Sounding Here: JAVA COLLECTIEF, Neviđeno, Maya Felixbrodt

SOUNDING HERE is a stage for fresh collaborations, premieres, and trying out new things as an artist at any stage of their career. Opening up the idea of what experimental can mean, Christine invites artists which keep sound at the core, but the series often presents “more than musical” ideas. SOUNDING HERE celebrates art that lives, grows, and breathes throughout a festival-in-an-evening atmosphere.

We are so glad to bring this series to a new home at WORM, the first line-up has “strings” in common, but the red thread is for you to discover…

ACT 1
JAVA COLLECTIEF presents Sonic Bodies

Asim Halwarvi – electronics
Vicki Itsiou – movement
Anastasia Koukioglou – violin and voice

Sonic Bodies explores the relationship between movement and sound. We are intrigued by the idea that a particular physical movement or gesture can be translated into a sonic or a musical gesture. Similarly, we can imagine a physical gesture/movement when we listen to a gesture of sound. The similarity in the gesture on a physical and a sonic level suggests us to link those two together. In a metaphorical sense, we came up with the idea, ‘How does a sound move? How does a body sound?’. We are experimenting with the sonification of different movements with the help of our imagination to give them a new perceptual meaning. JAVA COLLECTIEF is a collective of artists coming from various disciplines, artistic practices and backgrounds. Founded in 2022, JAVA is based on a hybrid format that allows its members to explore, experiment and create multidisciplinary works that transcend stylistic constraints and embrace the different aspects of the artistic identities of its members.

ACT 2
Neviđeno

Eva Beunk – composer/artist
Lucija Gregov – cello

The starting point of our collaboration was a video that Lucija made in her hometown in Croatia. Soon, it became clear that we didn’t just want to use the beautiful video as an inspiration but that the piece really would be a duet for cello and video. While we are closely collaborating, we are finding different ways to interact with the video, exploring sounds, patterns and structures that embrace the themes such as ‘fragmental memories, our connection to sea and nature and our connection to a diverse community that we are part of’.

Eva Beunk (1999) strives to make the world a more beautiful place through music. Creating events such as the productions Op Wacht, an opera for 33 horns 3 singers and a fort and Klinkerweg, a location performance in corona time, the composer connects contemporary music to society. In many of her pieces, Eva explores different forms of interaction. Interaction between the musicians themselves, but also between her and the musicians, or the musicians and the audience. She looks for different ways to give musicians more space and freedom of interpretation. Since September 2022, Eva has been a composer at Kasko, house for music theatre. KASKO is the national development place for music theatre, operating from Zwolle.

Lucija Gregov is a cellist, improviser, composer and programmer. Through many interdisciplinary collaborations, Lucija seeks to push the boundaries of traditional cello playing which further extend her interpretation, technique and ideas. Her instrumental cello practice is a starting point of the sonic exploration through which over time she disintegrated traditional techniques in order to discover a more personal and sincere sound aesthetic. Lucija uses visceral approach to improvisation as a way to propose a distinctive way of creating, co-creating, thinking and performing in and about current sonic dynamic. She found improvisation to be a significant tool in enabling emergence of practice and sound materials that are open-ended and continuously transformative. Since 2023, Lucija has been playing Knurl, an electroacoustic instrument-interface exploring concepts of interactivity and polyphony in the practice of a bowed string instrument. In various collaborations, Lucija has further explored sound through practice of deep listening and environmental sounding to better understand the social power of sound and extended recognition of its sources. In her work as a programmer of music events, she tends to search for creative solutions that can enable expansion of the concept, form and context in which sound work is being realized.

ACT 3
Solo

Maya Felixbrodt – viola and movement

Bringing herself back to her roots of music and movement, Sounding Here invites Maya to be free to envision a renewed direction for her solo practice. For this question, we are invited into a space of the unknown, the work will unfold and to become voices, bodies and expressions – the form so far obscured until the performance. About Maya Felixbrodt: “I’m a musician, violist and composer. My practice is about reconnecting sound and movement as a whole: a woven fabric in which the two create new territory, through music and somatic movement practices, mainly the Laban Bartenieff Movement System. For me, games, improvisation, discipline and its multiplicity are a means as well as meaning. My practice is also about making the inaccessible accessible. That’s where my passion for working with different communities partially comes from. I compose music for film, theater, dance and visual arts, perform as a soloist and with ensembles, collaborate in interdisciplinary settings, I advise artists and ensembles, curate and sometimes choreograph, I teach and lead workshops, for babies, art students, elderly and more. I’m the co-founder and member of Moving Strings ensemble, the Play As We Are platform and Zvov duo. I live in Amsterdam and Tel-aviv.”