19:30–22:00
Sasha Vinogradova, Alina Anufrienko and Angelina Toros
Vocalist and composer Sasha Vinogradova sees music not only as a creative and spiritual process but also as a therapeutic tool. Two years ago, Sasha began studying psychoacoustics and arranging vocal improvisations with kids and adults while also using sound meditations to help sick people. This approach led her to new musical revelations, which later resulted in the album OKO—a collection of contemplative pieces somewhere between ambient pop and electro-folk, recorded with cellist Alina Anufrienko.
The album OKO that has been released on Hidden Harmony Recordings will premiere as part of Screening 2021. Especially for the program, the musicians will team up with video artist Angelina Toros to turn the stage action into an integrated concert-journey. The duo’s compositions will acquire a visual narrative and morph into a single audiovisual narrative with music.
Sanscreed Kanon, Ekaterina Kalashnikova and VJ Spam
The music of Moscow’s Sanscreed Kanon collective is best described by the term Zen funk, coined by the Swiss pianist Nick Birch. Mixing gradual compositional development with hooky bassline groove, strict minimalist accuracy with the wobbling immediacy of jazz, the Moscow quintet’s Zen funk stretches somewhere in between, consistently immersing listeners in a state of deepest hypnosis. Thought out to the smallest nuances, Sanscreed Kanon’s tracks attract the audience entirely, making it follow each of the instruments: the scrupulous piano, the monotonous bass, the leaky saxophone, the measured drums, and the point percussion on bizarre instruments.
Performer Inga plays a special role in Sanscreed Kanon's acts. While ideally emphasizing the band’s music, her movements, at once plastic and angular, and completely adjusted to the compositional dramaturgy, operate as yet another musical instrument. For Screening 2021, Ekaterina Kalashnikova and VJ Spam will “scale” Inga's dance, transforming her movements into sophisticated patterns and story-driven videography.
Felix Kubin and Wolfgang Lehmann's film Dragonflies with Birds and Snake
With forty years of creative experience to his name, Hamburg-based electronic composer and multi-instrumentalist Felix Kubin is a musical virtuoso and magician. One of the most eccentric figures in the German electronic scene, Felix has demonstrated on many occasions his unique skill of juggling with ease different music genres and forms. No matter what Kubin is up to, be it his signature “laboratory-made” microscopic electronics featuring swinging melodies, maliciously grinning synthetic pop, rollicking glitch cabaret, or even a real ensemble performing demonic hits at the junction of avant-garde and grotesque, his sense of humor never deserts him.
At Screening 2021, Felix Kubin will turn into frequencer summoner who will voice German avant-garde director Wolfgang Lehmann’s film Dragonflies with Birds and Snake, which traces the life cycle of a dragonfly, delving deeper into its relationship with the surrounding ecosystem. In spite of the zoological context, however, it is not a gradually unfolding, balanced story in the style of Discovery documentaries that awaits the viewer— Lehmann’s raw mechanical editing and strobing visuals endow all processes with special dynamics and expression, creating an extreme contrast between form and content. Acting as the author of a live soundtrack, Felix will set up a real-time sound meditation. Among his instruments, a special place is occupied by light scanner, which play a hand-drawn abstract scores, affecting the intensity of the sound, leading to a self-sufficient audiovisual performance, where the audial and the visual are equally paramount.
