FIBER Festival Symposium 2023
Acts of Fragmentation
May 13 + 14, De Brakke Grond
How to attune to a fragmented world? The FIBER festival symposium will take a deep dive into the work of visionary makers and thinkers, through alternative modes of listening, organising and practising art.
After a period of 3 years, the FIBER symposium returns to the theatre hall of the Brakke Grond in the city centre of Amsterdam. Our two-day exploratory programme is a vibrant meeting place for students, professional makers/researchers, and anyone with an interest in contemporary art and culture. International speakers – from musicians, digital artists, writers to leading scientists – will share their work and thus reflect on pressing questions in relation to technological and ecological developments. A multitude of stories and perspectives on realigning us with our histories and living environments, will be brought together under the title Acts of Fragmentation. Sharing alternative modes of listening and playing.
Saturday’s programme offers a stage to makers and researchers working with sound, worldbuilding and performative strategies, through which they (re)experience human and non-human realities. Join us on a journey to discover the healing power of sound frequencies, how playing fictional worlds teaches us something about more-than-human sensorial perceptions and go underground with SPUN and the intelligence of mycelium. The Saturday programme will be moderated by Abdel Hassan
Sunday, we explore emerging initiatives and mindsets on how we can re-organise an increasingly fragmented world. From new assemblies of energy communities and queering technology, to how artificial intelligence systems are listening to us and other machines, and what forms of community organising are being experimented with - from virtual care to distributed ways of critical blockchain thinking. The sunday programme will be moderated by Michelle Kasprzak
Location: De Brakke Grond
Nes 45, 1012 KD Amsterdam
Would you like to attend the symposium but are you deaf or hard of hearing? Then we gladly want to provide an interpreter to attend the programme. Please sign up for this via lisa@fiber-space.nl
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Session 1: Transformative Frequencies
How Listening Can Expand Understanding and Healing
Talks by: Maria Muehombo (M I M I), Budhaditya Chattopadhyay
Saturday 13 May, De Brakke Grond (+ online)
12:00 - 14:00During times of crisis, when we feel highly disoriented, does it help to fall silent and listen to our surroundings? How did we get here, and how do we move forward? Opening the 2023 festival symposium, we will learn from guest speakers whose research and artistic practice explore how sound, music and recordings can work as new modes of orientation. Can we reach a deeper understanding of the crises we find ourselves in? Can sound and performing be a guide to new paths of understanding and healing?
Prior to the lectures – without saying anything – we will open the first day of the symposium with a performance by the Belgian artist, DJ and performer M I M I, in which she explores the healing potential of sound. The performance will start at 12:00. And the lectures start at 12:30.
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Session 2: Playing Worlds
Exploring Acts of Sonic Worldbuilding
Talks by: Jordan Edge & Aditi Srivastava
Saturday 13 May, De Brakke Grond (+ online)
14:30 - 16:00 CESTBy opening up our bodies and minds to new sonic experiences, can we create new realities and alternative worlds? These two performative lectures will explore sonic possibilities of creating alternative realities and worlding systems that break apart and reassemble cultural narratives. From imagining queer futures to deconstructing colonial structures, our speakers will guide us towards alternative worlds, inviting us to shapeshift into new beings. Can we push our own boundaries of understanding and imagining through playing, chanting and listening?
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Session 3: Symbotic Systems
From Fungal Knowledge to Machine Symbioses
Talks by: Toby Kiers (SPUN) & Studio Above & Below
Saturday 13 May, De Brakke Grond (+ online)
16:30 - 18:00 CESTThe world of communication between animals, plants and fungi is still a largely alien territory for humans. Without amplification or augmentation, large parts are inaudible to us, but what goes on under our feet in the soil and between the buildings of our cities is of great importance to the inner workings of our ecosystems. In this session, we listen to mycelium and learn of the importance of protecting these vast networks, and explore how AI and game engine technology can be used to better understand multi-species communication and design within our cities.
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Session 4: Grounding Instruments
A fragmented study of (ecological) truth, matter and instruments
Talks by: Sean Cubitt (remote) & Helen V. Pritchard
Sunday 14 May, De Brakke Grond (+ online)
12:15 - 13:30 CESTWhile we overshoot many ecological boundaries of our planet, and we may already be at/beyond a point-of-no-return, many are working hard on alternative ways of thinking, listening and living that are grounded within an earthly reality of matter and sound. This can be seen as reaching a new 21st-century truth in which our instruments, the knowledge we produce and their energy consumption are organised in new ways. To open the second day of FIBER’s symposium, we have asked Seán Cubitt and Helen V. Pritchard for a fragmented study on listening, sensing and developing in ecological ways. Seán Cubitt will address how we could hear ecologically and make space for sensory wisdom, also within the framework of his latest book Truth. Helen V. Pritchard will introduce us to her work with the Regenerative Energy Communities, working with soil, low energy instruments and regenerative and queer organising.
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Session 5: Patterns in the Noise
How machines are listening and learning
Talks: Aimée Theriot-Ramos, Emile Frankel (remote), Arif Kornweitz
Sunday 14 May, De Brakke Grond (+ online)
14:15 - 16:00 CESTMachine learning and artificial intelligence have opened up new possibilities in every aspect of our lives. Like many other things, the sonic world has changed, from generative music systems to real-time sound processing. Meanwhile, these developments have raised important questions about technology's role in creative expression, the ethics of using AI to produce and manipulate sound, and the potential impact of these technologies. With this panel, we will zoom in on the possibilities and entanglements of machine listening and artificial sounds. How do machines listen to us and other machines? How are they trained and how does their listening affect our perception of the world?
The panel will start with a listening experience by Arif Kornweitz and a short Q&A.
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Session 6: Fragmented Collectivity
New ways of collective, decentralised and careful togetherness
Panel with: Alice Yuan Zhang (remote), Wassim Z. Alsindi, and Michelle Kasprzak.
Sunday 14 May, De Brakke Grond (+ online)
16:30 - 18:00 CESTWhile we are still catching our breath from a global pandemic, we are simultaneously seeing the accelerated or urgent possibilities of decentralised and virtual ways of organising. From the promises of Web3, blockchain and DAOs (Decentralised Autonomous Organisations) to social and ecological-inspired ways of regenerative community organisation. How can we organise ourselves within a disintegrating world due to a technological and ecological emergency? In which the virtual and physical are part of one material and spiritual world. What strategies and ways are there to offer a collective alternative towards a post-capitalist and regenerative world? We close the 2023 symposium with a panel on hopeful, yet critical views and artistic ways of fragmented togetherness and trust.
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Abdo Hassan (Moderator)
Sat 13 May De Brakke Grond
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Aimée Theriot-Ramos (Lecture)
Sun 14 May
De Brakke Grond -
Aditi Srivastava (Lecture)
Sat 13 May
De Brakke Grond -
Alice Yuan Zhang (Remote Lecture)
Sun 14 May
De Brakke Grond | Remote -
Arif Kornweitz (Lecture)
Sun 14 May
De Brakke Grond -
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay (Lecture)
Sat 13 May
De Brakke Grond -
Helen Pritchard (Lecture)
Sat 13 May
De Brakke Grond | Remote -
Jordan Edge (Lecture)
Sat 13 May
De Brakke Grond -
Sean Cubitt (Remote Lecture)
Sat 13 May
De Brakke Grond | Remote -
Studio Above&Below (Lecture)
Sat 13 May
De Brakke Grond -
Toby Kiers | SPUN (Lecture)
Sat 13 May
De Brakke Grond -
Maria Muehombo aka M I M I (Lecture)
Sat 13 May
De Brakke Grond -
Michelle Kasprzak (Moderator)
Sun 13 May De Brakke Grond
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Wassim Z. Alsindi (Lecture)
Sat 13 May De Brakke Grond
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Emile Frankel (Remote Lecture)
Sun 14 May De Brakke Grond | Remote