250909_Ultima_PDF_mobile_guide_Casablanca_PRESS

There is more to it than Casablanca 20 September 14:00–01:00 Vega Scene

There is more to it than Casablanca offers concerts, films, DJ sets, food, reading circles and radio talks—all in one full day and night. It brings artists and audiences together to explore Moroccan music and sound, from contemporary classical to rock, electronica and hip hop.

At the heart of the event is sonic pluralism—a listening practice that sees sound as shaped by place, memory and movement. Referring to the 1940s film Casablanca, which romanticizes Morocco while silencing local voices, the programme invites to listen differently. It challenges how Western technologies and ideas have defined sound, and shows how it can be reimagined through other tools, voices and traditions.

The programme highlights radical and experimental practices past and present in Morocco: the political street poetry of Nass El Ghiwane, the decolonial ethos of the Casablanca Art School, and Ahmed Essyad’s electronic tape works from exile in the 1970s.

Today this legacy continues through artists like Leila Bencharnia, and video artist & DJ Mohamed Chakiri. Their contributions—via films, performances, talks, and informal formats—

come alive with many of the artists present to share their insights.

Not all contributors come from Morocco.

Francesca Ceccherini of the Swiss collective Zaira Oram presents Abdellah M. Hassak’s work A Symphony of Archives, and Gilles Aubry shares his experiments with AI and traditional music. Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s reflections on the sonic politics of the sky open up yet other geographies. Together, they invite us to listen across borders, disciplines and lived realities.

This is also an invitation to communities with ties to Morocco to come together—to remember, to listen, across time and place.

The programme features composer Ahmed Essyad; artist-researcher Gilles Aubry; composer-artist Leila Bencharnia; flautist Yumi Murakami; curator-researcher FatimaZahra Lakrissa; curator-researcher Francesca Ceccherini (Zaira Oram) with sound artist and DJ/music producer Abdellah M. Hassak (remotely); artist and vocalist Othmane Hmimar (Hoba Hoba Spirit), Philipp Rhensius (Norient) presenting the book Home is Where the Heart Strives; a Masahat-hosted reading circle led

by Terese Pepe; and DJ sets by filmmaker,

photographer, and DJ Mohamed Chakiri, among others. The programme will be moderated by Katía Truijen (Rewire), Heloisa Amaral (Ultima), Ash Kilmartin (Radio WORM) and Selma Benmalek (Masahat).

An accompanying film programme curated by Ultima and Vega includes Trances (1981) on Nass El Ghiwane; Salam Godzilla (2019), L’Makina (2023) by Gilles Aubry; and The Diary of a Sky (2024) by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Amussu (2019) by Nadir Bouhmouch; and Apartheid Casablanca (2020), A (Rough) Seasonal Work Song (2022), and A Song to the Oar (2024) by Tizintizwa.

There is more to it than Casablanca is curated by Katía Truijen in collaboration with Vega Scene and Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival.

The programme will be held in English.

Norient and Ultima collaborate on an online special “Dust & Frequencies” inspired by the programme, including essays, recorded conversations and sound pieces. The publication will be launched at Norient some time after the festival via: ↗ norient.com/dust-and-frequencies

Programme 20 September

. d e v r e s e b l l i le b w a l a i e a t v t a n i e m r a n r. s a a k c b n c i k o r c r a rd n e Mo S h t A o G d E n V a e d h t t Foo a e s ha c r u p for

Salongen 14:00–14:05 Welcome by Heloisa Amaral and Katía Truijen 14:05–14:45 Conversation on Sonic Pluralism, with Gilles Aubry and Fatima-Zahra Lakrissa 15:15–16:00 Conversation with Ahmed Essyad 18:30–19:15 Fatema U Trab (Fatima and the Dust) live performance by Leila Bencharnia 19:50–20:30 Conversation with Leila Bencharnia and Fatima-Zahra Lakrissa

Foajè 21:00–21:45 L’Makina live performance by Gilles Aubry 21:55–22:00 Asselman

by Ahmed Essyad, performed by flautist Yumi Murakami 22:00–22:45 Electroacoustic works by Ahmed Essyad 23:00–00:00 DJ set by Mohamed Chakiri 00:00–01:00 Ultima After Party with special playlists by the event’s artists

Mezzanine – with Radio WORM 14:50–15:50 Reading circle The Legend of Sidi Amhaouch and the Insect Saint led by Teresa Pepe in collaboration with Masahat 16:00–16:25 Conversation with Othmane Hmimar (Hoba Hoba Spirit) 16:30–17:30 Home is Where the Heart Strives book presentation with Philipp Rhensius (Norient) 17:45–18:45 Listening session and discussion with Francesca Ceccherini (Zaira Oram) presenting Symphony of Archives by Abdellah M. Hassak 19:15–19:45 Selma Benmalek in conversation with Mohamed Chakiri 20:30–21:00 Closing conversation

Kino TO 15:30–17:15 Casablanca (1941, 102’) 17:30–19:15 Trances (1981, 90’) with an introduction by Mohamed Chakiri 19:30–20:30 The Diary of a Sky

by Lawrence Abu Hamdan (2024, 44’) with an introduction by Lawrence Abu Hamdan and Tominga O’Donnell (MUNCH) 21:00–23:00 Les Yeux Secs (2003, 116’)

Kino TRE 15:30–16:15 Salam Godzilla

by Gilles Aubry (2019, 41’) 16:30–17:00 L’Makina

by Gilles Aubry (2023, 25’) 17:30–18:15 A Song to the Oar (2024, 3’) and A (Rough) Seasonal Work Song (2022, 41’)

by Tizintizwa 18:45–20:35 Apartheid Casablanca (2020, 5’)

by Tizintizwa and Amussu (2019, 98’)

by Nadir Bouhmouch 21:00–22:45 Aşk, Mark ve Ölüm / Love, Deutschmarks and Death (2022, 102’)

Programme information

Salongen Conversation on Sonic Pluralism, with Gilles Aubry and Fatima-Zahra Lakrissa 14:05 – 14:45, Salongen In Sawt, Bodies, Species, sound artist and musician Gilles Aubry, introduces his concept of “sonic pluralism”, resulting from artistic research on sound and listening in Morocco, that he started over ten years ago with other artists and musicians. The concept of sonic pluralism highlights the relationship between sound, modernity, and coloniality in Morocco, through case studies that take place in sonic environments of different regions in Morocco.

During this conversation, Gilles Aubry and Fatima-Zahra Lakrissa will discuss how Aubry’s research enables us to rethink the relationships between bodies and subjectivities, beyond the social imaginary of power, and to open up a horizon of action and thought that aims to be post-, even a-colonial. It also allows us to reflect on art and research practices that are cocreative.

Conversation with Ahmed Essyad 15:15 – 16:00, Salongen Anticipating his performances, Heloisa Amaral and Katía Truijen will enter into a conversation with Ahmed Essyad about his electroacoustic music, influences from Moroccan and NorthAfrican traditional as well as Western music, and the body and voice as the primary instrument.

The conversation will be held in French with English translation.

Essyad is a composer born in 1938 in Salé, Morocco. After studying music at the Rabat Conservatory, he moved to Paris in 1962, where he became a pupil and then assistant to Max Deutsch. Trained in the avant-garde processes of Western musical composition, he also claims the Amazigh folk music of Morocco as a fundamental source of inspiration for his work. Interested in ethnomusicology, he focused his research on orality and notation (Le Collier des ruses, 1977), as well as on musical time and pulsation (Le Cycle de L’eau, 1980-1993; Héloïse et Abélard, 2000). His music is a blend of Berber oral tradition, serial writing and Gregorian and modal influences.

Fatema U Trab (Fatima and the Dust) live performance by Leila Bencharnia 18:30 – 19:15, Salongen A sonic delve into Gnawa tradition and matrilineal knowledge, this performance unfolds as a space of deep listening — an homage to what is unseen and unspoken. It moves through the spiritual landscapes of Gnawa practice, rooted in Sufism and in indigenous spiritual technologies carried through oral histories and healing practices, where music and ritual open thresholds between the earthly and the divine. At its heart lies a tribute to the silent yet vital role of women — guardians of ancestral lineages, keepers of ritual, and weavers of invisible threads that continue to sustain their communities.

Conversation with Leila Bencharnia and Fatima-Zahra Lakrissa 19:50 – 20:30, Salongen After their performance, composer and sound & textile researcher Leila Bencharnia will enter into a conversation with researcher and curator Fatima-Zahra Lakrissa. Their exchange will revolve around Bencharnia’s work Fatema U Trab (Fatima and the Dust), and open a reflection on how her practice draws on indigenous intelligences embedded in both textile traditions and sonic practices. Together they will explore the ways in which these intertwined knowledges shape modes of listening, weaving, and imagining our place within the cosmos.

Mezzanine Reading circle The Legend of Sidi Amhaouch and the Insect Saint, led by Teresa Pepe 14:50 – 15:50, Mezzanine – with Radio WORM In collaboration with Masahat, professor of Arabic literature Teresa Pepe will host a reading circle around The Legend of Sidi Amhaouch and the Insect Saint, a zine made by Tizintizwa.

The zine is part of “Against Monoculture”, a self-published series of publications. Inspired by northeastern Brazilian literatura de cordel, the publications are part of an art and research project which lies at the intersection between popular North African oral poetry, folktales and legends, food sovereignty and history, environmentalism, the transition from peasantry to proletariat, and exploitative agricultural wage labour in the Atlas mountains. All zines revolve around the contemporary expansion of apple monocultures in the Atlas. The series is meant to be Against Monoculture by speaking about polyculture, maize, forests and insects.

In collaboration with Masahat.

Conversation with Othmane Hmimar (Hoba Hoba Spirit) 16:00 – 16:25, Mezzanine – with Radio WORM Othmane Hmimar is a Moroccan musician and vocalist, best known from the band Hoba Hoba Spirit, a pioneering group blending rock, reggae, and North African sounds. With international stage experience, he has helped shape the voice of modern Moroccan music. In 2019, he moved to Norway and chose a new path in education, working in schools while maintaining his artistic identity. His journey reflects creativity, adaptability, and a passion for bringing cultural richness to his community. The conversation will be in Moroccan, with English translation.

Home is Where the Heart Strives book presentation by Philipp Rhensius (Norient) 16:30 – 17:30, Mezzanine – with Radio WORM The new Norient book Home Is Where The Hart Strives explores what place means in relation to music and sound – looking at borders and the unseen connections between them. From a metalhead smuggling banned tapes across the Syrian border to a vogueing oasis in the mountains of Bogotá, the book asks: how does place shape music, and can one listen beyond their history? 85 contributors from 38 countries map their sonic landscapes of migration, war, queerness, and home through essays, poetry, and images. The event features editor Philipp Rhensius presenting the book through virtual readings, sound pieces from the book, a short panel discussion and opening a space for reflection on sound, place, and belonging.

Collective listening session and discussion with Francesca Ceccherini (Zaira Oram / OTO SOUND MUSEUM) presenting Symphony of Archives by Abdellah M. Hassak 17:45 – 18:45, Mezzanine – with Radio WORM A Symphony of Archives (2022) is a composition and sound performance by Moroccan artist Abdellah M. Hassak, developed through his encounter with OTO SOUND MUSEUM and as part of a wider artistic research project. With an investigative and experimental approach, Hassak delves into audiovisual archives, journals, and sounds of certain territories in order to reactivate their memory and re-write them in the context of colonial actions to which they were subjected. This listening session invites the audience into a situated listening experience that reopens the question of how we re-signify the past, while reflecting on the act of exposing and sonically narrating a discourse of power.

The session will be followed by a reflection from Abdellah M. Hassak and a discussion with curator Francesca Ceccherini.

Selma Benmalek in conversation with Mohamed Chakiri 19:15 – 19:45, Mezzanine – with Radio WORM Mohamed Chakiri is a filmmaker, photographer, and DJ from Oslo. His creative path began with skateboarding and street photography, where he discovered the camera’s power to capture and transform everyday life into narrative.

He later co-founded the record label Mutual Intentions.

In Oslo’s nightlife, Mohamed is equally present behind DJ booths, weaving together eclectic and adventurous sets that mirror his wide-ranging artistic sensibility. His work in music videos led him to develop a cinematic language, rooted in rhythm, atmosphere, and the crosscurrents of urban culture. During There is more to it than Casablanca, Mohamed will perform with a DJ set: a sonic journey across the many faces of the Atlas soundscape, gathering ancient chants and hypnotizing rhythms that break the spell of time. A dovetail of the different spirits of Moroccan folk music. He will also introduce Trances (1981), a documentary film about the influential Moroccan avant-pop band Nass El Ghiwane.

Closing conversation 20:30 – 21:00, Mezzanine – with Radio WORM Participating artists join for a closing conversation, reflecting on the contributions to There is more to it than Casablanca, together with the audience.

Foyer L’Makina live performance by Gilles Aubry 21:00 – 21:45, Foyer Gilles Aubry’s composition L’Makina is a haunting soundscape that combines AIgenerated sound textures with modular synths.

Structured in two parts, the piece explores the spectral possibilities of a virtual sound model developed using a machine learning algorithm, in collaboration with Moroccan musicians Ali Faiq and Idr Basrou. The title, L’Makina, references a 1930s song about the phonograph

by Amazigh musician L’Haj Belaid. In the original song, Belaid marvels at the machine’s ability to replicate human speech with uncanny precision, prompting the poet to question whether he should continue composing verses. This reflection resonates with current debates surrounding artificial intelligence and the interplay between humans and machines. In live performances, Aubry improvises on a quadraphonic sound system, integrating modular synths with elements from the recorded work.

Asselman by Ahmed Essyad, for flute and electronics, performed by Yumi Murakami 21:55 – 22:00, Foyer Norwegian-Japanese flautist Yumi Murakami will perform Asselman, one of the solo pieces of the Le Cycle de l’Eau series by Ahmed Essyad, which he composed for flute and piano in 1993.

Murakami is a member of Ensemble neoN as well as other constellations, and has participated in festivals for new music such as the Impuls Festival, Darmstadt Summer Course, Ultima, Borealis, and the Venice Biennale. As a performer of contemporary music, she is dedicated to performing and commissioning new works for both chamber ensembles and solo flute.

Electroacoustic works by Ahmed Essyad: Toubkal and Sultane 22:00 – 22:45, Foyer Ahmed Essayad produced electroacoustic work between 1972 and 1974 in the music studio of the American Center in Paris. The piece Toubkal (1972) refers to the summit of the same name that dominates the Moroccan High Atlas range, cradle of Amazigh culture. The title appears as a gesture of affection and solidarity with this culture, which is stigmatized and threatened.

The use of synthesizers and the manipulation of recorded sounds allow for an imperceptible, almost subterranean evolution of timbres, in the manner of the progressive temporal modulations of ahwach music. Sultane (1973) is the fruit of a reflection on earth and soil. The first movement is festive, inspired by a warrior song recorded in Taza in the 1950s. Each of the five movements has its own character, alternating between dense, rhythmic parts and slower passages, from which electronically distorted voices emerge.

Mohamed Chakiri, DJ set 23:00 – 00:00, Foyer Closing the programme, Mohamed Chakiri will embark on a sonic journey across the many faces of the Atlas soundscape, gathering ancient chants and hypnotizing rhythms that break the spell of time. The DJ set was made especially for this programme, and is a dovetail of the different spirits of Moroccan folk music.

Mohamed Chakiri is a filmmaker, photographer, and DJ from Oslo. His creative path began with skateboarding and street photography, where he discovered the camera’s power to capture and transform everyday life into narrative. He later co-founded the record label Mutual Intentions. In Oslo’s nightlife, Mohamed is equally present behind DJ booths, weaving together eclectic and adventurous sets that mirror his wide-ranging artistic sensibility. His work in music videos led him to develop a cinematic language, rooted in rhythm, atmosphere, and the crosscurrents of urban culture.

Ultima Afterparty 00:00 – 01:00, Foyer With music selection by the day’s artists!

Kino TO Casablanca (1941, 102’) 15:30 – 17:15, Kino TO Casablanca is the 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid. Filmed and set during World War II, it focuses on an American expatriate who must choose between his love for a woman and helping her husband, a Czechoslovak resistance leader, escape from the Vichy-controlled city of Casablanca to continue his fight against the Nazis. Over time, the film’s reputation has gradually grown, and its lead characters, lines, and pervasive theme song have all become iconic.

The title of There is more to it than Casablanca refers to this film, which romanticizes Morocco while silencing local voices.

Trances (1981, 90’) with an introduction by Mohamed Chakiri 17:30 – 19:15, Kino TO The groundbreaking Moroccan band Nass El Ghiwane is the dynamic subject of this captivating, one-of-a-kind documentary by Ahmed El Maanouni, who filmed the four musicians during a series of electrifying live performances in Tunisia, Morocco, and France; on the streets of Casablanca; and in intimate conversations. Storytellers through song and traditional instruments, and with connections to political theater, the band became a local phenomenon and an international sensation, thanks to its rebellious lyrics and sublime, fully acoustic sound, which draws on Berber rhythms, Malhun sung poetry, and Gnawa dances. Both a concert movie and a free-form audiovisual experiment, bolstered by images of the band’s rapt audience, Trances is pure cinematic poetry.

The Diary of a Sky, by Lawrence Abu Hamdan (2024, 44’), introduction by Lawrence Abu Hamdan and Tominga O’Donnell (MUNCH) 19:30 – 20:30, Kino TO Set against the background of the Covid-19 lockdown in Lebanon, The Diary of a Sky, the new film by Turner Prize-winning sound artist and filmmaker Lawrence Abu Hamdan, investigates airspace violations by the Israeli military through the sonic evidence of these flights’ ominous droning hums. Despite air travel grinding to a halt amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, in Beirut, continuous flights by the Israeli military punctured daily life in the city – weaponising the airspace and causing an ever-foreboding sense of nearby devastation to seep into the everyday lives of those on ground level. This 45-minute video essay chronicles this period of Beirut, bearing witness to hundreds of hours of airspace violations to draw links between territoriality and atmospheric violence, while considering the impact of these sonic aberrations on the Lebanese people. Prior to the film, Lawrence Abu Hamdan will introduce the film in conversation with Tominga O’Donnell.

Kino TRE Salam Godzilla, film by Gilles Aubry (2019, 41’) 15:30 – 16:15, Kino TRE Shot inside Cinema Salam and in the surroundings of Agadir, Morocco, the film revisits the destructive 1960 Agadir earthquake through archives, seismic data, and a local poem interpreted by singer Ali Faiq. Geological anxieties surface in the dinosaur footprints on a nearby beach, echoing the strange coincidence that the film screened in the cinema on the night of the earthquake was Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956), a famous figure of postapocalyptic days.

L’Makina, film by Gilles Aubry (2023, 25’) 16:30 – 17:00, Kino TRE L’Makina (The Machine) is a song about the phonograph composed by the Moroccan musician Haj Belaid in the 1930s. Observing the machine’s ability to precisely reproduce human speech, the poet contemplated whether he should stop making verses, commenting also on social changes brought by mechanization at the time. The song serves as a starting point for conversations on AI sound technology and music experiments with musicians Ali Faiq and Idr Bazrou.

A Song to the Oar (2024, 3’) and A (Rough) Seasonal Work Song (2022, 41’) by Tizintizwa 17:30 – 18:15, Kino TRE Between musical documentary and visual poem, A Seasonal Work Song is a collaboration between the filmmakers; Fadma Boutalaa, a subsistence farmer, agricultural worker, poet and singer; and Cheikh Hammou, an Amdiaz (Amazigh equivalent of griot/troubadour). In this participatory docu-fiction, Fadma (the main protagonist) writes and plays her own role, fictionalising it and interweaving it with that of Cheikh Hammou, the griot who acts as a witness to her story. Today, like their husbands and fathers who preceded them, indigenous Amazigh women are also becoming migrant seasonal workers, travelling from harvest to harvest across the Atlas mountains. Fadma is just one of those women, and we follow her journey from her village to the apple harvest. In this contemporary revival of the ancestral work song, Fadma conveys the pride farmers attribute to their labour through spiritual pleas for fair wages.

The film will be preceded by Tizintizwa’s short A Song to the Oar. The North African idiom, “koulshi ti galeri” evokes a stratified world. There are those above deck and then there are those

below—the only ones who feel the excruciating cyclical motions of the oars that keep the galley moving forward. Yet, those who row are also the only ones with the power to either hold the oars firm in the water and bring the galley to a sudden halt, or to hold them loose in the air and allow its momentum to peter out—any point of the cycle can be leveraged for liberation. A Song to the Oar thus explores the moments leading up to a revolt and the role work songs and working class music play in instigating liberation within a cyclical order. Yet, liberation is not limited to throwing the captain overboard or demanding the fall of a regime—both risk coming back in another form. For most North African youth, it often implies throwing oneself into the watery void that is the Mediterranean in the hopes of finding a better ship, hopefully one with sails instead of oars.

Apartheid Casablanca (2020, 5’) by Tizintizwa and Amussu (2019, 98’) by Nadir Bouhmouch 18:45 – 20:35, Kino TRE Imider, Southeastern Morocco. A rapacious silver mine has siphoned water from local aquifers for decades, drying out the almond groves belonging to an Amazigh community.

Fearing their fragile oasis might disappear and their livelihoods destroyed, the villagers peacefully rebelled in 2011 and shut down a major water pipeline heading towards the mine.

Eight years later, they continue to resist in a protest camp which has now turned into a small solar-powered village. However, backed by conniving intelligence services and aggressively protected by the police, Africa’s biggest silver mine is no easy adversary. Dozens have been arrested for taking part of what the villagers have dubbed “Amussu xf Ubrid n ‘96” Movement on Road ‘96). Nevertheless, the resilient villagers continue to resist with the little means they have - songs, weekly assemblies, a flimsy camera, a film festival and endless ingenuity.

The film will be preceded by Tizintizwa’s short Apartheid Casablanca, a found footage essay film made over 48 hours in response to

a promotional video advertising Casablanca’s new urban projects. A collaboration between the filmmakers and Moroccan rappers, Blackwind, Khtek, L7a9ed and Lil Assaf, the film draws from pioneering Moroccan films, 3D architecture models and protest videos as it delves into the city of Casablanca’s gentrification, economic apartheid and the marginalisation of its working class communities through songs of condemnation and lament.

Aşk, Mark ve Ölüm / Love, Deutschmarks and Death (2022, 102’) by Cem Kaya 21:00 – 22:45, Kino TRE This documentary tells the rich history of Turkish guest workers and their musical culture in Germany. Cem Kaya’s documentary combines personal stories, never before seen archival footage, and a rich soundtrack of the era, including iconic music from Turkish artists. It also brings to light the struggles and dreams of the workers, illustrating the cultural exchange between Turkey and Germany during this period.

Artists and moderators Abdellah M. Hassak is a sound artist, DJ/music producer, and art director. He was born in Morocco / Casablanca.

In 2014, his work had already pushed the boundaries of his practice, and he founded Mahattat Radio, where he conducted radiophonic and sound research in interdisciplinary projects with various communities. For 8 years, he participated as an artist, researcher, and radio producer. Abdellah shapes sound as a material to create sound pieces, performances, acts, and installations.

His creative process is often collaborative, involving communities. Currently, his research focuses on memory, which he uses as a creative process based on interaction.

He is fascinated by the way humans inhabit their environment.

Ahmed Essyad is a composer born in 1938 in Salé, Morocco. After studying music at the Rabat Conservatory, he moved to Paris in 1962, where he became a pupil and then assistant to Max Deutsch.

Trained in the avant-garde processes of Western musical composition, he also claims the Amazigh folk music of Morocco as a fundamental source of inspiration for his work. Interested in ethnomusicology, he focused his research on orality and notation (Le Collier des ruses, 1977), as well as on musical time and pulsation (cycle L’eau, 1980-1993; Héloïse et Abélard, 2000). His music is a blend of Berber oral tradition, serial writing and Gregorian and modal influences.

Ash Kilmartin is an artist and radiomaker from Aotearoa New Zealand, based in the Netherlands.

She is programme lead of Radio WORM, an online community radio platform within WORM Rotterdam, an experimental culture house for music, film, club, art, talk, community and performance programming.

Fatima-Zahra Lakrissa is an independent curator and researcher. Among her recent curatorial work, Turning Frozen Yesterdays into Fluid Now, is an ongoing research and artistic collaboration project that contributes to recontextualizing the emergence of modernity in Morocco through a selection of archives and a decolonial ethnographic approach. This research and artistic collaboration project began within the School of Casablanca residency program. It has been presented in Casablanca (2023), Berlin (2024), Sharjah (2024), and Saskatoon (2024). Fatima-Zahra Lakrissa is the author of several essays published in exhibition catalogs and specialized magazines.

Francesca Ceccherini is a curator and PhD candidate in Visual and Media Studies at IULM University in Milan, with a research project focused on the relationship between sound practices and trauma. In 2020 she cofounded OTO SOUND MUSEUM and the curatorial collective Zaira Oram in Switzerland, in order to experiment new displays and aural imaginaries in the urban space and beyond. Among her most recent collaborations is Eart_‫ض‬, a sonic research project developed by Zaira Oram and Qanat collective in the mountains of Valais (Switzerland) and Moulay Boutcha (Morocco), supported by Pro Helvetia Cairo Liaison.

Gilles Aubry works between sound and visual arts, experimental music and academic research. His practice combines field recording, performance and composition to create musical works, installations, films, radio plays and participatory interventions. In his book Sawt, Bodies, Species (2023, Adocs), Aubry offers an in-depth exploration of sound and aurality in Morocco.

Heloisa Amaral is a Brazilian pianist and curator known for her work at the intersection of performance, contemporary music, and artistic research. She lectures in curatorial practices at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague and holds a doctorate in artistic research from the Orpheus Institute and Leiden University. As a performer, Amaral plays solo and with Ensemble neoN and Duo Hellqvist/Amaral. Since 2023, she has been the director of Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival.

Katía Truijen is a media researcher, curator, educator and musician, based in The Netherlands. 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. She curates the context programme for Rewire festival and Ultima festival.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan is a researcher, filmmaker, artist, and activist, who has described himself as a Private Ear, on behalf of people under attack from state authorities and others such as Israeli soldiers in Palestine, the Parisian police or torture in Syrian jails. His work has been presented in the form of forensics reports, lectures,

live performances, films, publications and exhibitions around the world. He runs earshot.ngo, which leads sonic investigations for communities affected by corporate, state, and environmental injustice.

Leila Bencharnia is a Moroccan composer, sound and textile researcher, and storyteller whose practice interlaces sonic experimentation with the materiality of textiles. Their work examines the parallels between the auditory and the tactile. Inspired by the intricate logic of weaving and the symbolic language of Tamazight textile traditions, Bencharnia constructs works that are about structure, repetition, narrative and resonance.

Influenced by the spatial exploration of free jazz and its commitment to improvisation, their compositions become open spaces — fluid, non-linear, and charged with the potential for sonic transformation.

Mohamed Chakiri is a filmmaker, photographer, and DJ from Oslo. His creative path began with skateboarding and street photography, where he discovered the camera’s power to capture and transform everyday life into narrative. He later co-founded the record label Mutual Intentions.

In Oslo’s nightlife, Mohamed is equally present behind DJ booths, weaving together eclectic and adventurous sets that mirror his wide-ranging artistic sensibility. His work in music videos led him to develop a cinematic language, rooted in rhythm, atmosphere, and the crosscurrents of urban culture. A graduate of The Norwegian Film School, Mohamed is now building a career in film and television, carrying forward his fascination with storytelling across images, sound,

and space. His access to diverse communities and environments fuels a practice that moves fluidly between music, photography, and cinema.

Othmane Hmimar is a Moroccan musician and vocalist, best known from the band Hoba Hoba Spirit, a pioneering group blending rock, reggae, and North African sounds. With international stage experience, he has helped shape the voice of modern Moroccan music. In 2019, he moved to Norway and chose a new path in education, working in schools while maintaining his artistic identity. His journey reflects creativity, adaptability, and a passion for bringing cultural richness to his community.

Philipp Rhensius is a writer, musician, poet, and editor at Norient. He currently publishes the column “Was Macht Mich” in the German newspaper taz. His texts and music projects are based on the idea that feeling the chains is the first step toward emancipation. As editor at Norient, he works with artists and authors from over 60 countries to promote (sub)cultural diversity. In his music projects (Kl.ne, aphtc, Alienationst), he blends sonic fiction with poetry, queer theory, and visceral club sounds. In June 2025, he published the book volume “Home Is Where The Heart Strives.”

Selma Benmalek grew up in Oslo, with family roots stretching from eastern Morocco to northern Norway. For over a decade, she has worked in the cultural field, committed to bringing untold stories and underrepresented voices to the stage. Her interests also centre on Moroccan culture and artistic

practices—both in a personal and broader culturalhistorical framework—with particular attention to how younger generations in Morocco and the diaspora are engaging in processes of rediscovery, reframing, and reinterpretation of their heritage.

Teresa Pepe is professor of Arabic literature at the University of Oslo. Her research interests span across Arabic literature, media, popular culture, sociolinguistics, ecocriticism, and the relation between aesthetics and politics. Her research has focused on Arabic literature and culture during and after the Arab Spring. She is the author of the book Blogging from Egypt: Digital Literature (2019), and editor of several collective volumes, including Arabic Literature in a Posthuman World (2019).

Tizintizwa (“mountain pass of the bees”) is a polydisciplinary art-research collective which acts as a set of pretexts for collective reflection, creation and crosspollination. Their practice is based on working together and with others, finding consonance in difference and championing heterogeneity in nature and culture.

Carried by their research into ancestral modes of communitarian artistic creation, horizontal governance and “cinema from below” their work’s focus tends to include orality, collective memory, popular history, land struggles and urban planning.

Yumi Murakami is a Norwegian-Japanese flautist, born in Oslo in 1982. She was educated at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris. She completed

her Master’s degree in Music Performance in 2010.

Both as a member of Ensemble neoN and in other constellations, she has participated in festivals for new music such as the Impuls Festival, Darmstadt Ferienkurse, the Ultima Festival, the Borealis Festival, and the Venice Biennale, among others. As a performer of contemporary music, she is dedicated to performing and commissioning new works for both chamber ensembles and solo flute.

Zaira Oram is a curatorial collective engaged in experimental displays across visual arts, performance, sound, and data. Founded in 2020, Zaira Oram is currently joined by Francesca Ceccherini, Chloé Dall’Olio, Camille Regli, Francesca Brusa, and Elisa Bernardoni, and she expands to include other practitioners along her path. Her work weaves the themes of memory and identity, marginalization and resistance, rituality and healing with artistic processes.

Mother of Oto Sound Museum, Zaira believes in the practice of listening as a vessel for transformation.

Over time, she has fostered relationships with various art research organizations in Switzerland and beyond, with the aim of exploring the boundaries of curatorial interaction and cultural contamination, while simultaneously amplifying artistic voices that remain unheard.

Partners Vega Scene is a cinema and theatre that promotes current films and new drama. Since its opening in 2018, it has served as a venue for sharing, discussing, and exploring art in Oslo.

Rewire is an annual international festival for adventurous music. Across four days from 9 – 12 April 2026, Rewire returns to The Hague with its 15th festival edition, bringing together a wide range of musical and interdisciplinary performances, specially commissioned works, club nights, installations, talks, screenings, workshops, and listening sessions.

Masahat curates and produces knowledge, history, art and culture from the Middle East and North Africa with a focus on the Arab world and its diaspora since 2015.

Radio WORM has been broadcasting sound art, experimental music, informal reporting and in-depth discussion shows since 2019, that reflect WORM Rotterdam’s position as a meeting place of many and varied communities.

Norient is an audio-visual gallery and a community (of practice) for the sound of the world: for contemporary music, quality journalism, cutting-edge research, projects, and events like the Norient Festival.

The Goethe-Institut is Germany’s cultural institute, active worldwide in promoting knowledge of the German

language and fostering international cultural exchange.

In Norway, the Goethe-Institut Oslo is known for events such as the annual German Film Days at Vega Scene, as well as debates, concerts, and literature programmes.

With special thanks to Digital Diaspora

Supported by Pro Helvetia and Sparebankstiftelsen DNB