focus: default#22 - 13.02.2025 with Janneke van der Putten, Weston Olencki & Laura Cocks, Sunik Kim
In this focus newsletter, we would like to share with you more information on our upcoming program
default#22, Thursday, 13th of February, The Grey Space in The Middle, Paviljoensgracht 20-24, Den Haag,
Janneke van der Putten, Weston Olencki & Laura Cocks, Sunik Kim
For the program of default#22, taking place on the 13th of February in The Grey Space in The Middle, we are looking forward to hosting an event featuring a site-specific vocal performance by Janneke van der Putten, ‘Music For Two Flutes’ by Weston Olencki & Laura Cocks, and a computer music performance exploring the compression and dilation of perceptual time by Sunik Kim. Read more about the artists and the performances below.
doors at 19:30, performances start at 20:00
Tickets | €12.5 (student) / €15 * We recommend reserving your tickets in advance.
*in case your current financial situation does not allow you to visit the event, but you are keen on coming, you can mail to info@defaultdenhaag.com and we can find a solution.
Janneke van der Putten: ‘Cycles: Overtones and Glottis Attack’
In an intuitive and physical way, Janneke van der Putten in ‘Cycles: Overtones and Glottis Attack’ explores her voice as a sound texture. She has specialized in extended vocal techniques, producing two or more sounds simultaneously: basic tones, harmonics, interferences – like glottal attacks – and spatial reflections. Van der Putten uses architecture as a natural sound amplifier and as a trigger for echoes or other sonic effects. Wandering in space makes the sound move and generates a dynamic listening experience. Her rhythmic and conceptual approach to singing is inspired by the cycles of the breath, the body and the earth. Her performances are often performed without electrical amplification. In this way, she focuses on the exploration of space itself: how it sounds, whether it is lit or not, and where the audience is located. Janneke’s acoustic voice performance ‘Cycles: Overtones and Glottis Attack’ has been the theme for her solo debut album 'JNNK' (Aloardi, 2023).
Janneke van der Putten is a Rotterdam-based artist with a background in visual arts and singing. Her practice involves experiences of listening, performances, sound and video, painting, workshops, and music projects. Her voice is her main tool, guiding her through physical and sonic explorations in different landscapes. Engaging with specific sites and local contexts, and through her personal experiences, she investigates (human) responses to her surroundings, and their relation to natural phenomena and transitions, such as the sunrise. She has collaborated with several composers, such as Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Werner Durand, Philemon Mukarno, Marcus Schmickler, and Sajjra Xhrs Galarreta. Besides her involvement in music, she has had solo exhibitions in gallery spaces such as TENT (Rotterdam, 2015), Quartier am Hafen (Cologne, 2017), and a duo-show in Kunstraum 34 (Stuttgart, 2020).
Weston Olencki & Laura Cocks: ‘Music for Two Flutes’
Weston Olencki is a composer, trombonist, and instrument builder based in Berlin who mostly doesn't play the flute. Laura Cocks is a flutist based in New York City who works in a wide array of environments as a performer of experimental music. ‘Music for Two Flutes’ is two pieces for two flutes. Through various deconstructions of the instrument and years of friendship, they pull uncanny resonances from these modest means – locating sites of intensity and spectral saturation where they aren't always found. ‘Music for Two Flutes’ was released on Hideous Replica in 2024, it involves immense, heavy physicality, exploring the instrument with both persistent power and sensitive buzzing.
1. ceòl meadhonach
From the Kilberry Book of Ceol Meadhonach, published in 1908 by Captain John Campbell and Archibald Campbell:
"The music of the Highland bagpipe is usually said to be divided into three categories: Ceol Mor, the big music or Piobaireachd; Ceol Beag, the little music, that is quicksteps and dance music, and Ceol Meadhonach, the middle music which lies between the other two, and consists of such tunes as are neither constructed in the measure of Piobaireachd, nor adapted for the quick march or dance."
2. SLUB
As an instrument activated via buzzing, the flute’s scales and acoustic systems are reconfigured; SLUB is the act of submerging into the instabilities of this reconfiguration, building a world of internal physical disturbance that shifts, envelopes, and becomes quasi-environmental as it moves along the body of the flutes.
Weston Olencki is a composer-performer, and audio engineer originally from South Carolina, living now in Berlin. Their recent solo music deals with the non-linear relationships and unexpected resonances between experimental sound, geography, historicity, and (mostly American) musical traditions. They perform regularly as a soloist and ensemble member on low brass instruments, winds, banjo, organs, and various electronics. They are an active member of RAGE THORMBONES, Harmonic Space Orchestra, Ensemblekollektiv Berlin, APPARAT, Clone Decay (with Mary Halvorson & Kalia Vandever), and The Hollows (with Nick Dunston & Etienne Nillesen). Their recent solo releases include I Went to the Dance (feat. Jules Reidy) (Longform Editions, 2024), Pearls Ground Down to Powder (Full Spectrum Records, 2024), SOLO HORN (Sound Holes, 2023), and their collaboration with Tongue Depressor on Don’t Tell No Tales Upon Us (Dinzu Artefacts, 2023).
Laura Cocks is a flutist who works in a wide array of environments as a performer of experimental music. Laura is an active member of the TAK ensemble and Talea Ensemble. As a soloist, improviser, and chamber musician, they have performed with musicians such as Shara Lunon, yuniya edi kwon, Luke Stewart, Wendy Eisenberg, Lester St. Louis, Brandon Lopez, Madison Greenstone, Sun Ra Arkestra, Wet Ink Ensemble, and many others in NYC and abroad. Laura can be heard on labels such as ECM, Denovali Records, Catalytic Sound, TAK editions, Tripticks Tapes, Carrier Records, Sound American, Orange Mountain Music, Hideous Replica, and many others. Their second solo release ‘Fathm’ is scheduled to be released on February 21, 2025 via Relative Pitch Records. Furthermore, they are engaged in research in corporeal analyses in the field of art and musical praxis – treating the performing body as an analytic site.
Sunik Kim
Sunik Kim is a musician, writer and filmmaker currently based in Los Angeles. Sunik's music is often described as "a frenzied electronic orchestra that sits somewhere in between free jazz, noise, and Korean shamanic music." Their writing on subjects ranging from Korean communism to Conlon Nancarrow has been featured in The Wire Magazine, Tone Glow and elsewhere.
Their latest album ’Tears of Rage’ was released on the Seoul-based label Rope Editions in 2024, presenting a recent route towards a focus on the physicality of pure, computer-generated electronic sounds, where the ‘clear’/’dry’ synthesis approach does not meet the conventional ‘harsh’ computer music tropes, but the compositional and structural complexity surfaces.
However, even when working with soundfonts and recorded materials in the past, this focus on treating bare-bone sounds as potential building blocks for uncertain, large structures has been a common thread in their different works throughout the past years. Their earlier releases include: ‘Zero Chime’ (First Terrace Recordings, 2019), ‘Raid On The White Tiger Regiment’ (Notice Recordings, 2022), ‘Potential’ (Cafe OTO’s Otoroku, 2023). Films include: ‘The bent bow must wait to be released’ (Otoroku, 2021) and ‘Truth Is Marching’ (for Performa Biennial, 2021), currently hosted on the archiving platform Brouwnian Movement.
At default, Sunik will be presenting the first hour of a new extended piece that emerged from an intensive study of Conlon Nancarrow's usage of the tempo canon and its relation to the compression and dilation of perceptual time.
default#22 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