focus: default#17 - 15.11.2024 with talks by Nick Klein & Makoto Oshiro and Paul Abbott
In this focus newsletter, we would like to share with you more information on the freely accessible talks that take place during our upcoming two-day program
default#17, Friday, the 15th of November, Central Library (5th floor), Spui 68, 2511 CB Den Haag doors 17:00, talks 17:30 - 19:30 | Free Reservation
talks by Nick Klein & Makoto Oshiro and Paul Abbott
In this talk event, hosted by default den haag and taking place in The Hague Central Library on the 15th of November, sound makers Paul Abbott, Nick Klein and Makoto Oshiro will share their distinct approaches in performing and thinking about electro-acoustic music, delving into improvisation, self-built instruments and collaboration - read more information on the talks below.
This event is a part of the two-day program that default den haag is curating in November. On the following day, Saturday, 16th of November, default returns to The Grey Space in The Middle, celebrating the special occasion of their two year anniversary featuring performances by Tzu Ni, Nick Klein & Makoto Oshiro, as well as lll人 (Daichi Yoshikawa, Paul Abbott, Seymour Wright) - more information can be found here.
approaching self-built systems for thinking about collaborative performance and composition in electro-acoustic music; real and fictional drums
In the form of a dialogue with a number of fictional characters, a letter to friends, Paul Abbott will present a non-technical exploration, oscillations everywhere, a body-to-body shaking out of some words about sounds and sounds about words — spoken, fictional and concrete, about combining drums and synthetic sounds — real, imaginary, live, and the making of his recent record called ‘Knees, Elbow Bag’. About his recent collaboration with Chicago footwork founder Kavain Wayne Space (aka RP Boo) and saxophonist Seymour Wright. On exploring how the body and its movements generate meaning and imaginative structures during a performance setting and on maintaining an “alter practice of ongoing undoing”. Fictional characters in a garden; a speaking frog, a talking balloon, and the life-world soundings of non-contact…
Nick Klein and Makoto Oshiro will share the process behind their collaborative work with Oshiro’s self-built ‘kachi-kachi’ acoustic machines and Klein’s synths and effects within a reciprocal system navigated by both. The talk follows up their last year’s series of shows, as well as their release ‘Spaced’ on Superpang, with their collaborative work tending to be both dynamic and physical.
Paul Abbott
Paul Abbott is a musician and drummer. He plays with real and imaginary drums, synthetic sounds, performance and writing. He explores music as an ecology: in which the interaction of sounds, signs and the physical body grow real and imaginary music. His work is often concerned with creating practical and fictional structures to facilitate improvisation and experimental musical play. Recent and ongoing collaborations include: XT with Seymour Wright; XT with Pat Thomas; XT with Anne Gillis; X Ray Hex Tet; F.R.David, "very good*" & Rosmarie with Will Holder; film sound for Keira Greene; Rian Treanor Duo; RP Boo Trio with XT; The Creaking Breeze Ensemble with Nathaniel Mackey; yPLO with Michael Speers and performances with Cara Tolmie.
In 2022 he completed a PhD at the University of Edinburgh under the supervision of Florian Hecker and Nikki Moran, synthesising the rhythmic emergence of sound and sign through embodied drum kit performance and creative writing. He was a co-founder and co-editor of Cesura//Acceso journal for music, politics, and poetics.
Nick Klein
Nick Klein is an artist working in sound and art and sometimes (begrudgingly) sound art with a lean towards the social potential in those modalities as they interact. Klein has recorded a large amount of music for tape, CD, digital file, and vinyl editions for music labels around the world, as well as running his own amorphous label project PL (primitive languages, Psychic Liberation, etc). Concurrently, to the best of his ability, he has shown work in visual art contexts. Klein is uninterested in the prohibitive ideological tropes and circumstances that both contexts offer, and focuses the intent of his work on trying to see what productive energy comes from the friction between the two. Klein likes loud volume, cooking, offline community building, records, bars, synthesizers, and comedy.
Klein is currently located in Berlin. Klein has operated a monthly radio show on Montez Press Radio since its inception, and is spending 2023-2024 developing a monthly invitational program at the Volksbühne Roter Salon. Klein has collaborated in various capacities and medial materializations with Wilted Woman, Audrey Chen, Das Ding, Hugo Esquinca, Jean-Louis Huhta, Erik Nystrand, Scant, Philip Maier, Makoto Oshiro and many more.
Makoto Oshiro
Makoto Oshiro is a Berlin-Tokyo based performer and artist. He has developed an artistic practice spanning across sound, installation, field recording, language, instrument design, to name a few, for over a decade. In live performances, he uses self-made instruments based on electronic devices, everyday materials, and junk. His installation work handles sound as a physical and auditory phenomenon, and focuses on characteristics such as vibration and interference. Makoto has among others collaborated with Ken Ikeda, Rie Nakajima, Yan Jun, Tetuzi Akiyama, suzueri, and extensively with Takahiro Kawaguchi. He is also a member of the live installation / performance group The Great △(夏の大△) with Takahiro Kawaguchi and Satoshi Yashiro, and runs the label Basic Function.
default#17 is financially supported by The Municipality of The Hague and the Konrad Boehmer Foundation.
About Us
default den haag is a non-profit curatorial initiative focused on the presentation of creative contemporary sound and performance in the Hague, curating and organizing their nomadic sound series with an international focus on experimental music and sound art performances since 2022, next to occasionally hosting accompanying talks and lectures. - read more