The Ongoing Now
The eighth edition of the Seanaps Festival will take place in Leipzig from September 19 to 22, 2024. With The Ongoing Now, the festival focuses on various current artistic positions and their individual or collective practices. The invited artists will explore and present various contemporary aesthetics based on experimental and participatory practices in concerts, performances, DJ sets, interventions, workshops, listening sessions and a festival radio programme. The selected approaches will circulate between the respective artistic practice and the recipients, thus setting not only current but also future impulses in experimental music, culture and its further development.
Festival Opening
September 19 - LOFFT - Das Theater, 20:00
On Thursday, the festival opens its four-day program for the first time at LOFFT - Das Theater. It will kick off with the dadaistically nervous disco-punk of the duo HUNGER by Christoph Rothmeier and Jörg Hochapfel, followed by HIT concert performance by Hamburg theater maker Greta Granderath together with percussionist Ying-Hsueh Chen, performer Juliana Oliveira and drummer and performer Carrie McILwain. HIT interweaves compositions for drum kit, axe, wood and voice with verses by the ancient poet Sappho and Iannis Xenakis' PSAPPHA for solo percussion.
HIT concert performance will be performed a second time on September 21 at the same place and time.
Concerts
September 20 - 22 • Westflügel, 18:00 - 23:00
Three concerts will take place at Westflügel on three consecutive evenings. Each concert evening is introduced by various DJ sets in the foyer.
Percussionist SOFIA BORGES will open the concert program at Westflügel on Friday with a solo performance. Using her setup consisting of everyday objects and special percussion instruments, Borges develops rhythmic improvisations that immerse us in unusual soundscapes. Afterwards, we can expect jagged, interdimensional lo-fi pop from producer, multi-instrumentalist and singer YOSA PEIT, who will be presenting her new album Gut Buster, which deals with the destructive power of modern consumption. It is an anti-capitalist battle cry that combines intimacy and hostility - a surrealist-punk affirmation and an expression of Peit's unique and visionary approach. LA TÈNE, consisting of Cyril Bondi, Laurent Peter, Guilhem Lacroix, Jérémie Sauvage, Louis Jacques and Jaques Puech, will then carry the audience into the night with long, hypnotic and wordless pieces of traditional instrumentation, wild percussion and delicate electronic sounds.
Audiovisual artist LEILA HASSAN opens the Saturday evening with a sound collage of experimental music, dub and poetry in which she interweaves different languages, dialects and fantasy languages. KA BAIRD then presents Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos in an ecstatic live performance with vocals and electro-acoustic instrumentation. Afterwards, the duo SPILL GOLD by Nina de Jong and Rosa Ronsdorf combine drums, synthesizer and vocals to create a sonic and genre-bending journey. Their music fuses psychedelic echoes, danceable rhythms and complex percussive layers and leads the festival into a nocturnal momentum that continues in the concert and DJ program at Spxlxnke.
Three special ensembles will be performing at the end of The Ongoing Now on Sunday: first, composer and vocalist EVELYN SAYLOR will perform her vocal ensemble works with NINA GUO & DINA MACCABEE & MARCO WESSNIGK. In duo, trio, and quartet configurations, she focuses on the human voice through live electronic processing as well as a cappella group singing. Her compositions explore shifting patterns, harmonic interplay, vocal textures, and use of text. Following this, composer and musician PIOTR KUREK presents his new album Smartwoods together with harpist ANNA PASIČ, clarinettist, saxophonist and flutist TOMASZ DUDA and bassist WOJTEK TRACZYK. Smartwoods is a sprawling root system of tiny melodic phrases winding and twisting around a subtly evolving instrumental thicket. Early music, baroque music and experimental jazz interweave with delicate traces of contemporary computer music. An eerie dream world in which reality is not always what it seems.
To round off the festival, JONAS KOCHER & HANNES LINGENS & SUSANNE STOCK will perform the experimental compositions The Well (1982-1983) by Pauline Oliveros and Exploratory (2019) by composer Phil Niblock, who passed away in January, as an accordion trio. While The Well focuses on the individuality and sense of community of the musicians in its openness, Exploratory creates a sound space of psycho-acoustic effects that are amplified by the interplay of the accordions and the additional recordings by accordionist Ben Richter, creating an all-encompassing sound space.
There will be drinks and DJ sets in the Westflügel bar before and between the concerts.
Night Program
September 21 • Spxlxnkx, 23:00 - 03:30
As in 2018, the festival night program will be presented at Spxlxnkx. Percussionist CAMILLE ÉMAILLE will begin by activating an intense sound space in which she explores the physical relationship between different materials, intensities and playing styles. This energy is taken up by DIANE BARBÉ in her electro-acoustic performance with field recordings, synthesis, self-made flutes, whistles, clay pots and other acoustic instruments. The rhythm-loaden live set by REPTILIAN EXPO, a shape-shifter for the dancefloor, leads into what he himself describes as an extraterrestrial club banger, which is then carried further into the night by HÖÄH's eclectic and dreamy DJ set.
Collective Listening The Nest
September 21 • Schaubühne Lindenfels, 12:00 - 14:00
The Nest is a collective space carried by sounds of a psychosomatic approach, exploring and questioning the concept of “healing” in a health-obsessed society with an individualistic urge for “quick fixes”. Aiming to create an atmosphere of relaxation and care, The Nest is designed by multidisciplinary artist MALU, who works with experimental sound and physical expression.
Participatory Performance Sonic Driving
September 21 • Westwerk, 13:00 - 17:00 & September 22 • Westwerk, 13:00 - 15:00 • Every 30 minutes recurring
Sonic Driving is a participatory performance by LAURA PAPKE that invites people to get in touch with themselves and others via their heartbeat. Sensors record the pulse of five participants and transmit this data to a digital synthesizer. Each of the five participants has their own loudspeaker that plays frequencies between 90 and 120 Hertz, making the heartbeats not only audible but also perceptible in the body. Each individual heartbeat triggers a unique and unmistakable sound. When combined, the sounds merge harmoniously into a collective symphony that literally “touches” from the inside out. The duration of a performance is around 20 minutes. Those interested can register at the festival center Westflügel or go directly to Westwerk and follow the signs to the 4th floor.
Workshop The Alien Kin
September 21 • Spxlxnkx, 14:00 - 17:00
The Alien Kin is an ongoing research and performance project led by composer, field recordist and sound artist DIANE BARBÉ. Using simple handmade instruments such as flutes, ocarinas and percussion, it is proposed to collectively develop synchronicity, explore non-verbal communication, play with other, non-human voices thereby addressing our ability to listen, imitate and respond. The workshop will culminate in a performance on festival radio. The ideal group size is between 7 and 17 participants.
Interventions Wasserkonzerte
September 22 • Karl-Heine-Kanal, 15:00 - 17:30
On Sunday afternoon, the festival will enter the public space along the Karl Heine Canal with a series of site-specific performances as part of Water Concerts. Sound artist ANNA SCHIMKAT explores the humming, hissing, clicking, growling, humming and noise both above and below the water. This is followed by unusual vocal compositions by EVELYN SAYLOR & DINA MACCABEE, which resonate with the different sound situations on the canal. In her performance, ANA CARUCCI works with instruments specially made from clay and transforms the sounds produced mechanically and electronically. In doing so, she reflects on the boundaries between the natural and the artificial. The movements from place to place of the performances are accompanied and guided by the street musician and percussionist WACLAW in short, concise percussion sets that take up the respective acoustic space and play with it.
Radio
September 20 - 22 • Sphere Radio, 12:00 - 17:00
From Friday to Sunday, Seanaps Radio will accompany the multi-faceted program within which talks, live recordings, radio concerts and interviews form the creative on-air backbone of the off-air festival. The program will be broadcast live daily from 12:00-17:00 from the Temporarium in the Westwerk. Seanaps Radio can be heard online on Sphere Radio and locally via FM on Radio Blau in Leipzig (99.2) and Radio Corax in Halle/ Saale (95.9).
