Sounding Here: Auditive Connections & Absurd Theatricalities
Step into the unknown with Sounding Here—an avant-garde platform curated by Christine Cornwell, where boundaries between genres dissolve. This event sits as close as possible to the questions alive in a creative process…
Experience live performances and take your space to respond, let go, and embrace the unexpected reflections presented by artists who refuse to be categorised…
Auditive Connections
Hidde Kramer – creator, coding, visuals
Felix de Natris – coding, visuals
Audience – performers
Join a game to explore what it means to be connected in a digital world. Are you really connected if you speak over the internet, or is it being physically present with each other, that truly connects? Auditive Connections is an interactive game and performance, that you play with your mobile phones and your own body, in which you create a shared experience and contribute to an evolving patchwork of sounds and voices of the audiences who came before you. Connecting over the internet gives us distance and safety, but in order to advance you need to dare to make a connection with each other in real life. Come to participate in a unique and personal experience that might change your outlook on technology and its role in your life. Perhaps you even come away from it with new friends. Will you dare to open up to another human being, or will you stay in anonymity as a spectator?
Hidde Kramer
Hidde’s works include compositions for musicians and/or electronics, filmscores, interactive installations, and multi-media soundworks. In his works he explores electronic, mixed, electroacoustic, and acoustic sounds. He always looks for a balance between the abstract and the concrete, keeping room for emotion and looking for a sense of beauty. As of late, the audience as a core part of the work, and the role of the work to shape personal experiences, has been of special interest to Hidde. Hidde studied Composition, Music Production & Songwriting at the Prins Claus Conservatory in Groningen after completing his bachelor he went on to do a Master Composition at the Royal Conservatory The Hague.
www.hiddekramermusic.com
A Pickle for the Knowing Ones
René Thie – actor, vocalist
Niya Parvanova – violin
Anastas Paev – percussions
Otto Rissanen – creator, performer
A Pickle for the Knowing Ones is a genre-bending performance that merges history, absurdity, and the unconscious. It brings together Timothy Dexter’s chaotic 1802 book release party, composer Otto Rissanen’s premier concert, and beyond. The work is inspired by the life—and the baffling book—of Timothy Dexter, an 18th-century American entrepreneur and eccentric social figure. Against all odds, Dexter amassed a fortune by selling bed warmers and stray cats to the Caribbean, shipping coal to the coal-rich Newcastle, and investing in worthless Continental Currency. Nearly illiterate, he still managed to publish A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, a book described at the time as “a jumble of letters promiscuously gathered together.”
Otto Rissanen is a Finnish composer based in Rotterdam whose works move between jazz, classical and experimental music, shaped by minimalist textures, modern harmonies, rhythmic grooves, and a theatrical sensibility. Blending acoustic and electronic sound worlds, his work is rooted in narrative and collaboration across disciplines. His works invite curiosity and emotional engagement, bridging styles and art forms to create thoughtful, absurd, and striking experiences.
https://ottorissanen.com/
https://www.instagram.com/ottovillejuhani/
René Thie is a film composer, electronic musician and vocalist from Friesland. In his work he hovers between modern experimental music, pop music and the rave scene. He is involved in this project as a vocalist and actor.
Niya Parvanova is a classically trained violinist born in Sofia, Bulgaria. Since coming to Rotterdam in 2020 to pursue her bachelor studies at Codarts, she has participated in many crossover projects, including pop, world music and contemporary ensembles. Now graduated and navigating life as a freelancing violinist, Niya has also been an active member of the Jong Metropole Orchestra since 2024.
Anastas Paev is a young aspiring percussionist and composer who’s currently in his masters degree in Rotterdam. Previously he studied in Lausanne, Switzerland and Rotterdam through his bachelor years. His percussive experiences include playing with the Bulgarian National Radio orchestra, Sofia Philharmonic and more recently the Jong Metropole. He has won prizes from various competitions in Italy, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Romania. Some of his compositions include many short films like “Nocturnal”, a Short Student Drama from England, and recently more acoustic pieces like “Koploper”, commissioned by Mallet Collective for their new album and tour.
Nina Guo & Ragnar Árni Ólafsson
Nina Guo – singer, composer
Ragnar Árni Ólafsson – guitar, voice, composer
Nina Guo and Ragnar Árni Ólafsson present a set of short fictions and semi-fictional musical storytelling. The tragicomedic sensibilities of their written words play against existing guitar+voice styles in what can be viewed as a sort of anti-sentimental singer-songwriter duo. Their collaboration is deeply inspired by the works of Robert Ashley and Gunnar Gunnsteinsson.
Nina Guo is a high soprano based in Berlin. She is interested in the sounds&music of recent&ongoing times. Her performance practice includes interpreting notated music, improvising, and collaborating on interdisciplinary projects. Radio and humor play large roles in her work. She is fond of the duo unit.
www.facesound.org
https://www.instagram.com/facesound/
Ragnar Árni Ólafsson is a guitarist, composer and improviser working in various collaborative settings and as a solo artist. He is interested in real time music creation, rawness, text, film and video, fourth wall breaking and extramusical topics among a host of other things.
https://ragnararni.is
https://www.instagram.com/ragnarao/
