September 30–October 23, 2022
From September 30 to October 23, Sonic Acts is back in full force with a biennial international festival at various locations in and around Amsterdam, including W139, Het HEM, Likeminds, OT301, Zone2Source and Singelkerk. Stretching beyond the standard format of the festival, the 2022 biennial features three weekends of exhibition openings, performances, lectures, sound installations, artist presentations, workshops, excursions and more.
For almost three decades, Sonic Acts has sought to celebrate new developments in electronic and digital artforms. With its 2022 biennial programme, Sonic Acts emphasises collaborative knowledge production, as well as experimental sound and moving image that attunes and responds to ecological thinking. Through thought-provoking interventions, the Biennial provides an immersion into the environmental humanities and contemporary art practices responding to the urgency of pollution.
Participating artists and researchers include Agnès Villette and Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou, Aho Ssan, Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh, Áine O’Dwyer, Ale Hop and Tatiana Heuman; Alexa Hatanaka, Danny Osborne, Eric McNair-Landry, Erik Boomer, Patrick Thompson, Raven Chacon and Sarah McNair-Landry; Andrea Galano Toro, Angeliki Balayannis, Anthea Caddy, Antonia Alampi, Arnaud Rivière, Aura Satz, Ben Bertrand, Bloedneus en de Snuitkever, Bride, Cesar Majorana, Dani Admiss, Dania, Debit, Enrico Malatesta, Félicia Atkinson, Félix Blume, Femke Dekker, Hüma Utku, Jessica Ekomane, John Grzinich, Julian Charrière, Kali Malone, Kent Chan, Lance Laoyan, Leanne Wijnsma, Leila Bordreuil, Louis Braddock Clarke and Zuzanna Zgierska, Lucky Dragons, Lucy Railton, Maria Komarova, Mary Maggic, Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, Mazen Kerbaj, MELT, Music Research Strategies and Dirar Kalash, Natalie Dixon, Nerea Calvillo, Nicole L’Huillier, Nina Garcia, Nishat Awan, Olivia Block; pantea, u-matic and Telematique; PLF, Russell Haswell and Hugo Esquinca, Sam Lavigne, Samson Young, Sarah Davachi and Nemø ensemble, Sasha Engelmann and Sophie Dyer, Seline Buttner, Soundcamp, Stephen O’Malley, Tarek Atoui and Tomoko Sauvage. More artists and speakers are to be announced.
Opening on September 30, the Sonic Acts Biennial 2022 exhibition one sun after another contemplates multiple incarnations of time, listening to an immersive aerial choir of bees, following a microbe embedded within lithium traveling from a Chilean mine to a digital device, and plunging into deep time through lead-encased nuclear coconuts from the Bikini Atoll. Artistic research traces the lineages of exhaust produced by oil and other extractive economies, while in other places it speculates over Greenland’s mineral deposits, now made accessible by melting ice. In the Canadian Arctic, visual narratives on monumental ice walls come and go with tidal movements, soundtracked by a cacophony of environmental field recordings. Against the din, visitors are welcome to a joyful meditation about presence, sensing and bending time, before drifting downstream, where the exhibition stretches time even further. Diving under, performative and installative artworks explore toxic cycles of water and stretch inner time with hybrid instruments and sub-aquatic amplification.
For more information and tickets visit here.
