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I CA S Festiva l – I nterna tiona l Cities of A dva nc ed Sound
N etw ork i n g T om orrow ’s Art for a n U n k n ow n Fu tu re
27 Apri l – 3 Ma y 2015 / / Dresden , DE
PRESS RELEASE
21 April 2015
THIRD WAVE OF CONFIRMED ARTISTS AND PROGRAMME SCHEDULE
With just over a week to go before the launch of the first-ever ICAS Festival, we are excited to
share the third wave of confirmed artists and projects that will perform from 27 April - 3 May 2015
in some of Dresden’s most interesting venues LAB 15, Altes Wettbüro, Hole of Fame, and the
Thalia movie theatre, as well as the Festspielhaus Hellerau. A collaborative event presented by
the ICAS (International Cities of Advanced Sound) network, the Festival will reunite over 20 music
and media art festivals in a 7-day programme of club concerts public interventions, conference
activities, a film series, and lab formats. The programme latest additions, which celebrate a mix of
projects supported through the network’s ending ECAS project and brand-new SHAPE platform
for emerging European artists are:
Yves de Mey (Grey Branches) [BE] / Martin Bricelj Baraga & Olaf Bender –
“NEUNUNDNEUNZIG (99)” [SI/DE] / Lotic [US/DE] / DJ Nigga Fox [PT] / Jesse OsborneLanthier [CA/DE] / Lief Hall [CA/DE] / Shaddah Tuum [INT] / Stanislav Abrahám –
“Shapescapes and Spectral Scenery” [CZ] / Sonic Robots – Mad Science, Bass & Robots!
[DE] / QRG [BR] / Michal Šeba [CZ] / Matthijs Munnik & Joris Strijbos – “U/AV” [NL] / Heimo
Lattner & Judith Laub [AT] / Alien Productions [AT] / Cuthead [DE] / Mr. Incognito [DE]
Complementing the music programme is a 1-day symposium exploring the festival’s “Tools for an
Unknown Future” theme and a series of presentations by DAVE Dresden Audiovisual Experience.
The ICAS Festival Passport and the Professional Passport, which grants access to all festival
events, remain on sale. Press accreditation is open. Tickets to individual events are now online.
icasfestival.net/ // facebook.com/ICASnetwork // twitter.com/icasnetwork
1 THI R D WA VE OF CONFI R MED A R TI STS A ND PR OJECTS
Yves De Mey, the Belgian sound designer and artist behind the moniker Grey Branches, has
released a good deal of output under his own name as well as under the Eavesdropper moniker
and together with Peter Van Hoesen as Sendai. These various musical identities have seen
releases on Opal Tapes, Semantica, and Modal Analysis, and his first release as Grey Branches,
Lower Bounds, was put out on Inner Surface Music in December. With this newest project, De
Mey ventures into the noisier, rougher, broad-brush-stroked corners of techno.
NEUNUNDNEUNZIG (99), a collaboration between the multimedia artist Martin Bricelj Baraga
and Raster Noton co-founder Olaf Bender, is a kinetic environment and immersive, intimate
installation consisting of a grid of numerous balloons and a 4.1 speaker system. Between April
29th and May 2nd, four shows per night will be presented as a world premiere at the
Festspielhaus Hellerau. A coproduction between ICAS members SONICA Festival Ljubljana
(MoTA - Museum of Transitory Art) and the International Digital Arts Biennial Paris / Île-de-France
(Arcadi Île-de-France), it will be presented several times over four festival days.
Lisbon’s dance music trailblazer DJ Nigga Fox will do his part to pulverize a surely already
bumping dance floor. Rogério Brandão’s one-of-a-kind collection of bangers have the absorption
of multifarious influences such as kuduro, afro-house, Angolan deep, tarraxinha, batida to thank,
but most of all couldn’t exist without Brandão’s initial, highly creative impulse to meld all of these,
and the chops that have allowed him to do so, and virtuosically.
Berlin talent is highlighted through several artists supported by Berlin Current, a CTM-led initiative
that aims to identify and support emerging sounds from the city, with funding from Musicboard
Berlin. Lotic aka J’Kerian Morgan of Houston, Texas has gained attention through his regular sets
of critical, delirious mash-ups of pop culture references at Berlin’s hyped Janus club night.
March’s Heterocetera, Lotic’s first vinyl release and debut for Tri Angle records, has been widely
praised. Jesse Osborne Lanthier, a Montreal-born, Berlin-based conceptual electronic musician
and visual artist, is focused on inciting alternative cognitive responses via mixed sonic material.
His work, in its range from dub-influenced techno to static waves of noise, is always textural and
resists references to simplified, predictable formats. Lief Hall is a creative brain from west coast
Canada. Following an extended period as screamer for the Vancouver noise-punk outfit Mutators,
Hall’s electronic duo MYTHS toured with Grimes. Her eventual relocation to Berlin brought with it
a process of re-identification as a solo performer. As such Hall is most interested in use of the
human voice as spiritually expressive instrument, and of electronics as the post-human, otherworldly setting for that essential, primitive communication. Finally, fellow Berliners Brandon
Rosenbluth and Nicolas Lefort will appear as Shaddah Tuum. The duo employs avant-garde
compositional techniques such as serialism, microtonality, sample-based production, synthetic
vocal manipulation, spring reverb, and feedback loops generated by sound sources like guitar,
percussion, voice, and field recordings and then processed through a complex array of digital
effects and generative modules to create gasping, charry techno hybrids. On stage, they aim to
integrate physicality and abstract sound while leaving space for the channeling of volatile creative
impulses.
Moritz Simon Geist, the brains behind the midi-controlled percussion ensemble Sonic Robots,
brings an idiosyncratic, creative approach to the construction of autonomous sonic structures, a
process he refers to as "musical hacking," "...is our form of anti-passiveness, through which we
think the individual can have an impact on his or her environment, status and state of mind.”
2 QRG, a Brazilian-born, New York City- educated analogue-head will wreak havoc with massive
sounds, glitch, and processing errors.
Cuthead’s trajectory as a DJ and producer has seen a progression in his identity from hip hop
devotee to wonky, dubstep, techno, house, and IDM producer back to hip hop and house
specialist. He will be playing a DJ set at the DAVE Cluster 8x8 afterparty along with Mr. Incognito
and previously announced Le Petit Garçon.
Two ICAS network commissioned pieces are also added to the programme. Central to Heimo
Lattner and Judith Laub’s project The Silbadores is El Silbo, the whistling language of the
Guanche, native inhabitants of the Canary Islands. While El Silbo presumably developed as a
means to communicate across the volcanic island’s deep-cut gorges, the advance of modern
telecommunications and infrastructure have rendered its original purpose redundant. The levels
of meaning of this musical language as well as the shifts these meanings have undergone over
the last six decades serve as the points of departure for Heimo Lattner and Judith Laub’s
research. The project is made up of four separate parts: a radio feature, a lecture performance, a
live performance for voice, whistle, and echo, and a sound installation.
Alien Productions is Andrea Sodomka, Martin Breindl, Norbert Math, and August Black. In its
contribution to the ICAS Festival, the collective presents a sound installation activated and
appreciated by a group of parrots from a special shelter outside of Vienna. The installation
attempts to investigate the animals' attraction to sound as a creative medium and pleasureable
phenomenon. The birds are previously introduced to sound-activating interfaces, and in the
performance they are given the opportunity to control, voluntarily and according to their mood, the
activation of various sounds.
This third announcement, which includes many artists supported by multiple European ICAS
network organisations via the SHAPE platform, adds to an already rich line-up including:
Evian Christ live [UK] / Lorenzo Senni [IT] / Félicie d’Estienne d’Orves & Etienne Jaumet –
“Satori” / Low Jack [FR] / Gábor Lázár [HU] / Lumisokea [BE/IT] / Borusiade [RO] / RSS B0YS
[PL] / Bocca al Lupo (Kathy Alberici with Federico Nitti) [INT] / N1L (Martins Rokis) [LV] /
Charlotte Bendiks [NO] / 12z [HU] / Mørk [NO] / Pasajera Oscura [AT] / Bruma [FR] / Le Petit
Garçon [NO] / Assimilation Process [DE] / Cooptrol [UY] / HUMATIC – “MNM stage version”
feat Mieko Suzuki [DE] / Alexander Dorn – Phantasialand [DE] / Random Logic [SI]
With outdoor interventions: Teun Verkerk & Joris Hoogeboom – BUQS [NL] / Environmental
Auditors [INT];
A film programme regrouping: “The Sound of Belgium” by Jozef Deville [BE] / “High on
Hope” by Piers Sanderson [UK] / “Nine Futures: Sounds Fragmenting” [CA/UK] by Nathan
Budzinski & Theo Cook;
And a MusicMakers Hacklab with Interspecifics [MX] and Alberto de Campo [AT].
icasfestival.net/ // facebook.com/ICASnetwork // twitter.com/icasnetwork
3 DA YTI ME CONFER ENCE A CTI VI TI ES
Tools for an Unknown Future Symposium
2 May 2015 // Festspielhaus Hellerau
11:00 – 13:00 Session 1 // 13:00 – 14:00 Networking Lunch // 14:00 – 16:00 Session 2
The day-long “Tools for an Unknown Future” symposium is an attempt to examine how to cope
with increasing uncertainty in the field of culture using the tools that have been developed in our
society thus far. In times with no illusions of utopia, the urge to find methods of self-empowerment
– a safety net in the face of the unknown – is more urgently needed than ever before.
Over the past 20 years new art forms and new forms of cultural event have emerged as crucibles
for an emerging and ever-changing worldwide cultural identity. These are characterised by their
early and innovative adoption of digital technologies, placing them at the forefront of the digital
revolution. These art forms and events developed in a “bottom up” manner, rather than through
the patronage of established educational and cultural institutions, and have, as a result, focussed
on inclusion and empowerment. They are both hyper-local and inherently international, in that
they involve specific globally dispersed sub-cultural groups.
ICAS network members have been at the forefront of this shift for over 15 years of pioneering
work in areas of electronic and digital experimentation. “Advanced sound”, a broad term used to
define post-war experimental music that has developed into a common culture of electronic
experimentation, is an exemplary case of such an emerging art form. Together with its strongly
linked new cultural forms and technologies it gives very perceptible examples for our society of
how the human condition is changing and delivers a low-threshold access for all generations,
allowing listeners to get acquainted with questions, needs, and the possible societal changes
beyond the impact of the harsh economic changes.
Gathering participants from the worldwide ICAS network, as well as artists supported by the
network’s ECAS Project and SHAPE Platform, local participants, and invited journalists and
researchers, the “Tools for an Unknown Future” symposium will explore themes within the
evolution, production, diffusion of this culture as well as future perspectives for sustaining it.
The full symposium programme will be available shortly before the festival.
4 DAVE Cluster 8x8 + After Show with Cuthead, Mr. Incognito live (DD) & Le Petit Garçon DJ
29 April // Altes Wettbüro
“8x8” is an event designed by the organisers of DAVE – Dresden Audiovisual Experience
together with the ICAS festival administrators. Eight figures from the international music industry
introduce themselves, each within eight minutes. In these short presentations, they tell the story
of how they came to work in music — why they chose to start a label, organise concerts, or
convert a hobby into a career — and of the highs and lows they encountered along the way. Each
of the podium participants represents a different sector of the music industry, from artists,
journalists, label owners, to radio hosts, bookers, and festival organisers.
DAVE Cluster DONNERSTAG
2 May // Altes Wettbüro
What are the most important differences between today’s reality and the imaginary depiction of it,
in the past, as “future”? If techno was the music of the future, where are we now? How have the
production of, listening to, and dreams about music changed? donnerstag.org, a discussion
between SHAPE-supported and local artists, is an event designed by DAVE organisers together
with ICAS Festival administrators.
5 FESTI VA L PA SSES, TI CKETS, A ND A CCR EDI TA TI ON
A limited number of Festival Passports as well as Professional Passports that give access to all
festival events are available for 40 and 45 euro respectively via the ICAS Festival website. Tickets
to individual events are also now available.
http://icasfestival.net/TICKETS.php
Press accreditation remains open. Journalists and media interested in covering the festival are
invited to fill in the online application form available via the festival website.
http://icasfestival.net/PRESS.php
PR ESS CONTA CT
International Press
Taïca Replansky – [email protected]
+49 (0) 30 4404 1852
German Press
Johanna Martinez – [email protected]
+49 (0) 351 889 6665
6 PA R TNER S & SPONSOR S
Produced by:
TMA Hellerau e.V. ı DISK – Initiative Bild & Ton e.V. ı HELLERAU – European Center for the Arts Dresden ı
ICAS Network
In Collaboration With:
ECAS Project Members – ecasnetwork.org:
CTM Festival / DISK e.V. – Berlin, DE
Cimatics – Brussels, BE
Cynetart Festival / TMA Hellerau e.V. – Dresden, DE
FutureEverything – Manchester, UK
Insomnia Festival / Association – Tromsø, NO
ORF/ musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst – Graz, AT
Skaņu Mežs Festival / Association – Riga, LV
TodaysArt Festival / The Generator Foundation – The Hague, NL
Unsound Festival / Fundacja Tone – Krakow, PL
SHAPE Project Members – shapeplatform.eu:
Biennale Némo / ARCADI – Paris, FR
CTM Festival / DISK e.V. – Berlin, DE
Cynetart Festival / TMA Hellerau e.V. – Dresden, DE
Festival Maintenant / Association Electroni[K] – Rennes, FR
Insomnia Festival / Association – Tromsø, NO
Les Siestes Electroniques / Association Rotation – Toulouse, FR
MeetFactory – Prague, CZ,
musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst / ORF – Graz, AT
RIAM Festival / Technè – Marseilles, FR, Rokolectiv Festival / Association – Bucharest, RO
Rokolectiv Festival / Association – Bucharest, RO
Schiev Festival / Black Drop Productions – Brussels, BE
Skaņu Mežs Festival / Association – Riga, LV
Sonica Festival / MoTA – Museum of Transitory Art – Ljubljana, SI
TodaysArt Festival / The Generator Foundation – The Hague, NL
UH Fest / Ultrasound Foundation – Budapest, HU
Unsound Festival / Fundacja Tone – Krakow, PL
Further ICAS members – icasnetwork.org:
Novas Frequências – Rio de Janeiro, BR
SOCO Festival – Montevideo, UY
Local Partners:
DAVE – Dresden Audiovisual Experience ı Wir gestalten Dresden – Branch Association for Culture and
Creative Industry Dresden
Funded By:
European Union Programme Culture ı Creative Europe Programme of the European Union ı Initiative Musik ı
Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony ı Culture and Monument Preservation Office of the State
Capital Dresden ı Musicboard Berlin ı British Council ı Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
Media Partners:
The Wire ı Resident Advisor ı Electronic Beats ı NTS ı The Quietus ı Tiny Mix Tapes ı Resonance FM
Sponsors:
pms ı Best Western Macrander Hotel Dresden ı Sankt Pauli / Sidedoor ı fritz-kola GmbH ı Mondpalast
Venues:
Altes Wettbüro ı LAB15 ı Hole of Fame ı Thalia Cinema Dresden ı Festspielhaus Hellerau
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the
author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
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