Cover photo: Saint-Abdullah, Eomac, Rebecca-Salvadori
Every other February, when Amsterdam is still thawing out and pretending winter is almost over, Sonic Acts Biennial recouples the city. Not with noise for noise’s sake, but with frequency, friction and programming that will actually open your world.
Founded in 1994 by Paradiso Amsterdam, the ArtScience Interfaculty of the Royal Academy of Art and the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Sonic Acts began as a platform for new developments in electronic and digital art. In its early years, it was a yearly festival rooted in Paradiso’s countercultural energy, presenting IDM and experimental electronic pioneers like Mike Paradinas, Plaid, Robin Rimbaud, and Autechre, alongside workshops and demonstrations that treated theory and practice as equals.
Over the decades, it evolved. From 2010 onwards, international collaborations and long-term research trajectories such as Dark Ecology expanded its reach, folding science, ecology and critical theory deeper into its DNA. Today, Sonic Acts operates as an interdisciplinary arts organisation dedicated to research, development and production at the intersection of sound art, science and theory. It commissions new work, hosts residencies, publishes Ecoes through Sonic Acts Press, and every two years stages the Sonic Acts Biennial.
The Biennial now unfolds across February and March, allowing for slower, deeper engagement with urgent questions in art and culture. This year’s edition, Melted for Love, turns toward the sounds of home. It proposes friendly ways of feeling at home, technologies of welcoming and open invitations to participate in hospitality. Rather than mapping the world as a grid of strangers, it imagines a mesh of souls woven together, human and otherwise. If home is love as a network of kinship and care, then Melted for Love foregrounds communities working in solidarity, exchanging exhaustion for tenderness. In a city negotiating displacement, ecological pressure and cultural saturation, it feels timely. Maybe even urgent.
What sets Sonic Acts apart from other Amsterdam happenings is its refusal to separate art from inquiry.
And whilst that all sounds beautiful and conceptually airtight, the programming is, let’s say, overwhelming. Two months and countless events means you have to pick your battles. Battles, not favourites. So in the spirit of public service, we disappeared into the Sonic Acts website and resurfaced with the happenings we are most excited about.
Concert Series: Heart Rests Twice @ murmur
March 12 / 20:00 – 23:30 / murmur
The concert series Heart Rests Twice at murmur unfolds across five Thursdays. The first two concerts opened with attentive listening and subtle shifts in time. On Thursday, March 12th the series continues with a third concert where Kween, Nancy Mounir and Virus2020 take stage to explore time as memory in motion. A meditative sonic exploration through one of our favorite sounds systems in Amsterdam, a definite must-attend.
Exhibition @ W139
7 Feb – 29 Mar / Wed–Sun 12:00–20:00 / W139
The exhibition at W139 offers an acoustic and material study of how ecosystems absorb militarisation, colonial occupation, and environmental disruption. On 25 February, Emiddio Vasquez of Lower Levant Company and Diana Policarpo will reflect on echolocation and non-human sound. It is rare to see ecological violence translated so precisely into sonic inquiry.
Public Attention Workshop by Roman Tkachenko
13 Mar / 16:00–20:00 / Muziekgebouw
Public Attention explores collective rhythm and sonic togetherness through chants, call and response and protest music. It examines sound as political tool and embodied resistance. In a moment when public space feels increasingly surveilled and fragmented, this feels like both rehearsal and reclamation.
Festival Weekend
26 Feb – 1 Mar / Various Locations
The beating heart of the Biennial. For four days, Melted for Love takes over the city with concerts, exhibitions, audiovisual performances and conversations. If you are travelling in, this is your concentrated hit.
Expanded Experience @ Muziekgebouw
26 Feb / 19:30–01:00 / Muziekgebouw
Six intense hours pushing the audiovisual form. Mazen Kerbaj opens with Lungless, followed by Zinc and Copper with Occam Océan, Saint Abdullah, Eomac and Rebecca Salvadori with A Forbidden Distance, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Pierce Warnecke and Matthew Biederman, and Paul Jebanasam and bela with Anton Filatov. The lingering question: how can sound and cinema break through walls, connecting us across war, migration and ecological collapse?
Comprehensive Exhibition Tour
27 Feb / 14:00–17:15 / W139, Arti et Amicitiae, Rozenstraat
Curator Angeliki Tzortzakaki leads a tour across venues, tracing how belonging and care endure under climate catastrophe and colonial violence.
Spatial Sound Evening 2 @ Paradiso
28 Feb / 20:00–00:30 / Paradiso
In partnership with Hartwig Art Foundation and INA GRM, the Acousmonium arrives in Amsterdam. An orchestra of around sixty loudspeakers becomes the stage. KMRU and Aho Ssan present Still Fold, unfolding live within this immersive architecture of sound.
Sonic Acts @ Garage Noord
28 Feb / 23:30–06:00 / Garage Noord
Later that night, Sonic Acts takes over Garage Noord. Japanese beatmaker DJ DIE SOON joins Indonesian vocalist Rully Shabara of Senyawa for fierce improvisation. Nigerian musician LINTD collaborates with Sheffield producer Porter Brook in a collision of gothic noise and rap. Light design by Ben Kreukniet sculpts the space into a digitally warped environment. A reminder that sound is always spatial.
And that might be the real takeaway. Sonic Acts is not only about what you hear, but how you inhabit what you hear. It frames listening as care. As relational. As a way of being with others.
For the full programme and tickets, see this year’s details via Sonic Acts.
See you somewhere between the speakers.
