Unleash the power of vibrations and immerse yourself in an evening where the pulse of subfrequencies sets the rhythm. Sub_Bar LIVE, the vanguard of sensorial music experiences, is reverberating back into the heart of Berlin with an avant-garde celebration that interlaces the talents of both hearing and Deaf artists. Prepare for a night where music is heard and felt in a gathering that transcends the conventional.
The curtain rises with Grischa Lichtenberger, an auditory alchemist from the annals of Raster notoriety, whose “Composition for Audio Description Subtitles” is not just a performance, it’s a paradigm shift. Lichtenberger’s craft sways between soundscapes and story, making his act an essential pilgrimage for connoisseurs of cutting-edge compositions.
Berlin Vibes: Sub_Bar LIVE Unites Sound, Silence, and Sensation in an Electrifying Comeback
In a formidable juxtaposition, we introduce Ana Jumelle, an artist emanating her prowess from Lisbon’s dynamic scene. Aligning with Sub_Bar LIVE’s ethos of inclusivity, Jumelle debuts her solo performance out of her enclave, FreqSix—a collective manifesting the artistry of Deaf performers. Her presence is a testament to the exploration of uncharted artistic domains.
The lineup spirals deeper into the subsonic realms with Subworks featuring a coterie of illustrious figures: Daisuke Ishida, who educates through sound at UdK; Stefanie Egedy, a sculptress of subfrequencies; and Byetone, a Raster founding father. The experience further unfurls with the resonant creations of John Kameel Farah, an acolyte of Terry Riley and Toronto’s celebrated virtuoso, alongside Lisbon’s queer nightlife luminary, Cigarra, and a cavalcade of visionary talents including Peter Kirn, Alejandro Mosso, Ana Bogner, Francisco Nogueira, and Pawel Janicki.
Dive into the Deep End:
Sub_Bar LIVE isn’t just an event; it’s a seismic shift in the musical topography. Born in 2022, this Berlin brainchild has already orchestrated over 40 spellbinding gatherings across Germany, Portugal, and Italy. But more than events, Sub_Bar LIVE crafts a symposium for the Deaf community, weaving them into the tapestry of electronic music and encouraging collaborations that dissolve the divide between hearing and Deaf creators.
Event Manifesto:
Live Acts: Grischa Lichtenberger (Raster) & Ana Jumelle (Sub_Bar Academy)
Subworks Symphony: Daisuke Ishida, Stefanie Egedy, Byetone, Peter Kirn, John Kameel Farah, Cigarra, Alejandro Mosso, Ana Bogner, Francisco Nogueira, Pawel Janicki
Doors Open: 19:00
Concert Starts: 20:00
At Panke Gerichtstraße 23 Hof V 13347 Berlin
Tickets: The first 100 tickets are available at a special price of 13€ on Eventbrite, followed by regular door sales at 15€
GET YOUR TICKET HERE
In collaboration with KALTBLUT Magazine, Sub_Bar LIVE is thrilled to offer a chance to win 5 pairs of tickets to this sensory soiree. Envelope yourself in this extraordinary encounter of music, moment, and motion. Send an email to win@kaltblut-magazine.com to grab the tickets
Be sure to delve into the full interview below this article for an intimate dialogue with the artists. Join us, feel the vibrations, and discover a world where music is a shared language for all. Tickets are limited, but sensations are not. Witness this pulse-pounding event where every beat matters.
@grischenka
@subbar.eufonia
@pankeculture
How does Sub_Bar LIVE’s format, based on vibrations, create an inclusive environment for both hearing and deaf artists?
Every art form is essentially a composition of stimuli. Until now, music has been built around auditory stimuli (sounds), which has made the art form and its social effects almost exclusively available to those who can hear, and hear well. By focusing on low frequencies and vibrations, the stimuli are received by the body, enabling both the creation and observation of the artwork to be accessible to everyone. This might seem like a big ask from the hearing community, right? From one perspective, it may appear that to create an inclusive environment, we’re asking for a significant concession from those who can hear.
One reason I believe this format could become sustainable and be embraced is because of the sensory channel it utilizes. We’ve developed art forms for nearly all senses, yet touch seemed less explored in this context, possibly because sharing a tactile experience was challenging until now. While most sensory experiences (like a cake, a painting, a concert, a fragrance) can be shared if not immersive, touch has remained quite personal. Considering that the appreciation of art involves both personal and collective memories triggered by the artwork, what could happen if we start building new haptic memories together? What if international artists begin to explore and compose for a wider range of feelings and sensations? What if complexity shifts from the intellectual to the instinctual?
So, how does Sub_Bar create an inclusive environment? By starting with the basic commonality between the two groups we aim to unite and rely on everybody’s pleasure instead of their drive for inclusion, which is much more fragile. I know the math doesn’t add up, and I’m lucky I grew up through music. I knew artists could find endlessness in a limited space.
What role does Grischa Lichtenberger’s “Composition for Audio Description Subtitles” play in shaping this unique concept?
Back in 2019, when we organized the Eufonia Festival, we placed three of our artists and researchers in the same room: Playtronica with their installation for ventilators, Grischa with his A/V installation, and Mirko Miceli, a theatre director who, through sound, wanted to provide a more inclusive experience to blind people in theatre. In that room, I found the spirit of Mirko, the vision of Playtronica (who played a version of Ravel’s Bolero through ventilators), and the experience of Grischa’s piece, a rumble limited to low frequencies that we did not play through speakers or subwoofers, but through a vibrating chair instead. All of those artists created the necessary context for Sub_Bar’s vision to emerge. It is striking how Sub_Bar did not exist at all in my head before asking myself how I could “create” music for deaf people, but appeared a couple of seconds afterwards, with clarity and a sense of “obviously”. Everything was already in my head because first, it was in the head of other artists.
How do both artists prepare for their sets compared to other concerts/ club nights?
Ana has been training a lot since October, first in a group with other Deaf individuals from Freqsix (a Deaf collective from Lisbon), later in a residency with Rita Silva, and recently again with me. For this show, which is going to be her debut show, she prepared a narrative close to her recent life, oscillating between struggles, persistence, and optimism. When we started working on preparing her for the show, she came with the whole performance already prepared (I am also attaching a photo of the structure of her performance – it makes sense to us!). She looked for vibrations that inspire several physical states; this was her starting point, and she organizes these to create her story. From here, we explored various ways to move or remain in the same place, added a second synthesizer to her setup, explored variations in rhythm, and looked for harmony in different contexts. Sometimes I believe Ana is building important blocks and symbols for a language that is body and sensation-oriented because so far the harmony of low frequencies was answering to tonal and sound engineer rules… I would say that the way she works with low frequencies has nothing in common with those rules, and responds to another type of harmony.
Answer from Grischa
The idea and the preparation are of course different… trying to concentrate on a resonance experience rather than acoustic musical expression. So I’m composing a special set, starting from the work “composition for audio description subtitles” I did in 2019.
I’m looking for a system where collisions of different sub-bass frequencies create a relatable experience for non-hearing people and hearing people alike. I imagine people who don’t hear are much more used to deciphering musical experiences from the vibrations as they come – but I would like to create an entry point for those who can hear this different reception of music. It is more about working on imagining what music would be like if I couldn’t hear, than thinking about music for those who can’t hear… (it concerns a branch of wider strategies of making art about your limitations, and your finiteness.
So concretely put: the idea is, to produce sort of beats, or rhythmical structures through the changing of different overlapping sub-bass frequencies, which create even lower interference patterns, that should be pretty easily noticeable physically, especially when they are changing in time, in a ryhtmical structure. additional elements, like snare drums, hi-hats etc. (usually of higher pitch and not noticeable in the sub-bass spectrum) will be represented with a light projection.
Music is never only about tones, frequencies and their relations. it’s also about gaps, expectational tension, and silence. A transient, the hitting, the impact of a rhythmical sequence depends on a hypothetical moment of 0-energy before it appears. the silence is broken by a high-energy burst – that difference makes the event of a beat.
I think it is an interesting experiment to try to make a concert beyond hearing, out of tensional silence, so to speak. I’m looking generally for drawing in things closer that sort of resist being seen (or heard): the invisible in a picture (its history/story/ghostly trace), the unrecognisable symbolic trace in a musical event (its material, historical embedding). the relation between these two are then especially interesting, as they fill in gaps, but never fill them out. but it makes this invisibility (or silence) noticeable, I think.
The most difficult part in preparing is though, that the idea of sub-bass frequency interference depends very much on the energy level and the dimensions of the space the emitters/speakers are in. So to simulate at home I use 2 old Zeck Disco pa loudspeakers in hopes it will translate ok to the space it will be presented. (also I hope my neighbours will forgive me)…
Why did you decide to run an event for and with both hearing and deaf artists and punters?
It all started with the Eufonia Festival, the first thing we have done with Eufonia. I think we did a great job with our concept. We had plans that the pandemic put on hold: Eufonia Festival could happen in so many cities, and I remember Solene Wolff, one of our speakers, during a call told me that “there is still hope for the world” because people can be transformed, and in my head, my model was a little bit more pessimistic. I saw in the Eufonia Festival a tool to transform people, because of the role that art has and its similarity with psychological treatment. We tell each other what to do, but we hate when somebody tells us what to do. Similarly, we need to spend a lot of time with a psychologist so that he/she can tear down the wall we build, just to finally say “I always knew it”. Artworks with questions, not orders, and when those questions come from within us, we don’t raise the wall. This is why I believe art could be transformative, and I thought Eufonia had some work to do, and had a great public: curious people in big cities. At the same time when I realized we could reach every curious person through sound, I realized I could not reach deaf people. That’s when I asked myself “Can I create music for deaf people”? You know the rest of the story.
