stedelijk @ sonic acts festival - sonic acts master classes

February 20-23, 2012

Location: Several locations  in Amsterdam (STEIM, SMART Project Space, and De Balie)
Language: English
Fee: € 25 per master class (catering included)
Registration: Please see below 

Call for Participants: Sonic Acts Master Classes, February 20-23, 2012, Amsterdam

In collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum and STEIM, Sonic Acts will host a series of Master Classes as part of this year’s festival edition Travelling Time. The Master Classes will be supervised by Catherine Christer Hennix, Peter Kubelka, Olaf Nicolai, Pauline Oliveros, and Tino Sehgal. 

The Master Classes provide a unique opportunity for artists, musicians, and other creative professionals to work with five internationally renowned artists whose work critically reflects on time and timing. In a concentrated and intimate setting, participants will gain insight into the artists’ concepts, creative processes, and methods of composition and production through hands-on workshops and seminars. 

To participate

The deadline for applications is February 12, 2012. Please send a biography and a short statement of motivation outlining why you would like to take part in a specific Master Class to: masterclass@sonicacts.com. 

Attending multiple classes is possible. Late or incomplete applications will not be considered. You will be notified about the result of your application by February 14. Successful applicants will receive a detailed schedule, as well as more information about the preparation for the Master Class, with their notification. 

Dates & Locations

The Master Classes take place in Amsterdam at STEIM, SMART Project Space, and De Balie

February 20: Olaf Nicolai

February 21 & 22: Catherine Christer Hennix

February 22: Peter Kubelka

February 23: Pauline Oliveros

February 23: Tino Sehgal

The Master Class  program is made possible with the generous support of the Mondriaan Fund. 

More information about the artists: 

Catherine Christer Hennix (US/SE) is a composer, philosopher, mathematician, and visual artist. In the 1960s and 1970s, she worked with illustrious figures such as La Monte Young and Pandit Pran Nath, who were very important for her own work. She has frequently collaborated with the American anti-art philosopher, composer, and violinist Henry Flynt. Hennix also draws inspiration from Japanese Gagaku music and the early vocal music of Perotinus and Leoninus. All her major compositions, including The Electric Harpsichord, are regarded as part of an ongoing, endless cycle. 

Hennix’ two-day Master Class will investigate the relationship between modern music, programming and linguistics, and relate the latter to mathematical structures. 

Peter Kubelka (AT) is a multifaceted artist and theoretician who has worked in film, cooking, music, architecture, speech, and writing. He communicates through lectures, which also use non-verbal elements “to free our world view from being the exclusive property of language.” Kubelka’s cinematographic work is short and highly condensed. His “Metric Films” preceded and laid the foundations for structural cinema. Kubelka will lead a master class on film and cooking. 

Olaf Nicolai (DE) is a German artist whose conceptual approach and use of diverse media question the way in which we view our everyday environment. He also translates theories from science and the arts into aesthetic-artistic idioms, rendering them accessible in a new context. His works deal with the perception of time in the reception of art. Nicolai has participated in international solo and group exhibitions. His works were shown at Documenta X, and at the 49th and 51st Venice Biennales. Several of his works can be found in public collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Thyssen Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna; Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, Berlin; and Migros Museum, Zürich. 

Pauline Oliveros (US), composer, performer and humanitarian, is an important pioneer in American music and electronic music. She has explored sound for five decades, breaking new ground for herself and others. Through improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching, and meditation, she has created a body of work with such breadth of vision that it profoundly affects those who experience it. 
Oliveros will lead a Deep Listening session. 

Tino Sehgal (DE/UK) is a British-German artist whose works, which he calls “constructed situations,” involve one or more people carrying out instructions conceived by the artist. What all of Sehgal's works have in common is that they reside only in the space and time they occupy, and in the memory of the work and its reception. The artist himself describes his works as “constructed situations,” whose materials are the human voice, language, movement, and interaction, without the production of physical objects. His pieces are choreographies that are regularly staged in museums or galleries, and continuously executed for the entire duration of a show. In 2012, he will present a newly commissioned work for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, London.

More information about the Master Classes will be provided soon via the Sonic Acts website.

The full festival program of Sonic Acts - Travelling Time (February 23-26, 2012) is online.