TOWARDS SOUND Festival

TOWARDS SOUND FESTIVAL
09. - 13.03.2022
HilbertRaum Berlin

TOWARDS SOUND, initiated by composer Ruth Wiesenfeld, deals with visual traces of sonic thought. Since its inception in the summer of 2020, over sixty international sound creators have taken their sketches, drawings, and visual notations of music out of their drawers and made them available to The Fleeting Archive of TOWARDS SOUND. These documents are of a very personal nature providing insight into all aspects of individual creative processes.

The TOWARDS SOUND Festival combined an exhibition of the archive's holdings with concerts, lectures, talks and performances to render the processuality of artistic practice tangible.

Funded by:

PROGRAM

Wednesday, 09.03.2022

12 pm - 8 pm
Le Livre des Nombres (Durational Performance)
COLIN ROCHE

Colin Roche is composing, on a table, whereas a system is recording his pulse beats in real time. His pulse beats are transcribed as a score of silence, which he defines as “Le Livre des nombres” The sounds of the composer’s pulse beats - recorded live - are mixed with the slightly amplified sounds he creates by working on the table. The members of the audience are let into the space one by one. They are invited to sit vis-à- vis the composer. Over headphones they listen to the soundscape of his pulse beats and work noises, experiencing the physical, mental and creative presence of the composer at work in an unusually intimate setting.

Thursday, 10.03.2022

12 pm - 5 pm
Le Livre des Nombres (Durational Performance)
COLIN ROCHE

6 pm
The Book of Numbers - Silence as a Geneses (Artist Talk)
COlIN ROCHE

8 pm
cansos (concert)
music and poetry by BERTRAND CHAVARRIA-ALDRETE

pômrô (2020) for guitar, sirimcho and electronics
fomio (2020) for sirimcho and loop pedals
maêseniå (2021) for electric guitar
[côrīo]·étilá (2021) for guitar and sirimcho

film still © Max Hilsamer

An open poetry process that emerged into an own personal writing language which obviates the filter of meaning. An expression, an open will, expressive sounds that emerge in a different format outside the score.

film still © Max Hilsamer

Friday, 11.03.2022

6 pm - 10 pm
The Rampant Wall
Exhibition I Opening

The Rampant Wall is a participatory exhibition format in which the working documents of international composers and sound artists gathered in TOWARDS SOUND's Fleeting Archive are arranged close together in a sprawling field. Assembled in this way they form a topography of conscious and unconscious aesthetic action, a visualization of creative work in itself, detached from the question of authorship, a conglomeration of designs with utopian potential.

Through an Open Call local sound artists and composers were invited to add their own artifacts of sketching and to participate in the installment of the exhibition.

7 pm Diagrams of Sounds
A philosophical reflection on experimental practices
Book Presentation by Dr. Lidia Gasperoni (Editor)
Construction and Design Manual
Experimental Diagrams in Architecture, DOM Publishers

film still © Max Hilsamer

©Eli Cornejo

Saturday, 12.03.2022

2 pm
Frequencies (Drawing Performance)
NICOLE WENDEL and RUTH WIESENFELD

Nicole Wendel understands her drawing both as an act of setting traces and as a translation of intense perceptions of her body in relation. Forms of "Deep Listening" thereby constitute her process of composition and become visible as a performative notation. Ruth Wiesenfeld's drawings emerge as gestural explorations of sonic ideas; often they are preparatory works for music compositions. In their first collaborative performance, Wendel and Wiesenfeld focus on the tactile and auditory aspects of drawing. Together they explore methods of entering into dialogue with each other through the sound evoked by the drawing gesture.

film still © Max Hilsamer

3.30 pm
The Plastic Extension of Music (Lecture and Discussion)
BERTRAND CHAVARRIA-ALDRETE

I propose a new form of interpretation that goes beyond translation, synaesthesia or musical analysis. This form of creative criticism/ intervention is a plastic extension of music taking the instrumental interpretation (praxis) of a work as a poietic process preceding plasticity.

Considering musical performance as an incompleteness that creates a recollection of material: impressions, technical hacks, muscle memory and more subjective information generated during the physical work with the instrument along the exegetical study and the musical interpretation. To thus extend and complete this experience in space, concretising the music through the hands and the eye of the artist interpreter in a new model of interpretation and plastic creation.

film still © Max Hilsamer

7 pm
synchrony (or language as a living system) (Performance)
by LUCÍA HINOJOSA GAXIOLA
with Lucía Hinojosa Gaxiola (voice), Birgitta Flick (Saxophone), Mehdi Hesamizadeh (Violin), James Etherington (Recorder), Bastian Duncker (Ney)

synchrony (or language as a living system) is based on Lucia Hinojosa’s series of experimental texts and poems regarding the politics of breath, mythological conceptions of breath across different cultures and epochs, exploring the idea of a “breathing earth” as a post-human approach to other non-human relations, frequencies and memory, pulse and deep time.

Preparing this performance, the artist read the same poems during an EKG session, exploring how they can be translated and re-modulated through the act of reading and the agency of pulse. Her heartbeats was recorded. In the performance the EKG scroll is displayed over a long table and functions as a music score, along with a series of written instructions for the musicians.

film still © Max Hilsamer

Sunday, 13.03.2022

12 pm
Interpretations (Concert)

What Was The Journey, What Was The Search
by THOMAS VAN WALLE
with DRIES VERHEYEN (Saxophone and Electronics)

A piece about the confrontation of man with himself, about finding your place as an individual within society. What would your journey be like? How many walls would you tear down in order to open up new horizons? This electro - acoustic piece is the result of a close collaboration between composer Thomas van Walle & saxophone player/sound designer Dries Verheyen.

'What was the journey, what was the search' is an ode to a recently departed friend.

Circular Composition #2
for Saxphone solo
with and by BIRGITTA FLICK

Circular artistic processes and improvisations with dancers started this composition . It is the prelude to FLick's artistic doctorate at the mdw in Vienna: "refiguring Composition - Artistically Researching the Contact between Composition, Improvisation and the outside World". With a circular working process between composition and improvisation Flick will investigate the inner processes and transformations of a composition when it comes into contact with improvisation and the spontaneous individual creativity in the moment of making music.

In-tonation
for Viola solo
with and by MEHDI HESAMIZADEH

This piece is an interpretation of several poems from the book Dîvân-i Shams by Jalāl ad-Dīn Mohammad Balkhī known as Rumi. The structure is following the rhythms of the poems and interpreting modes of recitation. Just as a reciter of a poem can create and accentuate meaning with meaning-making faculties of human speech, so a player can accomplish the same with his or her unique intonation.

2.30 pm
You see, I write by ear (Lecture/Concert/Performance).
ESTHER VENROOIJ

As humans it is our lot to constantly project ourselves upon our environment. We are unable to disconnect ourselves completely from it, even with the advent of tech-free mini-breaks and the rise of cheap airplane flights to remote parts of the world. In the end we always take our personal archive with us, everywhere. In this lecture / concert / performance I set about bringing a selection of sound memories back to life: a recreation of the Dutch landscape of my childhood. I will follow the tradition of Dutch painters, who often pictured dykes, meadows and people working the land. What’s interesting about these paintings is that the focus is always very much directed towards the sky – to the clouds, or to the play of light and shadow.

But with sound there must be another focus because clouds aren’t known for making any noise.

6 pm
Voices (Concert)

Give me my voice back
for Santoor Solo and vidoeo
by and with ATEFEH EINALI

Give me my voice back” is part of an ongoing protest against banning female singers from performing in public concerts. Although, generally musicians face different problems in Iran, there is usually more pressure on women as singers, musicians or audience due to the compulsory Hejab. Since the revolution of 1979, all women have to cover their hair and body, regardless of their religious beliefs and nationalities. The video shows the first protest after revolution (1979) against compulsory Hejab which is combined with the close up of Einali’s eyes, recorded when she was composing a piece in her hometown, Tehran.

film still @ Max Hilsamer

A Telling
for Ney and Voice
by JAMES ETHERINGTON
with BASTIAN DUNCKER (Ney) and JAMES ETHERINGTON (Voice)

The two musicians sit back to back, one facing the audience, one facing away. This creates a special acoustic fascination, with the sounds tending in two directions, and also demands a special kind of listening from the musicians, which is in a sense represented to the audience. To do that in this day and age seems to me a useful task for a composition.