Unsound has revealed lineup details for its 2020 virtual edition, in lieu of this year’s usual Kraków festival.
Scheduled to take place early next month, Unsound says that this year’s event, which has the theme of Intermission, will host collaborations between musicians, commissioned A/V works, a sleep concert, dance and meditation workshops, experimental webinar sessions, community listening events, and more.
The opening show of this year’s edition is Weavings, which has been conceived and co-curated by Nicolás Jaar. It will see performers playing with the artists coming before and after them, with the likes of Jaar, Laraaji, Angel Bat Dawid, Ka Baird, Ellen Fullman, Resina, and Wukir Suryadi & Rully Shabara of Senyawa all taking part.
A/V shows specifically created for online streaming will come from Sinjin Hawke & Zora Jones, DeForrest Brown, Jr. & James Hoff, TCF, and Antonina Nowacka, while percussionists Miłosz Pękala and Hubert Zemler will perform new interpretations of two pieces by Jlin.
GAIKA, GLOR1A and Shannen SP’s Nine Nights streaming concept will be hosting a series of online events as part of the programme, and essays that merge sound and image by Steve Goodman (AKA Kode9) and sometime tQ contributor Kristen Gallerneaux have also been commissioned.
Elsewhere on the programme, Unsound will feature a series of free online workshops for which participants need to register. These include deep listening and laughter meditation workshops presented by Laraaji, a guide to Jersey Club by DJ UNIIQU3, and a Gqom Dance Workshop with Esi.J, set to the tune of DJ sets by gqom figures such as Griffit Vigo and Rudeboyz.
Discussion panels will also be added to the programme next week, while Unsound has set up a Discord page to function as a meeting place for the audience to find out what’s currently happening and chat with others, including artists and curators presenting work during the festival.
"It’s impossible to expect anyone to spend as much time behind a screen as they would in the physical realm of the festival in Kraków, so we’ve tried to create an online event where you can dip in and out across 11 days, or stay for the duration if you have a lot of ‘screen stamina’," says Unsound Artistic Director Mat Schultz. "No doubt there will be glitches along the way, but we hope the result will be always at least interesting, a way of looking for paths forward through a very disorientating time.
Unsound runs from October 1 to 11, 2020. You can find the full schedule here.
