Op & Ed
The Day After: Sonic Acts 2026 – Melted for Love
Text by Mila Azimonti I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a single word: Home [1]. Fragments by Mahmoud Darwish punctuate Ecoes #8, Sonic Acts’ latest publication accompanying the 2026 Biennial. His writing on exile, loss, and belonging anchors this year’s curatorial strand,
Artists as co-shapers of technological futures
Text by Daniela Silva We live in a moment when the infrastructure of our lives is being rewritten by code, sensors, and systems that most of us do not see. Artificial intelligence sorts, predicts, and governs; quantum computing promises to fracture our notions of logic; biotechnology engineers life itself; space
When we become NPCs: Trolled by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s video game-based Art
Text by Eddy Gibb I’m a woke bitch–the artwork said so. The whining voice on the other side of the door hated democracy, so I shut it out. The game character berated me, but I ‘unlocked a chance for change.’ Why they would try to enter this space, devoid of
‘Is There a Speaker Inside That?’ Exploring vocal machines & voice synthesis with artists Mike McShane & Benjamin Whateley
Text by Iris Colomb Mike McShane makes sculptures out of aluminium, silicone, prosthetics, kebab boxes and air. Benjamin Whateley is a developer and computer musician whose aesthetic and process are influenced by club music. Over the past five years, these two Essex and London-based artists have been working with artificial
Curating the Present at Norient Festival 2026
Text by Mila Azimonti Curating musical expressions today can be an important calling.[i] The line catches me while I drift through Politics of Curatorship,[ii] picked up the day before from a small table of Norient publications tucked inside the festival. The task is not to anticipate what a scene will
When Gothic Nature meets ecological thought: contemporary ecoGothic imaginaries
Text by Caterina Avataneo In recent years, a significant portion of contemporary art has turned to murky and confrontational atmospheres, whether through hybrid forms, ghostly presences, or oneiric visions. The resurgence of this obscure sensibility arguably coincides with a shift in how we culturally understand, among others, the ecological crisis:
Akira: A Multidisciplinary artist choosing I Ching over AI
Text by Iris Colomb Ningrui Liu (aka Akira) is a multidisciplinary London-based artist from Shanghai who uses the I Ching as a compositional framework to approach performance, sound and visuals. She has experimented with multiple choice-making approaches involving this ancient system, ranging from embodied processes fueled by its spiritual roots
Swamping: On Curatorial Practices about Planetary Health & Wetlands
Text by Tuçe Erel Swamps and birds go together; when the swamp disappears, so do the birds.Annie Proulx’s Fen, Bog, and Swamp As Pauline Doutreluingne wraps up her series, Swamping, I am writing to share my personal reflection and review of the program. As a fellow curator working at the
OJO| |ÓLǪ́, on Eric Paul Rieges’s living weavings
Text by Daniela Silva There is a quiet clarity in the way Eric-Paul Riege, a Diné/Navajo artist, approaches material. Before anything becomes art, before it hangs, drapes, accumulates, or moves, he listens. The artist, whose practice expands through weaving, sculpture, sound, video, and performance, often says that materials have their
CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS, interdisciplinary experiences at Art Laboratory Berlin
Text by Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly There is a prevailing notion that art and science are wholly separate fields. One discipline is seen as rooted in fact, ruled by reason. The other is considered an emotional process, where empiricism plays a lesser role. Yet this division is misleading. To me, they
The Severed Wing, bed-bound artist Corinne explores the meaning of theatre & performativity
Text by Lyndsey Walsh The clattering of typewriter keys accompanies a rhythmic emergence of a written addressal by the artist Corinne to their audience in Act One of their performance, The Severed Wing. While this performance is set to happen in real-time in venues across the United Kingdom, Corinne is
SEMIBREVE festival 2025: The day after, resonant lineages
Text by Jacobo Garcia Semibreve reached its 15th edition this year, a symbolic threshold that speaks of maturity: a festival that knows what it is, where it stands, and how it resonates within Europe’s experimental music ecosystem. Semibreve contemplates itself as a tapestry woven from multiple eras of sound: veteran
The Vital Story of Undying Darkness: Gothic Recurrence
Text by Caterina Avataneo Scorpio season has knocked once again, boosting Halloweenish taste for velvet, candlelight, and gloom. As per tradition, bookshops go goth, stacking their windows with special editions of Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley, while pâtisseries stage their own miniature danse macabre with pumpkin desserts and spun-sugar cobwebs.
Unsound Kraków 2025 – WEB: immersive listening, unwavering curation & an intangible fabric of community
Text by Dom Stevenson Immersive listening, unwavering curation, and an intangible fabric of community –the kind that only a late return to the Hotel Forum can reveal. It was Saturday evening – the penultimate day of Unsound. I sat at a bar in Kraków around a small outside table with
Gill Gatfield’s ‘Habeas Corpus’: Networked Resistance in Posthuman Worlds
Text by Tamar Torrance From the outset, Gill Gatfield’s Habeas Corpus casts the body as arbiter and object: both the first point of contact and contested locus of control. Referencing the Latin legal writ – meaning literally “you have the body” – the project’s name is double-edged, invoking the structures
Oblique Futures & Diagonal Records at ICA London – Between Eye & Ear: Experiments in Audiovisual Perception
Text by Mila Azimonti There’s hardly anything neutral about adding visuals to a music performance. Images never merely “adorn sound” — research shows as much. Once sight enters the equation, the eye takes over judgment, steering how we make sense of what we hear. Sometimes subtly, other times entirely, visuals