VOICE AFFAIRS initiates artistic border crossings in which European art music is infected by the diversity of Lebanon’s experimental music scenes. It connects the Neue Vocalsolisten with musicians from Lebanon (Youmna Saba, Raed Yassin and Cynthia Zaven), Egypt (Aya Metwalli) and Palestine (Samir Odeh-Tamimi). From the perspective of contemporary composition, electronic music, sound art, improvisation and avant-pop, they all deal in different ways with the voice, which plays a special role in the music of the Mediterranean region. Filmmaker Panos Aprahamian connects these works through video sequences that oscillate between documentary film and science fiction and in which he explores the phenomenon of the voice. In a combination of concert performance and video installation, VOICE AFFAIRS is a grand narrative about the diversity, contradictoriness, explosiveness and poetry of the Lebanese cultural space.

This project was developed and co-produced by Akademie der Künste Berlin, Irtijal Festival, Musik der Jahrhunderte Stuttgart, Onassis Cultural Center/Stegi Athens, and Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival.

Yorgos Stenos is a sonic scavenger; a full-time explorer of hardware stores, kitchens and junkyards in quest for noise-making treasures. His live performances showcase his home-brewed electroacoustic instruments, electronics and amplified objects. He has created audiovisual works, installations and music compositions for instruments and fixed media. He also conducts workshops on sound experimentation for young people and adults of diverse backgrounds.

Dimitra Kousteridou is a composer and sound artist who lives and works in Athens. She creates site-specific installations and performances originating from improvisation and using sound as a key medium. Her interdisciplinary practice includes on-call situations with hand-made acoustic synthesizers, natural attributes of artistic objects, and the moving body with its changing feedback in space and time.

Sofia Zafeiriou is an Athens-based musician and sound artist. Her current research is focused on transcending non-Western rhythms and modalities using electronic and stochastic interfaces, noise, improvisation and acoustic performatives. She is a long-term member of Khora Community Centre, an initiative aiming to provide open, social and cultural spaces for displaced people in Athens. She has worked with various education-technology initiatives in Athens for locals and newcomers to Greece, and has released a workshop-based course on creative computing. She is a member of the Intercultural Orchestra of the Greek National Opera, as a violinist.