Wednesday, 29th November 2023 at 20.00: 

Fifteenth International Festival of Experimental Sound
Prepared Surroundings 2023
Edges / Borders
Wednesday, 29.11.2023
Cirkulacija 2, 20:00

«Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death.
One need not fear about the future of music».
John Cage «Experimental Music» (1957)

Prepared Surroundings (PS) is one of the weirdest festivals of sound – running for 15 years. As ever our topic is to experiment with sound and technology.

Festival statement: globaLocal proxyFest

Live stream:

This year, PS will take place simultaneously in different cities and countries, as always on Wednesdays. Two Wednesdays – four cities. Thanks to the initiative of an international group of curators and collaboration with local communities of artists and musicians, we are pleased to present events in Almaty (Kazakhstan) and Ljubljana (Slovenia) on November 29; and then in Yerevan (Armenia) and Tijuana (Mexico) on December 20.

The overall theme of PS this year is simultaneously a new speculative format: globaLocal proxyFest. The unusual distribution of the event across the globe while focusing on work in specific locations naturally prompts us to reflect on the connections between the global and the local, the singular and the multiple. In the context of art, copying always sparks discussions, but what is its vice if a copy is a way to preserve data from loss? PS launches its own proxies in different cities and countries. Will this be the same festival as the previous 14 years?

Each location’s curator will propose their own theme for artistic interpretation. The themes are as follows:

Almaty: contacts / boundaries
Ljubljana: edges / borders
Yerevan: joinings / partings
Tijuana: dots / ties

We plan to conduct live events with audio-video broadcasts.

The world is changing, and the Festival changes with it, only our slogan remains unchanged for 15 years: “Participants will demonstrate work with prepared objects, surroundings, constructs.”

Link to the global festival page – https://soundartist.ru/ps-15-en

Artists bios:

Stagnat
Stagnat is an electronic A/V project of two Slovenian artists, based in Vienna. Their outburst is a result of a thrive for a joined musical expression and a branching of the past visually-centered artistic endeavors. The result is of an experimental nature, techno with a darker shade, with a ruckus of a passing train, chaotic bird singing, a path into a gray morning with resentful teenage angst. Their first gig was as an improvised live act at Festival Izvir (Formaviva) in the Summer of 2019. Since then their sets have evolved into more homogeneous autoschediasm as they developed their own distinctive sound. In 2020 they self-released their first EP Synchrony of Falling and were featured on the compilation of the local record label Sigma5. Their debut album together with an experimental film was released in March of 2021 on the London-based label Singularity Recordings. In December 2021 they co-founded their own label DE/FRAGMENT. Since then they released 2 EPs, Subterranean Occurrence (DE/FRAGMENT), and Twilight World (Scarlet Carson Black), a full album Vague Radius (DE/FRAGMENT), and appeared on a few compilations and radio shows. Now they are finishing their newest release “Charisma”, a 6-track EP of weird and driving bangers, based around the concept and bewilderment of cults.
https://linktr.ee/stagnat

Lisokot
Lisokot (Varya Pavlova) is a singer, artist, composer and poet responsible for a wide range of musical performances around the globe from Riga Biennial of Contemporary Art and Manifesta 10 to Berlin’s clubs Berghain, Funkhouse and the Department of Slavic Studies at Stanford University. Working between experimental electronics, improvisation and performance she mostly uses her voice as only instrument. Often refers to soviet music heritage, it’s deconstruction, reinterpretation and own animalistic poetry about politics and society. Her shows often turn into site-specific performances with own costumes and decorations creating it’s own mythology. In 2017 she releases an EP “Walzerzyklus” in collaboration with Uwe Schmidt (AtomTM, Señor Coconut) on german-based label Raster.
https://nazlorecords.bandcamp.com/album/i-want-i-have-to-share-my-life-with-you
https://linktr.ee/lisokot

Boris Shershenkov
Boris Shershenkov – independent artist and researcher, Ph.D. (candidate of technical sciences), educator and musical instrument designer. Focusing on projects that develop new methodologies in technological and sound art, he investigates the relationship between humans and technology combining modern techniques with media archaeological research. Boris is engaged in various activities in the field of experimental music and sound art as the author of numerous media installations and sound performances and curator of concert programs, exhibitions and educational projects. As a musician, he is actively working in the areas of live electronics and electroacoustic improvisation, both solo and in collaboration with other musicians and artists.
web – https://www.shershenkov.com/

Ksenia Bakhtina
Ksenia Bakhtina, interdisciplinary artist. Main directions of sound art, creation of works for multi-channel audio systems.

::vtol::
Dmitry Morozov aka ::vtol:: is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher. He focuses on contemporary media arts including sound, robotics and installation, placing special emphasis on the link between emergent systems and new kinds of technological synthesis.
web – http://vtol.cc