Music & Audio Visual Programme Performers

Dharma (Singapore), best known as the former guitarist of Singapore out-rock group The Observatory, Dharma was with the band for the first 7 albums. His initial approach stems from guitar experimentations with effects and later on incorporating objects to bring it to a grittier, mystical and industrial-esque sonic dimension. Dharma’s solo practice, which came to fore with his 2013 solo debut, Intergranular Space, has opened up new vistas for his guitar work. Using prepared and extended techniques, his guitar no longer just plays notes and chords, but conjures forth colours, textures and even beats.

Duoture (France/USA/Singapore) is formed by American improvisor E-Luthier Dirk Stromberg and French Experimental Filmmaker and VJ Cecile Chagnaud continue to join forces as an improvising duo. First working together in the acclaimed mammoth work time:space:, they have continued to grow their collaboration of organic electro-instrumental sounds and haltingly quirky videos of our world to create performances that are both exciting and ground-breaking. Duoture is interested in the intersection of sound and visuals. Cecile works have received awards from the Academy Awards and Cannes Music Festival. Dirk has been featured in residencies and festivals in Europe, Asia and the United States.

Jameson Feakes & Josten Myburgh (Australia) are Perth-based musicians active in contemporary, experimental and improvised music practices. As a duo, their focus is on the composition & performance of music that explores conceptual, open-ended approaches with minimal material. In 2016 they were part of the lineup for the Tilde New Music Festival in Melbourne, Victoria, for which they composed new work ‘a window in Sicily’, and they gave Western Australian premieres of works from the Wandelweiser Collective. They have also performed in unorthodox performance contexts—onboard the installation ‘RAFT’ afloat on Perth’s Swan River, and in public parks, house concerts, and on beaches. Their current performance program consists of extended new commissioned works from composers Jonathan Heilbron, Simon Charles & Olivia Davies, which received their first performances as part of the duo’s tour to Adelaide and Melbourne with artists from their record label Tone List.

Kok Siew-Wai (Malaysia) is a vocal improviser, artist-organiser and video artist. She has performed in festivals such as Kuala Lumpur Contemporary Music Festival, SoundBridge Contemporary Music Festival, Asian Meeting Festival (Japan), Choppa Experimental Music Festival (Singapore), Playfreely Festival (Singapore), RRRec Fest (Indonesia), E-Poetry Festival (USA) and more. Her video text + vocal improvisation performance piece “Language of Self” is collected by He Xiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen, China. (Photo: Teoh Eng Hooi)

Mampos (Malaysia) is a noise unit using pedals, feedback, loops and other means to create harsh noise and sonic destructions.

Mark Lazar makes use of processed electronic sounds to generate sweeping frequencies that lie anywhere between sustained pure tones, masses of shifting bass, splintered harmonic outbursts and scattered white noise. He lives in Selangor.

Max Hattler (Germany) is a new media artist working primarily with abstract animation, video installation and audiovisual performance. His work explores relationships between abstraction and figuration, aesthetics and politics, sound and image, and precision and improvisation. Max studied at Goldsmiths and the Royal College of Art, and received a Doctorate in Fine Art from the University of East London. His work has been presented around the world, such as at Beijing Minsheng Museum, Sonar Hong Kong, Filmfest Dresden, MoCA Taipei, and Exploratorium San Francisco. Awards include Third Culture Film Festival, Bradford Animation Festival, and several Visual Music Awards. He has performed live around the world, including at Playgrounds Festival, Seoul Museum of Art, EXPO Milano and the European Media Art Festival. Max has been on the jury of over 30 festivals including Animafest Zagreb, CutOut Fest Mexico, Punto y Raya Festival, Filmwinter Stuttgart, and Tehran International Animation Festival. He is an Assistant Professor at the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong.

Max Riefer (Germany/Malaysia) is “Director of Percussion Studies” at Universiti Teknologi Mara UiTM, Faculty of Music Selangor/Malaysia. He is the coach of the New Music module „Opus Novus“ at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music/ Singapore, has performed as soloist and chamber musician at international festivals like MaerzMusik (Berlin), Tokyo Experimental Festival (Japan), Wien Modern (Austria) among others. Currently, he is the percussionist with Inverspace (Switzerland) and Zero Crossing (Germany/Singapore). He has also played with Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt) and Zeitkratzer (Berlin). Max Riefer served as a lecturer of the Percussion Faculty at the Conservatory of Music Lugano (Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana), Switzerland from 2010 to 2012, and gave masterclasses and lectures at the Birmingham Conservatoire (UK); Musikhochschule Mannheim (Germany), Tokyo Ongaku Daigaku (both Japan) and the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Max Riefer had studied at the Freiburg Music University with Prof. Bernhard Wulff and Prof. Taijiro Miyazaki and at the Toho Orchestra Academy (Japan) with Prof. Yoshiyuki Tsukada and Prof. Kyoichi Sano. He is an endorser of Vibrawell Mallets and Pre du Rhin instruments.

Monteith McCollum (USA) is an inter-media artist working in film, sound, and sculpture. His films have screened at Festivals and Museums including The Museum of Modern Art, Hirshhorn, Wexner Center for the Arts and Festivals including SXSW, Slamdance, Hot Docs, Amsterdam & Osnabruck European Media Arts Festival. His films have garnered dozens of festival awards including an IFP Truer than Fiction Spirit Award. In addition to making films Monteith has consistently been creating unique compositions for films and performances. Compositions are included on the NYFA Current Fellow CD compilation curated and put together by Innova. His film and sound work has received support from organizations including New York Foundation for the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation, NEA, Jerome Foundation and Kodak.

Hidden Frequencies is a performative work that playfully explores musical sounds that stem from early communication and sound technologies. The performance moves from transmission to transcription, from the experience of decoding language to the material qualities of the machines of communication, and structural music. The first part of the work incorporates morse code patterns; the violin, tuning forks, and telegraph oscillators, forming a multi layered exploration of musical qualities. The second half moves into transcription of early images of sound vibrations from formats including optical film tracks and phonographs. To enhance the haptic experience of sound and an interactive involvement with the work, the audience receives sound cards, which are opened and closed on cues supplied by the film.

Shinkan Tamaki (Japan) Born in 1982, Japan. Artist in search of never-before-seen images and new perceptual experience. He makes mainly moving image and works related it. While he was studying Science Education at the University, he found a 8mm film camera in dump site by chance. It was the beginning of experiments in moving image with film. He started production with 16mm film in earnest through self-education since 2005. He often processes films by himself and uses it as objects to make best use of its materiality. His films lead the audience’s perception to change naturally and sometimes drastically by coming and going across borders between abstract and concrete, sound and image. Works have been screened at many film festivals, including International Film Festival Rotterdam. Recently, He performs with video camera and projector to observe optical phenomena which happens on the spot.

A duo featuring the hollowed-out sounds of Elizabeth Millar and Craig Pedersen on amplified clarinet and trumpet, Sound of the Mountain (Canada) comes from a strong history of improvisation and extended performance techniques, offering their audience long-form deep listening experiences through the sculpting of vitalized breath. Drawing influence from the works of Pauline Oliveros, Keiji Haino, Toshimaru Nakamura, and Isabelle Duthoit and Franz Hautzinger, their debut album Amplified Clarinet & Trumpet evokes a vast range of textures, from silence and spaciousness to rumbling bass and saturation. The duo works with closely-mic’d instruments and minimal equalization, avoiding the use of effects pedals and loops, such that their constant physical attention drives the music. The whistles and creaking of metal and reed anticipate the more dense moments of distortion and feedback in pieces that can be appreciated as discreet moments, or longer forms. Together Elizabeth and Craig run a record label dedicated to experimental music called Mystery & Wonder.

Sudarshan Chandra Kumar (Malaysia) has performed for the CHOPPA Music Fest (Singapore), Playfreely (Singapore), Switch On (Malaysia) and KLEX Festival (Malaysia). He participates in Serious Play Improv Lab (SPIL) regularly, a monthly experimental music series in Kuala Lumpur. Sudarshan has contributed vocals and live electronics to the following bands: HKPT, Takdir, Sorry and Think!Tadpole!Think!. Working with music for theatre, he is the music facilitator for Main Wayang (2015-2016), a children’s theatre workshop which emphasizes on the basics for orchestrating D.I.Y multimedia performances and has directed and scored music for his musical “The Propitiation of Fundamentals” (2015). Together with musician Yong Yandsen and art space owner Tey Beng Tze, LaoBan Records was established in 2017, and released its first album “His Hubris Clinamina”, a duet by Sudarshan and Yandsen.

Tenggara Trio (Indonesia/Malaysia/Singapore): Comprising of improvisors from South East Asia, Tengarra Trio is Yong Yandsen (Kuala Lumpur) on saxophone, Ikbal S. Lubys (Jogjakarta) on self-made electric guitar and Dharma (S’pore) on electric guitar. Being active in the experimental and improv scene in their respective cities, Tengarra Trio first came together at KLEX (Kuala Lumpur Experimental Music and Film Festival) in 2016, when the 3 members were paired randomly and realised the cosmic energy from their emanating sounds. In Sept 2017, they embarked on their first tour, The Geography of Nowhere, from Singapore right up to Penang, Malaysia. The music has it’s roots in free jazz, rock and noise and is totally freeform improvisation.

Theo Nugraha (Indonesia) is a sound artist from Samarinda Beginning of interest in Sound Art starting in 2013 with the birth of a split album with ‘To die’ from Yogyakarta He’s also active in sounds like Soundscape, Field Recording, Noise, Experimental Music, and Traditional Music from Borneo. Now in addtion to activities in Palangka Raya, He also works through media zine and mail art.

Toh Hun Ping (Singapore) is a video artist and film researcher. His experimental video works visually expounds on broad themes of resistance, travel, time, loss, and mental instability. In preparation for his next (semi – autobiographical) video work, he is researching into the history of film production in early-mid 20th century Singapore. He also runs the Singapore Film Locations Archive, a private video collection of films made in Singapore, and maintains a blog and a website about the intrigues of old Singapore film locations.

Will Guthrie (Australia) is an Australian drummer and percussionist living in France. He works in many different settings of music: live performance, improvisation and studio composition using various combinations of drums, percussion, objects, junk, amplification and electronics. He plays solo and in various projects such as THE AMES ROOM & THE SOMMES ENSEMBLE. His music has been released on labels such as Black Truffle, Editions Mego, Ipecac, Erstwhile, Clean Feed, Gaffer Records, 23five, iDEAL and his own label Antboy Music. While studying jazz and improvised music(s) at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, alongside Ren Walters he started the weekly concert series ‘Improvised Tuesdays’, now known as the Make It Up Club and is Australia’s longest running performance space dedicated to experimental and improvised musics. In Nantes, France he is part of the collective CABLE# which also organizes regular concerts and an annual festival. He also runs the experimental improvised CD label and mail-order service; ANTBOY MUSIC. He plays solo using different combinations of drums, percussion, amplification and electronics, in minimalist/maximalist free jazz trio THE AMES ROOM (with Jean-Luc Guionnet & Clayton Thomas), as well as the improvised/composed ensemble THE SOMMES ENSEMBLE (with Pierre-Antoine Badaroux, Julien Desperez & Maxime Petit). Regular collaborators past and present include Mark Fell, Jérôme Noetinger, Oren Ambarchi, Anthony Pateras, Chulki Hong, Keith Rowe, David Maranha, Toma Gouband, Erell Latimier, Ava Mendoza, Adam Sussmann, Matt Earle, Ren Walters, Helmut Schafer, David Ades, Mark Simmonds, the film maker Hangjun Lee and choreographer/dancer Mette Ingvartsen.

Yong Yandsen (Malaysia) is an improvised saxophonist. He has played at the Kuala Lumpur Contemporary Music Festival, Asian Meeting Festival (Japan), Mosaic Festival Singapore, Choppa Eclectic Improvised Music Festival (Singapore), Turn Around Free Jazz & Improvisation Festival (Singapore), Music Matters Festival (Sri Lanka) amongst others. Yandsen, together with Darren Moore and Brian O’Reily, form an improvised trio called Game of Patience. They have toured to Japan, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand. They released debut CD album “Trial and Error” and a vinyl album “The Bad Sleeps Well”. Together with musician Sudarshan Chandra Kumar and art space owner Tey Beng Tze, LaoBan Records was established in 2017, and released its first album “His Hubris Clinamina”, a duet by Yandsen and Sudarshan.

Yuen Chee Wai (Singapore) Born in 1975. Musician, artist, designer based in Singapore. Often inspired by ideas drawn from philosophical and literary texts, and perspectives glimpsed through the filmic eye and photographic lens, Yuen’s stylistic oeuvre in improvised music is marked by internalised reflections on memory and loss, invisibility and indeterminacy. In 2008, he teamed with Otomo Yoshihide (Japan), Ryu Hankil (South Korea), and Yan Jun (China) to form FEN (Far East Network). FEN focuses on the continuing multifaceted networks and collaborations between Asian countries. Since its inception in 2014, Yuen is part of Ensembles Asia as Project Director for Asian Music Network, to which he co-curates the annual Asian Meeting Festival (AMF) in Japan. He is also a member of the avant-rock band The Observatory (Singapore), with whom he plays guitar, synth and electronics. With nine albums to date, including the most recent August is the cruellest (2016), The Observatory has also conceived a vanguard of initiatives such as the annual festival Playfreely, which gives artists new creative avenues for performing and working together. Both FEN and The Observatory continue to tour extensively, performing in Europe, America and Asia regularly, and has presented in MIMI Festival, Lausanne Underground Music and Film Festival, All Ears Festival and Ftarri Festival. (Photo by Inoue Yoshikazu)