Borderline Festival 11 | 1st Day

16:00 - 23:00 | Back of House

Radio Crawler – a sound installation by MIZI

“Radio Crawler” is an ongoing, open-ended, experimental radio art project. It is a custom software framework and a multiform iterative piece that aims to explore and resurface the technology, concepts, and content of the declining medium of shortwave radio. The software algorithmically controls and mixes four instances of the online shortwave receiver located at the University of Twente. A meta-radio is generated live through the blending and mixing of the radio transmissions. The emergent radio is narrowcasted on four micro-FM transmitters and then received by an assortment of “wounded” analogue radios.

The combination of the analog shortwave with the newer technology of SDR (Software-Defined Radio) forms a unique, amalgamated medium with mixed properties. “Radio Crawler” probes the high frequency band revealing ham radio transmissions, Morse codes, NAVTEX, encrypted messages, commercial radio transmissions, jammers, and time-signals, among many other unique transmissions.

Free admission

18:00 | Galaxy Space

Curating Across Borders – a discussion panel with Sharif Sehnaoui (Irtijal Festival, Beirut), Hardi Kurda (Space21, Kurdistan), Michalis Moschoutis (Borderline Festival, Athens), and Cedrik Fermont (Syrphe platform)

The curators of the collaborating music festivals (Irtijal, Space21, and Borderline) discuss with the creator of the Syrphe platform’s African and Asian Alternative Database about the development of artistic networks with Middle East institutions, as well as the importance of showcasing artists beyond the established marketing channels.

Part of the program Sounds Now. Co-funded by Creative Europe Program of the European Union.

Free admission | Reservation is required

19:30 | 4th Floor Foyer

Illegal Performance by Duo Moment (Hardi Kurda & Khabat Abas)

What does 'illegal' mean from an artistic perspective? With all the rules that make up our everyday life, how can sound and music contribute to a space of freedom? With the use of the instruments made by Hardi Kurda (Interactive Radio Antenna, Radiola Springs) and Khabat Abas (Shellbomb Cello), “Illegal Performance” reflects on those questions through stories of Immigration and War that immerse local culture, calling us to rethink and relisten to related materials and sounds. Perhaps this can function as an analogy for a more complex and nuanced image of today's social and political challenges. “Illegal Performance” is a project by Kurdish-Swedish composer and researcher Hardi Kurda, founder of Space21 and partner of Borderline Festival 2022.

Free admission

20:30 | Main Stage

SpaceTime Helix by Michela Pelusio

“SpaceTime Helix” is a site-specific audiovisual performance with a giant spinning standing wave in a white string, forming a large helicoid up to the ceiling. The surface is bright and transparent, with waves running over it, disappearing into the future, more and more distant in space-time.

A white string, a line, a boundary, twists into a giant spinning standing wave, a large helicoid uniting earth and sky. A vibrational dance between physical and metaphysical phenomena, inducing retinal persistence of vision and synesthetic journeying for those caught in its vortex.

Roly Porter & MFO present Kistvaen (feat. Mary-Anne Roberts)

“Kistvaen” is a performance piece that contrasts primordial motifs – elements and seasons, sun and moon, gods and magic – with that of the 21st century life in designed environments and an evolving virtual existence. Pivotal to the piece are Kists, Neolithic sites located on Dartmoor, and the songs of a burial ritual sung live by Mary-Anne Roberts of Bragod. The music, composed by Roly Porter, blurs the boundaries between field recording, folk instrumentation, and digital sound processing, while Marcel Weber’s scenography blends subliminal stage and lighting effects with cinematic imagery. Filmed on location in Dartmoor and Białowieża, Dutch Westland and Tokyo, they evoke timeless inner feelings, pictures from the subconscious. Our pagan roots and technology-driven present are inextricably interwoven.

Tickets 3 — 10 €

22:30 | Upper Stage

Passport, With You & Sharif Sehnaoui

As part of the collaboration with Irtijal Festival, Beirut, its founder, the guitarist and composer Sharif Sehnaoui teams up with a group of young musicians from the Athenian experimental scene. Together they will perform a work based on a new graphic score by Sehnaoui, which explores the role of sound imitation and repetition in free improvisation. The forming of the band Passport, With You, as well as rehearsals with Sharif Sehnaoui, were part of the collaboration between Onassis Stegi and the performance arts and music research space On Off Studio.

Nicky Kokkoli (alto saxophone)
Dimitra Kousteridou (electronics)
Sharif Sehnaoui (guitar)
Yorgos Stavridis (percussion)
Yorgos Stenos (saxophone and electronics)
Artemis Vavatsika (accordion)

Radio Tweets (Ute Wassermann & Birgit Ulher)

Radio Tweets are sound accomplices. Birgit Ulher projects radio sounds into the trumpet, which thus becomes both transmitter and receiver. She uses everyday objects, as well as metal sheets that she holds in front of the trumpet´s horn, thus creating multiphonics and split sounds. Ute Wassermann masks her singing with bird whistles, jaw's harp, objects, and various microphones and creates a hybrid vocal instrument with oscillating timbres, dissolving into a sound world of birds, electronics, machines, and fragmented language. The timing and timbre of both musicians complement each other perfectly in their uncompromisingly coordinated but always surprising improvisations.

Tickets 3 — 10 €