starry sequences: Skånes konstförening x Scaling x Retreat Radio
Artist talk and concert
Saturday 13 April 2024, 18.30 – 22.00 

Free entry

Gab_i ,Simnikiwe Buhlungu, emer, Qow

✧・゚: *✧・゚:*

Skånes konstförening, Scaling and Retreat Radio are excited to announce a joint event of interventions within the shared fabric of one starry night, two live sets, an artist talk and a DJ-set.  

Scaling is a concert series based in Malmö that operates nomadically. Sprouting from the eponymous, monthly broadcast on Retreat Radio, the live-series carves out a space where listening is in focus. 

Hosted across different locations in the city, Scaling has for this second instalment of the year invited three artists to share their sonic worlds within the setting of Skånes konstförening: Prague-based audiovisual artist Qow, Brussels-based musician and sound artist emer as well as Copenhagen-based DJ and producer Gab_i. 

To Where Are We Beautifully Going? ​is a series of performative talks, lectures, film screenings, interventions that invite the audience to experience a plurality of visuality, practice and thought. In this iteration, Amsterdam-based artist Simnikiwe Buhlungu will hold a performative artist talk, Live Scoh’ for residual phenomena (from the time of the ode and before and after). 

Debuting crumbs, sketches, projects, and demos of moments that haven’t yet left the hard drive, Live Scoh’ will commence as a public sharing of aspects in Buhlungu’s practice that have influenced, complicated, and shaped the oscillation of sound as a primary and, oftentimes, auxiliary presence.

The evening is a concerted effort to listen closely to the independent forces and their broad frequencies that operate in Malmö and beyond. 

Organised and curated by Tawanda Appiah and Matilda Tjäder.  

About

To Where Are We Beautifully Going? ​is a series of performative talks, lectures, film screenings, interventions that invite the audience to experience a plurality of visuality, practice and thought. In these times we are in, of rampant uncertainty, negated history and a sense of tipping chaos it is crucial to forge kinships that traverse borders creating a stronger sense of connection. Previous volumes of the series have featured; Samuel Girma, Marronage represented by Nina Cramer and Mai Takawira, Santiago Mostyn and Zara Julius.

Named after the staccato strings, chiming bells, jazzy breaks and imaginary voices that make up the opening track of an album named Royal Astronomy from 1999, Scaling is a concert series and collaboration between Retreat Radio and its eponymous broadcast. Expect temporary bubble worlds of stories, loops, breaks and some whispers from ghostly pianos. Like floating across a river via the mistiest of forests and sleepiest of suburbs, picking up some pulse down the high-street, finally bursting in a steamy club somewhere. Scaling has thus far taken place at Margaretapaviljongens Café (Scaling : Kafé), Malmö Roddklubb (Scaling : City) and Hypnos (Scaling : Moonlit). 

Retreat Radio is an independent, non-commercial radio station based in Malmö, Sweden. The station broadcasts 24-7, with daily livestreams by residents and one-off contributors from Malmö, Scandinavia, Europe and beyond. Aside from the radio, Retreat produces events in the form of clubs, raves and concerts.

Artwork by Mathias Tang

Finger food by Knækkeheksens Servering 

✧・゚: *✧・゚:*

Bios

emer: Besides Marija’s various practices in sound and acousmatic music, exploring sonic spatialization, texture, and fragility, she is also one-half of electroacoustic duos ugne&maria and Forgotten Plants, as well as the author of her latest cassette, 𝓈𝑒𝒶 𝓈𝒶𝓁𝓉 (Lillerne Tapes), written under the moniker emer. Her music has been described as “delicate but imbued with enormous emotional resonance. This music doesn’t call attention to itself; it doesn’t attempt to pummel you with concrete realizations. Instead, Rasa has shaped a galaxy of gentle swaying soundscapes in which voices are left to wander through nebulas of amorphous melody as we engage with a persistent desire to sink further into these celestial spaces.” — Joshua Picard.

gab_i: gab_i is gabriel (he/him) – a producer, dj, and music technology enthusiast currently based in copenhagen, denmark. he creates a hybrid of new music aesthetics and synthesis-fusing electronic sounds, blending a desire for amorphous depths with a commitment to textural currents. through long-form electroacoustic pieces and ambient experimental productions, his exercises in music production are tied from a considerable academic background and a self-driven study in electroacoustic compositions.

simnikiwe buhlungu: Simnikiwe Buhlungu is an artist from Johannesburg, South Africa and currently based in Amsterdam, NL. Interested in knowledge production[s] — how it is produced, by whom and how it is disseminated — Buhlungu locates socio-historical and everyday phenomena by navigating these questions and their inexhaustible potential answers via research based methodologies. Through this, she maps points of cognisance which situate various layers of awareness as reverberated ecologies. Lately, she has been listening to djelis, thinking about geologic burps and attempting to distribute publication contributions to Simunye Resource Works (a publishing house that is forever yet-to-exist).

Qow: Qow aka Omar El Sadek is an audiovisual artist// Cairo-born. Prague based/// specialising in sound design, painting and animating visuals. He collaborated with artists such as Drew Mcdowall, ZULI, MSYLMA and Pollution Opera.

Omar was selected on the roster of Shape+ Platform for 2022/2023 and is part of the Glory Affairs collective in Prague. His latest album, El Mosameh Sherine, was released on the cairene label, “irsh”, and his visual works have been previously exhibited or performed at audiovisual festivals such as Unsound Festival 2019, Rewire Festival 2022 and Le Guess Who 2023. 

Scaling is supported by Malmö Stad.