First edition Sonic Acts Academy

26–28 February 2016, at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, de Brakke Grond and Paradiso

Sonic Acts announces the Sonic Acts Academy, a three-day event that aims to expand, sustain and disseminate thought-provoking discussions about artistic research, and underscore artistic engagement as vital to understanding the complexities of our contemporary world. The Acaddemy takes place from 26 to 28 February 2016, and will open at the Stedelijk Museum with performances by Thomas Ankersmit, Okkyung Lee, and others. The programme at de Brakke Grond features lectures and presentations by Susan Schuppli, Louis Henderson, Heather Davis and more, and the performance and club night at Paradiso features Lotic, M.E.S.H., Nkisi, and many others.
 
Over the span of two decades Sonic Acts has developed from a thematic festival into a platform with a strong focus on contemporary and historical developments at the intersections of art, science and technology. Now Sonic Acts is adding another dimension to the platform, the Sonic Acts Academy. The Academy aims to destabilise the sterile dichotomy of theory-versus-practice, which suggests that theory and practice are distinct approaches that form their own discourse. It focuses on artists and their practice, as well as on artistic strategies and processes that begin with research and end in a finished artwork. In doing this, the Academy aims to enhance the reflective and critical aspects of artists’ research and enable them to participate in the theory-versus-practice debate without having to compromise their hands-on, intuitive working methods, or re-frame their work within a scientific vernacular or methodology.
 
Sonic Acts also intends to reclaim the term ‘academy’, not to discuss what an academy is, or can be, but to acknowledge the many ad hoc academies that are popping up in contemporary culture. Sonic Acts Academy is about creating bridges between existing modes of knowledge and theory and the more idiosyncratic modes of knowledge produced by artists.
 
For the inaugural 2016 edition, Sonic Acts Academy invites artists and theorists to expand on their research through workshops, masterclasses, lectures, concerts, film screenings and work presentations. For three days the Academy will probe the traditional notions of the ‘academy’ through an open and dynamic format, with the aim of positioning art as a means of knowledge production, full of potential, to be shared and expanded upon with and by future generations.
 
Sonic Acts Academy starts on Friday 26 February at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and is followed by two days of lectures, presentations and film screenings at de Brakke Grond, Amsterdam. On Saturday 27 February, Sonic Acts will take over Paradiso in collaboration with Viral Radio with a massive line-up of performances. In the weeks preceding and after the Academy, there will be masterclasses and workshops for artists, curators, students, theorists and cultural practitioners.

Opening at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
Sonic Acts Academy will be inaugurated on 26 February at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Energetic acoustic and electronic live music will alternate with freshly restored sounds and images from pioneering artists. Dispersed over various spaces inside the Stedelijk, the Maryanne Amacher Archive will be presented in the Netherlands for the first time, there will be a world premiere of a new work by Thomas Ankersmit based on Dick Raaijmakers’ art, and performances by Okkyung Lee, WaSm and Raphael Vanoli. Sonic Acts also selected related works from the Stedelijk Museum’s collection to be shown throughout the Academy weekend, by among others La Monte Young, Dick Raaijmakers and Terry Riley.
 
Academy at de Brakke Grond
The two-day symposium, the nucleus of Sonic Acts Academy, begins on 27 February at de Brakke Grond, a new location for Sonic Acts. Sally-Jane Norman will introduce the symposium and take the role of central respondent during the Academy. Speakers on 27 and 28 February are media artists Susan Schuppli and Anton Kats, filmmakers Louis Henderson and Ana Vaz, sound artists Ewa Justka and Katrina Burch, researcher Heather Davis, the activist artist collective #Additivism, and Bill Dietz introducing the recently established Maryanne Amacher Archive.
 
Sonic Acts at Paradiso
Featuring over 20 artists from four continents, and 16 hours of bleeding-edge music and film, Saturday night’s programme on 27 February is perhaps our most ambitious line-up to date. In collaboration with Viral Radio, Sonic Acts brings together many of the newest, freshest, and sometimes even youngest artists from scenes in Stockholm to Cape Town, from Berlin to Brighton. With performances by, among others, Lotic, M.E.S.H., Why Be, Yon Eta, KABLAM, Nkisi, SKY H1, Soraya, Juha, GAIKA, Drill Folly, J.G. Biberkopf, Yoneda Lemma, Anna Mikkola, Daïchi Saïto and Jason Sharp.

For more information, see www.sonicacts.com