• 4 ALL THE MEDIEVAL BITCHES OUT THERE

  • for viola, irish bouzouki, two swords and electronics, for eight speakers

This is a continuation of a work I did last year with Matthieu La-Brossard, who is a choreographer, performer and visual artist studying in the SNDO department. The piece is a kind of sound installation and game activated by 3 players; a love letter for mediaeval nerds and science fiction fans. Since we had worked once before on this piece, we were looking for what to do differently this time, and soon we were talking about reversing the form; I started thinking about reversing the sound. I ended up reversing some of the main materials of the work, most prominently the church-bells. This was my first time seriously using Spear to analyse spectra, which yielded a beautiful array of metallic, inharmonic, pure drones with which to work. I also invited my friend Marike to play with us; that made me feel less alone in making sound in this work. Perhaps the most interesting thing we did was trying to turn the swords that were already present in the work into instruments; to make them sing. We taped contact microphones on the blade of the sword, just before the hilt, and fed them through a convolution reverb of the sword itself, generating a kind of self-resonation.

 

Credits:

Concept // Matthieu La-Brossard 

Musicians // Christian Johannes, Marike Knegtering

Players // Matthieu La-Brossard, Yooha & Xiao Chuyue

Technique // Geert & Roan Lo-a-Njo

Photography // Gergely Ofner & Nelly De Boer

Thanks to // Bruno Listopad, Chantal Mouij, Keerthi Basavarajalah, SNDO cuties, Uma Hitte, Hideteka Miazaky, Elodie Pong & Keanu Reeves.

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• this is an invite to burn

  • electronics, for four speakers

Through some friends at the HKU, I came into contact with Loïs Hageman, a director studying there who was looking for an electronic composer for her upcoming performances in Het Huis in Utrecht and Sexyland in Amsterdam; we started working together. She was mainly focussed on working with the performers, and I was mostly free to compose from the sidelines. What was striking for me in this process was the clear differentiation of roles, reminding starkly of classical theatre. I, as a non-performing crewmember, spent most of the time hanging out with the scenographer. This made me feel kind of uninvolved by the time the performance came about. Despite that, it was quite stimulating to work with people in another discipline, going to a different school with quite a different working culture! They drove me to make music that is more ‘edgy’ than I would ever make myself.
 

Credits:
Spel: Anne Bouwmeester, Yildrim Rouw, Yanoah Rosales, Tony Dre, Jor Broeder

Regie: Loïs Hageman

Regie-assistent: Sophie van Duuren

Vormgeving en techniek: Hilde Jobben

Geluid: Christian Johannes

Tekst: Eva Kolsteren

Begeleiding: Noufri Bachdim

Foto’s: Billie Bakker

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• CREEPING UNDER

  • voice and electronics, for ten speakers

CREEPING UNDER is a collaboration with Sasu Korum, a recently graduated choreographer of the SNDO department. It was performed in Frascati 4 at the Frascati Theater in Amsterdam, as part of the SNDO 4 Paradise Festival. In this work, we explore the Underland: what it means to be underground, to delve into something, to open a chasm and get lost inside it. We were initially inspired to work with this notion by an amazing book by Robert Macfarlane, aptly titled “Underland: A Deep Time Journey”. The underland is such a fascinating space: omnipresent, literally carrying our world, and yet so invisible, so repulsed, so captivating, so unexplored. This was the third piece Sasu and I collaborated on together; I’ve never worked this intensely with another maker. The first two, however, were rather different: then, we would work in big groups of 5-10 people. In this piece, it was just the two of us on stage. This gave us plenty of time and depth to explore, and really find the work together through experimentation. I mixed a live electronic soundscape, spacializing live and responding to Sasu’s movements and body in the moment; it was like dancing or singing together. Doing this piece was maybe one of my best experiences this year, not only because of the material, but also sharing it with a dear friend and a great scenographer, but also for the experience of playing in a professional sold-out hall like Frascati with an amazing sound system and dedicated technicians for a small week. I felt very seen and taken seriously as an artist.

 

Credits:

photographed by @gergelyofner

Sound: @christian_johannes_

Stage design: @eszter___szoke

Artistic advising: @antonellafittipaldi_

Fellow researcher: Zsofi Ulbert

Costume designers: @eszter___szoke

Lights: Martin Kaffarnik

Created and performed by @sas_ukorom

Performed in @frascatiamsterdam

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• The Last Paradise

  • electronics, for 4 speakers

The Last Paradise is a ridiculously large graduation piece of the whole of SNDO 4 2023-2024 working together. The whole performance lasts about 6 hours, and takes place in various places around the theatre. This piece deals heavily with themes of hell and heaven, constructing modern divine spaces and hedonistic hellscapes, and many forms in between. It is an attempt to combine the works of 7 very different choreographers and their previous works into one performance. I was asked to do some sound-design/composing in quadraphonic format, based on previous material I had composed when working with Sasu Korum.  The interesting thing for me with this work was: they didn’t really need me to be there for the rehearsals. I was simply commissioned to provide some background-ish, older material, over which would come a textural projection and the crew would perform. I could actually sit in the audience for this piece, not knowing the context of my own work until that section finally came after 4.5 hours or so. I was almost completely on the side of the audience, experiencing my own work interacting with all these other works and bodies. It was quite an interesting experience. It was performed once at Vlaams Cultuur De Brakke Grond, and it will be performed again at the end of this month in Ghent I believe.

Credits:
Makers & Performers: Agnė Auželytė, Barros, Ciro M. Goudsmit, La Uyi Ihasee, Sasu Korom, YuJing Liu & Saman Mahdavi
Collaborators:  Ion Kazantzidis (set design & visuals), Mangruv (music), Castle (music), Christian Johannes (music), Fu Te (music), Sammy Does (make up), Gergely Ofner (videography), Zaphkiël Jezestrio Christianos Zaydistic (guest performer), Uma (guest performer), Negar Ghaffari (music), Kawan Karimi (music), Ghasem Najjari (text advise), Yolande Ella (digital visuals), BABY BEAST (guest performer)
Artistic advisors: Joy Mariama Smith, Tianzhuo Chen, Ion Kazantzidis
Production Manager: Charlot van der Meer; Light & Sound: Martin Kaffarnik, Rik van der Veen & Vincent Romijn; SNDO production: Chantal Mooij; PR coordinators: Evelien van de Sanden and Antonella Fittipaldi; Social media coordinator: Karina Villafan; Graphic design: Isa Dahan (Gerrit Rietveld Academy); Mentor SNDO 4: Ana Vujanović; Artistic Director: Bojana Mladenović
Location: Vlaams Cultuurhuis De Brakke Grond

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