REVIEW: Reflections on Rewire Festival

To listen—really listen—is to witness. But as Zahra Malkani suggested in To Beat To Burn, a
listening session and workshop held at Rewire, it is also to destabilise. Rewire’s power came not
only from its musical and performative showcases, but from its rupturing of expectations, inviting
us to feel the raw tension between silence and signal, voice and void, through installations, talks,
workshops, space, and sound.

The opening performance, Maritime Rites by Alvin Curran set the tone of a festival demanding our
witness; with locals gathering in confusion at the strange sounds accumulating across
the Hofvijver. Boats moved in a ritualistic disorder across the lake in a choreography of chaos
underscored by Schoenbergian atonality, with brass instruments howling across the water and
field recordings merging with synthesised crashing waves, transforming the river into a theatre of
storm and migration. The music collapsed boundaries between nature and noise through intention
and, dare I say, accident? Synths crackled like broken masts, startling birds on the small island in
the Hofvijver, never quite settling and always resisting. It was a bewildering and often
uncomfortable experience. Maritime Rites was a soundscape that rejected aesthetics and
demanded witness, a fitting overture to the provocations and dialogues woven throughout the
weekend.

Rewire opened by positioning its queen in a place of abstract listening, hoping the pawns would
follow, not in obedience, but in recognition that the most radical gestures often begin in stillness,
in witnessing, in tuning in to what seeps beneath the surface, to what lurks beneath the soils of
the avant-garde.

We know Rewire as a festival that shelters fugitives of music, sounds on the outskirts of our
audible cities, sounds that bring us together as fugitives of listening. And Rewire delivered on that
promise. For one weekend in April, the Hague became a confluence of sonic pilgrims, arriving
from as far as the outskirts of Australia. As a first-time attendee, my expectations were high and I
left not only bewildered but deeply inspired in terms of artistic practice and personal reflection.
Rewire flowed across the city like a sonic tide, forming passageways shaped by a network of our
collective listening. With over 220 events across four days and 25 venues, spanning genres from
experimental, neo-classical to noise, ambient, and beyond, it offered a kaleidoscope of possible
experiences. One could curate a neo-classical weekend bathed in stained-glass reverence, attending
performances like those of Olivia Block Trio and Anja Lauvdal. Another could sink into heavy
noise with the return of Yellow Swans after 11 years of silence. Or perhaps drift into an indie-rock
orbit, catching Good Sad Happy Bad as they stepped out from behind their favourite tree.
Beyond concerts, Rewire immersed us deeper into performances such as CORTEX: Four States of
Mind and A Short History of Decay by Billy Bultheel, among many others including the collective
Verdensteatret.

Among my highlights was a live performance by Osmium, a supergroup comprising Hildur
Guðnadóttir, Sam Slater, James Ginzburg, and Rully Shabara. Drawing from diverse artistic
backgrounds, they assembled like the dense element their name evokes, crafting a hypnotic voyage
through mechanical and organic sounds. Shabara’s brittle, abrasive vocals merged with granular
textures in a sound-world both overwhelming and transcendental, leaving me drained and
mesmerised, rendering me almost unable to continue with the evening sounds as I questioned
whether there was any worth, nothing could top that.

Another unforgettable performance was Heinali & Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko. I had never
experienced anything like it. As light poured through the church windows, a single table stood
slightly off-centre with a modular synth rack cloaked in haze. Andriana walked gently to the stage,
positioning herself just behind a shard of light, a gesture of concealment that only magnified her power. The duo reworked Hildegard von Bingen’s compositions for voice and modular synth,
channeling Bulgarian vocal traditions with forceful intonation. Timid in presence but towering in
resonance, she drew us into her void. Within ten minutes, tears welled up as I sat transfixed, caught
in the refracting interplay of drone, voice, and sacred space. Other standouts included Joan La
Barbara, Heith, and a surprise underdog: Radio Hito.

What truly sets Rewire apart from other festivals is its commitment to discourse. The range of talks,
panels, and workshops provided space not only to hear but to understand. One highlight for me was
the conversation with Joan La Barbara—a moment of profound artistic generosity.
Amongst the range of installations which were present across the city; Navid’s ‘Organism +
Excitable Chaos’ artwork stood out to me, exploring chaos and entropy. On the first day; the five
installation artists held a discussion panel, diving into their work, the meanings and process’s. ‘We
find ourselves trying to find meaning within the chaos, humans love to assign meaning within
entropy and chaos, imprinting order onto disorder.’ As I sat consumed by the installation, I found
myself assessing the motion of the pendulum in correlation to the other mechanical motions,
attempting to find logical parallels between the organisms. Navid’s installation thrives of the need
of humans to assign order and I realised this while I fell deeper into the pendulums motion like
Alice down the rabbit hole. Upon this realisation, maybe one has to accept entropy as it is and
remove the need to assign order onto chaos; take from this what you will; in this, maybe sometimes
listening means relinquishing control, sitting with entropy instead of solving it.

The Ring On Instrumental Time, an artist led symposium, lingered with me long after it ended. It
posed powerful questions which as a POC were very thought provoking for myself: They asked and
discussed ideologies on what happens when instruments are stripped from their landscapes, how
sonic tools born of place and time are silenced by colonial removals. What stayed with me most was
the idea that our bodies themselves are archives. Even when we’re not consciously absorbing
knowledge, we carry the imprints of our ancestors, their struggles, their rhythms and their
resilience. That inheritance gives us power today, a quiet authority that lives in our bones and
breath.

And so, Rewire didn’t simply present music. It offered echoes of resistance, of ancestral rhythms
buried under the surface of time, reinforced through talks by non other than Brandon La Belle. It
asked us to lean in, to stay still, to let the sound shape us rather than shape it. In doing so, it
reminded me that listening is not passive. It is a radical act of presence, of care, and ultimately, of
transformation. “We all start with our own listening position, but we do not end there,” reads a line
from Norient’s publication. Rewire didn’t ask me to listen—it demanded it. It rewired my mind to a
deeper frequency of presence, a frequency I find myself longing to return to. Rewire is more than
‘just’ a music festival; it’s a gathering of sonic fugitives, of those who find solace in the dissonance,
harbouring within a space of deep listening and unlearning. Until next year Rewire, I’ll be listening
for the echo.

by Ushara Dilrukshan