iv project space

Event: Lukas De Clerck plays Blank Forms

Originating in ancient Mesopotamia, and remembered best for its preeminence in classical Greco-Roman vase paintings, the aulos is a double-reed double pipe, which produces a sound likened to the buzzing of wasps or a “shrill, roaring lotus.” The aulos went extinct over a millennium ago, but in its time, the instrument was often characterized as the dark, Dionysian foil to Apollo’s sweet, harmonic lyre. Its microtonality and rough timbre were out of place in an era that ascribed the highest aesthetic value to mathematical perfection; accordingly, Horace derided the instrument as vulgar and impetuous, while Pratinas said it was fit to accompany “only door-to-door carousels and the brawling of drunken young men.” Though distant descendants persist, including the oboe and the bassoon, there are only fifteen extant aulos pipes or pipe sets remaining.

Lukas De Clerck, a musician and sound artist based in Brussels, has spent years on the archaeo-musicological project of reviving the aulos. But while classicists and luthiers have often been interested in conserving auloi as historical artifacts or creating exact replicas, De Clerck has focused on designing a living instrument, liberated from traditional expectations about how it should look, sound, or be played. By doing so he is crafting a new context for his chosen instrument in contemporary music.

Blank Forms presents this performance in collaboration with In vitro, supported by Flanders State of the Art.

Lukas De Clerck, solo performance
16 April 2025

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Article: 'In Fred Moten’s Music, Theory Is Put Into Practice' by Nate Wooley

In the introduction to his 2003 essay collection In the Break, Fred Moten lays out the importance of sound in his theoretical writing. He refers to a short parenthetical embedded in a scene from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in which the author recounts being forced to watch his Aunt Hester being whipped. Douglass describes witnessing the brutality as the event that opened his eyes to slavery’s innate cruelty. His mercilessly frank retelling refers to Aunt Hester’s “heart-rending shrieks.” It was those shrieks—specifically what Douglass heard—that stirs Moten to explore the bridge between the solidity of text and the ephemerality of sound. In his own words, he’s trying to get at “the implications of the breaking of such speech, the elevating disruptions of the verbal that takes the rich content of the object’s/commodity’s aurality outside the confines of meaning.” In my reading, Moten wants his work to tap into the moments when words aren’t enough, and when sound—a shriek, a note—is the only way to express the complexity of being human.

The Nation, Books & the Arts / March 26, 2025

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Event: Q-O2's Oscillation festival 2025 'The Weather'

The 2025 edition of the festival Oscillation ::: The Weather will depart from practices around field recording. Field recording can be thought of as the registration of one's listening environment. This registration may happen through microphones and a device, but might also include registration via the ear to memory or language. The field might be inside, outside, urban, rural, or domestic. Field recording can be intended as archival observation, as material for musical composition or radio emissions, or as listening practice. With such a broad scope of practices, it can raise questions from authenticity to ethics of authorship and appropriation, to geographies and changing environments.

The festival will link field recording to the weather as phenomenon, as metaphor, and as concept, able to cause poetic and beautiful effects but also to manifest radically destructive events. In both field recording and the weather we are reminded that environments are in perpetual change. They are affected by outside influences, and much of the surprise and interest in a place is the way it constantly throws up new constellations of events and impressions.

There are patterns to weather, seasons and weather systems, but it remains impossible to fully predict and still more impossible to control.

Exploring weather as a general condition, informed by climate, temperature, humidity, pressure, and changes in atmosphere, the festival will present and discuss various practices of field recording and their use in art and science.

Performances, walks, on-site workshops, and talks will provide the opportunity to experience different modes of listening to the environment, permeated by the various and varying phenomena that weather comprises.

The festival takes place over four days and six locations, and will be broadcast via a continuous radio stream.

Oscillation ::: The Weather
1-4 May 2025

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Event: STUK's Hear Here — a sound art festival

Hear Here takes you on a wal­king tour of sound art in Leuven. Fifteen art­works about sound or silen­ce rever­be­ra­te through Leuven’s his­to­ri­cal heri­ta­ge sites. On the occa­si­on of KU Leuven’s 600th anni­vers­a­ry, this edi­ti­on focu­ses on his­to­ri­cal uni­ver­si­ty buil­dings. With a map in hand, you shall walk from a medie­val water­ga­te, past an emp­ty school, to an impo­sing baro­que cha­pel. At each site, a sound instal­la­ti­on enters into dia­lo­gue with acous­tics and archi­tec­tu­re. Historic works by gre­at sound-art pio­neers are fea­tu­red alongsi­de new instal­la­ti­ons by Belgian artists.

Artists:
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Anri Sala, Adam Basanta, Rudy Decelière, Christina Kubisch, Jonáš Gruska, Mariska De Groot, Lucy Andrews, Franziska Windisch, Els Viaene, Aernoudt Jacobs, Dick Raaijmakers, Susan Philipsz, Anouk Kellner, Edwin van der Heide

Locations:
STUK (start & end) → Dijlepark → Hollands College → Justus Lipsius Tower → Sint-Agnes School → 30CC/​Chapel Romaanse Poort → BAC ART LAB → M Leuven → KADOC

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Reader: Echoes of Dissent (Vol. 5): X-Ray Hex Tet

Reader compiled by X-Ray Hex Tet in the context of Echoes of Dissent (Vol. 5).

X-Ray Hex Tet, 19 – 20 October 2024, Les Ateliers Claus Brussels. Part of the research project Echoes of Dissent (Stoffel Debuysere, KASK & Conservatory / School of Arts Gent). In collaboration with Courtisane, Auguste Orts and In vitro, with the support of Flanders State of the Art, VGC (Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie) and Q-O2.

Edited by Stoffel Debuysere
Design by Ran De Vos
Printed by Risiko Press

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Video: @xcrswx live at IV13

Live performance of ‪@xcrswx‬ at les ateliers claus for IV13 on December 9th, 2023.

@xcrswx is the poly-intra-media duo of Crystabel Riley and Seymour Wright. It contrasts the LIVE (evolved sounds/patience/relentless-ness) and the ANDROID (cropped media [sounds+visuals]/impatience/edits). Previous releases include 'Call Time/Hard Out ' and 'Fixes', together with experimental musician Lolina (aka Inga Copeland) on Feedback Moves, and 'Lookbook Digital' which was released on Cafe OTO's Takuroku Imprint.

Footage: Crystabel Riley
Music: Crystabel Riley & Seymour Wright
Sound: Arnaud Chamay

Thanks to Frans Claus, Ran De Vos, Lennert Lefever, Ferdinand Lezaire & Ornella Noulet.

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