Irtijal 2019
Day 3 – Detailed Program

Sunday March 31st, 2019
at Zoukak Studio, Qarantina – 3.00 pm
Solo Marathon
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay “Exile and Other Syndromes”
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay electronics, visuals
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay is an Indian award-winning sound and media artist, researcher and writer. Focusing on sound as a primary medium, Chattopadhyay’s large-scale installations deal with contemporary social and political issues such as the climate crisis, human intervention in the environment and ecology, urbanity, migration, and race. Conceptually, Chattopadhyay’s work enquires into the materiality, objecthood, site, and technological mediation of sound. His piece “Exile and Other Syndromes” was conceived during a residency at the Institute of Electronic Music in Graz, Austria, where a prototype was developed and premiered. The fuller version of the work is proposed at Irtijal, involving multichannel sound and live visuals.
Hardi
Hardi Kurda viola, electronics, objects
Hailing from Kurdistan, Hardi Kurda is a composer, sound artist, improviser, and curator working with sounds of otherness, real-time score, and improvisation strategies. He develops interactive sound projects for public spaces within a range of disciplinary collaborations. He is currently developing his new sound composition “The Latest News” at Recherche Ensemble in Freiburg, Germany.
Shakeeb Abu Hamdan
Shakeeb Abu Hamdan drums, electronics
Shakeeb Abu Hamdan is an artist, musician and recording engineer living in Beirut. He has been heavily involved in the DIY music scenes of London and Leeds in the UK over the past 15 years, playing in various experimental rock/weird punk bands including Cleckhuddersfax, Please
Fadi Tabbal
Fadi Tabbal guitar, electronics
Lebanese musician, producer
Christof Migone
Christof Migone microphones, electronics
Christof Migone is a Swiss-born artist, performer, teacher, curator and writer who works with language, voice, bodies, intimacy, complicity, and endurance. He has collaborated with Lynda Gaudreau, Martin Tétreault, Alexandre St-Onge, Michel F. Côté, Set Fire To Flames and Fly Pan Am, among others. A book compiling his writings on sound art, Sonic Somatic: Performances of the Unsound Body was published in 2012. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada.
Tarkamt
Cherif El-Masri synths, electronics
Cherif El-Masri is a composer and multi-instrumentalist based in Cairo. He is equally at ease in various musical idioms, including Arabic classical and folk music, jazz, free improvisation, punk rock, extreme metal, and experimental electronic music. He has been an active member of several Cairene bands such as Eskenderella, Procession Towards the Unknown, and more recently Nadah El-Shazly’s touring band. In 2012 he joined The Invisible Hands, a
Aya Metwalli
Aya Metwalli voice, electronics
Aya Metwalli is a singer/songwriter from Cairo who has been performing her original material since November 2011. Starting solely with her acoustic guitar and voice, she gradually expanded her live set after studying music production in 2014. She self-released her first album, an EP entitled “Beitak”, in December 2016. Lately, she has been leaning towards the
Stefan Fraunberger
Stefan Fraunberger santur, electronics
Stefan Fraunberger is an Austrian artist and composer exploring themes related to transformation and liminality in sound. He engages in an electro/acoustic dialogue with different instruments and conceptions through translation, composition, performance or writing. Focusing on schemes of perception, relating discontinuity of geometries and languages beyond nature and culture, his work touches on time, periphery, memory, and transience. Fraunberger has conducted research, residencies
Thomas Ankersmit
Thomas Ankersmit Serge modular synthesizer
Thomas Ankersmit is a musician and sound artist based in Berlin. He plays the Serge Modular synthesizer, both live and in the studio, and has collaborated with artists such as Phill Niblock and Valerio Tricoli. His music combines intricate sonic detail and raw electric power, with an extremely physical and spatial experience of sound. Acoustic phenomena such as infrasound and otoacoustic emissions (sounds emanating from inside the head, generated by the ears themselves) play a central role in his work, as does a deliberate misuse of the equipment.
Rabih Beaini
Rabih Beaini electronics
Lebanese-born producer and DJ Rabih Beaini
Stephanie Merchak
Stephanie Merchak synths, electronics
With an academic background and technical expertise in music going back decades, Lebanese producer Stephanie Merchak’s first endeavors into the realm of electronic music came in the early 2000s. Since 2009, she has been working on bringing out her own touch of experimentalism, releasing tracks, EPs and full-length albums both independently and on various labels, and performing in and around Beirut. She relies on an array of synthesizers, samplers and effect pedals to craft deeply intricate live sets, heavy on bass drones, screeching feedback, and ghostly sound effects. Merchak is also a freelance sound editor, composer and sound designer in various Beirut studios.
Find Zoukak Studio on the Map
Zoukak Studio

Irtijal’20 is made possible with the support of Onassis Cultural Center; Borderline Festival; Goethe Institute; British Council; Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival; Ruptured; Tunefork Studios; Studio Safar & Illy.


