SHAPE+ supported artists at Terraforma, Nextones, Il Pianeta, and Tranceparenti with one-off shows by Aho Ssan, Marina Herlop, Perila, Bella Baguena. 

Stefanie Egedy is part of a SHAPE+ residency realised in the context of Una Boccata d’Arte with artisan Laurent Jacquemod and videomaker Giovanni Sambo. 

Stefanie Egedy investigates sound as a composer of conceptual pieces, music, commissioned works, and dance music. Currently, she is focused on researching possibilities with low-frequency sound, bodies and subwoofers. Her artistic practice stems from installations to live performances as sonic propositions. Sub-bass, bass, infrasound, subwoofers, and their capacity to make themselves present in a space, are the foundations of her work. Alongside the possibilities of interaction between human/architectural bodies and sound waves, using field recordings, analogue & digital synthesis.

Aho Ssan – Terraforma 2023

Aho Ssan is the artist name of Paris-based Niamké Désiré. After studying graphic design and cinema, he began to compose electronic music and create his own digital instruments. Shortly thereafter he went on to win the Foundation France television prize for his soundtrack to the film of Ingha Mago in 2015 and has worked on several projects related to IRCAM/GRM in France. His debut LP «Simulacrum» was released on the 7th of February 2020 via Subtext Recordings. Based on the concept of Jean Baudrillard, it navigates through society’s presentation of inclusivity and equality against my own experience of growing up black in France. Aho Ssan debuted “Simulacrum” at Berlin Atonal 2019.

Bella Baguena – Tranceparenti 2023

Bella Báguena is a Spanish trans non binary woman who works with different disciplines such as music, performance, jewelry and other media. Bella centers her artistic production in a gender self examination and an intuitive, emotional process, using her voice, body movement and identity, as well as objects, spaces and technologies, to create sound, video, sculptural or performative pieces in which the emotional charge and thought load of the trans woman’s identity becomes the key.

Perila – Il Pianeta 2022

Perila is a St. Petersburg-born, Berlin-based sound and visual artist, DJ and performer exploring sensitive borderlines and depths of subtle matter. Her sets are thick narratives drifting through rich sound palette immersing a listener into pretty personal trip. Constantly shifting moods and textures of mixes create comfort space for emotions to float, merge, evaporate and ride in a deep context.

Marina Herlop – Nextones 2022

Marina Herlop is often described as a pianist, a lingering remnant of her classical training. But what strikes the listener on Herlop’s breakout track miu is the intricate trickery of her voice, tracing rhythmical clusters around the subtlest of musical beds, in a technique inspired by Carnatic music of Southern India. miu, the opening track of Herlop’s new studio album Pripyat, was among the first songs that the young Catalan artist made on a computer, after two albums – 2016’s Nanook and 2018’s Babasha – that brought spectral elegance to the sound of piano and voice.

BABAU is part of a SHAPE+ residency realised in the context of Nextones 2022 with artists Bienoise and Flora Rabitti. 

BABAU is the duo composed of Luigi Monteanni and Matteo Pennesi, both also founders of Artetetra records, tape label concerned with the latest developments in the concepts of digital folklore and transglobal exoticism during late globalization. BABAU is best defined by a pastiche combining the fascination for World Music 2.0, Fourth World galore and Mondo Voyeurism with the latest abstractions in computer music’s compositional techniques, which they call ‘Quinto Mondo’ music. Through the years they have played in festivals such as Club To Club, Fusion, Saturnalia, Outernational Days, Mondo Muzak and Camp Cosmic and have collaborated with Kiosk radio, NTS, The Wire, Sun Araw, Simon Reynolds, Senyawa and many others.

In 2023, Terraforma also hosted two educational activities supported by SHAPE+: 

– Whitney Wei in conversation with architects Bengt Carling and Matteo Ghidoni (Salottobuono): “Architecture and the Musical Experience” 

– Christine Kakaire “The importance of the archive as related to Black music innovation”

Award-winning culture journalist and critic Christine Kakaire will moderate a panel with secret guests to be announced soon. The panel is supported by SHAPE+ platform, co-funded by the European Union.

SHAPE+ platform for innovative music and audiovisual art, co-funded by the European Union, announces the second and final wave of acts of the collaborative showcase with Tbilisi’s Mutant Radio. The two-day event will happen over two nights  – June 23-24 – at Mutant Radio’s outdoor space and will gather more than 12 SHAPE+ artists alongside Georgian acts selected by the radio station.

Facebook event.

Second wave of SHAPE+ artists at Mutant Radio showcase

m.a.t.a.d.a.t.a. (LV)

m.a.t.a.d.a.t.a. is the latest dance/not dance solo moniker by electroacoustic musician, film and theater composer Toms Auniņš from Riga, Latvia. It came to life as a film score for Matīss Kaža feature film Neon Spring, a film for which Toms Auniņš attempted to create a full and total Riga underground techno and rave scene sound score with the help of local (Latvian-built) Erica Synths Techno System. Individually m.a.t.a.d.a.t.a. also serves as an instrument to sail the long presence in extreme music into a new, unknown sonic territory.

For the musician himself m.a.t.a.d.a.t.a. is a transfer to origins of consciousness, and ultimately a vessel for change.

NZIRIA (IT)

NZIRIA is an experimental project by artist Tullia Benedicta, the project integrates the main forms and themes of the Neomelodic song, while regenerating the cis-heteronormative scenario. Through a powerful and androgynous singing, they reinterpret the
stereotyped, almost archetypal stories of the Neomelodic genre, welcoming narratives of the LGBTQI+ community and singing of queer love and mercurial identities.

NZIRIA debuted on Gabber Eleganza’s imprint Never Sleep with a full-length titled XXYBRID. Recorded during a period of worldwide lockdown, the album represents the artist’s psychomagic act to redeem their Neapolitan origins and to reinterpret some of the topoi of the Neapolitan culture.

Felisha Ledesma (US/DE)

Felisha Ledesma is a sound artist and musician living and working in Berlin. Over the past decade, Ledesma has run project spaces, overseen festival curation and events programming, helped establish community programs around modular synthesis education, and performed live. More recently, Ledesma’s focus has widened to releasing solo compositions – two debut releases titled ‘Fringe’ and ‘Sweet Hour’ released on Ecstatic Recordings and Enmossed x Psychic Liberation, respectively.

On both releases, Ledesma draws extensively on a custom-made synthesizer called AMQR developed together with instrument designer Ess Mattisson, a collaboration that has since flowered into Fors, a music technology project focused on creating software instruments and effects. Exploring an emergent lowercase sound, Felisha Ledesma’s music shimmers with elusive timbres that occupy a unique space – neither electronic nor acoustic, but more a sort of observational sound that radiates tenderness and warmth. 

Qow (EG/CZ)

Qow, aka Omar El Sadek is an audiovisual artist specialising in electronic sound design and animated visuals. His works focus mainly on documenting the fragile nature of his surroundings, including himself. He takes a similar visual approach, investing in poetic imperfections and unexpected intimacies. This principal appears mostly through his collaborations with artists such as MSYLMA & Ismael, ZULI, Drew Mcdowall and KNOW V.A. His works have been previously exhibited at audiovisual festivals such as Unsound Festival 2019, Lunchmeat Festival 2020 and Rewire Festival 2022.

Hui Ye (CN/AT)

Hui Ye (b. in Guangzhou, China) is an artist and composer based in Vienna. Her works use various media (semi documentary, video, sound installations, and live sound performance) to address questions relating to individual social identity and its entanglements with different cultural and political contexts. In her recent projects, the artist focuses on sociopolitical aspects of the act of listening in contemplation of exploring diverse correlations between sound and the different social phenomenon in contemporary societies.

Jaka Berger (SI)

Jaka Berger is one of the most active, creative and diverse drummers, percussionists, composers and improvisers on the Slovenian music landscape in the last fifteen years. Since 2014, he has been creating music for a prepared drum kit, with which he regularly releases solo works that are regularly published in international publications for improvised music. He is also active in the field of ambient music, experimental hip hop (DUF), and dub (Darla Smoking), experimental composition (Cornelius Cardew’s Treatise), noise, contemporary jazz and improvised music (Fresh Dust Trio, Shoe & Shoelace, Niemoy, …), installations (Party) and electroacoustic music. In recent years, he has been intensively involved in the field of modular sound synthesis, establishing and expanding new sound fields in his work.

ABADIR (EG/DE)

ABADIR (Rami Abadir) is a music producer and sound designer born in Cairo, Egypt. His work focuses on experimental, club, glitch and ambient music, and he’s one half of the duo 0N4B. ABADIR holds an MA in Digital Media Design from University of the Arts, Bremen.

Mutant Radio has also added the following names to the Georgian line-up of the event: Levan Luka Nakashidze, Zesknel, JD J, TINA & TEDI.

Program overview

Summarizing both artist announcements,, here is the program overview:

Friday, June 23

Levan Luka Nakashidze (DJ SET), ESI , Nziria*, m.a.t.a.d.a.t.a.*, Hui Ye*, The Stanley Maneuver*, Ale Hop*, Thea Soti*, ABADIR*, BMI (DJ SET), Nino Davadze

Saturday, June 24

JD J (DJ SET), TeTe Noise, TINA & TEDI, Zesknel, Roxane Métayer*, Maria Bertel*, Jaka Berger*, Qow*, Felisha Ledesma*, undo despot*

*Artists of the SHAPE+ platform.

SHAPE+ platform for innovative music and audiovisual art, co-funded by the European Union, announces the first acts of the collaborative showcase with Tbilisi’s Mutant Radio and two new partner organizations, starting with its next working period. The two-day event will happen over two nights  – June 23-24 – at Mutant Radio’s outdoor space and will gather more than 12 artists. The new partner organizations will permanently join SHAPE+ after July 15, 2023.

First wave of SHAPE+ artists at Mutant Radio showcase

Ale Hop (PE/DE)

Alejandra Cárdenas Pacheco (also known as Ale Hop) is a Peruvian-born artist, researcher, and experimental musician based in Berlin. Her body of work includes live shows, record releases, sound and video artworks, research on sound and technology, and original music for film, dance and theater projects.

Thea Soti (HU/SERB)

Thea Soti is a multi-disciplinary artist, working within the fields of experimental vocal music, electronic sound, installation, text-based media and video art. She uses digitally manipulated sound, human voice and poetry in various formats, continuously manipulating and processing her own voice. Her pieces often go over the auditive experience and bravely explore space and movement, thus creating dynamic spaces. She often reflects on current socio-political issues, such as modern escapism, non-binary identities, beauty myths or collective fear.

The Stanley Maneuver (HU)

The Stanley Maneuver is the solo project of András Molnár, a musician, dj and organizer based in Budapest. His practice focuses on weaving a web of fragile environments that have their own histories, desires, faults and secrets. Building upon improvisational and generative techniques he constantly repurposes his materials to explore territories in and around experimental music and intimacy.

Maria Bertel (DK)

Maria Bertel is a Danish trombone player, improviser and composer. The acoustic sound of her instrument amplified creates an output that draws inspiration from drone and noise music. What is normally not hearable is presenting itself, movements, metal and breath becomes a swirling part of her compositions. Changing organic patterns are emerging, tiny sounds becomes brutally clear as well as the range of overtones of the instrument.

Roxane Métayer (BE/FR)

Roxane Métayer was born in France in 1992. She learned to play the violin at a young age, and then continued her studies in Belgium, at the Ecole de Recherches Graphiques, where she obtained her Master’s degree, in Speculative Narration, Narratives and Experiments.

She continues her practice as a visual artist and musician, based in Brussels. She has released several albums with the labels Primordial Void, Kraak, Morc, Wabisabi tapes and Vlek with the duo Sage Alyte. 

undo despot (UA)

undo despot is an experimental audio-visual artist from Odesa, Ukraine. Her musical practice is focused on combining deconstructed visual and music influences, coupled with academic techniques. At the same time she’s most known as a live artist, who combines various genre influences.

The event will also present a string of Georgian acts: BMI, Nino Davadze, TINA & TEDI, TeTe Noise.

Stay tuned for the full lineup announcement!

New partner organizations

After the showcase in July, Tbilisi’s Mutant Radio will become a permanent partner of SHAPE+.

Mutant Radio is a media platform that focuses on various directions: mixes, interviews, educational shows, live performances and discusssion broadcasts that are either live-streamed or filmed and streamed later on. It gathers various artists, DJs, and interesting personalities that have an opportunity to focus on the subject of their preference and their interest. What is unique about Mutant Radio is that it is mobile.

The physical station is a fully-equipped caravan-wagon that is based in Tbilisi yet also streams from other regions and special locations around Georgia. Apart from the live streams, Mutant Radio also has an open-air cafe, where like-minded people have an opportunity to enjoy quality music and a friendly vibe.

The second new partner is Portugal’s OUT.RA, responsible for organizing OUT.FEST. Started in 2004, and continuously held in Barreiro, Portugal, OUT.FEST is an annual festival celebrating adventurous and experimental music in all its diversity (improvised music, electronics, jazz, contemporary classical music, metal, new idioms), gathering and mapping, in its programme, music vanguard’s history, present and future.

Both organizations will start their work within SHAPE+ after July 15, 2023.

The Creative Europe-supported SHAPE+ platform for innovative music and audiovisual art has added four additional acts to its artist list. They enter the project via collaborative residencies, implemented by musikprotokoll in Austria and SONICA festival in Slovenia.

The selection process

Unlike the artists of SHAPE+ that are announced at the beginning of each working year as a result of collective voting, additional artists are selected by individual festivals of SHAPE+ initially for the purpose of taking part in collaborative residencies. They will be added to the SHAPE+ roster via bi-monthly announcements as more and more SHAPE+-related events and festivals are confirmed.
New acts
Ulla Rauter and Hui Ye have been selected by Austria’s musikprotokoll festival to participate in sonic bricolage artist Yara Mekawei’s residency later in the year. Jaka Berger and Branimir Štivić, selected by Slovenia’s SONICA festival, will collaborate with Tony Elieh, veteran of the Lebanese experimental music scene. Keep an eye on the “Events” section of the SHAPE+ website to catch these artists presenting new works.

The platform

SHAPE+ is a new European platform for innovative music and audiovisual art co-financed by the Creative Europe programme. Running for the next three years, SHAPE+ will foster exceptional emerging talent, connecting them to local communities and audiences through collaborative residencies with multiple artistic outcomes, commissioned artworks, as well as one-off presentations and performances. Combining an open call and a curatorial selection, the platform members will select a roster of artists to support each year.

SHAPE+ initially consists of 13 partners in 13 countries with plans for further expansion, while adopting an interdisciplinary approach and committing to social and environmental awareness.
SHAPE+ builds upon the previous SHAPE platform, which from 2015 to 2022 supported 336 emerging European artists and presented their work at festivals, events and venues in numerous countries across Europe and beyond.

Continue to Shape

Nominated artists for 2022 – 2023 are BABAU, Marina Herlop, Perila. Local artists for 2022 – 2023 are Bienoise, Flora Rabitti, Giovanni Sambo, and Laurent Jacquemod.

BABAU is the duo composed of Luigi Monteanni and Matteo Pennesi, both also founders of Artetetra records, tape label concerned with the latest developments in the concepts of digital folklore and transglobal exoticism during late globalization. BABAU is best defined by a pastiche combining the fascination for World Music 2.0, Fourth World galore and Mondo Voyeurism with the latest abstractions in computer music’s compositional techniques, which they call ‘Quinto Mondo’ music. Through the years they have played in festivals such as Club To Club, Fusion, Saturnalia, Outernational Days, Mondo Muzak and Camp Cosmic and have collaborated with Kiosk radio, NTS, The Wire, Sun Araw, Simon Reynolds, Senyawa and many others.

Marina Herlop is often described as a pianist, a lingering remnant of her classical training. But what strikes the listener on Herlop’s breakout track miu is the intricate trickery of her voice, tracing rhythmical clusters around the subtlest of musical beds, in a technique inspired by Carnatic music of Southern India. miu, the opening track of Herlop’s new studio album Pripyat, was among the first songs that the young Catalan artist made on a computer, after two albums – 2016’s Nanook and 2018’s Babasha – that brought spectral elegance to the sound of piano and voice.

Perila is a St. Petersburg-born, Berlin-based sound and visual artist, DJ and performer exploring sensitive borderlines and depths of subtle matter. Her sets are thick narratives drifting through rich sound palette immersing a listener into pretty personal trip. Constantly shifting moods and textures of mixes create comfort space for emotions to float, merge, evaporate and ride in a deep context.

Four local artists have been involved in two artist residencies. Musician Bienoise and designer Flora Rabitti collaborated with BABAU during their residency at Nextones. Artisan Laurent Jacquemod and Giovanni Sambo collaborated with Stefanie Egedy in the context of the project Una Boccata d’Arte; 

Read our SHAPE publication

This book celebrates the second phase of SHAPE (Sound, Heterogeneous Art and Performance in Europe), between 2018 and 2022. The platform supports mainly emerging and at times less explored innovative music and audiovisual art from various parts of Europe. SHAPE is run by 16 festivals and organisations that worked with 192 artistic projects during this period. First and foremost, this publication is a collection of selected interviews with some of these artists.

The founders of SHAPE hope that these conversations will give to the reader an insight into the diverse world of adventurous European sound and interdisciplinary artists who, with some exceptions, have escaped broader international attention. When speaking to the artists, we got to hear what motivates and inspires them, what backgrounds they are from, what pleases or worries them about their current situation (both creatively and socially), and where they hope to arrive. Their answers were just as diverse as their work, and there are many colourful opinions – sometimes even contradictory ones – which allow the reader to conjure a hypothetical future of the fields of music and art.

Beyond that, this book is a catalogue of names in music and audiovisual art that the reader might want to follow in the future. By nominating them for the SHAPE project, curators from 16 festivals wanted to draw attention to the idiosyncratic and innovative work they have done so far, and to suggest that these artists represent ideas, methods, and trends that will shape the nearest future of both aforementioned fields.

HAPPY READING!

SHAPE+ builds upon the previous SHAPE platform, which from 2015 to 2022 supported 336 emerging European artists and presented their work at festivals, events, and venues in numerous countries across Europe and beyond. We’d like to thank all the artists, partners, supporters, and friends who participated.

Open call

The artists chosen for SHAPE+ must be willing to choose greener forms of travel when such choice is possible, and are expected to participate either in residencies that include artistic collaboration or one-off performances and presentations as well as publicity activities, educational events and artist meet-ups. 

Artists can see more detailed eligibility criteria and apply by filling in this form.

Deadline: April 30, 2022.

On March 16 and 23, SHAPE platform for innovative music and audiovisual art will collaborate with the Bristol-based magazine and online media Crack on a string of online premieres of performances, video works, compositions and mixes, all created specifically for this two-part online event aimed at global audience. The SHAPE takeover of Crack magazine will happen in two parts: on March 16, all the audio premieres of this joint activity will be published on crackaud.io, whereas March 23 will see new video works by SHAPE artists published on Crack’s website.

The line-up of this collaboration will consist of 16 European acts – each SHAPE member organisation will present one artist that they initially nominated to the platform. For the occasion, Terraforma presented Shapednoise.

The Creative Europe-supported SHAPE platform for innovative music and audiovisual art is announcing its 2021 list of artists. The artist selection for the platform’s seventh year traditionally places a number of audiovisual projects and sound artists alongside musical acts that range from club music and forward-thinking media art to free improvisation and spatial music.
Continue to Shape

From November 11 until November 25, SHAPE platform for innovative music and audiovisual art will collaborate with the US-based online music magazine XLR8R on a string of exclusive live streams and mixes from a selection of 2020 SHAPE artists. Terraforma presents a performance by Piezo recorded in the Threes Studio at Assab One.

For the first time in Milan, an immersive showcase of the Platform for Innovative Music and Audiovisual Art from Europe. Being Terraforma the latest member to take part in SHAPE platform, the event aims to provide insights about the intents and modus operandi of SHAPE in order to fully present its work. The showcase takes place in the fascinating venue of ASSAB ONE, the new headquarters of Terraforma.

Continue to Shape

SHAPE platform for innovative music and audiovisual art, supported by the “Creative Europe” programme of the European Union announces a new open call for artist submissions for the 2021 SHAPE artist roster.

Musicians are asked to provide an up to 10 minute long streamable video or audio excerpt of their live performance, while audiovisual artists are asked to provide streamable video documentation (or photos) of their work (online links, no attachments). Materials that are not sent in accordance to these requirements, will not be considered.

As the creation of the annual SHAPE artist roster is rather complex and demands consensus from 16 different organizations, we will not be able to get back to artists or musicians with detailed evaluations of the submitted materials. However, they will be contacted in the case if they’re chosen for the SHAPE roster of 2021.

Artists can apply by filling in this form.

Deadline: July 31, 2020.

Continue to Shape

Marta De Pascalis is an Italian musician and sound designer living in Berlin. Her solo works employ analog synthesis and tape loops, incorporating free playing into steady, repetitive patterns. She has produced two albums of minimal synth excursions: the self- released Quitratue (2014) and Anzar (The Tapeworm, 2016) and Her Core in spring 2018 on The Wormhole. Marta creates densely layered collages of glowing melodic shards and growling bass lines, hypnotic synth figures that warp and whirl around each other before dissolving into entropic oblivion. For her compositions, she uses improvisation on a tape-loop system, in which patterns of repetition create a sense of dense, dynamic and cathartic distance.

Continue to Shape

Tadleeh is the nascent project of Indian-born, Milan-based musician Hazina Francia. Her club-heavy, brooding debut EP, Ego Will Collapse, was released in summer 2019 on Berlin’s Yegorka label. Hear her Red Light Radio live set below!

Continue to Shape

The Creative Europe-supported SHAPE platform for innovative music and audiovisual art is announcing its 2020 list of artists. The artist selection for the platform’s 6th year traditionally places a number of audiovisual projects and sound artists alongside musical acts that range from club music and forward-thinking media art to free improvisation and spatial music. SHAPE is also happy to welcome a new member – Italy’s Terraforma, and the festival has already contributed to this newly announced list of SHAPE acts.

Continue to Shape

After concluding a fruitful and curatorially enriching collaboration with the Paris-based Biennale Némo, SHAPE platform welcomes a new member festival – Italy’s Terraforma.

Continue to Shape