Sonic Acts Biennial festival 2022 takes place across Amsterdam from 30 Sep – 23 Oct.

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Biennial 2022

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Sonic Acts Biennial 2022: Festival celebrating art, technology and science.

For almost three decades, Sonic Acts has sought to celebrate new developments in electronic and digital artforms. We're excited to now reveal Sonic Acts Biennial 2022, staged across various locations in October, interweaving three weekends of exhibition openings, a sound programme, symposium, installations, artist presentations, workshops and more to be announced.

The biennial international festival has gained prominence since 1994 as an intensive art, theory and technology gathering that is motivated by changes in the ecological, political, and social landscapes.  Sonic Acts is back in full force this year, stretching beyond its standard format. Already a leading platform for international projects, research and the commissioning and co-production of new artworks, this edition reaffirms its dedication to supporting artists in ever-changing circumstances. Through artistic investigations and research, the organisation advances experimentation and provides a podium for dynamic perspectives, which can in turn be tools for discovery, growth, development, and emancipation.

This year’s edition of Sonic Acts’ biennial emphasises collaborative knowledge creation, as well as experimental sound and moving image that attunes and responds to ecological thinking. Through thought-provoking interventions, the biennial asks how we can care, collectively and despite exhaustion of energies, for what we cannot see or understand. The three weekends around which the biennial revolves provide a slow immersion into the environmental humanities and contemporary art practices responding to the urgency of pollution.

# one sun after another
Taking its name from a line in Etel Adnan’s powerful collection of poetry _The Arab Apocalypse_ (1989), _one sun after another_ takes place from **30 September** to **23 October** at three locations – **W139**, **Zone2Source** in Amstelpark and **Het HEM** in Zaandam. Expanding the long-term Sonic Acts research focus on the implications of the climate crisis, the exhibition traces the inextricable nature of pollution and time, moving across ecological and temporal scales.

With works by **Andrea Galano Toro** • **Cesar Majorana** • **Danny Osborne**, **Patrick Thompson**, **Alexa Hatanaka**, **Sarah McNair-Landry**, **Eric McNair-Landry**, **Erik Boomer** and **Raven Chacon** • **Félix Blume** • **John Grzinich** • **Julian Charrière** • **Leanne Wijnsma** • **Louis Braddock Clarke** and **Zuzanna Zgierska** • **Lucky Dragons** (**Sarah Rara**, **Luke Fischbeck**) • **Maryam Monalisa Gharavi** and **Sam Lavigne** • **MELT** (**Isabel Paehr**, **Ren Loren Britton**) • **Seline Buttner** • **Tomoko Sauvage**.



# Sound Art
During the second weekend of Sonic Acts Biennial 2022, **7** to **9** **October**, Sonic Acts presents an extensive sound art programme at **Het HEM** and other venues across Amsterdam. Het HEM will host a radical diffusion of sound in space: an iteration of INA GRM’s Acousmonium, built in collaboration with Sonic Acts for the 2022 Biennial. The former munitions factory turned contemporary art centre sets the stage for immersive, auditory encounters which engage with Sonic Acts’ enduring focus on sonic ecologies and pollution. The programme features musical performances, audiovisual works, immersive installations, site-specific field explorations and  workshops, with more to be announced.

# Leaving Traces
The Sonic Acts symposium convenes over the weekend of **15** to **16 October** with a series of talks and workshops on the interconnected ways that pollution affects all things living and nonliving. Focusing on an extractive relationship to the Earth, participants will be led by international artists and thinkers at **Likeminds** in Amsterdam, with the evening performance programme taking place both there and at **Singelkerk**. _Leaving Traces_ asks how we can care, collectively, for others amidst toxicities that so often evade human perception.
 
Leading on from the discursive programme, Sonic Acts is honoured to present a newly commissioned chapter of Aura Satz's feature film Preemptive Listening, made in collaboration with sound artist BJ Nilsen. The symposium will close with evening performances by an exciting lineup of sound artists.

With talks and presentations from **Angeliki Balayannis** • **Aura Satz** • **Dani Admiss** • **Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou** and **Agnès Villette** • **Mary Maggic** • **MELT** (**Isabel Paehr**, **Loren Britton**) • **Nerea Calvillo** • **Sasha Engelmann** and **Sophie Dyer**. 

More names to be announced soon.

# About Sonic Acts

Sonic Acts, founded in 1994, produces a biennial festival with a strong focus on contemporary developments at the intersections of audio-visual art, science and theory. Each edition explores the chosen thematics by means of a broad spectrum of fields, practices and disciplines. Sonic Acts is an organisation that stimulates and supports research, development and production of work by giving it a stage and commissioning new work and events, often in collaboration with international festivals, arts organisations, funders and other partners.

→ Read about the [programmes](https://www.sonicacts.com/agenda)

→ Purchase Early Bird passes via [Eventbrite](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sonic-acts-biennial-2022-tickets-376107897847)

Sonic Acts announces 2022 Biennial in October

Sonic Acts Biennial 2022 takes place from 30 September to 23 October at various locations across Amsterdam. Three weekends of exhibition visits, performances and talks will be accompanied throughout October by in/outdoor sound installations, workshops, excursions and other public events.