composer: Brane Zorman: INSECTA Cantata
curator: Katarina Radaljac
11 May – 28 Jun 2019
exhibition of 8-channel installation and the cycle of live concerts

Saturday, 11 May 2019 at 12.00 (noon) – family opening, presentation of the cycle and a short musical insert with saxophone player Vida Vatovec

live concerts
Tuesday, 14 May 2019 at 8.00 p.m.
Vida Vatovec, saxophone player

Tuesday, 28 May 2019 at 7.00 p.m.
Gašper Livk, contrabass player

Tuesday, 11 June 2019 at 7.00 p.m.
Mauricio Valdés San-Emeterio, sound artist

Zoomusicological cycle is sound research that encourages participating artists to interact and create together with non-human animals. Each individual concert evening will present different musician that will improvise on the same music, composed of sounds and music by animals. The composition will be prepared by the residence composer or sound artist. Musicians will be encouraged to respond to the compositions and, by doing that, create an indirect sound interaction. The cycle animotMUZIK opens new ways of performing, collaboration, and listening among individuals of humankind and beyond it.

In the first edition of a cross-species musical cycle, we will present three independent improvisations on pre-recorded composition INSECTA Cantata that will include sounds of cicadas and crickets. Performers will listen to the composition beforehand, they will also receive some basic information on the sound creativity of cicadas and crickets, as well as the guidelines on how to treat the used sounds of non-human animals in the composition. They will be encouraged to create their own understanding of their sounds and own way of relating to them – the latter will be realised as an indirect sound interaction. The goal is to foster participants to work in a more intuitive, artistically open and scientifically supported way. Interaction of each of the participants will, therefore, be unique and different.

After each improvisation, the cycle curator Katarina Radaljac will present a short explanation of the principles of cross-species collaboration and lead a short Q&A session with the performer.

“Thinking about the animals as collaborators, even if it sometimes might feel contrived, ensures that they are treated as the fully sentient beings they are. You don’t kill, harm or abuse someone you collaborate with.”
– Lisa Jevbratt

Music INSECTA Cantata presents, analyses and synthesises spectres and variations of harmonic, atonal rhythmic pulsing, sonic and social signals and songs of selected insects from the families Cicadidae and Gryllidae. With simple editing of own recordings of the natural environment (2016 – 2018) and non-destructive sound manipulation, the composer presents a time and space flux of complete dedication, connection and interdependence in a 20 minute-long 8-channel composition. In the music, he faces and features seemingly simple but actually complicated communication social nodes, sometimes regarded even as primitive by some people, intensities that are definitely inserted in the cycle of time loops, birth and death, basing on a certain self-evident intuitive dedication – the necessity of sharing information, knowledge and experience.

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Brane Zorman is a composer, sound and intermedia artist, sound manipulator, producer and curator. He composes sound works for theatre, intermedia and dance performances. He performs electro-acoustic solo music and improvisations with local and foreign artists in surround sound. In relation to sound and space, he develops various strategies, techniques, dynamic and interactive modules, records and re-interprets soundscapes and uses sophisticated tools to create electronic and acoustic sound sculptures.

Saxophone player Vida Vatovec is currently attending 3^rd year of Music Academy in Ljubljana. During her schooling, she got excellent results at regional, national and international competitions. She also collaborated with several different groups – dance department of Conservatory of Music and Ballet Ljubljana, chamber choir Ave, Brass Orchestra of Slovenian Army and symphonic orchestra of Ljubljana Slovene National Theatre Opera and Ballet. She is also a member of different chamber groups and regularly educates herself with established professors and musicians at home and abroad. She collaborates with young Slovenian composers, improvisation is one of her greatest challenges.

Mauricio Valdés San-Emeterio is an improvisator, composer, designer of media systems and music curator. He developed his career in different artistic areas, with special attention on acoustic, electro-acoustic and experimental music. His catalogue includes works for a single instrument, ensemble, mixed media, guided improvisation, installation, performance, film and different performative arts. As a media designer, he developed applications for real-time interaction. His goal in the near future is to establish an independent sound research studio for study, performing and research of multichannel sound interaction.

Contrabass player Gašper Livk is the last year student of MA programme at the Academy of Music in Ljubljana. He is interested in contemporary performance practices. He is actively contributing to the contemporary music scene of Academy in Ljubljana and beyond it, he performs locally and internationally. He is the assistant of artistic director Dre Hočevar in cycle Re_humanizacija (Re_humanisation) and executive producer at Studio 8. In 2017 and 2018 he played at Darmstadt Ferienkurs Open Space, festival Klangspuren Schwaz, Borderless Dissonance, Ljubljana Jazz Festival, Improcon, Jazzinty and other cycles around Ljubljana. His works for ensemble include Celota (Wholeness, 2016) and Kurirano nenotirano ABLB’L’A (Curated not Annotated ABLB’L’A, 2018).

Credits:
Composer: Brane Zorman
Artists: Vida Vatovec, Mauricio Valdés San-Emeterio, Gašper Livk
Curator: Katarina Radaljac
Organisation: Jasmina Založnik, Irena Pivka
Translation and editing: Urban Belina
Production: Cona, Institute for Contemporary Arts Processing, 2019
Venue:Steklenik, Gallery for Sound, Bioacoustics and Art