Onze Ambassade Festival #5
Program 02.09.2023
19:00 till 03:00 hrs, FREE

With concerts, events, exhibitions and guided tours, West opens up to a diverse audience, from art academy students to residents of the city: everyone is welcome. For this evening we organize a continuous special program with challenging music performances, exhibitions, films and DJs.

Exhibitions

At West Den Haag in the former American embassy you get to know contemporary art. Through exhibitions, events and guided tours we initiate conversations to make room for the imagination together. We would also like to welcome you! Wander through the special national monument that once stood for diplomatic ideals and power. And ask yourself, what is art anyway? — This evening all exhibitions are open for free!

1. Part Two of Many Parts (opening)
Looking at Video Art — West x LI-MA Peter Bogers, Giovanni Giaretta, Johan Grimonprez, Simone C. Niquille & Keigo Yamamoto

2. Gaps we want you to feel — a lingering game (opening)
A.L.C. Collective Anna Zimante, Charlotte Kremberg & L. Meïko Touraille

3. Gödel, Escher, Bach
Eleanor Antin, Christian Bök, peter campus, Richard Cavell, Louisa Clement, John Conway, Wim Crouwel, Hanne Darboven, Simon Denny, Arthur Reinders Folmer, Suzette Haden Elgin, Hansje van Halem, Florian Hecker, Georg Herold, Herlinde Koelbl, London Fieldworks (Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson), John C. Lilly & Randolph T Dible, Ernst Mach, Giacomo Miceli, Matan Mittwoch, Joke Olthaar, Daphne Oram & Tom Richards, Sigmar Polke, Royden Rabinowitch, Thomas Ruff, Marcus du Sautoy & Victoria Gould, Jeremy Shaw, Kim Soun-Gui, Eugene van Veldhoven, Christopher Williams, Ludwig Wittgenstein.

4. ALLES=GOED
Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven

Music Program
Curator: Alex Andropoulos


GROVE
Grove contorts dancehall, UK bass, and hip-hop into a brand-new musical force, spurred by sensual liberation, expression of identity, defiance, and political angst. Inspired by punk, Jamaican sound system culture, and a good dose of pop from their teen years, their music is a culmination of all the above, fused with social and political rage, igniting unhinged and unrestrained performance on stage and often off stage. The sheer musical energy is so exciting and physical it instantly forces one to dance, if one manages to keep up with the extreme tempos.
▶ https://www.youtube.com



SANS ÂGE
Sans Âge is the experimental drone folk duo of Arthur Chambry and Ugnė Vyliaudaitė based in Brussels. The two visual artists are exploring their musical background and interest apparent in their awareness of space and audience, the performative element of their concerts, and in the self-made instruments they use, employed as an attempt to produce as much sound as possible by two people, resulting in extremely performative and visual concerts. Musically they strive for meditative yet abrasive sonic rituals, beautiful attempts for the sublime through the crudest of methods.
▶ https://www.instagram.com/sans__age/



SYNAESTHESIS ENSEMBLE present TAMING THE AIR
The contemporary music ensemble Synaesthesis, based in Vilnius, has an international reputation as a daring musical ensemble dedicated to the creation and performance of new and unique music. The team is composed of a group of diverse and highly skilled musicians, taking up the mission of introducing works of experimental Lithuanian and foreign, and employing an array of performative methods to do so, spanning concert, installation, and performance. For their performance at Onze Ambassade Festival, Arminas Bižys, and Simonas Kaupinis will be performing the piece Taming the Air, written for saxophone, tuba, and an air compressor.
▶ https://www.synaesthesis.lt/



PAAL NILSSEN LOVE / JULIE KJÆR
Paal Nilssen-Love is a Norwegian drummer. He has been one of the figures in European and U.S. Free-jazz leading for almost three decades, with a unique playing style instantly recognizable. Although extremely dynamic and versatile, if his playing were to be summed up in one word, it would be ‘powerful’. Julie Kjær is a Norwegian Saxophonist having made a reputation as an extremely unique voice in jazz and Free-jazz. The duo has performed together for years, initially as part of Nilssen-Love’s ‘Large Unit’, and now in duo form, creating extremely explosive and melodic improvised sets.
▶ https://www.youtube.com



NAPE NECK
Nape Neck is a trio from Leeds, England, playing post-post-punk that’s simultaneously tangled and taut, frantic and danceable. Guitar, bass, and drums all function individually in their typical roles, while simultaneously reaching out to fill in for one another. Sharp stitches of guitar add to drum grove, repetitive low-tuned drums thicken up the bass, and melodies from the bass substitute the already preoccupied guitar. This is exaggerated further as all three musicians sing their neatly interwoven vocals, blurring all boundaries between musical roles and eliminating any stereotypical sense of hierarchy, either consciously or unconsciously reflecting the member’s own social/ political stance. The result is frantic, high energy, noisy music.
▶ https://napeneck.bandcamp.com/



RadioTonka Program
RadioTonka is The Hague’s underground radio station, since 1994. Next to a very diverse night radio broadcast program on DenHaagFM, RadioTonka functions as a roaming stage and platform, supporting djs and musicians, with a focus on new talent, experimentation and artistic growth. For the Onze Ambassade Festival #5 RadioTonka will again transform the Alphabetum to the hottest club in the museum district, with a thrilling lineup live-acts and expert DJs from the The Hague area.
▶ http://www.radiotonka.org


HOLLANDS SPOOR (LIVE)
Rinus van Alebeek (Berlin) and Harold Schellinx (Paris) form the electro-acoustic improvisation duo Hollands Spoor. Schellinx is an autonomous musician/composer/artist, writer and theoretical mathematician. He was a prominent figure in the Dutch post-punk movement Ultra around 1980. Van Alebeek is a writer, musician, co-founder of Radio On in Berlin and curator of Staaltape, Staalplaat's cassette label. They have been carrying their love and fascination for the musical and literary potential of the audio compact cassette in many forms for decades, including as members of Diktat, a dictaphonists-with-contrabassist quartet (see, for instance, Gonzo (Circus) #175). Also in Hollands Spoor, analogue cassette players (walkman, dictaphones, etc) are the primary instruments for the creation of layered sound collages, full of often pretty hidden audio treasures. And always full of stories.
▶ https://soundblog.bandcamp.com



SÁOF (LIVE)
Sáof is a drone/noise/power electronics project by Liza Kuzyakova — a composer, performer, researcher, and curator from Moscow, based in The Netherlands. Grounding her sound practice in between multichannel electro-acoustic composition and live performance, her work relates tosonic deconstruction and histories of sound in the instrumental space, traces and distortions of material. With a passion for extremes of music, Sáof outlines a chaotic atmosphere full of soft friction, which, gaining weight, becomes a seething low-frequency rumble. Merging screeching electronics, it shifts the audiences’ understanding of Noise into a turbulent long-term relationship, background narrative to a scene that never happened.
▶ https://soundcloud.com/



Parallax Omega (LIVE)
Parallax Omega is a new venture into the realm of minimal electronic and ambient music by The Hague based artist and musician, Rob Bothof. Characterized as a spiritualized sonic improvisation, the project revolves around the interplay of parallel running, cross-rhythmic synthesizer sequences that gradually converge into a cosmic audio mirage.



DEXTER (LIVE)
Step into the enchanting world of Dexter, the synth nerd who mesmerizes the crowd with his self-built modular synthesizer, crafting captivating improvised techno. Armed with just a blank patch, he embarks on a sonic journey, letting the moment carry him to uncharted musical realms. Prepare to be spellbound by the unpredictable and electrifying sounds he conjures.



RILLING DJ
Taking inspiration from genres such as old school UK break and dub, to modern jazz and soul; Dutch DJ and producer Rilling (Shiver) weaves together a dynamic, bass-filled sound they hope will keep you on your toes.



KRANK PAPPA DJ
In between the live performances Krank Pappa (Radio Tonka / Repeater Radio / DFM Radio) will DJ a selection of nevergreens and future classics.