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Unsound Fest hosting free 10-day online edition in October (lineup/schedule)

Poland’s Unsound Festival, which focuses on experimental and electronic music, is, like a lot of events, going virtual this year, and will host the 10-day Unsound 2020: Intermission from October 1-10. It will feature collaborations between musicians, commissioned A/V works, a sleep concert, dance and meditation workshops, guided walks, custom-built virtual worlds, experimental webinar sessions, community listening events and tours, panel discussions and more.

“It’s impossible to expect anyone to spend as much time behind a screen as they would in the physical realm of the festival in Kraków, so we’ve tried to create an online event where you can dip in and out across 11 days, or stay for the duration if you have a lot of ‘screen stamina’” says Unsound Artistic Director Mat Schulz. “No doubt there will be glitches along the way, but we hope the result will be always at least interesting, a way of looking for paths forward through a very disorientating time.”

Nicolas Jaar leads the Intermission lineup with “Weavings,” a “durational improvisation structured in the manner of a long fabric of sound, with performers playing with the artists coming before and after them.” Those performers include Aho Ssan, Angel Bat Dawid, Dirar Kalash, Ellen Fullman, Księżyc, Laraaji, Ka Baird, Paweł Szamburski, Raphael Roginski, Resina, Rolando Hernandes and Wukir Suryadi & Rully Shabara of Senyawa.

There will also be A/V shows made specifically for Intermission from Sinjin Hawke & Zora Jones, DeForrest Brown, Jr. & James Hoff, TCF and Antonina Nowacka; as well as “essays merging sound and image” from Steve Goodman and Kristen Gallerneaux, and percussionists Miłosz Pękala & Hubert Zemler will perform new interpretations of two pieces by Jlin.

That’s not all: Laraaji will host deep listening and laughter meditation workshops; visual duo Pussykrew are collaborating with 700 Bliss (Moor Mother & DJ Haram) to create “an interactive journey through a world inspired by the music and lyrics of the duo.”

Then there’s “∞ o’clock,” a second durational piece where artists will create music designed to allow one to sleep, listen, or to enter a meditative state. Performers include Emily A. Sprague, Lucrecia Dalt, Felicia Atkinson, Bartosz Kruczyński / Earth Trax, KAMR and Forest Management. Filmmaker and artist David OReilly will create visuals throughout, as well as stream his piece “Quarantine Dreams.” The six-hour piece will be broadcast four times in a 24 hour period.

There’s lots more than this and you can check out the announced lineup and schedule here.

The entire Unsound 2020: Intermission program is free, but if you’d like to help out, you can contribute via its Patreon.