Porosity
- Nina Kuttler
- Angela Anzi
- Sarahsson
The stream always starts on land, burrows out of the porous soil. For our final event of 2024 we turn our attention to the Earth, to what can grow out of fertile ground. The evening begins with a performative screening from Nina Kuttler, whose works probe cultural and scientific (hi)stories like topsoil, asking who gets to cultivate them, and for whom. Angela Anzi elicits sonic landscapes from sculptural ceramic forms, her clay objects signalling their connection to the terrains which produced them. Sarahsson, a British performance artist and musician, materialises as a deity that springs from the earth. She closes our season with a physical performance of goreish, neolithic noise-folk involving twisted, self-made instruments.
Surge
- Ute Wassermann
- Louise Vind Nielsen
- bela
A sudden spike of voltage, a wave of intensity, a deluge of something uncontainable. This program presents three artists whose works surge with energy and ebb with silence.
We begin - like a raincloud slowly opening - with vocalist Ute Wassermann. The German free improvisation icon will bring her concentrated vocal pitter-patter to the metallic guts of the Stubnitz, splashed through an assortment of objects and membranes. What follows is a set from Hamburg-based sound and performance artist Louise Vind Nielsen. In her practice, which combines poetry, mythology, psychology and sound, frenetic bursts of activity break with long periods of silence and soft synthetic vibrations in explorations of listening, perception and more-than-human relationships. The evening will conclude with the Berlin-based musician bela, whose latest album 'Noise and Cries (ê”ìêłŒ ìžì)' for Berlinâs Subtext Recordings will flood out torrentially on-stage. As nihilism born out of a queer experience of precarity living in South Korea transmutes into a desperate will to live, belaâs rasping screams, torchlight and deluges of noise drag the audience through a tumultuous odyssey of the soul.
Density
- Holly Hunter
- Post-Organic Bauplan
- Iceboy Violet
We find ourselves in dense depths. We've been pulled into the gyre, past the point of no return by chimeric forces stacked against us. Our bodies? Spaghettified - pulled apart by gravity and mined for resources. The artists in this program are stuck down here with us, too.
In Holly Hunter's texts we find murky waters, hybrid creatures, and queer narratives. For Upstream, she presents a new reading related to our theme. In the performance âDesbridarâ by Post-Organic Bauplan, the "more-than-human" takes centre stage as otherworldly robotic prostheses expand the performersâ bodies and posit new modes of being that go against the institutionalised, productive or ânaturalâ body. Dense feelings are condensed and extrapolated in the lyricism of Iceboy Violet. Their unique approach to rap and electronic music brings the event to a close in a warm embrace of collective catharsis.
Drift
- Lara Agar & Louis dâHeudiĂšres
- Wojciech Rusin
- bod [ć 柶混]
Drifting does not necessarily describe the music, sounds, words and objects of Wojciech Rusin, bod [ć 柶混] and Lara Agar & Louis dâHeudiĂšres, but perhaps a state of mind that emerges. Consonant harmonies, undulating movement and soft spiritualism lead a feeling to bubble to the surface that the past and the future are drifting inexorably into the present. Drawing on the region of East Anglia where they grew up, Agar and dâHeudiĂšresâ collaborative project reimagines ancient English myths through self-programmed synths and violin textures. After collaborating with Polandâs SpĂłĆdzielnia Muzyczna new music ensemble at last yearâs Unsound festival, Rusin continues to work with classical instruments, balancing their timbres against electronic soundscapes designed to push the Stubnitzâs sound system to its limit. bod [ć 柶混]âs gripping and immersive audiovisual style - combining voice, software synthesisers and electronics - closes out an evening with an epic rumination on alienation and awe.
Normality
- Anja Dietmann
- Michael Maierhof
- MICHAELBRAILEY
Our fourth concert brings together three Hamburg-based artists whose work forces us to question our relationship with contemporary normality in unique and different ways. Expect constructed environments in which motors and everyday objects are harnessed for their expressive musicality (Maierhof), songs that invite cats, dogs and skype calls into absurd and playful dialogues (Dietmann), and immersive reflections on post-digital love, sadness and intimacy (MICHAELBRAILEY).
Detritus
- Alexandra Spence
- Nika Son
- Yes Indeed
Upstreamâs September edition combines artists from Australia and the UK with Hamburg-based artist Nika Son for an evening dedicated to the idea of DETRITUS. We are taken from homemade instruments made from discarded materials (Alexandra Spence) to the creative potential of hypnotic and scattered states induced by insomnia (Son) to a chaotic affirmation of detritus as fertile ground for pushing music into new spaces (Yes Indeed).
Revelation
- Fion Pellacini
- Weston Olencki
- Tintin Patrone
Titled âREVELATIONâ, our second event celebrates the power of sound to enlighten, astonish, surprise, and transform familiar, lived experience into something otherworldly.
Upstream
- CILIA
- Neil Luck
Upstream is a concert series that brings new, forward-thinking, uncompromising music and performance from around the world to Hamburg. Using the metaphor of âupstreamâ to reference being closer to the source, and also salmon, which swim upstream to migrate, it is focused on charting the latest currents and tackling contemporary themes in art and music.