Den Haag’s Rewire: a festival of startling contrast and quiet provocation. The scale and quality of the programme and a seemingly never-ending timetable led to some wild thoughts by the last day. Frazzled imaginings such as: what actually is music nowadays, or where it should be performed, or, even, are we experiencing a new form of romantic expression, floated through my mind. Never was a post-festival sit down more needed.
Rewire is a practised hand in staging its audiovisual Masques around Den Haag. This edition began on a balmy night deep in Dutch Establishment territory. The old American Embassy – now known as West Den Haag – hosted talks, installations and shows from young locally-based artists. The magnificent Proximity Music project that ran throughout the weekend was a mini festival all in itself: positioned in the posher-than-posh parts of the city, one could, just like Mr Benn, enter a door and experience quiet recalibrations of space and time. The absorbing film in the old bunker at West Den Haag, Warnings in Waiting, by Aura Satz was one example. And at Pulchri Studio on the Lange Voorhout, Swiss artist Zimoun showcased a wonderfully immersive and generous recasting of sound in a multilevel space. Incredible stuff.
Ideas of romance seemed to float like gossamer at Rewire 2025: some gigs were lit by an inner radiance so strong you could have charged your phone with it. Mention should be given to the rousing mix of glitch poetry and chanson served up by Belgian voice artist Lila Maria de Coninck in West Den Haag on the opening night. Later, Alessandro Cortini brought emotional balm by the boatload in the nearby Koninklijke Schouwburg. The venerable Schouwburg rumbled to Cortini’s slow moving symphony, the warm noise and womblike visuals pressing us to remember firstborn memories. A festival highlight must be the show by more eaze and claire rousay at the Lutherskerk on the last evening. Here, a dazzling application of modern musical craft and two big hearts combined to devastating effect. With the dusk darkening the high windows behind the nave, the shifting melodic collages and switches of tone and texture achieved a beatific state.
Romance sometimes spelled defiance over the weekend, whether political or personal. Red Brut’s brilliant voyage through an array of cassette samples and embodied noise explored heartbreak and rebirth. On the last night, Use Knife brought their visceral and beautiful show to the Paard, the thumping (new) beats and plaintive calls for understanding reminding us that whilst we’re in the gutter, we must look up. Three Ukrainian artists taught us how to face down terror with both spiritual beauty and the body. To a set of incredibly powerful visuals (often, I suspect, imitating the cannon fire and smoke of the battlefield) Katarina Gruyvul writhed and raged, creating a gothic embodiment of her war-torn country. Her violin passages added an almost heartbreaking counterpoint. In contrast, softness was invoked as a weapon by Heinali & Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko in the Lutherskerk; the duo creating a dizzying vortex of cosmic folk and astonishing vocal runs that felt older than living memory.
There was also time for plain ol’ love and romance, too. Erika de Casier wooed and smooched the audience on the Paard main stage, courtesy of some beautiful modern R&B-driven pop and an embracing personality. In the small hall, the brilliant snark served up by John Glacier provided another side to modern love; the rich, psychedelic two-step soundtracking a fantastically cocky set of stories, chock full of fun and independence.
What’s the generation gap? Redundant tricks for commercial gain, that’s what. It was no surprise – given a crumbling world order – that audiences flocked to see such wise and experienced teachers as Laurie Anderson, Joan La Barbara and Alvin Curran. All three reminded us that a life wholly committed to the arts is not one wasted. Joan La Barbara’s wonderful show, a (part) extempore exploration of the voice, asked that we use our senses as portals for wider understanding: a reminder that listening is – as Wilde said – an art. Laurie Anderson wryly savaged the architects of our burning planet with a “creative review” in a packed out Amare hall. The place is cavernous, and I suspect she would have drawn double the crowd if she could. Elsewhere, to another packed room (every venue was packed out, it seemed), veteran Dutch sonic explorer Hessel Veldman and fellow electronicanaut Martijn Comes cooked up an interzone full of intense tonal passages that sometimes left their moorings and floated spacewards.
This writer has the sinking feeling that, in having written this review, another needs to be written, if only to list another dozen or so wonderful shows. However, if one event could be said to capture this heady weekend, with all its iterations of the human spirit, it would be Alvin Curran’s Maritime Rites, staged on the Hofvijver lake in front of the Dutch parliament. This opening night bonanza felt like some absurd clash of Handel, Stockhausen and Jerome K Jerome. The parps, squeals and groans from the boatbound orchestra bounced off the water, forming a wider dissonance created by the boats carrying amps and the crowds lining the banks. And there was Curran in the middle of it all, “composing”… A display of quotidian, human, and beautiful absurdity that refreshed the soul.
