FIBER Festival Selects

When I saw the artists being featured at FIBER Festival – I kid you not – I was freaking out. On the 16th -19th of June FIBER festival will be blessing our eyes and ears with experimental music and intrepid conversations across Amsterdam and Online. The festival acts as a meeting place for everyone and anyone with a passion for the contemporary and daring audiovisual arts. Having already kicked off with FIBER x The Rest is Noise on May 20th, the festival’s accompanying exhibition opens on June 8th, the FIBER countdown has already begun. So as your – self-proclaimed – official guides to the festival, we present to you our FIBER Festival must-see selects. 

DJ, producer, radio host and musical storyteller, CCL, embodies the fluid moment of music. Their sound naturally juxtaposes hard, heavy club noises with gentle musical notes – weaving them together to create an electronic symphony you won’t want to get out of your head. CCL captures their audience in a magical trance where catharsis is impossible to resist. Those who have tried to put it into words have described it as “combustive phase transitions through cowgirl-breaks, trip-funk, and wiggle steppers.” But we’re not the only ones that are obsessed, go listen to their mixes for Unsound, Discowoman and The Lodge (and their own productions of course). So get excited and see you at Garage Noord on June 18th for some CCL action.

London based artist Kumbirai Makumbe explores alternative states of being to reimagine – and negate – the exclusionary ideologies of today’s world. This in turn results in the transmutation of such Intangible experiences. They are best known for their explorations into notions of inclusions, in-betweenness, multi-dimensionality of blackness, care and transcendence. On June 19th, we will welcome Makumbe to the session 5 panel titled Queer Ecologies and In-Betweenness – and we can’t think of anyone more qualified. They will discuss the role of transformation by addressing and elaborating on the question: how to navigate ‘in-betweenness’ and how to take ownership of it?

We can’t think of a better way to open FIBER Festival than with the Yin-Wong experience. Performing on the opening night, the multidisciplinary producer and DJ Flora Yin-Wong fuses the sounds of cities with natural environments all while playing musical instruments. Her craft is understood as a rich auditory experience that layers sound from her own multinational life and spiritual history. By using Cantonese pop music, temple chimes, and the Chinese Yangqin string instrument, Ying-Wong creates a tapestry of sounds that both reflects on and expands electronic noise. Her most recent album, Sacro Bosco, explores the ever-changing relationship between humans and nature through topics like climate change to classical myths. But her creative brilliance doesn’t stop there. Last year Yin-Wong also published her first book – titled Liturgy – in which she works with religion, dreams and fragmented memories and their relation to our perception and intuition.

Giaderza – the Rotterdam based DJ and MONO nightclub programmer – and Derozan – the (also) Rotterdam based Garage Noord resident – make up the genius that is SU2IDYA. The merging of these two souls into a deeply connected brotherhood creates a sound like no other. Their thing? Suspense that melds complex rhythms and traditional folk beats. Focusing on non-European sounds, they explore musical heritages that blend the past with the ever-changing present. These experimental creations defamiliarize the known and challenge our understanding of today’s world. Join us as we celebrate the closing night at FIBER with SU2IDYA’s eccentric noise and unapologetic creativity. 

Get ready Amsterdam, the self-proclaimed sound clown – A.K.A Thick Owens – is coming to town. The DJ, curator, label owner and artistic director of the SOFT CENTRE investigates the disorienting effects of the visual culture produced by the contemporary media landscape. From medieval inspiration to deep-psy influenced hyper rhythms, his music is the embodiment of post-postmodern sounds. It’s no surprise that he’s the artistic director of SOFT CENTRE, the Sydney-based festival that – like FIBER – is a pioneer in radical creation across digital media art and sound. And honestly, what better place to get lost in his meme-esk music than Garage Noord?

The Architect, curator and editor, Marina Otero Verzier, does it all. From being the current head of the Social Design Masters at Design Academy Eindhoven to co-editing countless books, it’s safe to say, she knows her stuff. On the 18th of June we will get the privilege to hear her speak during session #3: Realms of Mutation with a talk titled “Compulsive Desires: On Lithium Extraction, Endless Growth, and Self-Optimisation”. The talk brings together the – all too familiar – feelings of burnout and the topic of the climate catastrophe. How? By demonstrating how our productivity and profit culture are connected to the landscapes of resource extraction. She narrows in on lithium, an element deemed one of the keys to the green energy transition which has also been prescribed for treating mania and depression since 1817. In offering new perspectives on an unsuspecting natural element, Verzier is trailblazing radically new understandings of the ever interrelated society of today.