ULTIMA 2024 Fluid Formations

FLUID FORMATIONS Ultima context programme 13 September 14:00–19:00

14 September 10:00–23:30 Vega Scene, Gratis

Fluid Formations brings artists, researchers, practitioners and audience members together in a two-day gathering of communal listening and thinking in and around Vega Scene.

Invited artists engage with the multispecies ecologies we are part of, and the histories that continue to echo and affect us today.

The programme asks how to listen to our environment against the background of ongoing geopolitical crises and an accelerating climate emergency. How to understand ourselves as ‘fluid formations’?

Over the two days, participants will engage with different listening positions, while addressing questions around music and migration, environmental listening, and the voice as a (political) instrument. Alternating between conversations (confluences), listening sessions (tributaries), film screenings (streams) and radio interviews (waves), the programme asks how gathering around music and sound can encourage empathy and solidarity with others, especially in the present difficult times. The programme will be held in English.

Supported by The Creative Europe Programme of the European Union as part of Sounds Now Fritt Ord

programme 13 and 14 September

confluences:

conversations

tributaries:

listening sessions, sound walks, lecture performances

streams:

film programme

waves:

radio interviews

Friday 13 September, 14:00–19:00 Salongen 14:00–14:10 introduction by Heloisa Amaral and Katía Truijen 14:10–14:30 The Oceanographies Institute lecture performance by Marialena Marouda 14:30–15:15 fathom in conversation with Jana Winderen, Chris Watson, Tony Myatt, moderated by Katía Truijen 15:15–15:30 Planktonium a short film by Jan van IJken 16:00–16:45 Tremble Staves in conversation with Raven Chacon, moderated by Katya García-Antón

17:15–18:30 Wave Through assembly on listening to (endangered) ecologies and cultures in the face of contemporary crises with Marialena Marouda, Anne Hytta, Margrethe Pettersen, Raven Chacon, Katya García-Anton, curated and moderated by Giada Dalla Bontà and Katía Truijen, in collaboration with Norsk Komponistforening 18:30–19:00 Horizontal Stillness performance by Anne Hytta Foajè 14:30–15:00 Esi Eshun and Cư ờ ng Minh Bá Phạm 15:30–16:00 Pouya Pour-Amin and Rasha Nahas 16:15–16:45 Berno Odo Polzer and Katía Truijen (House of Listening)

17:30–18:00 Enji and Kristin Norderval 18:30–19:00 JL Murtaugh and Viktorija Šiaulytė (Rupert) Radio conversations in collaboration with Radio WORM, led by Ash Kilmartin.

Each session opening with a contribution by participants of KHiO’s Between Site and Voice course.

Saturday 14 September, 10:00–23:30 Akerselva 10:00–10:45 soundwalk Akerselva led by Gyrid Nordal Kaldestad starting point at bus stop Arendalsgata at 10:00 Sound walk in collaboration with Norsk Komponistforening Salongen 11:00–11:45 Black Industrial/Noise in conversation with Dubmorphology and Nkisi, moderated by Oliver Fuke 11:45–12:15 The Third Pole: Moving Mountains listening session by Nischal Khadka

12:15–13:15 The Politics of Participation a film by Megan-Leigh Heilig, presented by Sounds Now 13:30–14:15 Dancing into Fire in conversation with Fatemeh Ekhtesari and Oddrun Lilja, moderated by Giada Dalla Bontà

14:30–15:15 Freedom to Move in conversation with Sofia Jernberg, moderated

by Radna Rumping 15:30–16:30 Wave Crest assembly on sounds as instruments of resistance, protest, and solidarity with Fatemeh Ekhtesari, Oddrun Lilja, Nischal Khadka, Polina Medvedeva, Andreas Kühne, Pouya Pour-Amin, curated and moderated by Giada Dalla Bontà and Katía Truijen 16:30–17:00 Facing the spills: a borderland listening lecture performance by Polina Medvedeva and Andreas Kühne

Foajè 12:15–12:45 Lucia D’Errico and students from KHiO (Oslo National Academy Norway) 13:15–13:45 Curating Lab on Lyden av minner er lyden av hjem soundwalk 14:15–14:45 artists to be confirmed 15:15–15:45 artists to be confirmed 16:15–16:45 Between Site and Voice students from KHiO Radio conversations in collaboration with Radio WORM, led by Ash Kilmartin.

Each session opening with a contribution by participants of KHiO’s Between Site and Voice course.

Vega 1 and 3 (Cinema Hall) 17:15–19:00 Taming the Garden a film by Salomé Jashi (2021) 19:30–21:10 Aquarela a film by Victor Kossakovsky (2020) 21:30–23:20 Geographies of Solitude a film by Jacquelyn Mills (2022) Film programme curated in collaboration with MIRAGE film festival

Programme information Friday 13 September, 14:00–19:00

Introduction by Heloisa Amaral and Katía Truijen 14:00–14:10, Salongen Fluid Formations brings artists, researchers, practitioners and audience members together in a two-day gathering of communal listening and thinking in and around Vega Scene.

Invited artists will engage with the multispecies ecologies we are part of, and the histories that continue to echo and affect us today. We will ask how to listen to our environment against the background of ongoing geopolitical crises and an accelerating climate emergency. How to understand ourselves as ‘fluid formations’?

Over the two days, we will engage with different listening positions, while addressing questions around music and migration, environmental listening, and the voice as a (political) instrument. Alternating between conversations (confluences), sound walks, lecture performances and listening sessions (tributaries), film screenings (streams) and radio interviews (waves), we will ask how gathering around music and sound can encourage empathy and solidarity with others, especially in the present difficult times.

At the end of each day, an assembly serves as a space for collective exploration, where the act

of listening becomes a shared journey. Guided by a metaphor of the sea, the Wave Through assembly draws inspiration from the subtle, steady currents that move beneath the surface and the lowest point of a wave in movement— representing the introspective and reflective facets of artistic outputs and dialogues. The Wave Crest assembly evokes the powerful, rising energy of a cresting wave—symbolizing the active, forceful push towards political and social engagement.

The Oceanographies Institute (TOI) lecture performance by Marialena Marouda 14:10–14:30, Salongen The Oceanographies Institute (TOI) focuses on the relations between two bodies of water: the human body and the world ocean(s). As a long term and site specific artistic research work, it was initiated in 2018 by Marialena Marouda; from 2019 to 2022, composer Charlie Usher and performance maker Elpida Orfanidou joined TOI, letting their practices of music composition and voice performance flow into it. TOI collects, analyzes and reenacts people‘s personal stories about their encounters with the ocean. The personal is political for TOI, as it seeks to make hearable the complex networks of ocean relations that exist in the specific contexts in which it shares its work. In a sound based lecture-presentation during Fluid Formations, Marialena will share parts of TOI’s database of conversations, songs and “Ocean Demonstrations”, in which amplified objects and simple actions bring about an immersive soundscape that summons the immense body of the ocean from within the Vega Scene.

fathom a conversation with Jana Winderen, Chris Watson, Tony Myatt 14:30–15:15, Salongen Following Ultima 2024’s opening concert fathom on September 12, artists and pioneers of spatial sound art Chris Watson, Jana Winderen and Tony Myatt will enter into a conversation about their practices and collaboration for the concert, and listening to changing underwater environments. fathom invites listeners on a sonic journey from the Oslo fjord to the ancient bed of the Norwegian Sea, filling the Oslo City Hall with marine sound environments, using live three-dimensional spatial audio projection.

Arctic currents mix and merge with thriving and diverse communities of wildlife: highly evolved, complex and fragile species now threatened by industrial exploitation. Evolving over millennia, the ocean has its own deep voice. When allowed to speak, it offers the most eloquent appeal for its own survival.

Planktonium a short film by Jan van IJken, with a sound composition by Jana Winderen 15:15–15:30, Salongen Phytoplankton (small plant-like cells) are producing half of all oxygen on earth by photosynthesis, like plants and trees do on land.

Plankton form the base of the food chain of aquatic life and play an important part in the global carbon cycle. They are of vital importance for all life on earth, but are threatened by climate change, global warming and acidification of the oceans. Planktonium is a short film about the unseen world of living plankton. It is a voyage into a secret universe, inhabited by alien-like creatures. Jan van IJken filmed the plankton through his microscopes, revealing the beauty and delicate structures of the minute organisms in the finest detail. Jana Winderen made a sound composition for the film.

Tremble Staves a conversation with Raven Chacon and Sarah Zahid, moderated by Katya García-Antón 16:00–16:45, Salongen Originally created for the ruins of a failed public bath project in the San Francisco Bay Area, Raven Chacon’s performance work Tremble Staves deals with the scarcity and sacredness of water. A new Oslo version is presented on 14 and 15 September, transforming the Opera beach and roof into a ritual site where musicians extract sounds from musical instruments and the very water of the fjord, and where poems

by Sarah Zahid evoke the presence of water in Oslo’s collective imagination. In anticipation of Tremble Staves, Katya García-Antón will enter into a conversation with Raven Chacon and Sarah Zahid about the performance work and their practices, and human interactions with land and water bodies.

Wave Through assembly, with Marialena Marouda, Anne Hytta, Margrethe Pettersen, Raven Chacon, Sarah Zahid, Katya GarcíaAnton, curated and moderated by Giada Dalla Bontà and Katía Truijen, in collaboration with Norsk Komponistforening 17:15–18:30, Salongen The Wave Through assembly delves into the intimate and introspective dimensions of humanity‘s relationship with the environment, navigating the quieter, reflective currents of fluid formations and marine movements. This assembly focuses on how music and sound recalibrate our connection to the natural world, particularly in the face of unprecedented ecological threats. Attention is given to the languages we use when addressing ecological crises and how they shape our understanding and response: what are the possible roles and limits of music and sound in doing this, if we listen to them? Traditional music, myths, and stories from various cultures, especially those deeply intertwined with their lands, are explored for their power to connect past and present ecological challenges. The assembly considers how music moves us—emotionally and physically—into a deeper relationship with

the natural world, while also recognizing its limitations. ↗ Wave trough playlist

Horizontal stillness performance by Anne Hytta 18:30–19:00, Salongen Anne Hytta will perform a small set of pondering improvisations on the hardanger fiddle, searching flowing lines and still flowings. As a performer and composer Anne is fascinated by the melodic lines, movements, details and ornaments of the old tunes; how the tones are intertwined in each other along flowing lines in a river, along a whirling straw of hair in the air, along a small branch of an old tree shivering in the wind. Contrasting the lines and the horizontal; the timbre of the instrument, the sound of strings stroked and echoing from the sympathetic strings underneath.

Fluid Formations: radio conversations 14:30–19:00, Foajè Radio conversations in collaboration with Radio WORM, led by Ash Kilmartin.

Each Waves session will be opened with a small presentation by participants in KHiO’s Between Site and Voice course.

Programme information Saturday 14 September, 10:00–23:30

Soundwalk Akerselva, led by Gyrid Nordal Kaldestad, in collaboration with Norsk Komponistforening 10:00–10:45, Akerselva: meeting point at the bus stop Arendalsgata at 10am On the second day of Fluid Formations, Gyrid Nordal Kaldestad will guide a walk along the Akerselva river. She will do a small introduction before we all walk in Silence, listening to the surroundings as we go, ending up at Vega Scene where the Fluid Formations programme continues.

Black Industrial/Noise in conversation with Dubmorphology (Trevor Mathison and Gary Stewart) and Nkisi, moderated by Oliver Fuke 11:00–11:45, Salongen In anticipation of the essay-concert Black Industrial/Noise taking over the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter later this day, Oliver Fuke enters into a conversation with artists Dubmorpholoy and Nkisi. They will speak about recent projects, their artistic practices in relation to ‘Black Industrial’ and ‘Black Noise’, as well as musical and artistic influences.

The Third Pole: Moving Mountains a listening session by Nischal Khadka 11:45–12:15, Salongen Nischal Khadka opens our ears to the sounds and music from the Third Pole region; all high mountainous regions with deeply rooted indigenous traditions. Connecting through insolation, these mountain states developed their own cultural traditions. The Third Pole: Moving Mountains is an attempt to present a variety of idiosyncratic forms of music and sonic art from around the Hindu Kush- Karakoram- Himalayan region, in the form of a listening session: moving from traditional and contemporary cultivations of sound and music, to the intermingling of voices, chants, and field recordings across decidedly liminal spaces.

The Politics of Participation a film by Megan-Leigh Heilig, presented

by Sounds Now 12:15–13:15, Salongen The Politics of Participation documents various Sounds Now projects and those who made those projects possible. It is a film essay woven together through a series of interviews, filmed throughout Europe, at some of its most important contemporary music festivals. The film is a reflection on the ethics and critical questions of participatory projects, how to curate diversity, what is meant by inclusivity and how to have greater transparency about who is programmed on stage and why. More than anything, the film is a celebration of the work, voices and minds that made Sounds Now possible.

Dancing into Fire a conversation with Fatemeh Ekhtesari and Oddrun Lilja, moderated by Giada Dalla Bontà 13:30–14:15, Salongen Music, poetry and visual art come together in Dancing into Fire, a performance about freedom, hope and exile, told from a female perspective, that will take place at Ultima on September 21st at Den Norske Opera & Ballett. At the heart of the performance lies the experience of three female artists from very different political backgrounds: Islamic theocracy, patriarchal dictatorship and idealistic social democracy.

Giada Dalla Bontà will enter into a conversation with Norwegian composer Oddrun Lilja and Iranian poet Fatemeh Ekhtesari, delving into how their contrasting yet deeply interconnected experiences find a shared language through transdisciplinary artistic collaboration. How does their creative synergy navigate and harmonize these diverse, polyphonic voices into a compelling and unified expression? In what ways can art challenge and reinterpret the constraints imposed by different sociopolitical landscapes, fostering unexpected connections and new forms of understanding?

Freedom to Move in conversation with Sofia Jernberg, moderated by Radna Rumping 14:30–15:15, Salongen Following the Freedom to Move concert on 13 September, Radna Rumping will enter into a conversation with experimental singer, improviser, and composer Sofia Jernberg on the poetics and politics of the voice as an instrument. Freedom to Move follows a threeday workshop for vocalists convened by Sofia Jernberg, who is known for her voice’s huge dynamic range and inclusive repertoire.

Jernberg is a self-taught vocalist, attending choir school as a child, and has spent many years expanding her vocal capacity in classical, jazz, improvised, film, theater and experimental music. Under her guidance, vocalists explored the boundaries of the voice as the most personal musical instrument, to carve out a musical space of their own.

Wave Crest assembly with Fatemeh Ekhtesari, Oddrun Lilja, Nischal Khadka, Polina Medvedeva, Andreas Kühne, Pouya Pour-Amin, curated and moderated by Giada Dalla Bontà and Katía Truijen 15:30–16:30, Salongen The Wave Crest assembly confronts the forceful and urgent waves crashing against the shores of collective consciousness, denouncing the destruction of natural ecosystems, pollution driven by extractivism, colonialist and capitalist exploitation, as well as engaging with critical social justice issues—migrant rights, gender equality, and the protection of marginalized identities, including political prisoners. The assembly channels the roaring energy of a wave crest, actively addressing these diverse yet interconnected issues in defense of both vulnerable ecosystems and human identities. The discussion challenges participants to consider how sounds function as instruments of resistance, protest, and solidarity, urging active engagement with the political forces shaping the world. The metaphor of the cresting wave captures the peaks of collective struggles and the power of music to amplify voices that might otherwise be drowned out, inviting participants to navigate

the fluid and often turbulent waters of the present, seeking new ways to listen, connect, and to act. ↗ Wave Crest playlist

Facing the spills: a borderland listening a lecture performance by Polina Medvedeva and Andreas Kühne 16:30–17:00, Salongen A lecture performance about the layers of militaristic, extractivist and patriarchal violence stored in the landscape of the border region of Várjjat/Varanger, and ways of listening and interacting, learning from the environment to overgrow and exhaust the violence through acts of adaptability and multispecies collaboration.

The protagonist, shapeshifting between human and more-than human realms, finds themselves aiming to heal but gradually realises their own positionality and responsibility. The lecture performance is a first sharing of a work currently being developed, which aims to imagine practicebased strategies of radical attentiveness to face industrialisation and settler entanglements to human and more-than-human entities.

Fluid Formations: radio conversations 12:15–16:45, Foajè, with Radio WORM Radio conversations in collaboration with Radio WORM, led by Ash Kilmartin.

Each Waves session will be opened with a small presentation by participants in KHiO’s Between Site and Voice course.

Taming the Garden a film by Salomé Jashi (2021) with an introduction by MIRAGE film festival 17:15–19:00, Vega 3 With Taming the Garden, the Georgian film director Salomé Jashi moves the concept of uprooting from its metaphorical meaning into an oppressive, tangible and yet surreal reality. A powerful man, who is also the former prime minister of Georgia, has developed an exquisite hobby. He collects century old trees along Georgia’s coastline. He commissions his men to uproot them and bring them to his private garden. Some of these trees are as tall as 15-floor-buildings. And in order to transplant a tree of such dimensions some other trees are chopped down, electric cables are shifted and new roads are paved through mandarin plantations.

Aquarela a film by Victor Kossakovsky (2020) with an introduction by the filmmaker 19:30–21:10, Vega 1 “Through the lens of water you are able to experience all known human emotion,” explains Victor Kossakovsky, director of Aquarela.

During a stay on the Baltic coast, he noticed how water changes from hour to hour with new colors, movements and energy. Aquarela is his attempt to capture all these different emotions, be they exquisite or unnerving. There‘s ecstasy and inspiration, but also destruction and human suffering. We see cars sinking into Lake Baikal, which thawed weeks earlier than normal. Caught in an intense storm, a sturdy sailing ship is no more than a helpless plaything. A wall of water surges through Miami during Hurricane Irma.

Here, humans are reduced to supporting roles as Kossakovsky prioritizes the breathtaking scenes that reveal the many personalities of water—in the wild waves and gentle brooks, on melting ice caps and at the highest waterfall in the world. The scenes are amplified by the film score, composed by composer and cellist Eicca Toppinen and performed by Finnish symphonic metal band Apocalyptica.

Geographies of Solitude a film by Jacquelyn Mills (2022) with an introduction by the filmmaker 21:30–23:20, Vega 3 For more than 40 years, Zoe Lucas has lived on Sable Island, a small sliver of land—30 by 1½ km—off the Nova Scotia coast, in the Atlantic Ocean. She lives in complete harmony with the magnificent natural environment that she studies, charts, and maintains—where possible.

Filmmaker and sound designer Jacquelyn Mills follows Lucas on her daily walks across the island, in a variety of weather conditions, and captures them on 16mm film. The two women inspire one another with their interest in research and art, and this gives rise to new projects.

One involves using natural materials such as horse dung, algae and plants for the recording and developing of film. The results become part of the cinematic experience accompanied by experimental music “made” by insects.

But Lucas’s life on the island is not all idyllic, because pollution, especially from plastics, has reached Sable Island. A sense of impermanence intensifies the melancholic undertone and beauty of the film.

Participating artists and moderators Andreas Kühne is a Dutch sound artist, composer, and drummer involved in making electroacoustic music, collaborative audiovisual performances and interactive installations that focus on listening positionalities and cross-pollination between improvisation practices and the environment. His doctoral research proposes field improvisation as a methodology for sounding material that is aimed to reflect on the relational affects between human and more-than-human beings, within numerous field sites across Northern Sápmi and Norway. Andreas is a PhD fellow at the Musikkonservatoriet, UiT The Arctic University of Norway. His work has been exhibited and performed at Landmark, Bergen Kunsthall, Lofoten International Art Festival, Sonic Acts Festival, HYBRID Biennale, Baltic Circle Festival, Inversia Festival, Lighthouse.

Anne Hytta is a performer and composer of the Hardanger Fiddle, a fiddle with sympathetic strings and its own repertoire of traditional tunes. Her background is deeply founded in the distinctive playing style of traditional tunes for the Hardanger fiddle, and from this basis she composes and performs her own music in solo performances or with various ensemble formats. She has received the Norwegian Grammy (Spellemannprisen) four times in different categories. This year she is nominated for the Nordic Council Music Prize and the Edvard Price (Edvard-prisen) for her work BRIGDE with Telemark Chamber Orchestra.

Ash Kilmartin is an artist, writer and radiomaker from Aotearoa New Zealand, based in the Netherlands. She is part of the programme team at WORM Rotterdam, an experimental culture house for music, film, art, performance, club culture, and community initiatives.

Her role as programme lead for Radio WORM brings together her interests in sound art, artist-led/DIY initiatives, and the voice as medium.

Berno Odo Polzer is a curator, researcher and dramaturg with a background in experimental music, soundrelated art and performance. In his practice he combines interdisciplinary research with artistic, curatorial and dramaturgical approaches to create communal spaces of listening and (un)learning. He was curator and Artistic Director of Wien Modern (2000–2009), and Artistic Director of Berliner Festspiele’s MaerzMusik festival (2015–2022), which he transformed into a research platform on the Politics of Time under the subtitle Festival for Time Issues. His current research is focussed on the bio-psycho-social, ethical and political dimensions of Listening. Under the title House of Listening he is building a platform for transdisciplinary Listening research and practices (supported by a grant of the Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie VGC in Brussels).

Chris Watson was a founding member of the influential Sheffield based experimental music group Cabaret Voltaire during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Since then he has developed a particular and passionate interest in recording the wildlife sounds of animals and habitats from around the world. As a freelance composer and sound recordist Watson specialises

creating spatial sound installations which feature a strong sense and spirit of place. Next to his work for television and radio, his installations have been commissioned by major international galleries and festivals.

Cư ờ ng Minh Bá Phạm works between / in / nearby / at the intersections of sound, community, and archives.

He is interested in learning (and unlearning) our understandings of history, community, movement, family, sound, language, memory, and how they can inform, challenge, or be influenced by power, knowledge, and / or subjectivity.

Lyden av minner er lyden av hjem is a soundwalk located in Holmlia, as a result of a workshop arranged by this year’s Curating Lab, which consists of Danee Feng, Amika Elfendi, Victor Vogel, Anna Näumann and Martijn Joling.

As the duo Dubmorphology, Trevor Mathison and Gary Stewart have been in search of a black avant garde since the 1980s. They make experimental audiovisual installations and performances that examine the relationship between culture, history and creativity, reworking historical, political and scientific archives.

Enji is a vocalist based in Munich, Germany, who combines jazz with traditional folk and throat-singing from her native Mongolia. Her music evokes dreams, captures breathtaking views, or recounts village visits, all unfolding through rhythmic Mongolian melodies. Her third album, Ulaan, came out in 2023.

Esi Eshun is a London based artist/writer/researcher whose work uses performance, sound, archives, moving image and narrative poetic idioms, to explore colonial legacies and environmental disturbances. She is a lecturer in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins and a contributor to The Wire magazine for whom she has been writing on the Black Industrial/Noise project.

Fatemeh Ekhtesari is a poet, editor, activist and midwife from Iran, who lives in Lillehammer, Norway. She fled from Iran in 2015 after being sentenced to 99 strokes of the whip and eleven and a half years in prison. She came to Norway in 2017 as an ICORN writer. In October 2020 her poetry collection was published in Norwegian translation as Vi overlever ikke (We do not survive).

She also contributed to the 2019 anthology Å kysse en ørken, å kysse en myr (Kissing a desert, kissing a marsh).

In 2022 she published Hun er ikke kvinne (She is not a woman), which she wrote in Norwegian and Farsi in parallel. At Ultima 2024, she presents Dancing Into Fire, together with Oddrun Lilja and Zhanna Gladko.

Giada Dalla Bontà is a researcher, curator, and writer focusing on sound, art, politics, and experimental practices. She has collaborated with independent art projects and music labels as well as institutions (Mondriaan Fund, Nieuwe Instituut, Venice Biennale) and held lectures and projects on sonic fictions and agency, art, ecology and politics at Freie Universität, CTM/Transmediale, HKW, and AdK, among others. After winning several grants and fellowships (Gothenburg University & Bard College), she is currently a PhD fellow at the Sound Studies Lab, Copenhagen University.

Gyrid Nordal Kaldestad is a composer and performer from the island of Stord in Sunnhordland, now based in Trondheim. She has a background in improvisation and electroacoustic music and works with vocals/ song, live electronics, field recordings and text writing for use in compositions, performances, installations and sound walks. She has worked as a composer and musician in theater and dance performances where live electronics and electroacoustic sound images have been a central part of the expression. She is often involved in interdisciplinary projects that seek to equate art expression. As well as being a freelance composer and performer, she is leader of the board of nyMusikk Trondheim and deputy chairman in the Norwegian Society of Composers.

Jan van IJken is a filmmaker and photographer based in Leiden, The Netherlands, working on the interface of art and science. In his latest works, he reveals secrets in nature like the murmurations of starlings, the genesis of life and the unseen world of microscopic plankton.

He is interested in microscopy, nature, biology, evolution, and embryology. His award-winning work has been published and screened in numerous international media.

JL Murtaugh is an artist, curator, writer, and consultant organizing projects under the alias of Syndicate since 2014. Syndicate is a liquid, nomadic contemporary art platform producing exhibitions, events, and publications with a group of long-term artist collaborators. It’s now based in Vilnius, with former headquarters in Los Angeles, Cologne, and London. Murtaugh is currently the curator of residencies and public programmes at Rupert in Vilnius.

Jana Winderen is an artist based in Norway with a background in mathematics, chemistry and fish ecology. Her practice pays particular attention to audio environments and to creatures which are hard for humans to access, both physically and aurally—deep under water, inside ice or in frequency ranges inaudible to the human ear. Her activities include site-specific and spatial audio installations and concerts, which have been exhibited and performed internationally in major institutions and public spaces.

Katía Truijen is a media researcher, curator, educator and musician. Her work is concerned with bringing people together around practices of listening, archiving, and rehearsing alternative urban, technological and ecological futures. Katía is part of Loom—practice for cultural transformation, and co-founder of interdisciplinary platform //\ hoekhuis. She curates the context programme for Rewire festival, and is research tutor at the Studio for Immediate Spaces at the Sandberg Instituut. Between 2014 and 2021, Katía developed research projects and public programmes at Het Nieuwe Instituut.

Katya García-Antón is an art historian, curator, writer and researcher based in Oslo. She has worked in Museo Nacional Reina Sofía Madrid, ICA London and IKON Birmingham; and was director of CAC Geneva, OCA Oslo and NNKM, Tromsø/Longyearbyen/Bodø.

In Biennale Arte Venezia, she curated the Spanish Pavilion_Dora García (2011), the Nordic Pavilion_ Camille Norment (2015), and commissioned/cocurated the transformation of The Nordic Pavilion into The Sámi

Pavilion (2022). She cocurated Qalandiya International Biennial (Jerusalem, Ramallah, West Bank) (2012).

Publications include Art and Solidarity Reader. Radical Actions, Politics and Friendships, OCA 2022; Indigenous Histories Anthology, MASP/KODE 2024; and Raven Chacon’s A Worm’s Eye View from a Bird’s Beak, NNKM/ SI 2024.

Kristin Norderval’s career has been twofold: as a singer of contemporary music working with composers such as Philip Glass, Pauline Oliveros, Annea Lockwood, Tania Leon, and many others, and as a composer-improviser working with technology. Kristin is inspired by hybridity, interactivity, and the idea that everything one does is site-specific. She blends acoustic and electronic sound, and is fascinated with detuned instruments, machines, and ambient sound. Her works include electronic scores, electro-acoustic chamber music, music for dance and film, and two fully staged operas. Between 2019 and 2023 Kristin was a PhD Research Fellow at the Oslo National Academy of Opera in Norway, where she developed an Expanded Vocal Improvising Instrument (EVII) for gestural vocal processing using wireless MIDI rings. She uses the EVII in solo concerts and in performances with other improvising musicians.

Lucia D’Errico is an artist-researcher in the field of music, with a specific focus on experimental performance practices and wide-ranging interests in the visual arts, post-structural philosophy, semiotics, and epistemology.

After completing her PhD at the KU Leuven and her post-doc at the Orpheus Institute in Ghent, she is currently Professor for Artistic Research at the University

Mozarteum Salzburg. She is the co-editor of Artistic Research: Charting a Field in Expansion (2019) and the author of Powers of Divergence. An Experimental Approach to Music Performance (2018).

Marialena Marouda is a performance maker based in Brussels. Her work is site-specific and research based, often employing storytelling, voicing and sound in order to create immersive environments. Marialena initiated The Oceanographies Institute (TOI) in May 2018; the long-term artistic research project focuses on the relations between the human body and the world ocean(s). TOI’s work has been shared internationally in various contexts and formats. In 2022, Marialena curated the Symposium “Songing with Our Ancestors: Hydrofeminisms”, in collaboration with VUB Crosstalks, Kaaitheater and Q-O2 in Brussels. Marialena teaches Performance and Installation at the MA of the école de recherche graphique (erg) in Brussels.

Margrethe Iren Pettersen is a flower decorator, has a Bachelor’s degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Tromsø and a Master’s in Art and Public Space from KHiO. Pettersen’s projects often start from a place, plants or other organisms, and seek to challenge the modern distinction between culture and nature. Her works materialize in various media such as installation, sculpture, sound walks, public cultivation projects and or more traditional works such as print, drawing and photography. Her Sami roots and the storytelling tradition in the north, with oral transmission of knowledge, is something she brings into her work. She is socially and environmentally politically engaged, she

wants to initiate thought processes in herself and her audience around sensuality, memory of places, ecology, power of definition and/or urban development.

Megan-Leigh Heilig is a contemporary artist from South Africa, currently based in Brussels. Activism lies at the heart of her work, which does not shirk from provocation or audacity in its examination of questions of gender, sexuality, exclusion and belonging, and in which colonial and postcolonial history plays an important role.

Often prompted by her personal experiences, the artist develops a wide field of reflection that encompasses socio-political considerations. Today her favoured media include video installations, film, photography, and performance.

Nkisi is a producer, live musician, DJ and curator born in Congo, raised in Belgium. Her intense sonics are influenced by ancient Kongo rhythms, noise, the planetary electromagnetic grid, and experimental improvisation.

Nischal Khadka is a sound artist, curator, cultural organizer and DJ from eastern Nepal. He founded Trans Himalaya ​Foundation with the aim of m ​ aking new art accessible to the public in the Himalayan regions, and was involved in promoting alternative ​and electronic music in Nepal as a part of Weird Collective.

Nischal ​has worked with Kathmandu Triennale 2077 as a head ​of multimedia and technology for the festival production. He has contributed four-part radio episodes called The ​Transhimalayan Network for SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin. ​Currently he is engaged

in curating the musical programme ​A Song of Woes: We Offer Steeps, commissioned by Sounds ​Now in collaboration with SPOR Festival and Ultima. Nischal is pursuing MA in Spatial Strategies at ​Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin.

Oddrun Lilja is a guitarist, singer and composer from Oslo, Norway. She has performed at various venues in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, New York and throughout Europe, and has collaborated with major names in the world of jazz and traditional music from around the world. She currently plays with her group Moksha, and collaborates on several projects, with the Pakistani sitar virtuoso Ustad Ashraf Sharif Khan, and with the Norwegian saxophonist Marthe Lea and the Moroccan gnawa master Zakaria Houaouara. At Ultima 2024, she presents Dancing Into Fire, together with Fatemeh Ekhtesari and Zhanna Gladko.

Oliver Fuke is an independent researcher. He has worked extensively on the independent and collaborative work of Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, curating Beyond the Scorched Earth of Counter-Cinema (2016), co-curating a series of exhibitions, and editing the book The Films of Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen: Scripts, Working Documents, Interpretation (2023). With Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom, he co-curated Trevor Mathison: From Signal to Decay: Volumes 1–6 (2022–ongoing). With Vinay Lal, Fuke is currently co-editing a collection of Teshome H. Gabriel’s writings. He has developed many projects and exhibitions with artists.

Polina Medvedeva works within the intersection of film,

installation and performance, portraying individuals or communities who exist by circumventing political prohibitions, societal stereotypes, and effects of economic crises and conflicts. Her focus on the tactics of civil disobedience and mechanisms of vernacular resilience—improvised, passed through generations as oral histories, smuggled in through migration—speaks of the (im)possibilities of existing within while being against systems of oppression. Medvedeva has been a resident at de Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten Amsterdam and her work was exhibited at among others Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Al-Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, and Bak Basis voor Actuele Kunst.

Pouya Pour-Amin is an Iranian interdisciplinary artist who began his musical journey in childhood by learning to play various instruments. His passion for composition and diverse musical interests led him to experiment with composing for instrumental ensembles, indiepop albums, film scores, and experimental electronic music. Coming from a theatrical background, Pouya was exposed to theater, puppetry, and literature from a young age due to his family. He later pursued formal theater studies, resulting in a diverse career portfolio that included music composition, acting, and theater directing. The influence of drama and storytelling is evident in his solo album Prison Episodes where his passion for narrative comes to life. He has been residing in Hvitsten since June 2024 as part of the Safemuse Artist residency, where he has been collaborating on several projects with the support of Safemuse.

Radna Rumping is a writer, artist and curator based in Amsterdam. Her work is relational and collaborative, dealing with public space, experimental archiving, ways of gathering, and conditions of (in)visibility. Radio and sonic explorations have run like a thread through her practice: she co-founded Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, an online radio platform dedicated to the arts. She also makes audio essays, works as an advisor on art in public space, and is part of the collective Loom—a practice for cultural transformation.

Rasha Nahas is an alternative rock singer and guitarist from Palestine. She currently lives in Berlin after a spell in Haifa. Her songs, sung in Arabic, are full of honest lyrics and a sense of nostalgic longing, as well as contrasts between the urban and rural experience.

Raven Chacon is a composer, performer, and installation artist born at Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. A recording artist over the span of 22 years, Chacon has appeared on over eighty releases on national and international labels. He has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at LACMA, The Whitney Biennial, Borealis Festival, SITE Santa Fe, The Kennedy Center, and more.

As an educator, Chacon is the senior composer mentor for the Native American Composer Apprentice Project (NACAP). In 2022, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition Voiceless Mass, and in 2023 was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship.

Sofia Jernberg is an experimental singer, improviser, and composer, who is known for her voice’s huge dynamic range and inclusive repertoire. Jernberg is a self-taught

vocalist, attending choir school as a child, and has spent many years expanding her vocal capacity in classical, jazz, improvised, film, theater and experimental music.

The concert Freedom to Move at Ultima 2024 marks the end of a three-day workshop for vocalists convened by Jernberg. Under her guidance, vocalists embrace their desire to move beyond boundaries and carve out a musical space of their own.

Tony Myatt is a sound recordist, sound engineer and academic who specialises in spatial audio production and reproduction for sound installation art, film and live audio performances. His recent work includes spatial audio system design and spatial audio production for the Catalan and UK Pavilions at the 2024 Venice Biennale (with Carlos Casas/Chris Watson and John Akomfrah respectively) and The River (with Jana Winderen, 2024). Tony has worked on sound installations for major galleries and venues around the world, and has written a number of academic papers about spatial audio since 1995. He was a founding editor of CUP’s Organised Sound; An International Journal of Music and Technology.

Viktorija Šiaulytė has worked as an independent curator and producer for more than 10 years in the fields of contemporary art, architecture, and film. She currently holds the post of research affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Program in Art, Culture and Technology and has been a fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude (2020–2021). She presented personal and collaborative projects at Architektūros fondas, transmediale festival for art and digital culture, Haus

der Kulturen der Welt among others. Since 2020 she is co-founder and co-curator of Videograms, a festival for artists’ film and moving image in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Partners Rewire is an annual international festival for adventurous music in The Hague, The Netherlands. Across four days from 3–6 April 2025, Rewire returns to The Hague with its 14th festival edition, bringing together a wide range of musical and interdisciplinary performances, specially commissioned works, club nights, installations, talks, screenings, workshops, and more.

MIRAGE is a festival and initiative in Oslo dedicated to the art of cinema. An arena for creating connections and refractions between artforms and expressions, to foster fascination about the world around us.

Sounds Now aims to actively stimulate inclusion by focusing on the curator’s social and artistic role in contemporary classical music and sound art. Centering on three pillars of diversity—gender/gender identity, ethnic and socio-economic background—the project includes a range of actions such as labs for curators, mentorship programs, artistic productions, symposia and research. Through these actions, Sounds Now seeks to open up the possibility for different experiences, conditions and perspectives to be defining forces in shaping the sonic art that reaches audiences today.

The Norwegian Society of Composers (Norsk Komponistforening), founded in 1917, is a professional and interest organization made up of professional composers who work with music and sound as an art form. The Society works to ensure that it is possible to

create a diversity of unique artistic expressions that provide reflection and experiences, create debate, dialogue and collaboration.

Vega Scene is a vibrant venue for art-cinema, contemporary theater, and debate. Further, a hangout spot where audience and industry get together, share, discuss and gain new knowledge of the world through art. Vega Scene opened in November 2018 and is located in Hausmanns gate 28, 0182 Oslo.

Radio WORM is an online radio platform for sound art, experimental music, informal reporting and in-depth talk-based programmes, broadcasting in its current iteration since 2020. Its roster represents local and distant currents in diverse audio forms, from WORM’s own Sound Studio residents and club guests, to artists sounding and listening worldwide.

Further reading Astrida Neimanis, Bodies of Water. Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology. Bloomsbury: 2017.

Espen Ytreberg, Utryddelsen. Forlaget Press: 2023. ↗ https://fpress.no/boker/utryddelsen K. A. Ingersoll, Waves of Knowing – A Seascape Epistemology. Duke University Press: 2016.

Douglas Kahn, Noise, Water, Meat. A History of Sound in the Arts. “Part IV: Water Flows and Flux.”

Cambridge – The MIT Press: 1999.

Lisa Blackmore, Alejandro Ponce de León (Ed. ), Hydrocommons Cultures: Art, Pedagogy and Care Practices across the Americas. ↗ La Escuela Journal N° 1: 2024.

Entre—ríos, a confluence of projects that explores continuities between bodies of water, human bodies and territories, recognizing rivers as active subjects that produce aesthetic forms, transform landscapes and shape memory. ↗ https://entre-rios.net Dianna McMenamin, Mark A. S. Mcmenamin, Hypersea: Life on Land. Columbia University Press: 1996.

Serpil Oppermann, Blue Humanities: Storied Waterscapes in the Anthropocene. Cambridge University Press: 2023.

Jane Bennet, Influx and Efflux – Writing Up with Walt Whitman. Duke University Press: 2020.

Steve Mentz, An introduction to the Blue Humanities.

Routledge: 2023.

Samuel Thulin, ‘Eroding Together: Mattering Processes of Sound‘, Journal of Sonic Studies, 18: 2019.

Ramos, Filipa. Flows – Bodies of Water – A Reader.

Les Presses du Réel: 2021.

Khamoosh, research community exploring the sonic heritage of Iran. ↗ https://khamoosh.posthaven.com The Oceanographic Institute, a collaborative platform for artistic practices that study human-ocean kinships. ↗ https://oceanographies.com