In keeping with tradition, Skaņu Mežs will host a free-entry event for White Night culture forum 2017. This five-hour porgram will consist of genre-wise diverse performances. For the first time, the White Night event of Skaņu Mežs will happen at the concert hall Ave Sol (Citadeles street 7). The event starts at 21:00.
Anna Zaradny graduated in conducting and music theory at the Szczecin branch of the Academy of Music in Poznań. She lives and works in Warsaw. Sound and visual artist, composer, improviser. As a composer and instrumentalist she works in a wide spectrum of genres: from acoustic improvised music with a contemporary minimalist language to the complex structures of experimental electronic music compositions. As a visual artist, Zaradny creates in various media including installations, objects, photography and video. The artist uses abstraction, micro sound and architectonic elements, lights and space. Her pieces are marked by the ambiguity and the relationship between medium and ideas. The winner of audience art prize, Deutsche Bank and Zachęta National Gallery of Art “Views 2011”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8nX3Na2wRg
Natasha Barrett studied in England for masters and doctoral degrees in electroacoustic composition, after which, in 1999, she moved to Norway. Since then her work with sound has expanded to encompass soundart, sound-architectural installations, interactive techniques, collaboration with experimental designers and scientists as well live performance and improvisation. She says: “Although computer and digital technologies are my core tools and sometimes the technology stimulates ideas and becomes the focus, most of the time I find technology is just a tool to realise ideas in sound. Technology has changed so fast over the past 20 years and will obviously continue to do so, yet art has a slower sense of evolution, which although connected to changes in both technology and society, has a timeless aspect long after technology has become retro. For me, science, the organsiation of society and culture are more significant driving forces. I’m interested in listeners hearing and feeling music and art through sound and temporal structure, rather than them needing to understand the complexity of my techniques.” Her works are performed and commissioned throughout the world and have received numerous recognitions, most notably the Nordic Council Music Prize (Norden / Scandinavia, 2006), Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Awards (France 2001, 1998 & 1995), Concours Luigi Russolo (Italy 1995 & 1998), Prix Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria 1998).
Julien Desprez is a musician and performer based in Paris. Jazz and rock were his early musical loves, but they evolved rapidly to free forms where body and space find their places through sound. As his practice progressed as well as his conception and approach to his instrument, the music and space changed. He is now considering the guitar more like a battery, an organ, a modifiable instrument deployable at will. Through a mix of actions on the instrument and a play of foot on effect pedals, taking inspiration from the technique of Tap Dance, it completely opened the possibilities, sound and physical environment of the instrument. This results in a practice where body is engaged to its fullest. Now evolving between sound art, performance and contemporary improvisational music, his work today is centred around all the questions that exist within a stage space, through body, space, sight and light, but where the sound remains the central pillar. Julien is also a co-founder of the Collectif Coax, a music cooperative based in Paris and created in 2008, which was recently labelled “Compagnie Nationale” by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication. He’s also played with Charlie Haden, Mats Gustafson, Louis Sclavis, Tortoise, Han Bennink, Rob Mazurek, Jef Parker, Frank Vaillant, Noël Ackchoté, David Grubbs.
Thomas Ankersmit is a musician and composer based in Berlin and Amsterdam. Since 2006 his main instrument, both live and in the studio, has been the Serge Modular synthesizer. Ankersmit has long-term collaborations with New York minimalist Phill Niblock and Italian composer Valerio Tricoli. His music is released on the Touch and PAN labels. Acoustic phenomena such as sound reflections, infrasonic vibration, otoacoustic emissions, and highly directional projections of sound play a central role in his work. His music is also characterized by a deliberate misuse of the equipment, using feedback and disruptions to the signal, and the extremes of frequency and dynamics, to create visceral but finely detailed swarms of sound. His work has been presented at venues such as Hamburger Bahnhof and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Kunsthalle, Basel; Tate Modern, London; Serralves Museum, Porto; MoMA PS1, New York. He has been a guest lecturer at universities such as Columbia, Harvard, Stanford, CalArts, and the Universität der Künste in Berlin. “Razor-sharp and incredibly detailed sounds appear in high-definition … Ankersmit constructs a seductive and highly unpredictable sound-poem in which space, non-space, or the illusion of one or the other, play a key role.
Under the moniker of Varg, Jonas Rönnberg runs a cunning operation. Covert transmissions, alongside penetrating statements from techno’s core, are stacked adjacent to self-assertive live performances with an agility and depth of focus rarely summoned so instinctively. With a still-rising presence, Jonas Rönnberg makes sense of the decadent overdose privy to underground musics at this time. And producing work on his own prolific schedule, his barelycontrolled chaos isn’t stopping to check that you’ve noticed. Tempering a caustic rhythmic sensibility with a pneumatic palette for high definition synthesis, Rönnberg’s unique embrace of risk tests the reliability of the forms he works in as well as the genre borders he surveys. His crucial techno releases on Semantica Records are a beacon amongst his engulfing ambient side projects such as D.ë.R.F.D.H.S., not to mention the persistent after-image of his black metal roots. Presiding over Stockholm’s Northern Electronics label with Abdulla Rashim, Rönnberg casts a cryptic shadow from the North over contemporary aesthetic platforms in club musics as well as the long arc of experimental music practices. The latter is best understood in terms of the collaborative pact with Copenhagen’s Posh Isolation, which has most notably given rise to Body Sculptures, a group that brings Rönnberg together with Loke Rahbek, Puce Mary, and other unique voices in European electronic music today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0ZZ_AUkBEs
The event is organized with the support of the Riga City council and the concert hall Ave Sol.
Anna Zaradny, Julien Desprez, Varg and Thomas Ankersmit are artists of the Skaņu Mežs co-founded SHAPE platform for innovative music and audiovisual art, which is supported by the „Creative Europe” program of the European Union and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia.
The performance by Natasha Barrett continues Skaņu Mežs’ project “Nordic Women in Experimental Music,” supported by Kulturkontakt Nord and the State Culture Capital Foundation.
The goal of the project is to reflect the strong presence of Nordic women in the field of experimental music, which has traditionally been dominated by male musicians.
Sequence of performances:
- Natasha Barrett
- Julien Desprez
- Varg
- Anna Zaradny
- Thomas Ankersmit
