FIBER Festival Frames Sonic Landscapes
© Sabine van Nistelrooij
Ask yourself where innovation could reside. Not the market version of it, but something quieter and more urgent. The answer, this time, was Amsterdam. FIBER Festival marked 15 years since the founding of the organization and 10 editions of the festival with a program that felt less like an event and more like a condition. What we witnessed was a gathering of people who live their work. You could see it in the gestures of the artists, in the weight behind their words during panels, and in the force of the live performances.
Architecture and scenography defined space as a shared language between bodies, machines, and memory. Talks punctured through the usual fatigue of discourse and became spaces for thinking aloud, together. Whether discussing sound systems or ecological computation, these conversations carried cultural gravity. You could feel the research, the ethics, the lived reality underneath.
“And then, the music it built rooms inside of you.”
There’s something deeply intelligent about the way FIBER elevates local voices. The Netherlands’ own creative scene was amplified. You felt it in the audiences too. Safe, present, focused. The kind of crowd that listens before reacting. The kind of place that invites interpretation without forcing consensus.
FIBER it stayed inside the tension. That’s its strength. The theme “Wildness” it was a refusal to reduce complexity. It asked what kind of art survives when the future feels unstable, and what kind of world we might construct by staying with the discomfort.
LEYA
Location: de Brakke Grond
© Angelina Nikolayeva
LEYA, the duo formed by harpist Marilu Donovan and vocalist-violinist Adam Markiewicz, inhabits a realm that feels both timeless and contemporary. Their sound draws from medieval influences but remains firmly connected to modern folk, classical, and pop traditions. At FIBER Festival, they presented pieces from their latest release I Forget Everything, where electronic elements subtly weave through the performance without overshadowing the core instruments — harp, strings, and voice. The music feels like a delicate conversation, where ancient tones meet subtle textures, inviting listeners into a quietly immersive atmosphere. Their work feels intimate, as if recalling forgotten memories through the delicate interplay of sound and emotion.
HEINALI & ANDRIANA YAROSLAVA SAIENKO
Location: Muziekgebouw
© Sabine van Nistelrooij
Heinali and Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko bring together the past and present through a deeply reflective performance rooted in the legacy of Hildegard von Bingen, a 12th-century mystic, healer, and musician. Drawing from Hildegard’s visionary ideas on self-transformation, their work addresses trauma and resilience with subtlety and care. The performance offers a meditative space where sound and voice carry a weight beyond words, allowing listeners to confront the echoes of wartime experience while sensing the possibility of renewal. The interplay between historical wisdom and contemporary expression shapes a quiet yet powerful narrative, inviting audiences to linger in a shared moment of healing and reflection.
OCEANIC AND GREETJE BIJMA
Location: Muziekgebouw
© Sabine van Nistelrooij
Oceanic and Greetje Bijma bring a focus on vocal experimentation, combining improvisation with electronic processing. Their performance at FIBER highlighted the voice’s raw textures and emotional depth, moving through fragile phrases and intense bursts. It was a real unexpected live, something personal that left us without words, where her voice drilled the mind of the audience with raw and strong personalities.
NAVID NAVAB
Location: Orgelpark
© Angelina Nikolayeva
Navid Navab, a Montreal-based media alchemist and interdisciplinary composer, presented a captivating solo performance at Amsterdam's historic Orgelpark. Engaging with the 1910 Casavant pipe organ, Navab transformed this century-old instrument into a living entity of sound. His improvisation was about the organ's inherent materiality, allowing its natural turbulence and sonic imperfections to surface. Navab's practice is rooted in the exploration of gesture, materiality, and the poetics of sound.
SARA PERSICO AND MIKA OKI
Location: de Brakke Grond
© Sabine van Nistelrooij
In Sphaîra, Sara Persico and Mika Oki guided the audience through a quiet, hypnotic terrain shaped by sound and light. Based on recordings from an abandoned dome in Tripoli, their live collaboration was built on the tension between voice, noise, and atmosphere. The light design gave the room its own pulse. Nothing distracted from the steady intensity of the work: it was sparse, patient, exact.
CORTICAL
Location: de Brakke Grond
© Angelina Nikolayeva
CORTICAL AV performance by Sevi Iko Dømochevsky and Daniel Benza built pressure from the first moment. The sound moved between sustained drones and punctuated percussive grids, drawing the audience into a narrow corridor of intensity. Each element felt highly calculated, yet never overworked. On screen, live audio-reactive CGI responded in precise loops and distortions, forming digital architectures that seemed to pulse in sync with the body. The light design added a sharp physicality to the whole system, turning the space into a thinking machine. What made the performance memorable was its restraint. No gestures were wasted. The duo carved a path between minimal rigor and overwhelming detail, never giving in fully to either.
DE SERING CLUBNIGHT II
Location: De Sering
© Angelina Nikolayeva
For their second club night, FIBER joined forces with Dusty Cabinets to present a lineup centered on low frequencies and dub-influenced electronics. The evening featured live sets from K88, ophélie, Elina Tapio, and Public Transportation // GTH (Vanja Rakić & cccore), delivering a spectrum of bass-focused music and propulsive rave rhythms. The event was powered by the Krackfree Soundsystem, a custom, self-built system known for its clarity and depth, enhancing the immersive experience for all attendees.
ANOUK KELLNER
Location: de Brakke Grond
© Sabine van Nistelrooij
Anouk Kellner created a sonic landscape that responded intimately to the audience’s presence in space. Her installation featured eight inflatable structures that expanded and contracted like living organisms, slowly breathing through a system of organ pipes. These soft, sculptural bodies shaped the acoustic field in real time, making each listener’s experience unique depending on where they stood or moved. The result was a tactile, spatial composition, part performance, part living sculpture, where mechanical respiration met ritual and play.
VICA PACHECO
Location: de Brakke Grond
© Sabine van Nistelrooij
In Éclipsis, Vica Pacheco shaped a dreamlike environment where the organic met the invented. Ceramic sculptures formed a small garden, each one reactive to sound and movement. As the performers navigated the space, her gestures activated percussive rhythms and glowing tones, creating a musical performance rooted in intuition. Light and dark weren’t just themes, they were elements, folded into the pacing, the silences, and the way sound hung in the air. The atmosphere was hushed yet alert, a kind of shared attention between artist, object, and audience.
DIANE MAHIM
Location: de Brakke Grond
© Sabine van Nistelrooij
In GRUNT, Diane Mahín stripped communication down to breath, voice, and instinct. Her character, a woman speaking only in growls, moved between vulnerability and fury, giving shape to what felt like a deeply personal monologue. The performance never tried to explain itself. Instead, it demanded attention through sheer presence. Every shift in tone suggested an emotional turn: a plea, a protest, a secret. The growl became a vocabulary. Words weren’t needed. Mahín’s work stayed with you in the body.
JONATHAN CHAIM REUS
Location: de Brakke Grond
© Sabine van Nistelrooij
Jonathan Chaim Reus presented a unique performance using an old Mac computer transformed into a self-contained sound and video machine. This device, built around legacy Apple iOS hardware, both generated and projected sound in ways that felt experimental and intimate. Reus is a transdisciplinary musician who investigates the complex relationship between humans and technology. His work includes performances, compositions, and building custom instruments. Over the past decade, he has developed personal approaches to working with voice and technology, pushing the limits of what machines and human expression can create together.
CHRISTINA VANTZOU ANDJOHN ALSO BENNETT
Location: BIMHUIS
© Sabine van Nistelrooij
Christina Vantzou navigates the manipulation of time perception by blending electronics with acoustic sounds, creating immersive atmospheres and rich harmonies. John Also Bennett complements this with his multi-instrumental approach, using flutes, microtonal synthesis, and natural recordings to build intricate sonic layers. Their collaboration formed a thoughtful soundscape where each element contributes to a shifting sense of space and time. At FIBER, their work brought forward a gentle but compelling conversation between different musical worlds.
FENNESZ
Location: BIMHUIS
© Sabine van Nistelrooij
Fennesz is known for his work in glitch ambient music, combining live guitar with layers of synthesizers. His sound balances analog warmth with digital clarity, producing textured, intricate atmospheres. At FIBER, his performance revealed a quiet tension, where subtle electronic noises met organic strings, creating moments of delicate intensity without excess.
FIBER Festival reminded us why we do what we do. It gave space to artists whose work comes from urgency, belief, and presence. The atmosphere was caring, the thinking sharp, the performances unforgettable. It felt like stepping into a dream designed with precision and openness. We left feeling seen, inspired, and grateful.
Locations:
de Brakke Grond | Nes 45, 1012KD
Muziekgebouw | Piet Heinkade 3, 1019BR
BIMHUIS | Herengracht 470, 1017CA
Orgelpark | Gerard Brandtstraat 28, 1054JK
Bar San Francisco | Zeedijk 40, 1012AZ
Goethe Instituut | Herengracht 470, 1017CA
Garage Noord Bar40 Clubnight | Gedempt Hamerkanaal 40, 1021KM
de Sering | Rhoneweg 6, 1043AH
words DONALD GJOKA
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