How are the twinned commodities of oil and data enmeshed within contemporary human landscapes? Sonic Acts is proud to present Exhaust, an online roundtable programme produced by resident artist, writer and theorist Maryam Monalisa Gharavi taking place on 27 February 2021. Propelled by the phrase ‘data is the new oil’, coined in 2006 by British mathematician (and customer loyalty card inventor) Clive Humby, Exhaust draws on the insights of eminent academic thinkers and influential practitioners to speculate, critique and make visible the cultural geography of oil and data. Among the roundtable participants are political and environmental anthropologist Omolade Adunbi, media artist and programmer Ryan Kuo, artist and geographer Helen Pritchard and interdisciplinary researcher Andrea Sempértegui. As an added plus (for Benelux IP addresses only), the programme is accompanied by a screening of Wang Bing's 840-minute-long documentary film Crude Oil (2008). Courtesy of International Film Festival Rotterdam. → Tickets Note: Ticket-buyers will receive a link to the event via email → Attend on Facebook

South Pars oil fields. Credit: Safa Daneshvar. Used with permission.

Maryam Monalisa Gharavi at Sonic Acts Festival 2017. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Omolade Adunbi. Photo courtesy the speaker.

Murtaza Vali. Photo courtesy of the speaker.

Crude Oil, Wang Bing, film still

Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, Face/Less: Human, Inhuman, Abhuman, at De Brakke Grond, Sonic Acts Festival 2017.

Underexposed Mentorship Programme for Young Artists General information Sonic Acts invites young artists to apply for Underexposed, an online mentorship and training programme starting in May 2021. This programme is part of a Sonic Acts talent development initiative focussed on supporting artists at the beginning of their career. Motivated by the breadth of exciting projects from young local artists, evidenced by many of the applications to our recent OVEREXPOSED residency call, Underexposed includes a mentorship period in which artists work directly with members of the Sonic Acts curatorial team, providing an opportunity to get feedback on the development of artistic projects. Depending on the specific needs of the applicant and their project, the programme may include: working together on research and setting goals; conceptualisation of the project for funding applications; developing a realistic production budget; creating a presentation plan; working on an artistic portfolio; and finding local and international presentation and commissioning opportunities. Sonic Acts will select 2 artists for the first iteration of the programme that will take place from the first week of May until mid-June 2021. Eligibility Underexposed is intended for young artists, 22 to 32 years of age, based in the Netherlands. The programme is open to artists working with sound or moving image that have graduated from art academies or similar artistic programmes or can demonstrate interest in the field with at least one year of experience. Currently-enrolled students are not eligible for the programme. We are encouraging artists to apply with a feasible project, meaning that the overall budget of the project should be realistic and not exceed 40.000 euro in the initial plan. Artists should submit a portfolio with recent works and projects, and a motivation letter in which they articulate issues they would like to address in the development process of their work and their expectations from the programme. Applications from both individual artists and collectives are welcome. Programme Underexposed is a six-week programme of weekly, one-hour online sessions with members of the Sonic Acts curatorial team. Each session will be focussed on discussing the artist’s needs, their project and portfolio, and opportunities including possible public presentations. The programme provides artists with insight into the process of developing an effective artistic proposal, creating a realistic production budget, writing a funding application and knowing where to look for opportunities. Deadlines and selection committee Applications should be submitted via Homerun by 15 March 2021. Selected applicants will be notified by 20 April at the latest. The selection committee comprises the curatorial team of Sonic Acts.

Are you interested in volunteering with Sonic Acts? In 2021, Sonic Acts will be organising a variety of on- and offline activities, including live streams, site-specific works and durational events. Like every year, Sonic Acts relies on the support of its volunteers, and while we are still determining the scale of help needed, opportunities cover a range of roles including hospitality and production to distribution and documentation, both before and during events. What do we offer? Volunteering at Sonic Acts is an opportunity to network, gain valuable experience, and get a behind-the-scenes peek at our events in a healthy and safe environment, in accordance with measures in force at the time. Each volunteer receives catering for the period of their shift, as well as a publication, t-shirt and tote bag, and, of course, our upmost appreciation. What are we looking for? We are initially seeking volunteers for the period of mid-April until mid-May 2021 and invite those who are interested to already apply via the form below. In order to volunteer at Sonic Acts in 2021, you’ll need to be located in Amsterdam (or surroundings). If selected, and once programme details are confirmed, you will be contacted by our volunteer coordinator to schedule an online introduction meeting as part of a pool of volunteers. We are happy to discuss your availability with you. Apply → volunteer application form If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact us at volunteer[at]sonicacts[dot]com.

Sonic Acts is proud to announce six artists and researchers for the OVEREXPOSED home-based residency. OVEREXPOSED is the new residency programme from Sonic Acts investigating pollution and its effects on everything living and non-living. In response to the Open Call, we received almost 400 applications including many imaginative and compelling perspectives on the core questions underlying the programme. As a result of the quality and breadth of the applications, we have doubled the number of residents to six. Each resident will undertake a one-month period of remote artistic research between December 2020 and May 2021. Stay tuned for updates on their practice and developments! The resident artists and researchers are Ameneh Solati, Angela Chan, Arjuna Neuman, Devin Hentz, Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, and MELT.

Arjuna Meuman & Denise Ferreira da Silva, 4 Waters-Deep Implicancy (2019) (Trailer). Courtesy of Berlin Bienale.

Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, Face/Less: Human, Inhuman, Abhuman, at De Brakke Grond, Sonic Acts Festival 2017.

MELT, Heating Matters / Change Flux (Trailer)

In a new podcast produced in collaboration with Sonic Acts, Ràdio Web MACBA talks to Jennifer Walshe about writing, annotating, teaching, collecting, eavesdropping, performing, faking, and a touch of machine learning. Listen to the podcast via Ràdio Web MACBA here. Jennifer Walshe studied composition and often performs as a vocalist, but her practice and a whopping list of works over the past twenty years put her in a twilight zone where music, performance art, theatre and stage writing intersect and converge. Walshe’s approach to texts, scripts and musical scores is based on a recursive process, a kind of feedback loop which includes and acknowledges all sorts of information about the text itself – the context and paratexts, which literary theorist Gérard Genette described as 'those liminal devices and conventions, both within and outside the book, that form part of the complex mediation between book, author, publisher, and reader.' Indeed, Walshe’s works (from operas, instrumental works and electronic pieces, to artistic alter egos with their own body of work and fictional histories) seem to extend that notion into a version of contemporary art and music that draws upon personal anecdote, paraphrased quotes, fiction, linguistic experiments and regurgitated pop culture. As she elegantly puts it in our conversation, 'when I make work with text I am not trying to write an essay, I’m trying to make a space where all this stuff is happening simultaneously. It’s all about talking about being alive'. Her talk Imaginary Histories at Sonic Acts Academy 2018 is also available to watch in full on the Sonic Acts YouTube channel.

Jennifer Walshe, Imaginary Histories, at Sonic Acts Academy 2018

OVEREXPOSED Sonic Acts Home-Based Residency General info Sonic Acts invites you to apply for the OVEREXPOSED residency programme. Starting in December 2020, this environmental residency is part of a four-year research programme on the materiality of pollution and systemic and political issues related to the contamination of our environment. 
As we are currently unable to host residents physically, this call invites three international artists and researchers to take part in a home-based residency.  The residency is an opportunity for artists and researchers to expand their practice and develop new ideas and methodologies while being supported financially in their work over a period of one month.  What is this residency about? Residents are expected to develop their artistic practice around the core questions underlying the Sonic Acts OVEREXPOSED programme, investigating pollution as a global thread that affects everything living and non-living on the planet. With this residency programme, Sonic Acts wishes to create awareness about pollution in our local surroundings and its interconnectedness on a planetary scale; stimulate thought and imagination about necessary steps, both locally and globally; and of course, mobilise direct action. We consider artistic research as an exploration of the connections between aesthetics, historical materiality and politics. What is expected? Residents are expected to present their research in three formats: 1) As a text that will be published in one or more suitable Sonic Acts channels. The length of the text should be between 4000 and 8000 words; 2) As a research journal that focuses on visual materials – field notes, photos, archival findings, etc. – to be published alongside the text; 3) As a public presentation, such as a lecture, concert or video screening, to be organised by Sonic Acts in collaboration with the resident. How long is the residency programme? The residency lasts for one continuous month. After the selection has been published, successful applicants are required to choose a one month period between December 2020 and May 2021 for their residency, in consultation with the Sonic Acts team. The presentation dates are also to be agreed upon with Sonic Acts. Who can apply? The OVEREXPOSED residency programme is intended for artists and researchers active in the fields of environmental, blue, animal and energy humanities, discard studies, disaster studies, waste colonialism, health care studies, postcolonial studies, geopolitics, media and experimental arts, etc. There is no age limit for applicants. Sonic Acts particularly welcomes and encourages applications from disabled, queer, non-binary and POC artists and researchers. We also encourage applicants younger than 35 years old. What is the financial support? Each resident receives a total fee of €2.000 for the residency, including production costs during the residency. Cost for presentation in the context of a Sonic Acts programme will be borne by Sonic Acts. How does one apply? Applications should include the following: • Research proposal summarising the intended focus (max. 3000 characters – roughly one page); • CV & portfolio (max. 10 MB); • Biography (max. 2000 characters); • Profile photo (max. 5 MB); • Contact information (name, email, phone, website and home address). The (edited) biography and profile photo will be used for the publication of selected residents on our website. What are the deadlines and who is in charge of the selection process? Applications should be submitted by email in English by 1 November 2020. Please email your application in PDF with OVEREXPOSED Residency in the subject field to residency[at]sonicacts[dot]com. Selected applicants will be notified by email by 15 November at the latest. Sonic Acts will not notify applicants that were not selected. Please follow sonicacts.com, where we will publish the results by 16 November. The selection committee comprises the curatorial team of Sonic Acts. Update: Due to a large number of applications, applicants will now be notified by 18 November. The results will be published by 23 November. Should you require any further information, please contact us at residency[at]sonicacts[dot]com. Part of Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.

William Heath (1794/95–1840), Monster Soup Commonly Called Thames Water, Being a Correct Representation of that Precious Stuff Doled Out To Us!!!

Sonic Acts-commissioned works by Anthea Caddy and Hugo Esquinca will be presented at the upcoming Touch Me Festival in Zagreb, Croatia, organised by Sonic Acts' Re-Imagine Europe partner KONTEJNER. Hugo Esquinca’s live multichannel intervention On ​‘A Psychedelic Becoming’, which premiered at Sonic Acts Academy 2020, confronts recursion and its openness to the necessity of contingency. The work follows that of his collaborator, philosopher Yuk Hui, who outlines these notions in his book Recursivity and Contingency (2019). The compositional framework involves modal amplification, spatial distribution and processual (dis)organisation. Long Throw: An Exploration of an Expanded Energetic System for Cello and Loud Speaker by Anthea Caddy is a live performance that expands the physical properties of projected sound energy via amplified cello. In the work, which also premiered at Sonic Acts Academy 2020, the cello signal is projected by a custom-built parabolic speaker – projecting a beam of sound up to 3 km long and 60 cm in circumference. Its unnatural quality is enhanced by the spatially synthetic behaviour of the controlled beam and the cello’s sound projection. The reflection or refraction nascent to the site lends an uncontrollable element to the signal in a project that harnesses energy to create large-scale bodies of spatial sound phenomena.

Anthea Caddy at Sonic Acts Academy 2020, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

In a new Ràdio Web MACBA and Sonic Acts podcast, we become the listeners as political geographer and sound artist Anja Kanngieser reflects on expanded listening, the inaudible, and our anthropocentrism. Talking about their long-standing interest in sound governance, they dissect the many tensions that built up in the project Climates of Listening, which was originally based on the intention of amplifying campaigns for self-determination and self-representation amongst Pacific communities. Listen to the podcast here via Ràdio Web MACBA. Political geographer and sound artist Anja Kanngieser works in the coordinates between space and sound. This merging of disciplines that seems completely normal to them tends to be more perplexing to the compartmentalised world of science and academia than to the undisciplined field of artistic practice. If you are interested in more from Anja Kanngieser, their presentation Listening to Ecocide at the Sonic Acts Academy 2020 conference earlier this year is available to watch in full online.

Anja Kanngieser, Listening to Ecocide, at Sonic Acts Academy 2020, De Brakke Grond.

Philip Vermeulen’s More Moiré² has been nominated for the prestigious Gouden Kalf award by the Nederlands Film Festival. The immersive installation, which is co-commissioned by Sonic Acts and premiered at Sonic Acts Academy 2020, creates an overwhelming cinematic experience in a panoramic Ganzfeld environment as landscapes of light, sound and moving moiré patterns play with human perception. More Moiré² is one of eight Virtual Reality experiences, installations and multimedia productions selected for the award, and can be seen and experienced at the NFF Interactive Expo during the festival from 25 September. Check out our recap video of the world premiere of the work below.

Recap of Philip Vermeulen, More Moiré², at Sonic Acts Academy 2020, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam,

Philip Vermeulen, More Moiré² installation at Sonic Acts Academy 2020. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Philip Vermeulen, More Moiré² installation at Sonic Acts Academy 2020. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Philip Vermeulen, More Moiré² installation at Sonic Acts Academy 2020. Photo by Pieter Kers.

With summer upon us, and with many of us spending more of the season at home this year – and with more time than ever to read – Sonic Acts is offering discounts on books – including recent publications Hereafter, The Noise of Being and Living Earth – as well as various package deals such as all available Sonic Acts publications with 60% off the total price. A new limited edition vinyl release by sound artist Hugo Esquinca is now also available, with a one-off digital rendering of the work purchasable via the Sonic Acts Bandcamp page. View the full sale at the Sonic Acts webshop. Although deliveries may take longer than usual due to limited working hours, we are continuing to take and ship orders as quickly as is safely possible.

Bookshop at Sonic Acts Academy 2020, De Brakke Grond. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Bookshop at Sonic Acts Academy 2020, De Brakke Grond. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Sonic Acts publishes a new digital release by artist Hugo Esquinca. During Sonic Acts Academy 2020, ten limited edition 7" dubplates – pressed with rough edits of feedback manipulations from a Buchla 200 synthesizer – were played back and recorded as an exclusive ten-minute set. While none of the material pressed onto the dubplates has otherwise been preserved digitally, this specially recorded rendering will be released via Bandcamp on 5 June. As Bandcamp waives its fees for the day, the artist has committed all of his proceeds to the direct distribution of ear protection against potential LRAD deployment within an undisclosed network in the US and the MX/US border. All of Sonic Acts' proceeds via Bandcamp on 5 June will be directed to The Black Archives, Nederland Wordt Beter and Black Queer & Trans Resistance NL. The original 7" dubplates, which are also available to buy, are the result of a series of exercises in analogue, digital and acoustic feedback manipulations with a Buchla 200 synthesizer at Studio 4, Elektronmusikstudion Stockholm. The documentation emerges from interactions between the synthesizer, open microphones, indeterminate processing in different programming environments, induced crashing and the resampling of software and loose cable amplification. The audio file resulting from the initial analogue to digital conversion – pressed into the ten unmarked 7” dubplates – was obtained directly from the synthesizer output without additional processing or edits.

Hugo Esquinca, EMS-REC_SAA2020 [objeto de acción parcialmente involuntaria]

Hugo Esquinca, EMS-REC_SAA2020 [objeto de acción parcialmente involuntaria]

We regret to announce that due to the unfortunate cancellation of parts of the programme, this online edition of Progress Bar will not be going ahead. We were looking forward to virtually reconvening for the Season 4 finale, after its interruption caused by the current global health crisis. However, we recognise that there is another, long-standing crisis at hand and there are rightly greater priorities at stake for many of our artists, speakers and community. In the meantime, we will continue to work on ways that we can use – and improve – our own platform to provide and promote equity, safety and inclusivity. Sonic Acts presents the Season 4 finale of Progress Bar on 19 June 2020, 20:00–01:00 (CET), as a live-streamed online event, with talks, interviews, an all-night cinema, audiovisual performances and DJ sets, simultaneously broadcast both locally and from the remote havens of artists internationally. Progress Bar is a monthly club night dedicated to communal desire and collective joy. Its fourth season in Amsterdam began in November last year, before its interruption as a result of the outbreak of COVID-19. Despite this, the season finale will be going ahead as scheduled, albeit in the form of an online simulcast, taking place in a 3D gaming environment and accessible via the ease of your web browser at progressbar.club. While entry is free, we are donating to a number of local social justice initiatives, to which further donations will be encouraged throughout the event. Save the date and add progressbar.club to your bookmarks! Talks: Alfrida Martis (in conversation with Sekai Makoni) Rachel Rumai Diaz (inc. Q&A moderated by Emma van Meijeren) Robin Ramos (inc. Q&A moderated by Emma van Meijeren) Film: Audre Lorde – The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992 (introduced by Sekai Makoni) dir. Dagmar Schultz Performances, installations & DJ sets: Flufflord & bod [包家巷] LazerGazer Loraine James (followed by Q&A) Soft Break TCF (followed by Q&A) The evening starts with a series of films and a talkshow, where guests discuss their work in art, music and social action, and the material conditions that shape it. Guests include Afro-Bonairian writer, public speaker and community organiser Alfrida Martis. By day Martis is a researcher/educator in the Chief Diversity Officer Team at the University of Amsterdam, while outside of academia she works as an independent advisor in the cultural and arts scene specialising in intersectionality and decolonisation. Together with her partner Daudi Cijntje, she founded and co-organises Caribbean Ancestry Club, a platform that unites and amplifies the voices of ABCSSS islanders. Rachel Rumai Diaz is a writer, poet, performance artist, teacher and artivist, who intertwines languages to create poetry that triggers imagination, emotions and understanding. As a storyteller, her goal is to build a dynamic bridge between art and activism, touching on subjects including intersectional feminism, identity and intergenerational trauma. She is also co-founder of La Raza, a collective founded by Latinx female creatives in the Netherlands. Robin Ramos is an interdisciplinary artist known for their films Wederzijde and Zo Zwart Als Ik. They are a prominent figure in Dutch intersectional activism, alongside writing and producing music, and running a clothing line. The documentary Audre Lorde – The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992 contains previously unreleased audiovisual material from director Dagmar Schultz's archives including stunning images of Audre Lorde offstage. With testimony from Lorde's colleagues and friends, the film documents Lorde's lasting legacy in Germany and the impact of her work and personality. Audre Lorde, the highly influential, award-winning African-American lesbian poet went to live in West-Berlin in the 1980s and early '90s. She was the mentor and catalyst who helped ignite the Afro-German movement while she challenged white women to acknowledge and constructively use their privileges. With her active support, a whole generation of writers and poets for the first time gave voice to their unique experience as people of colour in Germany. Later in the evening, the programme shifts gears into a virtual rave where, even though we can't get together and party in person, we can reconvene, catch up, and draw up online networks of communality. Live performances and DJ sets will be broadcast exclusively during the event, with artists including North London native Loraine James – an electronic producer who effortlessly blends electronica and IDM with whispers of jazz and ambient music, with recent releases on labels such as Hyperdub – and Norwegian contemporary artist and musician TCF, who explores themes of code, cryptography and musical composition through the use of visual, sonic, built and written concepts. Before DJ sets by Amsterdam's LazerGazer and Rotterdam-based Soft Break. A virtual installation by Berlin-based artists Flufflord & bod [包家巷] will also be accessible throughout the evening.

In a new podcast on Ràdio Web MACBA co-produced by Sonic Acts, Finnish artist Terike Haapoja invites us to imagine a hybrid, expansive, empathetic 'we', with room for ambiguity and difference and for interspecies political understanding, in which the morbid fantasy of human exceptionalism and the hierarchy of species is put to rest once and for all. Listen: Son[i]a #308 – Terike Haapoja

Terike Haapoja, Vulnerability, Community, Animality – The Art of Being Here with Others, at Sonic Acts Academy 2020, De Brakke Grond. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Terike Haapoja, Vulnerability, Community, Animality – The Art of Being Here with Others, at Sonic Acts Academy 2020, De Brakke Grond. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Terike Haapoja, Vulnerability, Community, Animality – The Art of Being Here with Others, at Sonic Acts Academy 2020

Motivated by changes in the ecological, political, technological and social landscape, Academy 2020 took its cue from inspiring artistic research with a special emphasis on experimentation and innovation. In light of the COVID-19 outbreak, this impulse now hinges on the need to stay at home, and many of us have more time than ever to read. For that reason, we’re giving away a digital edition of the recent Sonic Acts Academy 2020 Magazine for free! Sonic Acts Academy 2020 was fuelled by the most exciting contemporary artists and thinkers from around the globe, and we’re thrilled to be able to share this beautifully designed collections of essays, interviews and visual contributions by a selection of the Academy artists and speakers. Contributors include, among others, Lukáš Likavčan, Terike Haapoja, Speaker Music (De Forrest Brown, Jr.), Sadaf, Hugo Esquinca, Design Earth, Anja Kanngieser & Nabil Ahmed, and Daniel Mann & Eitan Efrat. Download the PDF of the magazine here The magazine is also available to download via the Sonic Acts webshop, where you can find many other publications and audio objects. Although deliveries may take longer than usual, we are continuing to take orders and endeavour to have each order shipped as quickly as is safely possible.

Bookshop at Sonic Acts Academy 2020, De Brakke Grond. Photo by Pieter Kers.

We hope this message finds you safe and in good health. In light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, Sonic Acts has ceased all its activities until further notice. This global crisis brings with it new challenges for artists and the dissemination of their work – its impact felt through the closure of cultural venues and alternative spaces, and the cancellation of exhibitions and events. Despite the difficult circumstances, we believe it’s important – perhaps now even more so – that we keep up our connections and communication, and continue to support our network, and we are working on ways to move activities online. In the meantime, the festival activities from Sonic Acts Academy 2020, which took place from 21 to 23 February in Amsterdam, have already resulted in a number of online materials that can be utilised, watched, read and listened to over the weeks and months ahead. These materials, including recordings of the Academy’s conference talks and performances, provide a timely reminder of the value of artistic research and the strategies of mobilisation that it carries. Complete videos of the lectures and presentations from the Academy conference are going to be published regularly over the coming weeks, and the first talks are now online. Of these, Terike Haapoja​’s presentation took 2020 as a landscape of deepening polarization in the political sphere as well as between people and Earth’s other inhabitants. At the core of these divides is a question of the ​‘we’ of political community, traditionally defined as ​‘we the people’. Starting from her collaborative art projects, Haapoja approaches questions of animalisation, law, interspecies communality, vulnerability and ethics in relationship to art and its role in political change.

Terike Haapoja at Sonic Acts Academy 2020, De Brakke Grond

T. J. Demos at Sonic Acts Academy 2020, De Brakke Grond

Tomoko Sauvage, Waterbowls, at Sonic Acts Academy 2020, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

Maika Garnica, From Bow to Ear, at Sonic Acts Academy 2020, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

Sonic Acts Academy 2020 recap video

Cõvco at Sounding Provocations, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Photo by Pieter Kers.

S280F / 011668 / vvxxii at Progress Bar, Paradiso. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Rosa Pistola at Progress Bar, Paradiso. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Marja Ahti at Expanded Experience, Paradiso. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Sonic Acts Academy 2020 recap video

AYA at Sonic Acts Academy 2020, Paradiso. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Nabil Ahmed at Sonic Acts Academy 2020, De Brakke Grond. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Roly Porter + MFO at Sonic Acts Academy 2020, Paradiso. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Toril Johannessen at Sonic Acts Academy 2020, De Brakke Grond. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Maika Garnica at Sonic Acts Academy 2020, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Anja Kanngieser at Sonic Acts Academy 2020, De Brakke Grond. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Sonic Acts Academy 2020 recap video

Progress Bar at Sonic Acts Academy 2020 recap video

Spin Cycles at Sonic Acts Academy 2020 recap video

Sonic Acts Academy 2020 officially opens on 21 February at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and the programme now fills out with new additions Tomoko Sauvage, xin and Judith Hamann. Paris-based artist Tomoko Sauvage combines water, ceramics and hydrophones in an experimental practice grounded on live performance that investigates improvisation and interaction with the environment. Berlin-based artist and writer xin warps, mangles and strangles rave tropes into something anew. And Australian cellist Judith Hamann joins French electronic composer Malibu; the soft strains of Malibu’s spoken voice overlaying the swell of cut-up sound and Hamann’s cello. Friday and Sunday Day Passes, and individual event tickets are available via Tickets. Academy 2020 participants: Ale Hop, Aliyah Hussain + Anna Bunting-Branch, Anja Kanngieser, Anthea Caddy, Arie Altena + Katía Truijen, AYA, Ben Russell, bod [包家巷] + Schwestern Sisters (SwS), Bookworms, Cõvco, Daniel Mann + Eitan Efrat, DEBBY FRIDAY, Dehlia Hannah, DESIGN EARTH: Rania Ghosn, DJ Serene, djb, Duncan Speakman, Elaine Gan, Elvin Brandhi, Ex Continent, Felicity Mangan, Go Me + Ity, Hatechild., Heleen Blanken + Karl Klomp, Holly Herndon, Hugo Esquinca, Jonáš Gruska, Kali Malone, KJDENNNM, Lag OS, LOKA, Lone Taxidermist, Lukáš Likavčan, MÆKUR: Anton Kats + Eva Rowson + Maia Urstad, Maika Garnica, Malibu + Judith Hamann, Marja Ahti, Marjolijn Dijkman, Meuko! Meuko!, Nabil Ahmed, Nadim Samman, No Bra, Philip Vermeulen, Roly Porter + MFO, Rosa Pistola, RUI HO, S280F / 011668 / vvxxii, Sadaf, SHYBOI, SITOI, Speaker Music (De Forrest Brown Jr.), T. J. Demos, Tadleeh, Terike Haapoja, Tomoko Sauvage, Underground Division: Helen Pritchard + Jara Rocha, Via App, Vincent Meessen, xin, Zohar. Visit the Programme page to discover more about the Academy 2020 artists and speakers.

Sonic Acts and Ja Ja Ja Née Née Née are collaborating on a series of podcasts for the upcoming Sonic Acts Academy 2020. In the third episode, Speaker Music (DeForrest Brown, Jr.) speaks to Arif from Ja Ja Ja Née Née Née about the origins of techno, (un)available historical nostalgia and a HECHA hat he is wearing that says: Make Techno Black Again. DeForrest Brown, Jr. is a New York-based rhythmanalyst and media theorist. Brown’s praxis Speaker Music is inspired by Rhythmanalysis, a book of essays by urbanist philosopher Henri Lefebvre as well as considerations of momentum and the ​‘chronopolitical’ from cultural theorist Kodwo Eshun. Mobilising free improvised electronic percussion and stereophonic audio recordings, Speaker Music yearns to caress, engineer and sculpt sentiment into a multi-textural rhythmic body, quivering the nexus event of the moment into a collapsed ​‘nonpulsed time’ towards a shared sphere of intimacy. His debut release for Planet Mu centered around gestural sonic portraitures of sonorous and cybernetic ensemble energy music. of desire, longing is a time-based release meant to fill both sides of the vinyl completely, working against the quick turnover rate of the current track-based standard of the streaming economy. Through his empathetic 'touching of frequencies', DeForrest unveils a romantic abstraction of sonic narratives that recalls previous innovations by electronic and jazz musicians such as Les McCann, Urban Tribe and James Stinson. of desire, longing encodes the listener with an encrypted heat, made 'with empathy' and 'without excess'.

The Sonic Acts Academy 2020 programme is now online, with a new wave of artists and speakers announced for a packed three days of live, immersive, expanded and charged experiences, and vital critical perspectives. Festival Passes, Day Passes, and individual event tickets are now on sale via Tickets.

Rosa Pistola. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Ale Hop. Photo by Rob de Kruif.

SHYBOI. Photo courtesy of Discwoman.

No Bra. Photo by Elly Clarke.

Mario de Vega at Sonic Acts Academy 2018. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Cõvco. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Elaine Gan. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Lone Taxidermist (Natalie Sharp). Photo by Tim Van Veen.

Vincent Meessen. Photo by Wali Issa Lee.

The workshop Sound Methods for Environmental Justice will be an introduction to interdisciplinary spatial, sound and listening methods used by advocates, artists and researchers Nabil Ahmed and Anja Kanngieser to address environmental racism, colonisation and ecocide in frontline communities. It will provide a conceptual and practice-led framework for participants to apply to the campaigns and projects they are active within. Over the two days, a real-time live sketch will be made by Ahmed and Kanngieser of how they approach specific sites of ecocide, and how they connect sound and listening to the composition of maps, and overall evidence collection plans that can be used to support environmental justice in legal or advocacy contexts. Ahmed and Kanngieser will discuss the importance of following community-led campaigns, cultural research protocols, composing appropriate forms of listening and attunement, fundamentals of spatial analysis, the ethics of working with frontline communities and ecosystems, identifying evidence, and most crucially, respecting boundaries, difficulties and silences. This sketch will be used to collectively imagine how it can be applied to participants own local contexts. A reading pack will be provided prior to the workshop. Participants are expected to be involved in an existing social-environmental campaign or project. Enrolment To apply for the workshop, taking place 19 and 20 February in Amsterdam, please send a short motivation, CV and proposed campaign or project to discuss to workshop[at]sonicacts[dot]com. The deadline for applications is 8 February. Fee Participants pay a contribution of €50 for the workshop led by Nabil Ahmed and Anja Kanngieser. Lunch is included.

Potential Wor(l)ds is a collaborative project between artists Anna Bunting-Branch and Aliyah Hussain, drawing on shared interests in feminist science fiction, embodied processes of making, and different ways of worldbuilding. The workshop will begin with an introduction to Láadan, a feminist language created by linguist and science fiction writer Suzette Haden Elgin in 1984. Finding herself unable to express certain ideas and emotions in English, Elgin intended Láadan to make space for new words and ways of communicating. For Elgin, the idea of gaps in language offers a place to start creating change. She called these gaps ​‘potential words’. Her experiment tested the hypothesis that ​‘there are changes you could not introduce into a language without destroying it and languages you could not introduce into a culture without destroying it,’ and that ​‘change in language brings about social change, rather than the contrary.’

Photo by Thor Brødreskift

Photo by Thor Brødreskift

Photo by Thor Brødreskift

Sonic Acts and Ja Ja Ja Née Née Née are collaborating on a series of podcasts for the upcoming Sonic Acts Academy. In the second episode, Lukáš Likavčan and Leonardo Dellanoce speak about extinction, spectres and the game Death Stranding. They discuss how the future influences the present and how computer modelling fails to predict the Australian forest fires. Theorist Lukáš Likavčan collaborates on art projects, including the simulation alt’ai, questioning machine protocols in communicating with environments. Exploring imaginations of Earth from the impersonal, totalising view to one in which humans are environmental accidents at home anywhere, he finds resonance in a line from Holly Herndon’s Extreme Love (2019): ​‘We are completely outside ourselves, and the world is completely inside us.’ Concluding his PhD in environmental studies at Masaryk University, Brno, he now teaches at Center for Audiovisual Studies at FAMU in Prague and Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow. Likavčan just released a book Introduction to Comparative Planetology (2019, Strelka Press) that presents an analysis of visual cultures of imagining the Earth and the geopolitics of climate emergency.

The workshop Creative Spatial Design will be an introduction to the artistic practice of conceptual stage design, led by spatial media artists Heleen Blanken and Karl Klomp. It focuses on the basic artistic and technical skills necessary for developing stage scenography for live performances. The workshop will provide participants with insight into the development process, from forming a concept to configuring media within physical space. Artists Heleen Blanken and Karl Klomp will elaborate on their own practice and the skills that are necessary to successfully create a media narrative on stage. The workshop will contain a hands-on demonstration of the different effects of lights, mirrors, smoke, projection, video, LED panels and more to manipulate the perception of illumination.

Progress Bar at Sonic Acts Festival 2019, Paradiso. Photo by Maarten Bax

Violence at Sonic Acts Academy 2018, Paradiso Noord. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Sonic Acts is excited to now reveal the second wave of artists, thinkers and commissioned works for Sonic Acts Academy 2020. Taking place in Amsterdam from 21 to 23 February 2020, the Academy transforms the spaces of partnering institutions – Paradiso, De Brakke Grond, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and OT301 – into a thought-provoking live showcase of various engaged art forms. Academy 2020 lifts the curtain to reveal current artistic reflections on the impact of planetary transformations caused by humans, with three days of experimental concerts, club nights and live cinema, alongside a two-day conference. Informed by the urgency of the climate crisis and approaches to new futures, the Academy is an open invitation to listen, talk and learn with one another. Fuelled by over 50 of the most exciting contemporary artists and thinkers from around the globe. Last chance: Early Bird festival passes are still available for €60 (regular festival pass €70) until 31 December 2019 via the Tickets page.

Holly Herndon. Photo courtesy of the artist.

bod [包家巷] and Schwestern Sisters (SwS). Photo by Sanjin Kastelan.

bod [???]. Photo by Sanjin Kastelan.

011668 / S280F. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Meuko! Meuko! Photo by nowhereashes.

Meuko! Meuko! Photo by chunliiwang.

ATTENTION! is a three-day workshop exploring perceptual engagement, that seeks to re-orient the audiovisual attentions of its participants towards the present. Participants will be led by artist, filmmaker and curator Ben Russell in employing a series of listening, movement, recording, and viewing exercises, to produce a continuity from now to the infinite. ATTENTION! takes its title from the exclamations of a trained Mynah bird in Aldous Huxley’s ISLAND*.

Ben Russell at Sonic Acts Festival 2017, De Brakke Grond.

Before Sonic Acts Academy 2020, a new edition of Progress Bar takes place at OT301 on Friday 17 January. The evening opens with a screening of Beatrice Gibson’s 2018 film I Hope I’m Loud When I’m Dead, which explores poetry and disobedience, with a score by world-renowned experimental musician and composer Pauline Oliveros. The programme also features a screening of poet Julianknxx’s film Roots for a Crown (2019), exploring the negative perceptions and prejudice surrounding locked hair, and a Q&A with its director; plus performances and DJ sets by Authentically Plastic, Elly Vineyard, jujulove, Nahshi and Thoom. Presale tickets are now online, including a limited amount of €3 early entry tickets. Named after a poem by CAConrad, I Hope I’m Loud When I’m Dead (2018) explores poetry and disobedience. Gibson made the first recordings on the eve of the 45th presidential inauguration in January 2017, as a portrait of two of the United States’ most important living poets, CAConrad and Eileen Myles. The film’s score, by world-renowned experimental musician and composer Pauline Oliveros, lends the film a remarkable sense of intimacy. Written and directed by Sierra Leonean via London poet Julianknxx, Roots for a Crown (2019) is an imaginative docufiction, in which various storytellers delve into the symbolism and traditions behind their locs. Its maker, Julianknxx, is a poet in search of vulnerability and vibes. Hailing from Sierra Leone via South London, the poet, filmmaker and visual artist has a profile on the rise – thanks to recent commissions by Southbank Centre, Roundhouse, and the ICA. As a DJ, producer and artist based in Kampala, Uganda, Authentically Plastic​’s sound is necessarily political. They run a riotous club night in Kampala called ANTI-MASS, which opens us space for femme, queer and experimental artists in an increasingly repressive social climate. Their sets, at once dark and playful, use gqom, vogue and techno as a base for exploring other unknown sounds. Elly Vineyard, born in 1991 and raised on the Caribbean island of Sint Maarten, discovered ballroom culture in 2008, which changed his life forever. Elly is now proudly Father of the pioneering House of Vineyard alongside Mother Amber Vineyard. One of the first voguers of the Dutch ballroom scene, Elly has been performing and representing ball culture for over 11 years. jujulove aka Juliette Lizotte is a video maker, designer and DJ based in Amsterdam. Her current research focuses on witches as ecofeminist key figures. Inspired by feminist science fiction, manga, pop culture and fantasy jujulove opens a parallel world of her own at 170bpm. Milan-based Nahshi, known at first for his dancefloor-oriented blends, recently set out to investigate the crushing force of Lento Violento, an Italian club music genre originating in the early 00’s – as brilliantly shown on his releases for Ashida Park and Country Music. Born in Tarik Jdideh, raised in Chicago, IL, and based in Berlin, Thoom​’s music is expansive, eclectic and nomadic. Tracing her journey as listeners, we won’t be surprised to find shattered traces of digital Arabic percussion and rhythm mixed with aggressive arrangements that call forth the metallic repetition of midwest American industry. Coming for the talks and film? Buy a €3 Early Entrance ticket (arrive before 21:00) and get free entry to the club on top! Attend the Facebook event for the latest programme details. About Progress Bar Progress Bar is a monthly club night dedicated to communal desire and collective joy. Every episode starts with a 90-minute talkshow with guests talking about their work in art, music and social action, and the material conditions that shape it. After the talks we move into the club, and, having spent time listening to the artists talk, dancing to their music will be even more magical. Progress Bar is a co-production of Sonic Acts & Paradiso and part of Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.

Following the success of previous Critical Writing workshops, a new edition will take place during Sonic Acts Academy, from 21 to 23 February 2020. The workshop is hosted by Arie Altena and Katía Truijen, as well as guests from different journalistic fields.

Critical Writing workshop 2019, De Brakke Grond. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Critical Writing workshop 2019, De Brakke Grond. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Sonic Acts and Ja Ja Ja Née Née Née are collaborating on a series of podcasts for the upcoming Sonic Acts Academy 2020. In the first episode, Sadaf speaks to Ivan Cheng and discusses the processes of making music, her work and the inspiration behind it all. Sadaf is an Iranian-born, New York City-based composer and visual artist whose multidisciplinary interventions include sound, film, painting, performance and text. Sadaf’s layered and cinematic visuals, sonics and confrontational performative tactics oscillate between opacity and narrative. Her work upends the inward-looking affect inherent to contemporary performance, subverting the languages of auto-fiction and the artist/​muse. These original compositions comprise intuitive and clashing material inspired by contemporary global archaeologies of sound, always flirting with noise.

Living Earth - Field Notes from the Dark Ecology Project 2014 - 2016 Price: 19,50 EUR Order here Living Earth is a new book filled with ideas, conversations, lectures, and documentation relating to commissioned installations, soundwalks, concerts and performances made for and during the Dark Ecology project. This three-year project, a collaboration between Sonic Acts and the Norwegian curator Hilde Methi, was held from 2014 to 2016 in different places in Norway and Russia and included three curated ‘Journeys’. Living Earth is a recreation of these research trips to the Barents Region, from Kirkenes and Svanvik in Norway to Nikel, Zapolyarny and Murmansk in Russia. The project was inspired by Timothy Morton’s concept of ‘dark ecology’ and his philosophy of ‘ecology without Nature’. Morton offers a radical criticism of the modernist way of thinking about nature as something outside of us, and instead proposes an interconnected ‘mesh’ of all living and non-living objects. He ruminates on this idea in his essay for Living Earth entitled ‘What Is Dark Ecology’, stating at the outset that ecological awareness is ‘weird weirdness’.

"Dark ecology is about how we get to exit from toxic modernity. It’s been very moving for me to watch the Sonic Acts artists working with a concept I’ve been shaping for a while. They have explored the Arctic realm with the greatest aesthetic skill, a skill that by no means excludes the political." – Timothy Morton

“What an amazing journey it was, through the Arctic regions of Norway and Russia! Now everyone can live or relive it through this feast of a collection.” – Graham Harman

“Participating in the Dark Ecology journey was an extraordinary opportunity to witness the dark matters of environmental change firsthand through direct contact with the landscapes in which we travelled. This book reflects upon these encounters, entangling our proximate and local experiences with the global processes of accelerated climate change.” – Susan Schuppli

Today we announce the first wave of artists, thinkers and com­mis­sioned works for Son­ic Acts Acad­e­my 2020. Tak­ing place in Ams­ter­dam from 21 to 23 Feb­ru­ary 2020, the 20th edi­tion of Son­ic Acts – and the third iter­a­tion of its Acad­e­my set­up – takes its cue from inspir­ing artis­tic research with a spe­cial empha­sis on exper­i­men­ta­tion and inno­va­tion. Three evenings offer a rich pro­gramme of live cin­e­ma, exper­i­men­tal con­certs and pro­gres­sive club nights, while the con­fer­ence fea­tures cut­ting-edge emerg­ing and well-known artis­tic voices. Informed by the urgency of the cli­mate cri­sis and approach­es to new futures, the Acad­e­my is an open invi­ta­tion to lis­ten, talk and learn with one anoth­er. Fuelled by over 50 of the most excit­ing con­tem­po­rary artists and thinkers from around the globe. Ear­ly Bird fes­ti­val pass­es are now avail­able for €60 (reg­u­lar fes­ti­val pass €70) via the Tick­ets page. The first artists and thinkers to be announced for Son­ic Acts Acad­e­my 2020 are: Nabil Ahmed Mar­ja Ahti Elvin Brand­hi Anthea Cad­dy T. J. Demos Hugo Esquin­ca + Yuk Hui Mai­ka Gar­ni­ca Jonáš Grus­ka Terike Haapo­ja Daniel Mann + Eitan Efrat MÆKUR: Anton Kats + Maia Urstad + Eva Row­son Kali Mal­one Roly Porter + MFO Philip Ver­meulen Sadaf Speak­er Music (De For­rest Brown, Jr.) First Son­ic Acts Acad­e­my 2020 artists and thinkers: In review Dur­ing the two-day con­fer­ence at De Brakke Grond, con­tem­po­rary artists and thinkers, includ­ing Terike Haapo­ja, Daniel Mann and Eitan Efrat exchange ideas with the audi­ence in lec­tures, pre­sen­ta­tions and pan­els, togeth­er with live per­for­mances by Hugo Esquin­ca in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Yuk Hui, and the sound col­lab­o­ra­tion MÆKUR with Anton Kats, Eva Row­son and Maia Urstad. At the core of the MÆKUR col­lab­o­ra­tion is an ongo­ing archive, to gath­er and empha­sise mul­ti­ple sound­ings of tech­ni­cal devel­op­ment and the dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties that form around it. Award-win­ning writer T. J. Demos – Pro­fes­sor of Visu­al Cul­ture and Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Cre­ative Ecolo­gies, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Cruz – will give a lec­ture relat­ed to his cel­e­brat­ed research on art’s abil­i­ty to devel­op inno­v­a­tive and exper­i­men­tal strate­gies to deal with ecol­o­gy and glob­al pol­i­tics. As founder of INTER­PRT, artist, writer, researcher and musi­cian Nabil Ahmed makes a clar­i­on call for inter­na­tion­al crim­i­nal law to pro­tect against eco­log­i­cal impunity. At Stedelijk Muse­um Ams­ter­dam, the Acad­e­my presents a mul­ti­tude of live sound per­for­mances and instal­la­tions. Anthea Cad­dy and Mai­ka Gar­ni­ca are some of the first names to be announced, as well as Hague-based artist Philip Ver­meulen, whose per­for­ma­tive ​‘hyper­scult­pures’ that use sound, light and physics trans­gress bound­aries in seduc­ing the view­er through play, dan­ger and attrac­tion. He is cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing a new large scale instal­la­tion co-com­mis­sioned by Son­ic Acts and W139, pre­mier­ing dur­ing the 2020 Academy. With her break­through rag­ga track Still­ness in 2016, Sadaf, reared on vio­lin lessons, became an in-demand pro­duc­er, vocal­ist, DJ and per­for­mance artist. Her hyp­not­ic music is con­strained and lush, held up by the indus­tri­al noise that fed her as a young per­former in Mon­tréal, and soaked in free jazz, reg­gae­ton and Mid­dle East­ern music, deserved­ly launch­ing her into the New York club stratosphere. An immer­sive pro­gramme of rad­i­cal audio-visu­al and mul­ti­chan­nel son­ic stim­u­la­tions takes place at Par­adiso, fea­tur­ing, among oth­ers, Mar­ja Ahti, Jonáš Grus­ka, and Roly Porter in col­lab­o­ra­tion with MFO. Half of sem­i­nal late-2000s dub­step duo Vex’d with Kue­do (Jamie Teas­dale), Roly Porter’s solo work since chances at dance floor optics, but serves the bod­ies beneath with chant­i­ng choirs, beats and slow-mov­ing synths. In his return to Son­ic Acts the rest­less dri­ve of his music nour­ish­es his cat­a­clysmic audio-visu­al project Kist­vaen (2019) with Mar­cel Weber (MFO) and Mary-Anne Roberts (Bragod), large­ly record­ed on Neolith­ic bur­ial sites.

Roly Porter & MFO at Sonic Acts Festival 2017. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Roly Porter & MFO at Sonic Acts Festival 2017. Photo by Pieter Kers.

After an exhilarating first edition of the new season, Sonic Acts is excited to announce the first artists for the next edition of Progress Bar, taking place on 20 December 2019 at OT301. Progress Bar is an expanded club night dedicated to communal desire and collective joy. Every episode starts with a 90-minute talkshow with guests discussing their work in art, music and social action, and the conditions that shape it. After the talks we move into the club, this time with Hesska and Oli XL, as well as many more artists to be announced. Buy tickets. Keep an eye on the Facebook event page for more artist announcements and programme updates.

TAYHANA at Progress Bar, 1 November, at OT301. Photo by George Knegtel.

SUUTOO at Progress Bar, 1 November, at OT301. Photo by George Knegtel.

Progress Bar, 1 November, at OT301. Photo by George Knegtel.

Fossil Free Culture NL at Progress Bar, 1 November, at OT301. Photo by George Knegtel.

Progress Bar, 1 November, at OT301. Photo by George Knegtel.

A limited amount of Blind Bird festival passes for Sonic Acts Academy 2020 are now available for €50. Regular passes will be on sale for €70. Sonic Acts Academy is a three-day festival of innovative audio-visual and performative art and critical thinking, motivated by ecological, political, technological and social change in our environment. From 21 to 23 February 2020 in Amsterdam, the Academy transforms partnering institutions – Paradiso, De Brakke Grond, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and OT301 – into a thought-provoking space for new developments in artistic research. Three richly programmed evenings of live cinema, experimental concerts and progressive club nights accompany a conference featuring cutting-edge artistic voices from around the world. As a condensed rendition of its bigger sister, Sonic Acts festival, the Academy is interested in experimental artistic reflections on the impact of planetary transformations in the age of the Anthropocene. Informed by the climate crisis and with thoughts on the potential futures, the Academy is the place to discuss, listen, watch and share experiences with over 50 over the most exciting contemporary artists and thinkers working today. BLIND BIRD Limited amount of Blind Bird festival passes available for €50. Regular passes will be on sale for €70. Buy tickets SUPPORT PASS Sonic Acts is devoting more of its resources to commissioned works, organising master classes for students and young artists, and special projects. If you wish to support Sonic Acts, we gladly welcome you to buy a Support pass for €110. Buy tickets The programme will be revealed in the coming months. Want to stay up to date with artist announcements, programme updates and timetables? Follow Sonic Acts on Facebook or subscribe to the newsletter.

A new season of Progress Bar kicks off on Friday 1 November 2019 at OT301, with talks by Fossil Free Culture NL and Nazar, as well as DJ sets by Nazar, Satin de Compostela, Snufkin, SUUTOO and TAYHANA, and a screening of the film Zombies by Baloji. Progress Bar is a club night dedicated to communal desire and collective joy. After one season in Brighton, and episodes in Vilnius, Kharkiv and Pristina, this is its fourth season in Amsterdam, in collaboration with Sonic Acts. Tickets for the first edition are now on sale. Keep an eye on the Facebook event page for more artist announcements and programme updates.

Fossil Free Culture NL, Dissonance Act2. Afterthought, at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam

LSDXOXO at Progress Bar, Paradiso Noord. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Le1f at Progress Bar, Paradiso. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Lafawndah at Progress Bar, Paradiso Noord. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Sonic Acts is happy to share another podcast in collaboration with Ràdio Web MACBA, under the umbrella of Re-Imagine Europe. In this podcast, Nora Sternfeld problematises the educational turn and talks about the crisis of the museum model, radical pedagogy, emancipatory practices and alliances, para-institutions, unlearning strategies and collective knowledge projected into the future. The podcast is available to listen to on Ràdio Web MACBA's podcast programme SON[I]A. From an extremely critical point of view at the intersection of art and politics, curator and educator Nora Sternfeld constantly breaks the fourth wall of research and curating, shining a light on terms such as 'exhibition', 'gallery', 'representation', 'museum', and 'collectivity', always looking for cracks and hidden connections.

Nora Sternfeld, Negotiating with Reality: Artistic and Curatorial Research, at Sonic Acts Academy 2018, De Brakke Grond.

Jennifer Walshe and Timothy Morton’s operatic work TIME TIME TIME, which was co-commissioned by Sonic Acts, will be presented on 13 September 2019 at Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival and 14 December 2019 at London Contemporary Music Festival in collaboration with Serpentine Galleries. For this commission, Morton and Walshe join forces with a notable ensemble of musicians and sound artists to explore the multiplicity of temporalities at the heart of being human. Everyone in the room is important – from the fast-paced digital time of M. C. Schmidt and Walshe, the deep geological rhythms of Lee Patterson, the liminal eternal drones of Aine O’Dwyer, to the shifting tectonic plates of Streifenjunko and Vilde&Inga. Following its world premiere at Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ as part of Sonic Acts Festival 2019, the work has since been presented at Borealis – en festival for eksperimentell musikk (Bergen) and MaerzMusik (Berlin). More information about the performances can be found on the Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival website and London Contemporary Music Festival / Serpentine Galleries.

TIME TIME TIME at Sonic Acts Festival 2019, Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. Photo by Pieter Kers.

TIME TIME TIME at Sonic Acts Festival 2019, Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. Photo by Pieter Kers.

TIME TIME TIME at Sonic Acts Festival 2019, Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. Photo by Pieter Kers.

TIME TIME TIME at Sonic Acts Festival 2019, Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. Photo by Pieter Kers.

TIME TIME TIME at Sonic Acts Festival 2019, Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Ràdio Web MACBA has published two new podcasts in collaboration with Sonic Acts, featuring educators and theorists Irit Rogoff and Ramon Amaro, who both gave lectures at Sonic Acts Festival 2019. The podcasts are available to listen to on Ràdio Web MACBA's podcast programme SON[I]A.

Ramon Amaro at Sonic Acts Festival 2019, De Brakke Grond. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Irit Rogoff at Sonic Acts Festival 2019, De Brakke Grond. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Ramon Amaro at Sonic Acts Festival 2019, De Brakke Grond. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Irit Rogoff at Sonic Acts Festival 2019, De Brakke Grond.

Ramon Amaro at Sonic Acts Festival 2019, De Brakke Grond.

The conference talks from Sonic Acts Festival 2019 are now available to listen to as a series of audio episodes, with lectures by leading theorists and artists including Rosi Braidotti, Susanne M. Winterling, Didier Debaise, Irit Rogoff, Jodi Dean, Gregory Sholette, Flavia Dzodan, Ramon Amaro, The Otolith Group and Elizabeth A. Povinelli, among others. You can also hear discussions with filmmakers including Maeve Brennan, Tony Cokes, Ephraim Asili and Louis Henderson, which were recorded following screenings of their respective films. The audio episodes are available to listen to at the Sonic Acts SoundCloud page or your preferred podcast platform. Visit the 2019 festival site

This year, Sonic Acts celebrated its 25-year history with a festival edition dedicated to the topic Hereafter. The full scope of issues discussed during the festival – which took place from the start of February until early March 2019 – is very much represented and palpable in the tone of this year's festival publication, or 'the reader', a coalescing of contributions from the festival's conference speakers, performers, filmmakers, and other participants. The publication includes contributions by Mirna Belina, Jodi Dean, Gregory Sholette, Clausthome & Mārtinš Ratniks, Flavia Dzodan, Rana Hamadeh, Susanne M. Winterling, The Living and the Dead Ensemble, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, William L. Fox, The Rodina with Lukáš Likavčan, Sasha Litvintseva & Beny Wagner, Stoffel Debuysere in conversation with Jacques Rancière, Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa, Filipa César, Ephraim Asili, Polina Medvedeva & Andreas Kühne, Ana Vaz, Arie Altena in conversation with Jennifer Walshe, Victoria Douka-Doukopoulou, and Lucas van der Velden. In addition to the publication, there are beautiful new HEREAFTER tote bags and sweatshirts designed by The Rodina. Sonic Acts is also proud to be selling a special extended version of BJ Nilsen's ORE, including a cryovial tube containing 2.0 ml iron ore from Kirkenes, Norway, and an individual download code to Nilsen’s sound piece; and the Martin Bartlett CD Ankle On: Electronic and Orchestral Works – compiled and edited by Luke Fowler in consultation with Jennifer Lucy Allan. The Hereafter publication, audio objects and merchandise are available at the Sonic Acts webshop. Visit the 2019 festival site

Sonic Acts Academy 2020 will take place in Amsterdam from 21 to 23 February. Stay tuned for more information to be announced over the coming months. Keep up to date:

• Sign up to our newsletter
• Attend on Facebook

HC Gilje, Radiant (Live), at Sonic Acts Festival 2019, Paradiso. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Phoebe Collings-James & Last Yearz Interesting Negro, Sound as Weapon, Sounds 4 Survival, at Sonic Acts Festival 2019, Paradiso. Photo by George Knegtel.

MC Schmidt, Time Time Time, at Sonic Acts Festival 2019, Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Audience at Expanded Experience, Sonic Acts Festival 2019, Paradiso. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Ji Youn Kang, Untitled, at Sonic Acts Festival 2019, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Lyra Hill, Breathe With Cube, at Sonic Acts Festival 2019, Paradiso. Photo by George Knegtel.

Sonic Acts is proud to announce that the visual identity for its 2019 festival edition has been nominated for the Dutch Design Awards. The multi-layered visual identity was designed by The Rodina, who took underground infrastructures as a starting point to shape the festival’s HEREAFTER theme: an exploration of major topics such as inequality due to colonisation, immigration and the climate crisis. The identity emphasises what The Rodina regards as two basic principles of design: revealing and hiding. Nominated in the Communication category, the jury notes that the identity fits seamlessly with Sonic Acts’ appetite for experimentation: ‘The Rodina uses a multifaceted, inviting visual language that generates curiosity. Well-considered, tasteful and layered, with a passion for detail and implemented with consistency.’ (Dutch Design Awards) 'Seen in its entirety, one of the most powerful overall identities of the past year' – Dutch Design Awards The resulting visual identity has been translated into a wide variety of offline and online resources, including a 320-page publication, and performative interventions that took place at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. The beautifully designed HEREAFTER publication, sweatshirts, tote bags and special edition ponchos are available to buy at the Sonic Acts webshop. Visit the 2019 festival site

Summer is upon us, and what better way to spend it than to delve into one of the many Sonic Acts publications. For that reason, we are offering discounts on many of our books including recent publications Hereafter (€17,50; regular price €19,50), The Noise of Being and Living Earth (€14,50 each; regular price €19,50), and The Dark Universe and Travelling Time (€10 each; regular price €17,50). In addition, many of the Sonic Acts t-shirts and tote bags are available at 50% off. Take advantage of package deals, including on the Dutch Design Awards-nominated Hereafter resources – get the publication, sweatshirt and tote bag for a combined €37,50 (full price €54,50). Or the Sonic Acts Academy 2018 and 2016 publications for €9,50 (full price €16,50). There's also the opportunity to buy all available Sonic Acts books for €52,80 (a 60% discount on the total price). The Summer Sale runs until 31 July 2019 at the Sonic Acts webshop.

This year, Sonic Acts celebrated its 25-year history with a festival edition dedicated to the topic Hereafter. It was as much a speculative position as it was, as always, a reality-check and an urgent call to rethink and act on the significant problems we are facing today. The three-day conference at De Brakke Grond reminded us of the festival's first quarter of a century and what has changed since, but also encouraged us to look ahead, beyond our current planetary crisis. Videos of the conference talks are now online on the Sonic Acts YouTube and Vimeo channels. The first day of the conference began with two keynote lectures by Rosi Braidotti and Rick Dolphijn, who asked about the logic of death; firstly, by rephrasing it through posthuman knowledges, and, secondly, by asking how art works with an idea of dying. This was followed by further keynote lectures by Susanne M. Winterling and Didier Debaise, who opened our eyes to the practices of life that we have hitherto been blind to and that our humanist concept of nature has refused to accept. The final session of the day was dedicated to artistic research. Irit Rogoff presented her current work on new practices of knowledge production and their impact on modes of research. And scholars and artists Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner spoke about their new film that addresses and shapes the possibility of alternative narrative models capable of responding to the complexities of contemporary perceptual realities. The second day of the conference started with a panel outlining the current political landscape on the Left and Right. Gregory Sholette wondered whether an anti-capitalist art can survive in a world of lolcats, doomsday preppers and xenophobic frog memes, while Jodi Dean showed how the twenty-first century puts forth a new choice: communism or feudalism. The panel was moderated by Ash Sarkar, an activist and senior editor for Novara Media. The second session of the day featured talks by Flavia Dzodan and Ramon Amaro. Dzodan was interested in how contemporary technologies become a tool of racial, gender and class exclusions, while Amaro discussed the domain of AI as an arrangement of axiomatic simplicity that, in its present form, diminishes variant domains of psychological and physical reality. After afternoon screenings of Black Celebration (1988) by Tony Cokes, and American Hunger (2013) and Fluid Frontiers (2017) by Ephraim Asili, the final session of the day comprised talks by these two artists and filmmakers. Cokes’ presentation connected three threads: his scepticism with regard to historical constructions, the media’s attempted conversion of ‘revolution’ into a marketing trope, and how these representations resonate in our current climate of fear and proto-fascism. Asili spoke about his own cinematic practice – Mindfulness Cinema – which includes jazz methodologies, meditation, African-American literary traditions, Sigmund Freud, Sun Ra and concepts of landscape/locational cinema. The final day of the conference began by dealing with the legacies of artist Julius Eastman (1940–1990), the queer African-American avant-garde composer, pianist, vocalist and conductor, and Amy Ashwood Garvey (1897–1969), political activists. Their pioneering and important work has been revived in new artworks by The Otolith Group in The Third Part of the Third Measure (2017), and Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa in Carrying Yours and Standing Between You (2018). We also welcomed Annie Fletcher to this panel, a curator from the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, who is preparing a large solo exhibition of The Otolith Group in May 2019. Later, in talks by Elizabeth A. Povinelli and Louis Henderson, we learned about the artistic collective practices with which these two artists and thinkers are associated: the Karrabing Film Collective, a grassroots Indigenous group from Australia’s Northwest Territory that produces films representing their lives and intervening in the representation of 'indigeneity'; and The Living and the Dead Ensemble, a collective created in Port-au-Prince with artists from Haiti, France and the UK who have translated and performed the play Monsieur Toussaint by Édouard Glissant from French into Haitian Creole. The final conference session problematised the usual ‘real of fiction’ and made arguments for the ‘fictions of the real’, whereby, after a talk by Stoffel Debuysere, Filipa César closed the conference with a performative reading called Meteorisations. Watch more videos from the conference on our YouTube and Vimeo channels. Visit the 2019 festival site

From early February until the beginning of March, Sonic Acts Festival 2019 welcomed over 120 artists and theorists in a month-long programme of exhibitions, workshops, talks, films, concerts and club nights across Amsterdam. This celebratory festival edition – which culminated from 21 to 24 February – marked 25 years since we first began back in 1994. But instead at looking back at our history, we set out to explore what might, could or should happen hereafter. A big THANK YOU goes out to our speakers, artists and funders, and to all who contributed their time and energy; our partners, production support, technicians and everyone else involved; our amazing crew before and during the festival; our photographers, film crew, bloggers and our fantastic volunteers; and last but not least to all of you who came to experience and participate in HEREAFTER. PHOTOS AND VIDEOS Our great team of photographers and videographers didn’t miss a thing at the festival. For photos, take a look at our Facebook and Flickr albums. Watch the festival recap video on our YouTube and Vimeo channels. And keep an eye out for videos of the conference talks, which will be published online very soon.

HC Gilje, Radiant (Live), at Sonic Acts Festival 2019, Paradiso. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Phoebe Collings-James & Last Yearz Interesting Negro, Sound as Weapon, Sounds 4 Survival, at Sonic Acts Festival 2019, Paradiso. Photo by George Knegtel.

MC Schmidt, Time Time Time, at Sonic Acts Festival 2019, Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Audience at Expanded Experience, Sonic Acts Festival 2019, Paradiso. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Ji Youn Kang, Untitled, at Sonic Acts Festival 2019, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Lyra Hill, Breathe With Cube, at Sonic Acts Festival 2019, Paradiso. Photo by George Knegtel.

Sonic Acts is thrilled to reveal the programme of its 2019 festival edition, HEREAFTER! Learn more about what the 25-year anniversary edition of the festival has in store via the Programme page. The complete programme features a diverse group of artists and theorists: 9T Antiope, Áine O'Dwyer, AJA, Alexis Destoop, Alobhe, Ana Vaz, André Castro, Andreas Kühne, Annie Fletcher, Anthea Caddy, Arie Altena, Ash Sarkar, Bbymutha, Beatriz Ferreyra, Beny Wagner, Bergsonist, BJ Nilsen, Charm Mone, Christina Kubisch, Chynna, Claude Speeed, Clausthome, Cyprien Gaillard, Dave Quam, Didier Debaise, Divoli S’vere, DJ Marcelle/Another Nice Mess, DJ Nervoso, Drone Operatør, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Emily Pethick, Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa, Ephraim Asili, EVOL, Fedde ten Berge, Fien, Filipa César, Flavia Dzodan, François Bonnet, gamut inc, GIRLISONFIRE, Gregory Sholette, HC Gilje, Het Interstedelijk Harmonium Verbond, Hugo Esquinca, Irit Rogoff, Jasmine Infiniti, Jennifer Walshe, Ji Youn Kang, Jin Mustafa, João Polido Gomes, Jodi Dean, Johan van Kreij, Jonas Bers, Joost Rekveld, Judith Hamann, Jung An Tagen, Karl Klomp, Karrabing Film Collective, Katía Truijen, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Lee Patterson, Louis Henderson, Lukas Marxt, Lyra Hill, M.C. Schmidt, Maeve Brennan, Marta Mateus, Mārtiņš Ratniks, Matale, Mette Rasmussen, Mieriën Coppens, Nina Pixel, Nuno da Luz, Okkyung Lee, Olivier Marboeuf, Oxhy, Petit Singe, Philippe Dao, Phoebe Collings-James & Last Yearz Interesting Negro, Pierce Warnecke, Polina Medvedeva, Quay Dash, Rainer Kohlberger, Ramon Amaro, Rana Hamadeh, Rick Dolphijn, rkss, Rosi Braidotti, Ryoko Akama, Sasha Litvintseva, Slikback, Snufkin, Sondra Perry, Stoffel Debuysere, Straub-Huillet, Streifenjunko, Susanne M. Winterling, SUUTOO, The Living and the Dead Ensemble, The Otolith Group, The Rodina, Thomas Ankersmit, Timothy Morton, Tony Cokes, Ulrike Ottinger, Verdensteatret, Vilde&Inga, Wilted Woman, Yantan Ministry, YATTA, Yoong, Zeno van den Broek, ZULI. Under the heading HEREAFTER, the 2019 edition of Sonic Acts aims to explore the genesis of our current crisis – and what happens hereafter – by reflecting on the issues we are forced to confront on a daily basis: the inequalities caused by colonisation and geostrategic manoeuvring, the challenges posed by the climate crisis and immigration, the ever-present exploitation and precarity of the workforce, and the way technological advancements disrupts and not emancipates – that is, the gooey mesh of global capitalism. In order to gauge this complicated and entangled crisis and re-imagine something different, it is helpful to look back, re-evaluate and untangle threads that disable thinking outside of the sticky terrain of neoliberalism. From 21 to 24 February, Sonic Acts Festival 2019 takes place at various locations in Amsterdam, including Paradiso, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond, Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ and Arti et Amicitiae. Festival Passes and single tickets are now available via the Tickets page.

February 14, 2019 | Utrecht University Rick Dolphijn Close Reading Session: Still Alive and Already Dead February 21, 2019 | University of Amsterdam Rosi Braidotti, Rick Dolphijn and Susanne Winterling Workshop: a Necropolitics of Life February 22, 2019 Sonic Acts Festival Rethinking Death… and Ways to Live Led by Rick Dolphijn, Sonic Acts and Platform for Posthuman Ecologies and the Contemporary (post)-Humanities (Utrecht University) are organising a seminar in collaboration with the Research School for Media Studies (RMeS). The seminar comprises a close reading session, a workshop with prominent guests – among others, Rosi Braidotti and Susanne Winterling – and a Sonic Acts festival visit and intervention, and aims to map some key thoughts that relate to life and death from a posthuman perspective. At the interstices of contemporary philosophy and contemporary art, psychoanalysis and ecology, we get together for a triptych of events that explore the concepts of death and life differently. Leaving modernist and anthropocentric oppositions behind us, our aim is to explore how different ideas of death give rise to different forms of life, and how these concepts relate to the organic and the inorganic, to space and time.

Rick Dolphijn at Sonic Acts Academy 2018. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Conference at Dansmakers. Sonic Acts Academy 2018. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Workshop by Christina Kubisch. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Christina Kubisch at Sonic Acts Academy 2018. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Interview with Christina Kubisch by Fridaymilk. Sonic Acts Academy 2018.

Sonic Acts is pleased to reveal the second batch of names for Sonic Acts Festival 2019. Under the heading Hereafter, the 25 year anniversary edition of the festival reflects on the entangled issues of power relations, neo-colonialism, capitalism, technological advancement and the implications of those practices for our environment. From 21 to 24 February, the festival will move through conversations with artists and thinkers at a three-day international conference, plus a programme filled with audiovisual performances, concerts, films, installations, exhibitions, and club nights at various locations in Amsterdam, including Paradiso, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond, Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ and Arti et Amicitiae. New confirmed artists and speakers are Ryoko Akama, Alobhe, Bergsonist, Jonas Bers, Maeve Brennan, Zeno van den Broek, Clausthome and Mārtiņš Ratniks, Tony Cokes, Mieriën Coppens, Quay Dash, Stoffel Debuysere, Rick Dolphijn, HC Gilje, Rana Hamadeh, Louis Henderson, Lyra Hill, Lukas Marxt, Polina Medvedeva and Andreas Kühne, Charm Mone, The Otolith Group and Annie Fletcher, Drone Operatør and Mette Rasmussen, Ulrike Ottinger, Oxhy, Claude Speeed, Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner, Dave Quam, Ash Sarkar, Jung An Tagen, Ana Vaz, Olivier Marboeuf and Nuno da Luz, Susanne M. Winterling, Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa, and YATTA. The complete programme will be revealed at the end of January. Read about the previously confirmed artists here. Festival Passes are now on sale for €100 (€80 for students). A special group discount is available for visitors in groups of four or more at €70 per pass. Day Passes and event tickets will be available at the end of January. Buy tickets A three-day conference at Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond features lectures and discussions from artists and theorists probing some of today’s most urgent questions, while this year’s film programme, which runs parallel to the conference, offers several speakers the possibility to expand their lectures with moving images. Conference panels will be moderated by prominent writers, journalists and academics, including Ash Sarkar, a senior editor at Novara Media and a lecturer in global politics at Anglia Ruskin University. Sarkar also teaches as part of a master’s degree in film, graphic design and propaganda at the Sandberg Instituut, and is a contributor to publications such as The Guardian and The Independent. At Sonic Acts Festival 2019, she will preside over a panel with Jodi Dean and Gregory Sholette, discussing topics around communism and the radical imagination. Writer and philosopher Rick Dolphijn returns to Sonic Acts to host a conference session with Rosi Braidotti and Susanne M. Winterling. Dolphijn’s work to date, which focuses on continental philosophy, contemporary art, activism, and life, includes authoring Foodscapes (2005), and New Materialism (2012) with Iris van der Tuin, and editing This Deleuzian Century (2014) with Rosi Braidotti. Dolphijn teaches at Utrecht University and holds an honorary associate professorship at Hong Kong University. As a part of this year’s Sonic Acts programme, Dolphijn is also organising a Research School for Media Studies (RMeS) seminar and close reading session on contemporary theory, creativity, the Earth and us.

Ash Sarkar at Progress Bar. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Rick Dolphijn at Sonic Acts Academy 2018. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Louis Henderson at Sonic Acts Academy 2016. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Louis Henderson at Sonic Acts Academy 2016. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Sonic Acts Festival 2017 at Paradiso. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Sonic Acts Festival 2017 at Paradiso. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Sonic Acts is pleased to announce a special educational programme for Sonic Acts Festival 2019, including numerous workshops, seminars and guided exhibition tours. Running in tandem with the festival, these activities will provide opportunities for participants to engage with and contribute to discussions that will be provoked throughout the rest of the programme, as well as to open up new perspectives and exchange ideas with artists and fellow participants. Further details about the workshops, seminars and exhibition programme will be revealed soon. Following the success of previous Critical Writing workshops, a new edition takes place in 2019, from 21 to 24 February. Emerging writers and critics are invited to cover the festival and interview participating artists, while engaging with artistic practice as a means to explore new ideas. The workshop focuses on specific aspects of the craft of writing, including language, style and focus. In keeping with her ongoing project Electrical Walks, pioneering sound installation artist Christina Kubisch leads a three-day workshop, from 25 to 27 February, that explores an otherwise imperceptible urban soundscape, opening up a remarkable view of our everyday environment. Kubisch’s public walks use specially made headphones that receive electromagnetic signals from the environment and convert them into sound. The Critical Writing workshop this year will focus on the different critical modes that can be used to write about, describe and discuss art, theory, sound and music, while thinking about how to package ideas. Lead by theorist, editor, writer and lecturer Arie Altena and supported by media theorist and musician Katía Truijen, participants will cover the conference, performances and other events during the festival, and have a chance to interview artists and theorists. Led by Rick Dolphijn, Sonic Acts and Platform for Posthuman Ecologies and the Contemporary (post)-Humanities (Utrecht University) are organising a seminar in collaboration with the Research School for Media Studies (RMeS). The seminar comprises a close reading session, a workshop with prominent guests – among others, Rosi Braidotti and Susanne Winterling – and a Sonic Acts festival visit and intervention, and aims to map some key thoughts that relate to life and death from a posthuman perspective. In addition, visitors to Sonic Acts Festival 2019 can engage with site-specific and immersive installations commissioned or restaged specially for the festival’s multi-site exhibition programme, with guided tours offering first-hand insight from curators and researchers, as well as the artists themselves. Registration To apply for one of the workshops, please send your motivation and CV to workshop[at]sonicacts[dot]com. Participants pay a contribution of €50 for the seminar led by Rick Dolphijn, €60 for the Critical Writing workshop and €75 for the workshop led by Christina Kubisch. The deadline for applications is 1 February. More details and official calls for applications can be found via the links below. Call for applications: Seminar on Contemporary Theory, Creativity, The Earth and Us Call for applications: The Hidden City workshop with Christina Kubisch Call for applications: Critical Writing workshop Guided exhibition tours can be arranged on request by sending an email to reservations[at]sonicacts[dot]com.

Sonic Acts is pleased to reveal the first batch of names for Sonic Acts Festival 2019. Under the heading Hereafter, the 25-year anniversary edition of the festival reflects on the entangled issues of power relations, neo-colonialism, capitalism, technological advancement and the implications of those practices for our environment. From 21 to 24 February, the festival will move through conversations with artists and thinkers at a three-day international conference, plus a programme filled with audiovisual performances, concerts, films, installations, exhibitions and club nights at various locations in Amsterdam, including Paradiso, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond, Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ and Arti et Amicitiae. The first names to be confirmed are Ramon Amaro, Thomas Ankersmit, Ephraim Asili, Rosi Braidotti, Filipa César, Jodi Dean, Flavia Dzodan, Hugo Esquinca, Christina Kubisch, Okkyung Lee, Yantan Ministry, Jin Mustafa, DJ Nervoso, BJ Nilsen, Áine O’Dwyer, Lee Patterson, Nina Pixel, Elizabeth Povinelli, Irit Rogoff, Divoli S’vere, M.C. Schmidt, Gregory Sholette, Petit Singe, Slikback, Streifenjunko, SUUTOO, Verdensteatret, Vilde&Inga, Jennifer Walshe and Ji Youn Kang. Many more participants will be revealed in the coming weeks and months. A limited number of Early Bird festival passes are still available for €80 (€70 for students) until 31 December. Regular-priced passes will be available for €100 from 1 January. Buy tickets During the three-day conference, internationally renowned artists and thinkers will address some of the pressing topics of our time. Drawing on the work of Frantz Fanon, Sylvia Wynter and Gilbert Simondon, researcher Ramon Amaro aims to open up new methodological considerations at the intersections of race, pathology and empiricism, placing specific emphasis on speculative articulations in machine learning, data, mathematics, engineering and black study. Amaro completed his PhD in Philosophy in the Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, and holds an advanced degree in Sociological Research and a BSE in Mechanical Engineering. Ephraim Asili is full-time artist in residence at Bard College in New York, where he is also an assistant professor of Film and Electronic Arts. As a filmmaker, DJ and radio presenter, Asili focuses on the African diaspora as a cultural force. In his films he explores his own relationship with the greater African diaspora and the constructs surrounding African-American cultural identity, while examining the interactions of cultures and histories across time and space. He was educated in film and video arts, receiving a BA from Temple University and MA from Bard College. Contemporary philosopher and feminist theoretician Rosi Braidotti is a ground-breaking scholar in both materialism, continental philosophy and gender studies, who has enriched the Information Age with her postmodern feminist considerations of cyberspace, prosthesis and the materiality of difference. Braidotti is the founding director of the Centre for the Humanities in Utrecht, and the author of numerous books, including Nomadic Subjects (2011), The Posthuman (2013), and co-editor of publications such as The Posthuman Glossary (2018; with Maria Hlavajova). Filipa César is an artist and filmmaker interested in the porous boundaries between the moving image and its reception, the fictional dimensions of the documentary, and the economies, politics, and poetics inherent to cinema praxis. Characterised by rigorous structural and lyrical elements, her multiform meditations often focus on Portuguese colonialism and the liberation of Guinea-Bissau in the 1960s and 70s. This research developed into the collective project Luta ca caba inda (The Struggle Is Not Yet Over). She gained an MA Art in Context at the University of Arts, Berlin, and her films include Spell Reel (2017) and Sunstone (2017; with Louis Henderson).

Spell Reel at Sonic Acts Academy 2018. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Filipa César at Sonic Acts Academy 2018. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Flavia Dzodan at Progress Bar. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Flavia Dzodan at Progress Bar. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Acousmonium at Kontraste 2011. Photo by HC Gilje.

Acousmonium at Kontraste 2011. Photo by HC Gilje.

Jennifer Walshe & Mario de Vega at Sonic Acts Academy 2018. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Jennifer Walshe & Mario de Vega at Sonic Acts Academy 2018. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Pentacle 15.3 workshop at STEIM. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Pentacle 15.3 workshop at STEIM. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Pentacle 15.3 workshop at STEIM. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Jana Winderen, Spring Bloom in the Marginal Ice Zone. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Jana Winderen, Spring Bloom in the Marginal Ice Zone. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Jana Winderen, Spring Bloom in the Marginal Ice Zone. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Jana Winderen at Sonic Acts Festival 2015.

21–24 February 2019, Amsterdam – Paradiso, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ, De Brakke Grond, Arti et Amicitiae

Verdensteatret. Photo courtesy of the artists.

Jennifer Walshe & the Arditti Quartet at Sonic Acts Festival 2017. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Verdensteatret. Photo courtesy of the artists.

Jennifer Walshe and the Arditti Quartet at Sonic Acts Festival 2017. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Verdensteatret. Photo courtesy of the artists.

Timothy Morton. Photo Pieter Kers.

Aine O'Dwyer. Photo by Malcolm McGettigan.

Lee Patterson. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Vilde&Inga. Photo by Sigrid Bjorbekkmo.

The second edition of Sonic Acts Academy took place in February. With the aim of unpacking the processes of artistic knowledge, the Academy included a two-day symposium at Dansmakers Amsterdam. The Academy Symposium was a playground at odds with institutionalised learning, where internationally renowned artists and thinkers from various disciplines offered a radical syllabus through the exchange of ideas. If you missed the symposium (or would like to refresh your memory) you can now watch videos of the presentations and panel discussions on the Sonic Acts Vimeo and YouTube channels.

Thomas Ankersmit's Homage to Dick Raaijmakers, which was commissioned by Sonic Acts and was premiered live at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam at Sonic Acts Academy 2016, has been released by Shelter Press. Homage to Dick Raaijmakers is an all-analogue electronic music composition inspired by legendary Dutch composer, electronic and tape music pioneer, and multimedia artist Dick Raaijmakers (1930–2013). The work takes inspiration from Raaijmakers’ music from the 1960s, his texts on sound composition and notes on his own music. With his homage Ankersmit re-contextualizes Raaijmakers’ ideas about electric sound, composition, and spatial experience. Like Raaijmakers himself Ankersmit exclusively uses analogue devices and especially feedback processes between them. The music focuses on the sounds of raw electricity through creatively abused electronics, composing with analogue micro-sounds, and the creation of three-dimensional sound fields. The piece also uses tones produced by the listener’s own ears, inspired by Raaijmakers’ thoughts on 'holophonic' sound fields to be individually explored by the listener. With this phenomenon, the listener’s inner ears actively generate sounds that don’t exist in the recorded signal, and which can change with a small movement of the head.

Summer is upon us, and what better way to spend it than to delve into the many Sonic Acts publications. For that reason, there are various discounts on offer throughout summer at the Sonic Acts webshop. There are up to 50% discounts on books, including the latest publications Sonic Acts Academy 2018 Reader (€7,50 instead of €9,50), The Noise of Being and Living Earth (both €14,50 instead of €19,50). Take advantage of the Academy deal and get Sonic Acts Academy 2018 Reader and Sonic Acts Academy Volume 1 together for €9,50. You can also buy the whole package, and get all available Sonic Acts publications for the special price of €52,80 (a 60% discount). Or cool off in the warm weather with one of the various Sonic Acts t-shirts (€10 instead of €15).

Underbelly bookshop at Sonic Acts Academy 2018. Photo by Pieter Kers.

The Noise of Being book launch at Stedelijk Book Club. Photo courtesy of Stedelijk.

FUTURELAND / CRA MA Group Project 2017-18 from Susan Schuppli on Vimeo.

Logistical Nightmares fieldtrip to the Port of Rotterdam. Photo by Lucas van der Velden.

Logistical Nightmares fieldtrip to the Port of Rotterdam. Photo by Lucas van der Velden.

Logistical Nightmares fieldtrip to the Port of Rotterdam. Photo by Lucas van der Velden.

Logistical Nightmares fieldtrip to the Port of Rotterdam. Photo by Lucas van der Velden.

Sonic Acts' Vertical Cinema programme is set to be screened at videoEx festival in Zürich. On Friday 1 June, ten works by Joost Rekveld, Tina Frank, Manuel Knapp, Johann Lurf, Billy Roisz & Dieter Kovačič, Makino Takashi & Telcosystems, Esther Urlus, Lukas Marxt, HC Gilje and BJ Nilsen & Karl Lemieux will be presented by videoEx in collaboration with Rote Fabrik and Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur. Vertical Cinema is a series of commissioned large-scale works by internationally renowned experimental filmmakers and audiovisual artists, which are presented on 35 mm celluloid and projected vertically with a custom-built projector at special locations. Since its premiere in 2013, the Vertical Cinema project has traveled the globe: from Kontraste Festival Krems in Austria, to multiple screenings in Holland (IFFR, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, STRP), the UK (Leeds Film Festival, Glasgow Short Film Festival), Germany (GEGENkino), Latvia (Balta Nakts), Australia (Melbourne International Film Festival) and the US (SXSW in Austin Texas). In February of 2017, four new films were premiered during Sonic Acts Festival, which have since been presented in Sweden (Göteburg Film Festival) and Russia (Inversia). Many Vertical Cinema screenings took place in churches, maximising the vertical characteristics of these buildings and offering a new take on stained glass. Other venues have included a 19th century market hall and other industrial buildings with vast open spaces that allow for maximum screen size and theatres (old and new) for which the scale and ratio of Vertical Cinema causes a disruption and rethinking of conventions.

Vertical Cinema at Kontraste 2013. Photo by Sascha Osaka.

Vertical Cinema at Glasgow Short Film Festival 2015. Photo by Eoin Carey.

Vertical Cinema at Sonic Acts Festival 2017. Photo by Pieter Kers.

The last Progress Bar edition of the season takes place on 26 May at Paradiso Noord, Tolhuistuin, with a programme of talks, live audiovisual performances and DJ sets. Representing radical equality, communality and hopefulness, Progress Bar is a growing community of artists, academics and activists who occupy clubs for a better politics. When confronted with the world today – institutional inequality, neofascism, platform capitalism, austerity and a dying planet – being happy becomes a political act. Progress Bar supports radical club cultures that believe resistance is necessary in order to change the world. Or, as a play on the famous quote by the feminist and anarchist activist Emma Goldman: If I can dance, I want to be part of your revolution.

Elysia Crampton. Photo by Boychild.

Rabit. Photo by Lane Stewart.

To accompany Sonic Acts Academy 2018, we have published the Sonic Acts Academy Reader – a beautifully designed and printed collection of short essays, maps, interviews, stories, speculations, and visual contributions. These come from a number of the artists, designers, and speakers to provide invaluable insights into the exploration conducted and presented during the Academy. The Sonic Acts Academy aims to unpack the processes of artistic knowledge, with a focus on educational practices and critical examination of knowledge production in the field of art. In keeping with the theme, the Reader is designed by The Rodina, a studio interested in self-reflection, critical design, and the reinvented connections between culture and technology. The Reader presents many interesting contributions, including a speculative text about the role of the museum from the year 2030 from our keynote speaker, Nora Sternfeld; a text by Marcus Boon about the composer and mathematician Catherine Christer Hennix; a beautiful story by Nicole Hewitt from her project This Woman Is Called Jasna, a speculative history in nine instalments covering 20 years in the life of a woman from Vukovar who works at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; a text about the history of the cargo container by Charmaine Chua; and research about sinkholes that rapidly started appearing in the past decades on shores of the Dead Sea (Sasha Litvintseva and Daniel Mann). With contributions from Sonic Acts Academy participants: Ami Clarke, ArtScience Interfaculty Research Group (KABK), Catherine Christer Hennix, Charmaine Chua, Christina Kubisch, Christoph Cox, Colm McAuliffe, Concrete Flux / 流泥, Continuum Programme (ArtEZ), Daniel Mann, Dreamcrusher, Jennifer Walshe, Juha van ’t Zelfde, Marcus Boon, Marija Bozinovska Jones, Mario de Vega, Nicole Hewitt, Nora Sternfeld, Roc Jiménez de Cisneros, Sam Rolfes, Sasha Litvintseva, Shadow Channel, Stefan Wharton, The Rodina, Yun Ingrid Lee. The Sonic Acts Academy 2018 Reader is available to order at the Sonic Acts webshop.

Whether you joined us in person or online, we hope you enjoyed Sonic Acts Academy 2018 as much as we did. If you attended the Academy, you can help us to evaluate the event and improve future editions by taking part in our online survey and sharing your thoughts and experiences. As well as hearing your thoughts on the development of the Academy, we would also like to know about the possible ways that you would like to get involved. By submitting the survey you can win one of two (2x) passe-partouts for next year’s Sonic Acts Festival – the 25th anniversary of Sonic Acts – which takes place from 21 to 24 February 2019. Participate in our online survey

Sonic Acts Academy 2018 at Dansmakers Amsterdam. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Sonic Acts Academy 2018 has passed and we are immensely grateful to everyone involved in making it a success. In particular, we would like to thank all of you who committed time and energy, including the ever-inspiring community of artists and speakers who participated, our production support and technicians, our incredible crew, our bloggers, photographers and film crew, our invaluable team of volunteers, and of course all of you who came to attend. We would also like to thank our generous funders and partner organisations: Paradiso, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Tolhuistuin, Dansmakers, EYE Filmmuseum, Rijksakademie, Creative Industries Fund NL, Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, Mondriaan Fund, Creative Europe programme of the European Union, Re-Imagine Europe, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, Continuum, Interaction Design (ArtEZ, Arnhem), ArtScience Interfaculty (Royal Conservatoire & the Royal Academy for Fine Arts, The Hague), Centre for Research Architecture (Goldsmiths, University of London), Shadow Channel (Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam), Research School for Media Studies (Utrecht University), Beam Systems, WG theatertechniek, Indyvideo, Engage! TV, CJP, The Wire, Het Nieuwe Instituut, and Elevate Festival. This year’s Sonic Acts Academy is one we certainly won’t forget, not least because it was documented by our excellent team of photographers and videographers, who were on hand to capture it all. You can view photo streams of each day of the Academy on our Facebook and Flickr pages. If you attended the Academy, you can help us improve future editions by taking part in our online survey and sharing your thoughts and experiences. By completing the survey you can win one of two (2x) passe-partouts for next year’s Sonic Acts Festival. We hope to welcome you again at one of our events in the near future. And don’t forget to save the date: next year’s Sonic Acts Festival – the 25th anniversary of Sonic Acts – takes place 21–24 February 2019!

Marija Bozinovska Jones at Sonic Acts Academy 2018. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Violence at Sonic Acts Academy 2018. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Sonic Acts Academy 2018. Photo by Pieter Kers.

The second edition of Sonic Acts Academy takes place from 23 to 25 February 2018 at various venues in Amsterdam, including Dansmakers and Paradiso Noord – Tolhuistuin, with several pre-festival events at the EYE Filmmuseum, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and Rijksakademie. Over the course of three days, Sonic Acts Academy will invite artists and thinkers to expand on their artistic research through lectures, artist presentations, films, performances and workshops. The complete programme and time schedule are now online and day passes are available now. Sonic Acts Academy 2018 will host artists and thinkers: Ane Hjort Guttu, Anni Nöps, Ase Manual, Benjamin Duboc, Birgit Bachler, Born in Flamez, Catherine Christer Hennix, Charmaine Chua, Christina Kubisch, Cocky Eek, Daniel Mann, Dinamarca, DJ Haram, DJ Lycox, Dreamcrusher, Drippin, Filipa César, Geng, Hilary Jeffery, Iris de Vries, Ivan Slipčević, Jelena Viskovic, Jennifer Lucy Allan, Jennifer Walshe, J.G. Biberkopf, Juha, Karl Klomp, Kei Kreutler, Kilbourne, Linn da Quebrada, Lorenzo Pezzani, Lyzza, Marcus Boon, Marcus Pal, Marija Bozinovska Jones, Mario de Vega, Martijn van Boven, M.E.S.H., Michele van Ool, Mijke Pasmans, Miron Galić, Moor Mother, Nicole Hewitt, Nora Sternfeld, PARADISE, patten, Rana Hamadeh, Renske Maria van Dam, Rick Dolphijn, Roc Jiménez de Cisneros, Rozemarie Heggen, Sam Rolfes, Sasha Litvintseva, Signe Lidén, Solveig Suess, Susan Schuppli, Swan Meat, Victor Mazón Gardoqui, Vida Guzmić, Violence, Wartone, and Yun Ingrid Lee. View programme Buy tickets

M.E.S.H.. Photo by Nadine Fraczkowski.

Rana Hamadeh. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Linn da Quebrada

Birgit Bachler

Sonic Acts and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam present: Catherine Christer Hennix In 2017, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Sonic Acts initiated a long-term research trajectory dedicated to the lesser-known pioneers of sound art. The first stage of this collaboration activated the archives of American composer and sound artist Maryanne Amacher (1938–2009). The latest project and collaboration is an exhibition and new sound piece and performance by the Swedish composer, philosopher, poet, mathematician, and visual artist Catherine Christer Hennix (1948). Although she is best known as a sound artist, she has also produced a body of visual art that crosses the boundaries between painting, sculpture, and anti-art – what Hennix refers to in her own personal nomenclature as Epistemic Art. As part of her retrospective exhibition Traversée du Fantasme – the first museum solo exhibition in over forty years – on 16 and 17 February 2018, CC Hennix will present the world premiere of her new composition Blue(s) in Green to the 31 Limit. This new work will premiere with two performances at Teijin Auditorium in Stedelijk Museum, performed with Benjamin Duboc, Rozemarie Heggen, Hilary Jeffery, and Marcus Pal. The work elaborates on concepts of space – specifically attempting to halt our experience of space-based phenomena – and continues the musician’s ongoing experiments in micro-tonality, just intonation and the space of sound. On 18 February, Marcus Boon will discuss CC Hennix’s work in a Symposium at the Stedelijk’s Teijin Auditorium.

Catherine Christer Hennix. Photo by JC McIlwaine courtesy of Goethe-Institut New York.

CC Hennix + The Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage. Photo by Laura Gianetti.

Sonic Acts' internationally acclaimed Vertical Cinema project will be screened as part of the Göteborg Film Festival and Inversia. On 31 January, in collaboration with the Church of Sweden, the Göteborg Film Festival presents Vertical Cinema for the first time in the Nordic region. Nine films from some of the most exciting contemporary filmmakers will be featured on a specially built projector that leans the film at 90 degrees, challenging our deep rooted beliefs about what a cinema and movie image are and may be in the future. On 3 February, Vertical Cinema will be screened at Inversia, an international audiovisual festival over the Polar circle, in Murmansk, Russia.

Vertical Cinema at Kontraste

Vertical Cinema at Kontraste

Vertical Cinema at Glasgow Short Film Festival. Photo by Eoin Carey/Glasgow Film.

Vertical Cinema at Glasgow Short Film Festival. Photo by Eoin Carey/Glasgow Film.

‘Vertical Cinema questions the basics of how a movie can look. It's a grand visual experience where the films can be seen as a prelude to the future of cinema culture, an avant-garde altar painting or the world's largest and most beautiful instastory’ – Jonas Holmberg, Artistic Director of the Göteborg Film Festival

On 20 and 22 February, as part of the pre-festival events of Sonic Acts Academy 2018, Sonic Acts presents two films at EYE Filmmuseum: Spell Reel by Filipa César and Time Passes by Ane Hjort Guttu. The two extraordinary films are presented in collaboration with EYE on Art, a weekly programme where film meets the visual arts. Both films will be followed by Q&A sessions with the filmmakers. With Spell Reel, filmmaker Filipa César imagines a journey where the fragile matter from the past operates as a visionary prism of shrapnel. Digitised in Berlin and screened and presented with a live commentary, the archive convokes debates, storytelling, and forecasts. From isolated villages in Guinea-Bissau to European capitals, the silent reels are now places from which people search for antidotes to a world in crisis. In Time Passes – a fictional story shot in a documentary style – 23-year-old Damla is an art student who begs daily on the streets next to Bianca, a Roma woman with whom she gradually develops a friendship. Gradually, her situation develops into an ethical and political crisis as she struggles to justify how she can continue her project in the face of the social inequality beyond the art academy.

Still from Spell Reel

Still from Spell Reel

Still from Spell Reel

Still from Spell Reel

Still from Time Passes

Still from Time Passes

Still from Time Passes

Still from Time Passes

Still from Time Passes

Sonic Acts Academy 2018: Unpacking the Processes of Artistic Knowledge Sonic Acts Academy takes place from 23 to 25 February 2018 at various locations in Amsterdam North, including Dansmakers and Paradiso Noord – Tolhuistuin, with several pre-festival events at the EYE Filmmuseum and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Regular tickets, Student and Group Passes are now on sale. Buy tickets here. Sonic Acts Academy 2018 is pleased to host the artists and thinkers Ane Hjort Guttu, Ase Manual, Catherine Christer Hennix, Charmaine Chua, Christina Kubisch, Cocky Eek, Daniel Mann, DJ Haram, DJ Lycox, Dreamcrusher, Drippin, Filipa César, Geng, Jennifer Lucy Allan, Jennifer Walshe, Kilbourne, Lorenzo Pezzani, Marija Bozinovska Jones, Mario de Vega, Martijn van Boven, Moor Mother, Nicole Hewitt, Nora Sternfeld, Renske Maria van Dam, Rick Dolphijn, Roc Jiménez de Cisneros, Sasha Litvintseva, Solveig Suess, Susan Schuppli, Swan Meat, and Violence. More names will be announced in January. Sonic Acts Academy is a new platform for speculation and reflection, focusing on critical examination of knowledge production in the field of art. It is an experimental setting free of institutional pressure and privileged classrooms, and it enables us to test and quickly react to changes in both form and content of what we should know. The Academy opts for an inclusive community; it involves those who resist or without access to the privileged spaces of academia.

Moor Mother. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Catherine Christer Hennix. Photo by JC McIlwaine, courtesy of Goethe-Institut New York.

Solveig Suess. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Violence. Photo by Sima Ajlyakin.

Mario de Vega. Photo by Krzysztof Zielinski.

DJ Haram. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Renske Maria van Dam. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Progress Bar at Paradiso Noord. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Eyal Weizman at Sonic Acts Festival 2017. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Noortje Marres at Sonic Acts Festival 2017. Photo by Pieter Kers.

The only political party you can dance to returns to Paradiso Noord (Tolhuistuin) on Saturday 20 January. For the first edition of 2018, Progress Bar has teamed up with Klein to bring you a night of radical thinking and dancing, with DJ sets and live performances by Klein, 'clubcouture', Crystallmess, Dodomundo, James Massiah, Larry B and more. Buy tickets. Progress Bar aims to represent radical equality, communality and hopefulness. We are a growing community of artists, academics and activists who occupy clubs for a better politics. When confronted with the world today – institutional inequality, neofascism, platform capitalism, austerity and a dying planet – being happy becomes a political act. We support radical club cultures that believe resistance is necessary in order to change the world. Or, as a play on the famous quote by the feminist and anarchist activist Emma Goldman: If I can dance, I want to be part of your revolution.

Progress Bar S03E03 video trailer by Sam Rolfes

We're having a winter sale at our webshop with great deals on books, t-shirts and bags at various discounts, including Travelling Time and The Dark Universe (€5 each instead of €17,50). Take advantage of our package deal on publications: Travelling Time + The Dark Universe + Sonic Acts Academy Vol. 1 (€12,50). There are many more discounts on offer at our webshop and you'll also receive a free bag with every purchase! The sale ends 31 January 2018. A limited number of Early Bird tickets for Sonic Acts Academy 2018 are available for €50 until 31 December. Regular tickets and Group Passes will go on sale in January. Buy your tickets here.

Speculation as Interface Workshop by Mario de Vega and Victor Mazón Gardoqui From 21 to 23 February 2018, Sonic Acts hosts a three-day workshop on disruptive technologies by r-aw.cc artists Mario de Vega and Victor Mazón Gardoqui as part of Sonic Acts Academy. This workshop is aimed at individuals with an interest in sound, speculative processes, signal transmissions, ecology, language, unstable systems, high-frequency demodulation and interface design. r-aw.cc is a research platform founded in 2008 by de Vega and Mazón Gardoqui to investigate strategies in pedagogy, independent publishing, speculative interfaces, design as process, radio transmission and psychoacoustics. During the workshop participants will use custom logarithmic detectors to translate wireless architecture into sound, and tools to explore, control and disrupt devices within their vicinity. Using this tactical media the participants will instigate and discuss alternative ways of creating communities. Participants will finish with a PCB – a powerful instrument that allows the user to 'observe through the ears'. This workshop is a co-production of Sonic Acts & Paradiso and part of Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.   Enrolment The full-day workshop is open to a maximum of 11 participants. No experience in electronics is needed, but patience is mandatory for soldering SMD components. To apply, please send a short biography and motivation letter outlining why you would like to attend to workshop[at]sonicacts[dot]com.   Participants must attend the full programme. Late or incomplete applications will not be considered. If we receive more applications than expected, a careful selection will be made based on motivation and diversity of backgrounds. More information, including a detailed schedule, will be sent to the selected participants. The deadline for applications is 30 January.   Fee Participants pay a €75,- contribution for three days. Lunch will be provided.

Mario de Vega. Photo by Chris Villafuerte.

Mario de Vega. Photo by Krzysztof Zielinski.

From 23 to 25 February, Sonic Acts took up residence in Amsterdam-Noord for the second edition of Sonic Acts Academy – a new platform geared towards unpacking the processes of artistic knowledge. Across three days, we turned to a diverse community of artists, teachers, tutors, mentors, thinkers and tinkerers, to exchange ideas and push for alternate pathways in the field of education and knowledge production. In the weekend prior to the Academy, festivities were already getting under way, with a celebration of the work of Swedish composer, philosopher, poet, mathematician, and visual artist Catherine Christer Hennix (1948). The celebration was part of a long-term research trajectory – initiated in 2017 by Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Sonic Acts – with a mission to diversify the canon of sound art. On Friday 16 February, we witnessed the world premiere of Hennix’s new sound piece Blue(s) in Green to the 31 Limit – echoed by a second performance of the piece the following day, and a symposium on Sunday 18 February with Marcus Boon. In a poison-green lit Teijin Auditorium, an electronic drone buzzed with fluttering overtones. The dizzying sound field was augmented by experienced improvisers Benjamin Duboc, Rozemarie Heggen, Hilary Jeffery, and Marcus Pal, who performed alongside the composer in an exploration of concepts of space; specifically, while continuing their ongoing experiments in micro-tonality and just intonation, the musicians attempted to halt our experience of space-based phenomena, and they succeeded.

Catherine Christer Hennix at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Spell Reel at EYE Filmmuseum. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Violence at Progress Bar. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Hidden Layers at Paradiso Noord, Tolhuistuin. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Progress Bar S03E02 trailer by Sam Rolfes

GAIKA performing at Progress Bar. Photo by Pieter Kers.

GAIKA performing at Progress Bar. Photo by Pieter Kers.

GAIKA performing at Progress Bar. Photo by Pieter Kers.

The Spectacular Empire Tour

On Saturday 2 December, Progress Bar returns to Paradiso Noord (Tolhuistuin) with talks, performances and a club in a single night. As part of a programme of talks that open the evening, Iranian-British political commentator, writer, broadcaster and activist Aaron Bastani will give a presentation about 'Fully Automated Luxury Communism'. Artist and writer Rachel Rose O'Leary will talk about language as impact, information warfare, and the flattening of concept into code. We'll also sit down for a conversation with artist GAIKA to discuss his music and political visions. To reserve a seat for the talks, please send an email to rsvp@sonicacts.com 'There is a tendency in capitalism to automate labor, to turn things previously done by humans into automated functions,' says Aaron Bastani. 'In recognition of that, then the only utopian demand can be for the full automation of everything and common ownership of that which is automated.' Aaron Bastani is the co-founder of Novara Media and Silke Digital. He is an expert on digital media, protest and political communications and has published with, among others, the Guardian, Vice and the LRB. GAIKA is one of the most visionary artists of the moment, with a singular, confrontational performance style. GAIKA injects powerful drama into poetic dub sermons about city life and society ‘in a state of emergency’. Rachel Rose O'Leary is an artist and writer currently based in Amsterdam. Her research concerns philosophy, encryption technologies, and eroticism. More information about the rest of the programme Progress Bar S03E02 Date: Saturday 2 December 2017 Venue: Paradiso Noord, Tolhuistuin Amsterdam Times: 21:00–04:00 (doors open 20:30) Tickets: €10,00 presale / €12,50 at the door (card only) Buy tickets Attend on Facebook

Sensing the Shipyard A Sensorial Journey Sonic Acts is currently working together with several educational institutes in the Netherlands and abroad. As part of the upcoming Sonic Acts Academy 2018, we are collaborating with the ArtScience Interfaculty in The Hague on Sensing the Shipyard: A Sensorial Journey. The project is part of ongoing research into the transformation and rethinking of modes in the artistic field. Under the guidance of artist and teacher Cocky Eek and Sonic Acts curatorial team member Nicky Assmann, a group of ten art students are running a research programme at the Damen Shiprepair in Amsterdam. During November, these students tapped into the different industrious rhythms of the huge shipyard, which is used to conduct numerous repairs on cargo and leisure ships. This terrain, located in the harbour on the north side of Amsterdam, next to the River IJ, is in operation for almost a hundred years and is bustling with energy and activity on an industrial scale. With the coaching of architect and creative researcher Renske Maria van Dam and sound artist BJ Nilsen, the students delve into questions such as: How do we relate our human presence to enormous living machines? How is this relationship sensorially inscribed at this rich and historic industrial complex? Field trip during Sonic Acts Academy By recording the different sounds, movements and smells, and investigating surfaces and scales by touch, the students explore this remarkable shipyard by sensorial mapping, whilst researching how they can recompose these location-specific stimuli into an artistic experience that the Academy audience can embark on. More information about the field trip and how to apply will be announced soon.

'I’m standing right here below sea-level next to the riverbank of the IJ in Amsterdam North. To be more precise, I’m standing at the bottom of dry-dock nr 3 of Damen Shiprepair Amsterdam, in front of the giant cruise ship, while tiny tiny men are tending it carefully. I’m facing the vertical front line of this giant ship towering out high above me. This dazzling vertical line connects me straight through the bottom of the ocean and up to the sky above. From the bow line of the ship, two sensuous steel planes curve upwards reaching out to the surface of the sea. When the gate will be opened the water of the IJ will fill the dock with fluid matter, lifting the body of this ship, to get itself afloat on the maritime waters of our world.' – Cocky Eek

Tonaliens have just released a new double LP with recordings from their live performance at Sonic Acts Festival 2015. The music of Tonaliens is focused on a specific area within the microtonal space that was discovered by mapping out the first three harmonics of three tubes of one of group's member's Werner Durand's self-invented Pan-Ney instrument. They named this area the Tonaliens chord, and both recordings on this double LP – two live performances from 2015 – are based on it. Sides A and B were recorded live in a church in Amsterdam, the Vondelkerk, during Sonic Acts Festival. Sides C and D contain a contrasting, more intimate performance made at KuLe in Berlin for the Labor Sonor concert series. Tonaliens is a Berlin-based group investigating the inner dimensions and outer limits of Just Intonation. Exploring harmonic space with voice , brass, invented instruments, sine waves and live electronics, Tonaliens navigate intricate musical relationships using Hayward Tuning Vine. You can purchase the double LP at our webshop.

Shenzhen, China

Buy tickets We are excited to tell you that a limited amount of Early Bird tickets for the upcoming Sonic Acts Academy 2018 are now available for only €50 (regular price €65). The Early Bird ticket is valid for the complete three-day programme. Sonic Acts Academy will take place from 23 to 25 February 2018 at various locations in Amsterdam. Now in its second edition, Sonic Acts Academy is a new platform that aims to grow, expand, sustain and disseminate stimulating discourse about artistic research. Following its inception in 2016, Sonic Acts Academy 2018 continues to highlight artistic engagement as vital to understanding the complexities of our contemporary world. Over the course of three days, artists will present work that challenges the sterile dichotomy of theory versus practice. Through an open and dynamic programme of workshops, masterclasses, a symposium, film programme, live performances and club nights, Sonic Acts Academy probes traditional notions of the academy by positioning art as a unique means of knowledge production, to be shared and expanded upon with future generations. The first artists for Sonic Acts Academy 2018 will be announced soon. Early Bird Passes are available for €50 until Sunday 31 December. The Early Bird Pass grants access to all events from Friday 23 February to Sunday 25 February. For some events reservation may be required due to limited capacity. Following the end of the Early Bird sale, we will be offering various different ticket options, including regular Academy Passes (€65) and tickets for individual events.

Design by The Rodina

We are happy to announce that HC Gilje's video installation Barents (Mare Incognitum), which was commissioned by Sonic Acts and Hilde Methi for Dark Ecology is part of Screen City Biennial 2017 in Stavanger, Norway.

A still from HC Gilje's video installation Barents (Mare Incognitum)

We are happy to announce that on Saturday 4 November, Progress Bar at Paradiso Noord with Bbymutha, Eaves, Lsdxoxo & more is an official afterparty of Museumnacht Amsterdam 2017.

It Won't Be Long Now, Comrades! opening at Framer Framed (2017). Photo © Marlise Steeman

t Won't Be Long Now, Comrades! opening at Framer Framed (2017). Photo © Marlise Steeman

It Won't Be Long Now, Comrades! at Framer Framed (2017), MARGE MONKO - I (Don't) Want a Baby (2017). Photo © Eva Broekema

Early Bird tickets for Sonic Acts Academy 2018 will be on sale from 7 November. Tickets will be available at a discount price of €50 (regular price: €65) until 31 December. Sonic Acts Academy is a new platform that aims to grow, expand, sustain and disseminate stimulating discourse about artistic research. Following its inception in 2016, the second edition of Sonic Acts Academy will take place from 23 to 25 February 2018 at various locations in Amsterdam. Stay tuned, as the first artists will be announced soon! Attend on Facebook.

Ewa Justka at Sonic Acts Academy 2016, photo by Pieter Kers

We are pleased to invite you to the launch of our new publication, The Noise of Being, on Saturday 4 November 2017 at Paradiso Noord (Tolhuistuin) in Amsterdam.

The Noise of Being book launch. Design by The Rodina

The Rodina presenting The Noise of Being at Stedelijk Book Club. Photo courtesy of Stedelijk

Lucas van der Velden presenting The Noise of Being at Stedelijk Book Club. Photo courtesy of Stedelijk

The Noise of Being BOOK from The Rodina on Vimeo.

Progress Bar is back for a third season of cutting-edge thinking and dancing at Paradiso Noord (Tolhuistuin) on Saturday 4 November. Mixing talks, performance and a club in a single night, Progress Bar has developed into a platform for leading speakers on a range of urgent topics, alongside an uncompromising line-up of DJs and live performers, whose work straddles the intersection between nightlife and socio-political activism. The first edition of the season features Bbymutha, Bonaventure, Eaves, Hanz, LSDXOXO, Lyzza, Nina Power and more. Buy your tickets here.

Progress Bar S03E01 Trailer by Sam Rolfes

LSDXOXO

BBYMUTHA

Eaves

Sonic Acts Academy is a new platform that aims to grow, expand, sustain and disseminate stimulating discourse about artistic research. Following its inception in 2016, the second edition of Sonic Acts Academy will take place from 23 to 25 February 2018 at various locations in Amsterdam. The academy is initiated by Sonic Acts, which also organises the internationally renowned Sonic Acts Festival focusing on developments at the intersection of art, science and technology. Sonic Acts Academy highlights artistic engagement as vital to understanding the complexities of our contemporary world. Over the course of three days, artists will present work that challenges the sterile dichotomy of theory versus practice. Following an open and dynamic format, Sonic Acts Academy probes traditional notions of the academy with the aim of positioning art as a unique means of knowledge production, to be shared and expanded upon with future generations. Keep an eye on the Facebook event and Sonic Acts website for more information in the coming months.

On 29 September the Stedelijk Museum’s Friday Night is all about books. As part of the programme, Sonic Acts will present The Noise of Being, a new book that offers a chance to continue speculating about the strange and anxious state of being human in the present day. The book will be introduced by the Director of Sonic Acts, Lucas van der Velden, and design studio The Rodina will give an artist presentation about the process behind its design. This evening is a chance for visitors to purchase The Noise of Being and is a must for book lovers! View the full programme here The programme of the second edition of Stedelijk Book Club: Press! Print! Publish! features presentations and performances by authors and artists in the newly designed entrance area and at various spots throughout the museum. The evening also includes the opening of two exhibitions: The Best Book Designs and Always at Risk, yet never in Danger: Rietveld Graphic Design 2017. The annual display of The Best Book Designs is designed by EventArchitectuur. The museum library also takes part in Stedelijk Book Club: the annual book sale takes place at the library, where visitors can purchase numerous publications on contemporary art from home and abroad, both used and brand new. With: Sonic Acts, Antonis Pittas, Florian Idenburg, Herman Verkerk, Ian Whittlesea & Pádraic E. Moore, Katja Gruijters, LAPS, Marjan Teeuwen, Michael Tedja, Radna Rumping, Stedelijk Publicaties & Roma Publications, The Sandberg Series, Het Poëzie Museum, Offprint Library Amsterdam and fanfare. The Noise of Being publication features contributions by Arie Altena, Ingrid Burrington, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Rick Dolphijn, Jennifer Gabrys, Louis Henderson, Jamon Van Den Hoek, Joey Holder, Rosa Menkman, Metahaven, Nina Power, The Rodina, Daniel Rourke, Lucas van der Velden, Eyal Weizman, Ytasha Womack, and Juha van ’t Zelfde. View the full programme here. More information about The Noise of Being publication: sonicacts.org/sashop

Buy The Noise of Being The Noise of Being attempts to piece together the dissonance that was produced and gathered at the 2017 Sonic Acts Festival. The festival focused on a theme that resonates deeply when thinking about the contemporary – namely, what it means to be human, to be part of a world that is an ever changing network. Many different ‘noises’ were featured and produced at the festival conference, in the clubs, museums, and cinemas. This book is by no means a definite conclusion: more of a reminder and a chance to continue speculating about the strange and anxious state of being.

The Noise of Being. Design by The Rodina.

Luke Fowler's lovingly constructed biographical essay of Canadian composer Martin Bartlett, Electro-Pythagoras (a Portrait of Martin Bartlett), will be screened at the 55th New York Film Festival on 8 October. As part of the festival's Projections section, Fowler's film – a co-production by Sonic Acts and Stedelijk Museum – finds Bartlett at home, at work and onstage, telling an intimate personal history.

Luke Fowler, 'Electro-Pythagoras (a Portrait of Martin Bartlett)' at Sonic Acts Festival 2017. Photo by Pieter Kers.

The second season of Progress Bar has come to a close. Over eight monthly editions taking place at Paradiso Noord (Tolhuistuin) and Paradiso in Amsterdam, we moved beyond the pressures facing club culture, and towards wider socio-political issues. Indeed, Progress Bar began as something conscious of the threats facing underground club culture and has developed into a platform for leading speakers on a range of urgent topics regarding the relations between states, societies and their citizens. We sought out voices proposing hopeful alternatives to the dominant media through grass-roots organisation, intersectional thinking and constructive radicalism, and looked for cues in the DIY approaches and activist mentalities of artists and collectives as far as Lisbon, London and Chicago. Watch a recording of the talks from the season finale...

The 17th edition of Sonic Acts Festival took place in February. Under the title The Noise of Being, the festival revolved around the exploration of what it means to be human in the present time. The festival included a three-day conference at De Brakke Grond in Amsterdam, where internationally renowned artists and thinkers from various disciplines explored and speculated on what being human means in the present time. If you missed the conference (or would like to refresh your memory) you can now watch videos of the presentations and discussions on the Sonic Acts Vimeo channel, or read reports of the conference as part of our Research Series. Watch Nick Axel's panel discussion with John Palmesino and Natasha Ginwala below, and follow the daily reports for many more videos from the conference.

Research Series

We are very pleased to announce that our project Re-Imagine Europe has been selected for funding by the European Commission’s programme Creative Europe. Re-Imagine Europe is a four-year project presented by ten cultural organisations from across Europe, with an aim to respond to the social and political challenges that we are currently facing. Rising nationalism, climate change and migration are drawing European countries apart, while technological advances continue to change the ways that we interact, urging us to explore new modes of operation. Funded by Creative Europe, the project involves artistic residencies, commissions, workshops and symposia, using art to empower a young generation of digitally connected Europeans to explore new ideas. Re-Imagine Europe is initiated by Sonic Acts (NL) and coordinated by Paradiso (NL) in collaboration with Elevate Festival (AT), Lighthouse (UK), Ina GRM (FR), Student Centre Zagreb / Izlog Festival (HR), Landmark / Bergen Kunsthall (NO), A4 (SK), SPEKTRUM (DE) and Ràdio Web MACBA (ES). More information will follow soon.

Roly Porter & MFO at Sonic Acts Festival 2017. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Summer is upon us, and what better way to spend it than to delve into one of our many publications. For that reason, we're offering various discounts at the Sonic Acts webshop, including great discounts on Travelling Time and The Dark Universe (€5 each instead of €17,50). Take advantage of our package deal on publications: Travelling Time + The Dark Universe + Sonic Acts Academy Vol. 1 (€12,50). You can also cool off in the warm weather with one of our many Sonic Acts t-shirts (€7,50 instead of €15). Go to www.sonicacts.com/sashop and get a free bag with every purchase!

Various discounts on offer at the Sonic Acts webshop

A special summer package: Travelling Time + The Dark Universe + Sonic Acts Academy Vol. 1: €12.50

The only political party you can dance to. Progress Bar is a regular night for cutting-edge thinking and dancing, showcasing urgent sounds and voices while offering insight into the artistic practice of the most exciting contemporary artists, with interviews and lectures as well as a club programme. The final edition of this second series features DJ sets and live performances by Bambii, Endgame, Juha, Kamixlo and Lyzza. The programme begins at 21:00 in the Tuinzaal with a series of talks: writer and critic Flavia Dzodan, who focuses on issues of gender, immigration, race, politics and media analysis, will give a lecture about the possibilities of radical pleasure; political scientist Hélène Christelle will be interviewed by writer and curator Jeanette Bisschops; and Toronto-based DJ Bambii will be in conversation with Progress Bar about her artistic practice. Buy Tickets

Progress Bar S02E08. Design by Michael Oswell and Ashkan Sepahvand

The only political party you can dance to. Progress Bar is a regular night for cutting-edge thinking and dancing, showcasing urgent sounds and voices while offering insight into the artistic practice of the most exciting contemporary artists, with interviews and lectures as well as a club programme. Writer and femenist Meredith Greer kicks off the evening with a talk about constructive radicalism, followed by interviews and DJ sets by DJ Nigga Fox, Juha, Lotic, Moro, Yon Eta and Ziúr. Buy Tickets

Lotic. Photo by Elias Johansson.

The Noise of Being A shortish report touching on some of the highlights of the 2017 Sonic Acts Festival, written by a biased insider Arie Altena The Sonic Acts festival opened on Thursday, 23rd February at the Paradiso with a full evening of Vertical Cinema films, but it had actually already started three weeks earlier on the 1st of February. That Wednesday about 60 people convened at the Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ to travel by coach to St. Jansklooster, 100 kilometres from Amsterdam, the heart of the nature reserve ‘De Wieden’. There, Signe Lidén and Espen Sommer Eide had developed Vertical Studies, a vertical soundscape in the old, 46-metre-tall water tower. The audience, spread out over the spiral staircase inside the tower, experienced a performance with sounds that slowly ascended the tower, and using environmental sounds, took full advantage of the specific characteristics and possibilities of the architecture. The piece was performed several times over the next three weeks, each time with many attentive visitors.

The Noise of Being Exhibition Opening from Sonic Acts on Vimeo.

Susan Schuppli, 'Atmospheric Feedback Loops' at the opening of Sonic Acts Festival 2017. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Maryam Monalisa Gharavi at Sonic Acts Festival 2017. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Supreme Connections presents: 'Mini-Sound Series' at Sonic Acts Festival 2017. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Le1f at Sonic Acts Festival 2017. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Matthew Biederman & Pierce Warnecke, 'Perspection (squared)' at Sonic Acts Festival 2017. Photo by Pieter Kers.

Sonic Acts Festival 2017 - Day 1 - Thursday 23 February from Sonic Acts on Vimeo.

Sonic Acts Festival 2017 - Day 2 - Friday 24 February from Sonic Acts on Vimeo.

Sonic Acts Festival 2017 - Day 3 - Saturday 25 February from Sonic Acts on Vimeo.

The only political party you can dance to. Progress Bar is a regular night for cutting-edge thinking and dancing, showcasing urgent sounds and voices while offering insight into the artistic practice of the most exciting contemporary artists, with interviews and lectures as well as a club programme. The next edition of Progress Bar takes place on Saturday 1 April at Paradiso Noord, Tolhuistuin, and features An Ni, Cakes Da Killa, DJ Firmeza, Juha, Kablam and Wail Qasim. AN NI (DJ) is an Estonian DJ, currently based in Netherlands. She describes her sonic palette as genre fluid, embracing raw and hard hitting percussions. Her sets blend a mix of industrial grime and floating melodies with glimpses of noise and sound design. An Ni is affiliated to the SISTER platform. CAKES DA KILLA (live) is one of hip-hop’s most exciting voices and a ferocious rapper. His unique sound is a mix of various musical influences, cinema and underground experiences. Cakes is praised for both his lyrical content and flow, which has earned him comparisons to Lil Kim and Foxy Brown.

RESEARCH SERIES #26 In this essay, which draws on his book Dark Ecology, For a Logic of Coexistence, Timothy Morton — who originally coined the term dark ecology — explains what dark ecology is. He also argues how agrilogistics underpins our ecological crisis and our view of the world. This essay forms part of Living Earth – Field Notes from Dark Ecology Project 2014 – 2016. The publication Living Earth is available now at www.sonicacts.com/shop. Lighten up: dark ecology does not mean heavy or bleak; it is strangely light.

Progress means: humanity emerges from its spellbound state no longer under the spell of progress as well, itself nature, by becoming aware of its own indigenousness to nature and by halting the mastery over nature through which nature continues its mastery. — Theodor Adorno

Dark is dangerous. You can’t see anything in the dark, you’re afraid. Don’t move, you might fall. Most of all, don’t go into the forest. And so we have internalized this horror of the dark. — Hélène Cixous

What is the present? How can it be thought? What is presence? Ecological awareness forces us to think and feel at multiple scales, scales that disorient normative concepts such as ‘present’, ‘life’, ‘human’, ‘nature’, ‘thing’, ‘thought’ and ‘logic’. I shall argue there are layers of attunement to ecological reality more accurate than what is habitual in the media, in the academy and in society at large.

These attunement structures are necessarily weird, a precise term that we shall explore in depth. Weirdness involves the hermeneutical knowingness belonging to the practices that the Humanities maintain. The attunement, which I call ecognosis, implies a practical yet highly nonstandard vision of what ecological politics could be. In part ecognosis involves realising that nonhumans are installed at profound levels of the human — not just biologically and socially but in the very structure of thought and logic. Coexisting with these nonhumans is ecological thought, art, ethics and politics.

We can trace the ecological crisis to a logistical ‘programme’ that has been running unquestioned since the Neolithic. Ecological reality requires an awareness that at first has the characteristics of tragic melancholy and negativity, concerning coexisting inextricably with a host of entities that surround and penetrate us; but which evolves paradoxically into an anarchic, comedic sense of coexistence. Ecological awareness has the form of a loop. In this loop we become aware of ourselves as a species—a task far more difficult than it superficially appears. We also grow familiar with a logistics of human social, psychic and philosophical space, a twelve-thousand-year set of procedures that resulted in the very global warming that it was designed to fend off. The logistics represses a paradoxical realm of human– nonhuman relations. The realm contains trickster-like beings that have a loop form, which is why ecological phenomena and awareness have a loop form. The growing familiarity with this state of affairs is a manifestation of dark ecology. Dark ecology begins in darkness as depression. It traverses darkness as ontological mystery. It ends as dark sweetness.

A bear monument in Nikel. Photo by Annette Wolfsberger, 2015.

Then Nikel becomes rather sad and melancholic. A collection of broken things. Past things. Garages repurposed as homes. Broken metal structures in which people are living. Holding on to things for no reason. Peeling paint tells stories of decisions and indecisions and non-decisions.

And then for some strange reason it becomes warm. There is a Palace of Culture, full of wonderful kitschy communist art, Terry Gilliam sculpture-like lampshades, hauntingly luminous pale blues, pinks and yellows, the building grooving as hard as a Tibetan stupa. And on the outskirts the reality of death is so explicit. It’s a charnel ground almost identical to the one on Mount Kailash, another very friendly place where offerings (or are they huge piles of garbage?) litter the space at the top and nuns meditate in a land strewn with bits of corpses like an emergency room. People are dying, or are they going to live, or are they already dead? There is a lot of blood, severing and severed limbs. A lot of care.

It’s even a little bit funny. A drag queen poses for a photographer outside a metallic building. Some kind of joy is here. The demons and ghosts aren’t demons or ghosts. They are faeries and sprites.

A whale bone on top of the hill overlooking Nikel. The bone was left there when the nearby museum closed down. Photo by Rosa Menkman, 2015.

Wrecked car on the roof of a row of garages on the top of the hill in Nikel, next to the smelter plant. Photo by Rosa Menkman, 2015.

Central square in Nikel, Russia. Statue of Lenin in front of the Nikel Culture Palace Voshod. Photo by Konstantin Guz, 2014.

Discussion panel during the second Dark Ecology Journey. Photo by Michael Miller, 2015.

What thinks dark ecology? Ecognosis, a riddle. Ecognosis is like knowing, but more like letting-be-known. It is something like coexisting. It is like becoming accustomed to something strange, yet it is also becoming accustomed to strangeness that doesn’t become less strange through acclimation. Ecognosis is like a knowing that knows itself. Knowing in a loop; a weird knowing. Weird from the Old Norse, urth, meaning twisted, in a loop.² The Norns entwine the web of fate with itself; Urðr is one of the Norns.³ The term weird can mean causal: the spool of fate is winding. The less well-known noun weird means destiny or magical power, and by extension the wielders of that power, the Fates or Norns.⁴ In this sense weird is connected with worth, not the noun but the verb, which has to do with happening or becoming.⁵

Weird: a turn or twist or loop, a turn of events. The milk turned sour. She had a funny turn. That weather was a strange turn-up for the book. Yet weird can also mean strange of appearance.⁶ That storm cloud looks so weird. She is acting weird. The milk smells weird. Global weirding.

In the term weird there flickers a dark pathway between causality and the aesthetic dimension, between doing and appearing, a pathway that dominant Western philosophy has blocked and suppressed. Now the thing about seeming is that seeming is never quite as it seems. Appearance is always strange.

Though the web of fate is so often invoked in tragedy, that default agricultural mode, words such as weird and faerie evoke the animistic world within the concept of the web of fate itself. We Mesopotamians have never left the Dreaming. So little have we moved that even when we thought we were awakening we had simply gathered more tools for understanding that this was in fact a lucid dream, even better than before.

Ecological awareness is weird: it has a twisted, looping form. Since there is no limit to the scope of ecological beings (biosphere, Solar System) we can infer that all things have a loop form. Ecological awareness is a loop because human interference has a loop form, because ecological and biological systems are loops. And ultimately this is because to exist at all is to assume the form of a loop. The loop form of beings means we live in a universe of finitude and fragility, a world in which objects are suffused and surrounded by mysterious hermeneutical clouds of unknowing. It means that the politics of coexistence are always contingent, brittle and flawed, so that in the thinking of interdependence at least one being must be missing.

What kind of weirdness are we talking about? Weird weirdness. Weird means strange of appearance; weirdness means the turning of causality. There are many kinds of loops. There are positive feedback loops that escalate the potency of the system in which they are operating. Antibiotics versus bacteria. Farmers versus soil, creating the Dust Bowl in the Midwestern United States in the 1930s. Such loops are common in human ‘command and control’ approaches to environmental management and they result in damage to the ecosystem.⁷ Some of them are unintended: consider the decimation of bees in the second decade of the twenty-first century brought on by the use of pesticides that drastically curtail pollination.⁸ Such unintended consequences are weirdly weird in the sense that they are uncanny, unexpected fallout from the myth of progress: for every seeming forward motion of the drill bit there is a backwards gyration, an asymmetrical contrary motion.

Then there are the negative feedback loops that cool down the intensity of positive feedback loops. Think of thermostats and James Lovelock’s Gaia. There are phasing loops. We encounter them in beings such as global warming, beings that are temporally smeared in such a way that they come in and out of phase with human temporality.⁹

Yet there is another loop, the dark-ecological loop. Ecognosis is a strange loop. A strange loop is a loop in which two levels that appear utterly separate flip into one another. Consider the dichotomy between moving and being still. In Lewis Carroll’s haunting story, Alice tries to leave the Looking Glass House. She sets off through the front garden yet she finds herself returning to the front door via that very movement.¹⁰ A strange loop is weirdly weird: a turn of events that has an uncanny appearance. And this defines emerging ecological awareness occurring to ‘civilized’ people at this moment.

The concept of species, upgraded from the absurd teleological and metaphysical concepts of old, is not anthropocentric at all. Because it is via this concept, which is open, porous, flickering, distant from what is given to my perception, that the human is decisively deracinated from its pampered, ostensibly privileged place set apart from all other beings.¹¹

Anthropocene’ is the first fully anti-anthropocentric concept.

The Anthropocene is an anti-anthropocentric concept because it enables us to think the human species not as an ontically given thing I can point to, but as a hyperobject that is real yet inaccessible.¹² Computational power has enabled us to think and visualise things that are ungraspable by our senses or by our quotidian experience. We live on more timescales than we can grasp.

We are faced with the task of thinking at temporal and spatial scales that are unfamiliar, even monstrously gigantic. Perhaps this is why we imagine such horrors as nuclear radiation in mythological terms. Take Godzilla, who appears to have grown as awareness of hyperobjects such as global warming has taken hold. Having started at a relatively huge fifty metres, by 2014 he had grown to a whopping one hundred and fifty metres tall.¹³ Earth magnitude is bigger than we thought, even if we have seen the NASA ‘Earthrise’ photos, which now look like charming and simplistic relics of an age in which human hubris was still mostly unnoticed; relics of, precisely, a ‘space age’ that evaporates in the age of giant nonhuman places. We have gone from having ‘the whole world in our hands’ and ‘I’d like to buy the world a Coke’ to realising that the whole world, including ‘little’ us, is in the vice-like death grip of a gigantic entity—ourselves as the human species. This uncanny sense of existing on more than one scale at once has nothing to do with the pathos of cradling a beautiful blue ball in the void.

Two reasons: it is everywhere, and it is taboo to mention it. You could be labelled a primitivist even for bringing it up. Yet foundational Axial (agricultural) Age stories narrate the origin of religion as the beginning of agricultural time: an origin in sin. The texts are almost shockingly explicit, so it’s strange we don’t think to read them that way. Pretty much out loud, they say that religion as such (was there ‘religion’ beforehand?) was founded in and as impiety. We witness the extraordinary spectacle of ‘religion’ itself talking about itself as a reflective, reflexive loop of sin and salvation, with escalating positive feedback loops. Like agriculture.

There’s a monster in the dark mirror and you are a cone in one of its eyes. When you are sufficiently creeped out by the human species you see something even bigger than the Anthropocene looming in the background, hiding in plain sight. What on Earth is this structure that looms even larger than the age of steam and oil? Isn’t it enough that we have to deal with cars and drills? It is the machine that is agriculture as such, a machine that predates Industrial Age machinery. Before the web of fate began to be woven on a power loom, machinery was already whirring away.

The term agrilogistics names a specific logistics of agriculture that arose in the Fertile Crescent and that is still plowing ahead. Logistics, because it is a technical, planned, and perfectly logical approach to built space. Logistics, because it proceeds without stepping back and rethinking the logic. A viral logistics, eventually requiring steam engines and industry to feed its proliferation.¹⁴

Agrilogistics: an agricultural programme so successful that it now dominates agricultural techniques planet-wide. The programme creates a hyperobject, global agriculture: the granddaddy hyperobject, the first one made by humans, and one that has sired many more. Toxic from the beginning to humans and other lifeforms, it operates blindly like a computer program.

Agrilogistics promises to eliminate fear, anxiety and contradiction—social, physical and ontological—by establishing thin rigid boundaries between human and nonhuman worlds and by reducing existence to sheer quantity. Though toxic it has been wildly successful because the program is deeply compelling. Agrilogistics is the smoking gun behind the (literally) smoking gun responsible for the Sixth Mass Extinction Event.

The humanistic analytical tools we currently possess are not capable of functioning at a scale appropriate to agrilogistics because they are themselves compromised products of agrilogistics. The nature–culture split we persist in using is the result of a nature–agriculture split (colo, cultum pertains to growing crops). This split is a product of agrilogistical subroutines, establishing the necessarily violent and arbitrary difference between itself and what it ‘conquers’ or delimits. Differences aside the confusions and endlessly granular distinctions arising therefrom remain well within agrilogistical conceptual space.¹⁵

Humans in Mesopotamia established villages with granaries. The storage and selection of grain pushed the harvested plants to evolve. Humans selected grain for its tastiness, ease of harvesting and other criteria favoured by the agrilogistical program. Scaled up the evolutionary pressure was substantial. Nine thousand years ago humans began to domesticate animals to mitigate seasonal variations in game, a modification to the agrilogistical programme that kept it in existence.¹⁶ Several agrilogistical millennia later, domesticated animals far outweigh (literally again) the number of non-domesticated ones. Humans represent roughly 32% of vertebrate biomass. The other 65% is creatures we keep to eat. Vertebrate wildlife counts for less than 3%.¹⁷ The term cattle speaks to this immensity and to a too-easy ontology humming away in its background.

Miserable social conditions were the almost immediate consequence of the inception of agrilogistics yet the virus persisted like an earworm or a chair, no matter how destructive to the humans who had devised it.¹⁸ Private property emerged based on settled ownership and use of land, a certain house and so on. This provided the nonhuman basis of the contemporary concept of self no matter how much we want to think ourselves out of that. Agrilogistics led rapidly to patriarchy, the impoverishment of all but a very few, a massive and rigid social hierarchy, and feedback loops of human–nonhuman interaction such as epidemics.¹⁹

The human hyperobject (the human as geophysical species) became a machine for the generation of hyperobjects. Precisely because of the sharp imbalance between the ‘civilisation’ concept and actually existing social space (which was never fully human), agrilogistics itself having produced this difference, ‘civilisations’ (the human structures of agrilogistical retreat) are inherently fragile.

Living Earth cover photo by Rosa Menkman, 2015.

(1) The Law of Noncontradiction is inviolable.

(2) Existing means being constantly present.

(3) Existing is always better than any quality of existing.

Axiom (1) also results in the persistent charm of the Easy Think Substance. Agrilogistical ontology, formalised by Aristotle, supposes a being to consist of a bland lump of whatever decorated with accidents. It’s the Easy Think Substance because it resembles what comes out of an Easy Bake Oven, a children’s toy. Some kind of brown featureless lump emerges, which one subsequently decorates with sprinkles.

The lump ontology evoked in Axiom (1) implies Axiom (2): to exist is to be constantly present, or the metaphysics of presence. Correctly identified by deconstruction as inimical to thinking future coexistence, the metaphysics of presence is intimately bound up with the history of global warming. Here is the field, I can plough it, sow it with this or that or nothing, farm cattle, yet it remains constantly the same. The entire system is construed as constantly present, rigidly bounded, separated from nonhuman systems. This appearance of hard separation belies the obvious existence of beings who show up ironically to maintain it. Consider the cats and their helpful culling of rodents chewing at the corn.²¹ The ambiguous status of cats is not quite the ‘companion species’ Haraway thinks through human coexistence with dogs.²² Within agrilogistical social space cats stand for the ontological ambiguity of lifeforms and indeed of things at all. Cats are a neighbour species.²³ Too many concepts are implied in the notion of ‘companion’. The penetrating gaze of a cat is used as the gaze of the extra-terrestrial alien because cats are the intra-terrestrial alien.

The agrilogistical engineer must strive to ignore the cats as best as he (underline he) can. If that doesn’t work he is obliged to kick them upstairs into deity status. Meanwhile he asserts instead that he could plant anything in this agrilogistical field and that underneath it remains the same field. A field is a substance underlying its accidents: cats happen, rodents happen, even wheat happens; the slate can always be wiped clean. Agrilogistical space is a war against the accidental. Weeds and pests are nasty accidents to minimise or eliminate.

Agrilogistical existing means being there in a totally uncomplicated sense. No matter what the appearances might be, essence lives on. Ontologically as much as socially, agrilogistics is immiseration. Appearance is of no consequence. What matters is knowing where your next meal is coming from no matter what the appearances are. Without paying too much attention to the cats, you have broken things down to pure simplicity and are ready for Axiom (3):

(3) Existing is always better than any quality of existing.

(3) Human existing is always better than any quality of existing.

To avoid the consequences of the last global warming, humans devised a logistics that has resulted in global warming.

The concept Nature isn’t only untrue; it’s responsible for global warming! Nature is defined within agrilogistics as a harmonious periodic cycling. Conveniently for agrilogistics, Nature arose at the start of the geological period we call the Holocene, a period marked by stable Earth system fluctuations.²⁹ One might argue that Nature is an illusion created by an accidental collaboration between the Holocene and agrilogistics: unconscious, and therefore liable to be repeated and prolonged like a zombie stumbling forwards. Like Oedipus meeting his father on the crossroads, the cross between the Holocene and agrilogistics has been fatally unconscious.

Nature is best imagined as the feudal societies imagined it, a pleasingly harmonious periodic cycling embodied in the cycle of the seasons, enabling regular anxiety-free prediction of the future. Carbon dioxide fluctuated in a harmonious-seeming cycle for 12,000 years—until it didn’t.³⁰ We Mesopotamians took this coincidence to be a fact about our world, and called it Nature. The smooth predictability allowed us to sustain the illusion. Think of how when we think of nonhumans we reminisce nostalgically for a less deviant-seeming moment within agrilogistics, such as fantasies of a feudal worldview: cyclic seasons, regular rhythms, tradition. This is just how agrilogistics feels—at first. The ecological value of the term Nature is dangerously overrated, because Nature isn’t just a term—it’s something that happened to human built space, demarcating human systems from Earth systems. Nature as such is a twelve-thousand-year-old human product, geological as well as discursive. Its wavy elegance was eventually revealed as inherently contingent and violent, as when in a seizure one’s brain waves become smooth.³¹. Wash-rinse-repeat the agrilogistics and suddenly we reach a tipping point.

The Anthropocene doesn’t destroy Nature. The Anthropocene is Nature in its toxic nightmare form. Nature is the latent form of the Anthropocene waiting to emerge as catastrophe.

What is required to remember is that this is a weird essentialism.

Earth isn’t just a blank sheet for the projection of human desire: the desire loop is predicated on entities (Earth, coral, clouds) that also exist in loop form in relation to one another and in relation to humans. We are going to have to rethink what a thing is. We require a Difficult Think Thing. That I claim humans exist and made the Anthropocene by drilling into rock does indeed make me an essentialist. However, if we must attune to the Difficult Think Thing, such a thing wouldn’t cleave to the Law of Noncontradiction, agrilogistical Axiom (1). Which in turn implies that while beings are what they are (essentialism) they are not constantly present. Demonstrating this would constitute a weird essentialism in the lineage of Luce Irigaray, whose project has been to break the Law of Noncontradiction so as to liberate beings from patriarchy.³²

As a performance of not seeming an idiot in theory class one is obliged to convey something like, ‘Well of course, I’m not an essentialist’ (make disgusted face here). Compare the ridicule that greets the idea of creating social spaces that are not agrilogistical (so not traditionally capitalist, communist or feudal). Such reactions are themselves agrilogistical. Both assume that to have a politics is to have a one-size-fits-all Easy Think concept. If you don’t, you are called a primitivist or an anarchist, both derogatory terms, and deemed unserious. Or you want to regress to some utopian state that ‘we couldn’t possibly even imagine’. ‘Of course, I’m not advocating that we actually try a social space that includes nonhumans in a noncoercive and nonutilitarian mode.’ Or its inverse, ridiculing ‘civilisation’: insisting that humans should ‘return’ to a pre-agrilogistical existence (John Zerzan, archivist of the Unabomber Ted Kaczinski). ‘Eliminate the evil loops of the human stain. Anyone with prosthetic devices such as glasses is suspect.’³³ Once one has deconstructed civilisation into agrilogistical retreat it is tempting to think this way. But imagine the Year Zero violence of actually trying to get rid of intellectuality, reflection, desire, whatever we think is a source of evil, so we can feel right and properly ecological. The assertion that this problem has something to do with ‘domestication’—which is how Zerzan and others frame it—avoids the genuine agrilogistical problem. ‘Domestication’ is a term from some kind of fall narrative: once upon a time, we let things be wild, but then we took some into our homes and unleashed evil. Neanderthals lived in homes. Primates make beds of leaves. Dogs were fused with humans hundreds of thousands of years ago. ‘Domestication’ is a canard that is itself agrilogistical, straight out of a theistic fall narrative.

The question of origins is complicated by the way in which that question is contaminated in advance by agrilogistics. We need to figure out how we fell for it, in order not to keep retweeting it. What seems to be the case is that a default paranoia about existing—an ontological uncertainty —was covered over as a survival mechanism, and the compelling, almost addictive qualities of that mechanism of covering-over has provided enough ontological comfort, until very recently, so as to go unexamined.

Recall, furthermore, that some of the most common words for thinking and apprehension—gather, glean—derive from agriculture.³⁶ What is required is no less than a logic that is otherwise than agrilogistical. A logic that is fully eco-logical. If you want ecological things to exist—ecological things like humans, meadows, frogs and the biosphere—you have to allow them to violate the logical ‘Law’ of Noncontradiction and its niece, the Law of the Excluded Middle. If we don’t, then it won’t be possible to explain the existence of vague, heap-like beings such as lifeforms and ecosystems, because they are not entirely self-identical.

According to the rigid agrilogistical logic format, there is no single, independent, definable point at which a meadow (for example) stops being a meadow. So there are no meadows. They might as well be car parks waiting to happen. And since by the same logic there are no car parks either, it doesn’t really matter if I build one on this meadow. Can you begin to see how the logical Law of Noncontradiction enables me to eliminate ecological beings both in thought and in actual physical reality? The Law of Noncontradiction was formulated by Aristotle, in section Gamma of his Metaphysics. It’s strange that we still carry this old law around in our heads, never thinking to prove it formally. According to the Law of Noncontradiction, being true means not contradicting yourself. You can’t say p and not-p at the very same time. You can’t say a meadow is a meadow and is not a meadow. Yet this is what is required, unless you want meadows not to exist.

The arche-lithic mind is immersed in a non-totalisable host of patterns that cannot be bounded in advance: lifeforms, ghosts, phantasms, zombies, visions, tricksters, masks. The idea that we might be deceived is intrinsic to the agrilogistical virus. The possibility of pretence haunts arche-lithic ‘cultures’ of magic as a structurally necessary component of that culture: ‘The real skill of the practitioner [of magic] lies not in skilled concealment but in the skilled revelation of skilled concealment.’³⁷ (I must put ‘culture’ in quotation marks because the term is hopelessly agrilogistical.) Skepticism and faith might not be enemies in every social configuration. In arche-lithic space they might be weirdly intertwined.

There is an ontological reason why the play of magic involves epistemological panic giving rise to hermeneutical spirals of belief and disbelief. The dance of concealing and revealing happens because reality as such just does have a magical, flickering aspect. It is as if there is an irreducible, story-like hermeneutical web that plays around and within all things. An irreducible uncertainty, not because things are unreal, but because they are real.

This telepathic Force-like zone of nonhuman energy keeps nuzzling at the edge of modern thought and culture, as if with enough relaxed religious inhibitions and enough enjoyable products humans default to the arche-lithic.

There is something profound and perhaps disturbing about the aesthetic–causal dimension. And about life: ‘life’ is not the opposite of death. The homology between cancer cells and embryo growth bears this out. The only difference is that an embryo becomes shapely through another death process, apoptosis: the dying-away of superfluous cells. There is no final resting spot: there is always something excessive about the pattern.³⁹ Life is an ambiguous spectral ‘undead’ quivering between two types of death: the machination of the death drive and the dissolution of physical objects.

And going down a level, this is because of the structure of how things are. Being and appearing are deeply, inextricably intertwined, yet different. This means that beings are themselves strange loops, the very loops that ecological awareness reminds us of. Much philosophical and cultural muscle has been put into getting rid of these loops, which are often decried as narcissistic, because they are self-relating, self-referential. But what is required for caring for nonhumans is precisely an extension of what is called narcissism! So attacking narcissism is something dark ecology won’t do: ‘What is called non-narcissism is in general but the economy of a much more welcoming, hospitable narcissism...without a movement of narcissistic reappropriation, the relation to the other would be absolutely destroyed, it would be destroyed in advance’ (Derrida).⁴⁰

We have to accept the disturbing excess of the aesthetic dimension as an intrinsic part of everything in the universe, and indeed as the part that has to do with causality itself.

So things are like the ouroboros, the self-swallowing snake. The Norse myth is pertinent: when Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent, stops sucking its own tail this is the beginning of Ragnarok, the apocalyptic battle. Agrilogistics has been a constant process of trying to un-loop the loop form of things. Finally to rid of the world of weirdness is impossible, as is devising a metalanguage that would slay self-reference forever. Violent threats can be made: ‘Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned.’⁴¹ You are either with us or against us. Torture isn’t an argument any more than kicking a pebble is, and the threat of torture is no way to display intelligence, let alone proof. The violence of the threat is in proportion to the impossibility of actually ridding the world of contradiction. Beating and burning, something done to cattle and corn, witches and weeds, is not the same as thinking and arguing. Still, in the margins of agrilogistical thought, we cannot but detect the disturbingly soft rustling of the arche-lithic and its serpentine beings. Beings inherently fragile, like logical systems that contain necessary flaws, like the hamartia of a tragic hero.

The modern upgrade of the Cadmus myth is the idea of progress, for instance, the idea that we have transcended our material conditions. I’m Harold and the Purple Crayon, ‘I am the lizard king, / I can do anything’, ‘I’m the Decider, goo-goo-ga-joob.’⁴² (Harold and the Purple Crayon is a US children’s character who can draw whatever he likes with his crayon in the void. Say he is drowning: he can draw a boat.) But if things are nonorientable surfaces, philosophy had better get out of the mastery business and into the allergy medicine business. We need philosophical medicine so as not to have allergic reactions before we mow the allergens down and build a parking lot. To remain in indecision.

We find this ecological smile within in the horror, disgust, shame and guilt of ecological awareness itself, because strangely, that joy is the possibility condition for all the other, more reified forms of ecological awareness. It goes like this. We have guilt because we can have shame. We have shame because we can have horror. We have horror because we can have depression. We have depression because we can have sadness. We have sadness because we can have longing. We have longing because we can have joy. Find the joy without pushing away the depression, for depression is accurate.

We live in a world of objectified depression. So do all the other lifeforms, who didn’t ask to be sucked into the grey concrete time tunnel. No wonder then that we find mass extinction depressing and uncanny.

Lighten up: dark ecology does not mean heavy or bleak; it is strangely light. Lifeforms play (‘This is a bite and this is not a bite’), because play is structural to reality, because things shimmer.⁴⁴ A disturbing imbalance and fragility haunts this play in order for it to be play. This is why play isn’t just candy or glue but structural to reality. If you think of (agrilogistical) civilization as normative you have already decided that it is inevitable, and this means that you have decided that agrilogistical retreat is the only way to move across Earth.

Timothy Morton - Dark Ecological Chocolate from Sonic Acts on Vimeo.

1. In 2013, Paul Kingsnorth published an essay called ‘Dark Ecology: Searching for Truth in a Post-Green World’ in Orion magazine (January–February 2013). Dark ecology is a term I coined in 2004 and wrote about in Ecology without Nature (2007). 2. Oxford English Dictionary, ‘weird’, adj. http://www.oed.com. 3. S.N. Hagen, ‘On Nornir ‘Fates’, Modern Language Notes, vol. 39, no. 8 (December 1924), pp. 466–69. 4. Oxford English Dictionary, ‘weird’, n. 1.a., 1.b., 2.a. oed.com. 5. Oxford English Dictionary, ‘worth’, v. oed.com. 6. Oxford English Dictionary, ‘weird’, adj. 1, 2.a., 3, oed.com. 7. C.S. Holling and Gary K. Meffe, ‘Command and Control and the Pathology of Natural Resource Management’, Conservation Biology, vol. 10, no. 2 (April 1996), pp. 328–37 8. Michael Wines, ‘Mys- tery Malady Kills More Bees, Heightening Wor- ry on Farms’, New York Times, 28 March 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/science/earth/soaring-bee-deaths-in-2012-sound-alarm-on-malady.html?pagewanted=all&_ r=0. Brad Plumer, ‘We’ve Covered the World in Pesticides: Is That a Problem?’, Washington Post, 18 August 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonk-blog/wp/2013/08/18/the-world-uses-billions-of-pounds-of-pesticides-each-year-is-that-a-problem. 9. Suzanne Goldenberg, ‘Americans Care Deeply about “Global Warming”—But Not ‘Climate Change’, The Guardian, 27 May 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/27/americans-climate-change-global-warming-yale-report/print, accessed 2 June 2014. 10. Lewis Carroll, Alice Through the Looking Glass in The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition, ed. Martin Gardner, New York: Norton, 2000, p. 157. 11. This idea is occurring to a number of people simultaneously. See for instance Charles C. Mann, ‘State of the Species: Does Success Spell Doom for Homo Sapiens?’, Orion (November–December 2012), http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/7146. 12. I use the term ‘ontic’ as Martin Heidegger uses it in Being and Time, tr. Joan Stambaugh, Albany, N.Y: State University of New York Press, 2010, p. 11. 13. I’m grateful to my talented Ph.D. student Toby Bates for pointing this out. 14. Timothy Morton, Dark Ecology, New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. 15. There are far too many texts to mention, but two reasonably recent ones that have stood out for me have been Geoffrey Hartman, The Fateful Question of Culture, New York: Columbia University Press, 1997; and Terry Eagleton, The Idea of Culture, Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. 16. In New Guinea, native pigs can’t plough, so agrilogistics was stymied there again. 17. Jan Zalasiewicz, ‘The Geological Basis for the Anthropocene,’ The History and Politics of the Anthropocene, University of Chicago, 17–18 May 2013. 18. Jared Diamond, ‘The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race’, Discover Magazine (May 1987), pp. 64–66. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. He offers a slightly revised discussion in ‘Overpopulation and the Quality of Life’, in Applied Ethics, ed. Peter Singer, New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. 19. On the patriarchy aspect insofar as it affects philosophy as such, Luce Irigaray is succinct: woman has been taken ‘quoad matrem... in the entire philosophic tradition. It is even one of the conditions of its possibility. One of the necessities, also, of its foundation: it is from (re)productive earth-mother-nature that the production of the logos will attempt to take away its power, by pointing to the power of the beginning(s) in the monopoly of the origin.’ This Sex Which Is Not One, tr. Catherine Porter and Carolyn Burke, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985, p. 102. 20. See, for instance, Pedro Barbosa, ed., Conservation Biological Control, San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1998. 21. Rebecca J. Rosen, ‘How Humans Invented Cats’, The Atlantic, 16 December 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/how-humans-created-cats/282391. Gerry Everding, ‘Cat Domestication Traced to Chinese Farmers 5,300 Years Ago’, Washington University St. Louis Newsroom, 16 December 2013, https://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/26273.aspx. Carlos A. Driscoll, ‘The Taming of the Cat’, Scientific American, vol. 300, no. 6 (June 2009), pp. 68–75. Yaowu Hu et al., ‘Earliest Evidence for Commensal Processes of Cat Domestication’, PNAS, vol. 111, no. 1 (7 January 2014), pp. 116–20. 22. See, for instance, Donna Haraway, When Species Meet, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. 23. For arguments in support of this hypothesis, see Terry O’Connor, Animals as Neighbors: The Past and Present of Commensal Animals, East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2013. 24. Tom Stoppard, Darkside: A Play for Radio Incorporating The Dark Side of the Moon (Parlophone, 2013). 25. Richard Manning, ‘The Oil We Eat’, Harper’s Magazine, 4 February 2004, http://www.wesjones.com/oil-weeat.htm. See Richard Manning, Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization, New York: North Point, 2005. 26. Gardiner, Perfect Moral Storm, pp. 213–45. 27. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. 28. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 433–41. 29. It is well accepted that concentrations of O18, an oxygen isotope, track climate stability. O18 concentrations were remarkably stable from the start of agrilogistics until the start of the Anthropocene. 30. Jan Zalasiewicz, presentation at ‘History and Politics of the Anthropocene’, University of Chicago, May 2013. 31. I am grateful to Jan Zalasiewicz for discussing this with me. 32. See also Hélène Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa, tr. Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen, Signs, vol. 1, no. 4 (Summer, 1976), pp. 875–93 (882). 33. See, for instance, John Zerzan, ‘The Catastrophe of Post-modernism’, Future Primitive Revisited, Port Townsend, WA: Feral House, 2012, pp. 64–90. The first demon named is the loop of ‘Consumer narcissism’ (64). In contrast, Neanderthal mind was fully present to itself and to its environment in a pure, non-deviant circularity, compared to which even the pre-Neolithic divisions of labour and cave paintings seem like original sin: ‘Running on Emptiness: The Failure of Symbolic Thought’, Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization, Los Angeles: Feral House, 2002, pp. 1–16 (2–3). 34. Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense’, The Nietzsche Reader, ed. Keith Ansell Pearson and Duncan Large, Oxford: Blackwell, 2006, pp. 114–23 (118). 35. Cary Wolfe, What Is Posthumanism?, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. 36. Oxford English Dictionary, ‘gather’, 4.a., b., c.; ‘glean’, v. oed.com: ‘1. To gather or pick up ears of corn which have been left by the reapers.’ 37. Michael Taussig, ‘Viscerality, Faith and Skepticism’, in Birgit Meyer and Peter Pels, eds., Magic and Modernity: Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003, pp. 272–341 (273). 38. See, for instance, Nicholas Royle’s magnificent Telepathy and Literature: Essays on the Reading Mind, Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. 39. George Johnson, ‘A Tumor, the Embryo’s Evil Twin’, New York Times, 17 March 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/science/a-tumor-the-embryos-evil-twin.html?_r=0. 40. Jacques Derrida, ‘There Is No One Narcissism: Autobiophotographies’, Points: Interviews 1974–1994, ed. Elisabeth Weber, tr. Peggy Kamuf et al., Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995, pp. 196–215 (199). 41. Avicenna, Metaphysics I.8, 53.13–15. 42. The Doors, ‘The Celebration of the Lizard’, Absolutely Live (Elektra, 1970). The Beatles, ‘I Am the Walrus’, Magical Mystery Tour (EMI, 1967). 43. Henri Bergson, ‘Laughter’, in Wylie Sypher, ed., and intro., Comedy: ‘An Essay on Comedy’ by George Meredith and ‘Laughter’ by Henri Bergson, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956, pp. 59 – 190. 44. Gregory Bateson, ‘A Theory of Play and Fantasy’, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, foreword Mary Catherine Bateson, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, pp. 177 – 93. 45. Kate Soper ‘Alternative Hedonism, Cultural Theory and the Role of Aesthetic Revisioning’, Cultural Studies, vol. 22, no. 5, Taylor and Francis, September 2008, pp. 567–87. 46. Jean-Antheleme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste, tr. Anne Drayton, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970, p. 13. Ludwig Feuerbach, Gesammelte Werke II, Kleinere Schriften, ed. Werner Schuffenhauer, Berlin: Akadamie-Verlag, 1972. 47. Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, tr. Catherine Porter and Carolyn Burke, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985, p. 31.