SUPERHOST | Listening to the walls

Sunday 19 February 2023

15:00-18:00

Talk / Listening Session and Performance
with Céline Gillain, Valentina Magaletti and Fanny Chiarello

As part of ANTENA SUPERHOST 2023

Programme

15:00
Listening to the Walls
Talk/listening session by Céline Gillain

Sounds are situated, they have histories. If we listen carefully, we can hear them echoing with other times and places. How would the walls of the M HKA sound like if we listened to them? What will we hear if we listen to the institution’s womb? Listening to the Walls means listening from within the institution while also to the institution. Listening to the invisible walls of legitimate(d) spaces and ramparts, but more importantly: to the points of contact, the areas of soft contamination and reciprocity.

What prevents us from hearing certain sounds? Why do we turn a deaf ear to some sounds whilst being all ears for others? In a hybrid talk, Céline Gillain will share her reflections on selective listening. Mixing speech and intimate narratives with a musical selection, she asks: how can we decompartmentalise/decolonise listening? How can we expand critical sound practices?

Céline Gillain is a musician, performance and video artist based in Brussels working across the fields of experimental music, electronic music, and visual and performing arts.

The representation of her voice and body through diverse artistic scenes as well as her acute analysis of communication and relationships have forged a posture that is driven by movements of liberation and empowerment.

Gillain has performed extensively throughout Europe during the last ten years. In 2017, together with Brussels’ Lexi Disques, she released her first single, What Happens if I Open My Mouth?, followed the next year by her debut LP Bad Woman on Paris label Drama. Mind is Mud is Gillain’s first 12-inch album. In the course of 2023 the album will be released on cortizona (Antwerp).

Céline Gillain lives and works in Brussels.

In English.
Duration: ca. 45 min.

16:00
Permanent Draft
Performance by Valentina Magaletti and Fanny Chiarello

Permanent Draft is a project by drummer Valentina Magaletti and author Fanny Chiarello. Exploring the relationship between sound, rhythm, field recording and spoken words, Permanent Draft aims to highlight works showing a certain taste for fragmentary, irrepressible creative eruptions and lo-fi experiments. The project leaves the grandiose aside, instead paying attention to the sounds, details and anecdotes of everyday life – picking up raw, ordinary material. An aesthetics of bitter truths, migrainous fulfilments, dead clowns, broken gods, taffeta fairies, fruit foxes and non-binary empty frames.

Valentina Magaletti is a multi-genre drummer, percussionist, and composer. Best known as an esteemed collaborator who worked together with Raime, Helm, Jandek, Floating Points, Nico Jaar and numerous others. Magaletti is a member of Moin, Vanishing Twin, Tomaga and CZN. She is also an accomplished solo artist. On her album A Queer Anthology of Drums (bié Records, Beijing, 2022) she invents an unapologetic yet delicate musical language, in a series of explorative collages of field recording, percussive low-fi frequencies and ritualistic free improvisation: structure and imagination meet in the interstices, to create a whole new dimension.

Valentia Magaletti lives and works in London.

Fanny Chiarello is a poet, novelist, and pop music critic. Chiarello has dabbled in nearly every genre, from short stories and poetry to children’s literature and novels. In her writings, she deconstructs storytelling, exploring neglected territories where questions of freedom and the shackles imposed by society arise again and again. A Happy Woman, the story of her encounter with American avant-garde star Meredith Monk, reads like a fascinating literary reportage where complicity goes hand in hand with a critical eye. In her free time, Chiarello is establishing a repertory of female sound creators from all over the world: from 1447 to this day.

Fanny Chiarello lives and works in Lille.

Duration: ca. 45 min.
Followed by drinks at the M HKAFE.

Practical information

Venue: M HKA’s top floor (SUPERHOST SPACE)
Limited capacity
No registration needed
Free access