focus: default #13 – 22.02.2024: Callahan & Witscher, Jonáš Gruska, and Jiyoung Wi & Concepción Huerta
The first installment of the year will take place at the Grey Space in the Middle on Thursday the 22nd of February.
default den haag is very happy to announce the continuation of their sound series in 2024. default#13 presents performances by American musicians Jack Callahan and Jeff Witscher, who probe with their joint efforts into the purpose and meaning of experimental music and showcase tensions inherent to the communication of ideas, Slovakian artist Jonáš Gruska, who will explore unconventional tunings and psychoacoustic properties with his ever-evolving Axis Mundi Sound Distribution System, and a special duo performance by multi-faceted Korean artist Jiyoung Wi and Mexican audiovisual artist Concepción Huerta who, besides being both active as performers in changing settings, and interested in manipulating or juxtaposing everyday objects and electronic instruments, have released their debut solo LP’s in the beginning of this year.
In this focus newsletter, we would like to share with you a selection of works made by the artists set to perform at default#13.
The event is taking place on 22.02 in The Grey Space in the Middle, Paviljoensgracht 20, The Hague. Doors open at 19:30, concerts start at 20:00.
You can purchase your tickets before the event here and at the entrance of the venue on the day of the event. The ticket price is €12.5 (student) / €15 (general).
*in case your current financial situation does not allow you to visit the event, but you are keen on coming, you can mail to defaultdenhaag@gmail.com and we can find a solution
Callahan & Witscher
American musicians Jack Callahan and Jeff Witscher are known for their far-ranging work under various monikers (die Reihe, Rene Hell) and deep individual histories within noise, computer music, and new music circles. Joining forces to helm new music and contemporary composition label FLEA, the duo has recently produced a series of beguiling and forward-thinking compositions including The Past, Present And Future Of Experimental Music (Uncut GRM), Stockhausen Syndrome, and ISSUES (What Happens on Earth Stays on Earth), as well as video works (I Want My Money Back) and curatorial projects.
Their collaborative work and performances often experiment with transparent composition systems and the limits of our current music technology, sharing sensibilities with radio art, A.A. meetings, group therapy sessions, formalist and Fluxus generative poetry experiments, and Q&A formats. They probe into the purpose and meaning of experimental music and showcase tensions inherent to the communication of ideas—exploring what music can be in a world where almost everything is reduced to signals and information. Together, their alliance charts a path for truly avant-garde music in the 21st century. (Nick James Scavo)
ISSUES (What Happens on Earth Stays on Earth)
(FLEA, 2021)
Stockhausen Syndrome
(FLEA, 2021)
At default#13, Callahan & Witscher will present material from their forthcoming record "Think Differently”, expected to arrive on Post Present Medium later this year. Its first singles, ‘Boiler Room’ and ‘Hate the Player (feat. Ana Roxanne)’, predict their collaboration moving forward towards a somehow surprising realm: exploring more explicitly the pop-song format, while still entailing their recognizable, referential contemplations on making, consuming and performing music.
‘Boiler Room’ (single from the forthcoming album "Think Differently")
Callahan & Witscher (documentation of performance at “BRING THE FLOWERS TO THE THEATRE", 2023)
Our personal favorites from their vast solo discographies include: 106 KERRI CHANDLER CHORDS (die Reihe, PSYCHIC LIBERATION, 2019), Callahan’s conceptual screamo album Tragedy In A Sense Is A Kind Of Psychic Flavor Of This Loneliness (die Reihe, Stellage, 2020) and Compression (Jack Callahan, NINA, 2023), dealing with the confusion around the word 'compression’,
Witscher’s ‘revisionist country’ release Approximately 1,000 Beers (Salon, 2018), 2 Days With Vincent's Expert Cleaners, (an audiovisual collaboration between Daniel Hewson and Jeff Witscher, 2020), Cob Music (Bánh Mì Verlag, 2019), and Ram Books from “Where Does the Good Times Go” (Cuvée Freddy, 2018): Witscher’s split with Eric Frye, who performed at default#4 back in April 2023.
Jonáš Gruska
Born in Czechoslovakia, Jonáš Gruska studied at the Institute of Sonology, The Hague, and the Music Academy, Cracow. His work focuses on chaotic, polymetric rhythms, unconventional tunings, and the exploration of psychoacoustic properties of sound and field recording.
‘Svitanie’ (from the “Synthetic Bird Music” compilation) (mappa, 2023)
He is known for site-specific sound installations based on resonant properties of spaces and materials, as well as for the conducting of workshops on sonification, field recording, electromagnetic listening, and programming for artists. At default, Jonás will present new work for his ever-evolving Axis Mundi Sound Distribution System; a modular sculpture designed to emit, reflect, and direct (ultra)sonic waves to space from a single axis. It consists of multiple levels of custom microsystems that distribute sound in egalitarian, circular coverage.
In 2011 Jonáš started LOM, a label and instrument manufacturing company spotlighting East/Central European experimental art and music, which in 2018 resulted in the launch of LOM space in Bratislava: a venue for contemporary sound. Presently, Gruska works as the main instrument designer for the much-coveted LOM instruments. In 2019 he also established bioLOM/mykoLOM: a platform dealing with amateur mycology, lichenology, and broader fungal perspectives. Since 2013, he has been organizing ZVUK as well, an outdoor festival dedicated to experimental music.
‘mŕtve rameno petržalky’ (from the “possible moistures” compilation) (forms of minutiae, 2021)
‘Žaburina’ (documentation of performance at Sonic Acts, 2020)
‘Volanie’ (from “Spevy” ) (LOM, 2017)
Other released audio works include Svitanie (from “Oscillation ::: Tuned Circuits 1”, umland editions / Q-O2, 2021), Federovo (self-released, 2018), Žaburina (LOM, 2018), and ZUŠ (self-released, 2017): a product of his fascination with the soundscapes of primary music school.
An article on Gruska’s work, published in The Wire Magazine #447 (May 2021), can be found here.
Concepción Huerta & Jiyoung Wi
For the special occasion of default#13, multi-faceted Korean artist Jiyoung Wi and Mexican audiovisual artist Concepción Huerta, both residing in the Hague at the moment, will present a special first duo performance. Besides being both active as performers in changing settings, and interested in manipulating or juxtaposing everyday objects and electronic instruments, they both have released their debut solo LP’s in the beginning of this year.
Concepción Huerta
Concepción Huerta is a multidisciplinary artist from Mexico who is interested in the creation of technological bridges between analog and digital processes and employs tapes to manipulate recordings of everyday objects and electronic instruments. She has a strong background in audiovisual media and a deep focus on the sound spectrum. Her approach to sound begins by reflecting on the relationship between silence-noise, political space, and the sound agent as a means of enunciation. She also investigates resonance, acoustic space, and the physical and psychological impact of sound on the listener.
Her work is developed in different practices such as sound design, installations, spatialized concerts, and speculative narratives. Huerta is an active solo performer as well as a member of the experimental ensemble Amor Muere , together with Gibrana Cervantes, Camille Mandoki, and Mabe Fratti, with whom she has collaborated on several releases. Following up earlier releases on different labels, her first solo vinyl The Earth Has Memory was released via Elevator Bath earlier this month. Its material was recorded while being in residence at Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) and features additional production by composer Olivia Block.
The Earth Has Memory (Elevator Bath, 2024)
Mabe Fratti & Concepción Huerta perform “Irreversible” (from “Estática”, SA Recordings, 2021)
Other releases include Lost Time (self-released, 2020), Internal Capacity (with Mabe Fratti, 2018), and Harmonies from Betelgeuse (Umor Rex, 2022). Amor Muere, the experimental ensemble she is part of, released their album A time to love, a time to die in November 2023 via Scrawl.
Earlier this year, Concepción presented a collaboration with Fe Sexta in Berlin; MAPS: Electronic Resonances Between Ecuador and Mexico, commissioned by CTM Radio Lab and tekhnē, aimed to recover audio archives of pioneer composers of electronic music in Mexico and Ecuador, active in the 1970s. Using archival materials and other sources, recordings and compositions were mixed with a documentary and fictional narrative approach. The innovative legacy of these early composers is integrated into Huerta and Sexta's own work, mapping the relationship between the individual and collective memory.
Jiyoung Wi
Jiyoung Wi is a multi-faceted artist from Seoul, Korea currently residing in The Hague, the Netherlands. Her work can be situated within fictional literature, improvised music, and field recording, with an interest in juxtaposing or disjointing these fields of practice through her sonic and literary methodologies. She approaches sound and text as invisible experiences and phenomena, and is interested in the narrative symptoms that emerge when both are juxtaposed on the same axis. In a series entitled “Sound Fiction”, she explores these symptoms operating within and without the art space.
As an improvisational music performer, she focuses on exploring the thresholds of the untrained body - where the linear flow of time is challenged and disrupted by playing the 'instrument' in a non-canonical manner, using electronics to further expose this element.
Accept All Cookies (PSYCHIC LIBERATION, 2024)
Jiyoung Wi’s debut album Accept All Cookies, part of her “Sound Fiction” series as well as the final installment of the ENXPL project shared between labels Enmossed and Psychic Liberation, was released in the end of last month. Matthew Blackwell (Bandcamp Daily) included the album in The Best Field Recordings on Bandcamp: January 2024, stating: ‘like its name suggests, Accept All Cookies is about the blurry boundary between private and public information as our digital personas intrude into our real lives (…) the album is a bracing listen, a harsh but clarifying portrayal of our increasingly atomized social life.’
‘Theresa’ (from the "INTIMATE GHOSTING" compilation) (PSYCHIC LIBERATION, 2020)
Intimate Ghosting is a compilation album curated by Jiyoung Wi herself, featuring nine musicians from Japan and South Korea. It served as a lucid invitation to the effervescente sonic field progressing throughout the experimental ambient music communities of said region.
Wi previously also released recordings on compilations for labels such as Mirae Arts, and Eastern Nurseries. Her earliest audio work ‘Group 3’ was self-released in 2020, accompanying the publication of a booklet.
Jiyoung Wi has been co-organizing an experimental/leftfield listening event Sorrow Club Seoul since 2019.
