal compendium of The Hague-based sound art that features the works of no less than 250 of the city’s most creative minds. Collected and sent into the world untouched by human hands using the specially developed and aptly-titled HARING software, audio-DH charts the adventurous tide of creativity continuously washing over The Hague in what promises to be a hallucinatory premiere. Performed live with HARING, López combines and recombines the submitted works in a myriad of constellations to produce a mesmerizing sonic collage.
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Partner program 21-25 September The Hague
Just Peace Festival
Taking place from the 21st to the 25th of September, Just Peace Festival is an annual celebration of the U.N.-declared International Day of Peace. Spread across the four days and throughout The Hague – the official international city of peace and justice, and second U.N. city – Just Peace Festival offers a wealth of festivities related to its central theme, Peace and Justice. The program includes a range of activities from debates, concerts and exhibitions to the Peace Run on Saturday, and an open day at the city’s various international organization, Just Peace Festival. Teaming up with TodaysArt 2016, Just Peace Festival co-presents Pedro Reyes’ Disarm (Mechanized) at Pulchri Studio over the course of the weekend.
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Partner program 23+24 September TodaysArt
The Creators Project Route + Screenings The Creators Project is a global celebration of creativity, arts and technology. Launched in 2009, the platform features the works of visionary artists across multiple disciplines who are using technology to push the boundaries of creative expression. An official TodaysArt 2016 partner, The Creators Project presents an exclusive program of screenings that runs throughout the festival weekend and features TodaysArt 2016 artists NONOTAK and Pedro Reyes, as well as other affiliated TCP originals. The team have also devised a special The Creators Project route for TodaysArt 2016, highlighting nine of the festival’s works and performances.
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Partner program 24 september Spuiplein
CoderDojo
CoderDojo is a global network of free, volunteer-led, community-based programming clubs for young people. Founded on the premise that an understanding of programming languages is increasingly important in the modern world, that it’s both better and easier to learn these skills early, and that nobody should be denied the opportunity to do so, regional CoderDojo affiliates organize events where anyone aged 7 to 17 can learn to code, build a website, create an app or a game, and explore technology in an informal, creative, and social environment. On the 24th of September, The Hague’s local CoderDojo chapter sets up shop at the Bibliotheek Den Haag. Following the main session, the Dojo apprentices will present their creations in one of the Spuiplein agoras.
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Partner program 23+24 september Filmhuis
Werner Herzog Lo and Behold With his new documentary, Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World, legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog dives into the virtual world, chronicling it from its origins to its outermost reaches. Exploring the digital landscape with the same curiosity and imagination he previously trained on earthly destinations as disparate as the Amazon, the Sahara, the South Pole and the Australian outback, Herzog now leads viewers on a journey through a series of provocative conversations that reveal the ways in which the online world has transformed the way virtually everything in the real world works. TodaysArt 2016 ticketholders can attend the Friday (21.45) or Saturday (19.30) screenings of Lo and Behold at the Filmhuis for a discounted rate of â‚Ź6.50.
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TodaysArt 2016 Practical information
Venues Tickets How to get there About Networks Partners
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TodaysArt 2016 Practical information
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Practical information
Venues
Tickets
How to get there and back
Spuiplein Public Interventions + Talks + Performances Spuiplein, 2511 BN The Hague,NL Open: 11.00-01.00
TodaysArt 2016 takes place on 23rd and 24th of September. Please find an overview of the different tickets and associated programs below.
This year’s TodaysArt festival takes place in the city centre of The Hague, on and around the Spuiplein.
Theater aan het Spui Installations + Talks + Performances + Club Nights Spui 187, 2511 BN The Hague,NL Open: 15.00-04.00 Filmhuis Screenings + Talks + Installations Spui 191, 2511 BN The Hague,NL Open: 11.00-24.00 Pulchri Studio Exhibition - Pedro Reyes Disarm (Mechanized) Lange Voorhout 15, 2514 EA The Hague,NL Open: 11.00-22.00 Korzo Partner-program: audio-DH Prinsestraat 42, 2513 CE The Hague,NL
Festival - €45 23 + 24 September The Full Festival pass grants you access to the complete program on the Friday and Saturday, including all performances, club nights and installations, as well as the symposium CJP Discount: €40 Friday - €25 23 September The Festival day pass grants you access to the complete program on either Friday or Saturday, including all performances, club nights and installations, as well as the symposium CJP discount: €20 Saturday - €25 24 September The Festival day pass grants you access to the complete program on either Friday or Saturday, including all performances, club nights and installations, as well as the symposium CJP discount: €20
By public transport The festival area lies within walking distance of both Den Haag Central Station (less than 5 minutes) and Den Haag Holland Spoor station (just over 10 minutes). Check ns.nl for more information on traveling by train and departure times. The trams will take you to other locations in the city or to where you are staying. For current timetables, directions and route instructions check htm.net and 9292.nl. Be sure to check in advance, schedules on Friday or Saturday may differ. By car / parking From Utrecht take the A12, from Amsterdam take the A4 or A44, from Rotterdam take the A13. When you enter The Hague follow the signs “CENTRUM”. The ‘Turfmarkt’ parking garage is situated near the square.
About Networks
TodaysArt TodaysArt is a network organization specialized in the presentation and development of contemporary visual and performing arts and emerging culture. Since 2005 TodaysArt has brought artists, makers, thinkers and audiences together in inspiring contexts. Our main activities are the annual TodaysArt festival and symposium in The Hague. In addition, TodaysArt organizes and participates in a variety of international events, exhibitions and presentations and acts as a co-producer for the development and distribution of artists and projects. Networks We are Europe We are Europe is a newly-formed association of 8 major European festivals – c/o pop, Elevate, Insomnia, Nuits sonores, Resonate, Reworks, Sónar and TodaysArt – who have joined forces in order to promote, create and produce innovative cultural practices that are defined by creative diversity and exchange. The project aims to develop a prospective vision of electronic culture, technology and entrepreneurship, contributing to new social and political developments with an interdisciplinary approach. Over the course of the next three years, each partnering festival will invite two other partners to collaborate on both a symposium program as well as an artistic program at their respective events.
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SHAPE With no less than 16 associated festivals, SHAPE – Sound, Heterogeneous Art and Performance in Europe – is the second and largest European network of which we are a proud founding-member. Co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, SHAPE is a platform for innovative music and audiovisual art that aims to support, promote and exchange innovative and aspiring musicians and interdisciplinary artists with an interest in sound. Each year, the 16 partner festivals and events collectively select 48 creatively strong artists and musicians to participate in a mix of live performances, residencies, workshops and talks across the respective partnering events.
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TodaysArt team
Supervisory Board Piet Barendse Robert Koetsier Alex Adriaansens Nicole van Vessum Director/Founder Olof van Winden TodaysArt The Hague Tim Terpstra Galina Bartelds Brecht Hoffmann Irvin van den Houdt Artistic Team Gwyneth Wentink Remco Schuurbiers Petra Heck Tim Terpstra Peter Zuiderwijk Olof van Winden TodaysArt 2016 Marketing & Communication Galina Bartelds Phil van der Krogt Production Kwinten Vissers Margarita Osipian Pierre-Yves Lavoie Sanne Kruithof Volunteer Coordination Joya de Bock Moniek van der Kwaak Art Direction + Design Collective Works Web Development buurmen Videography Tanja Busking
Photography Maurice Mikkers Other crew and Volunteers The Festival wouldn’t be what it is today without the great efforts by many other crew members and all volunteers who are not listed here!
Partners
Presenting Partners
Governmental + Institutional Partners
Creative Partners
Media Partners
Facillitating Partners + Preferred Suppliers
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