At a moment marked by ecological collapse, escalating political violence, and growing social fragmentation, fragility is often understood as a condition to overcome. But as much as it can make us vulnerable to feel hopelessly misaligned in a world that asks for hardness, it is this sensitivity that also makes care, interdependence, and collective attention possible. Across four days of audiovisual performances, concerts, talks, and club nights, the festival considered what kinds of forces might appear when control, certainty, and resilience no longer provide adequate responses to the conditions of the present. The program positioned fragility as a condition through which alternative ways of relating to one another and the world might become possible.

Throughout the festival, a collective desire to reconnect with the experience of listening itself stood out. It became a temporary space in which alternative imaginaries could briefly emerge, ones in which listening could be a sensory act, but also a form of community. Through sound, conversation, and shared presence, artists invited audiences to attune themselves not only to the sonic environments around them, but also to one another.

Bapari

(Location: de Brakke Grond)

During their performance at the Brakke Grond, Los Angeles-based producer and DJ Bapari presented tracks from their latest EP, Blurry Days. As the EP challenges the personal narratives we construct in our minds to protect ourselves from the world around us, yet which can also distort our perception of it, the record moves within that sort of hazy emotional landscape. That atmosphere resonated in the performance itself, as waves of sound and Bapari’s stage presence emitted a sort of fragile distance, melancholy, and introspection. Accompanied by visuals featuring the artist, the performed vocals offered fleeting moments of raw emotional clarity before dissolving back into ambiguity and detachment. Bapari lingers within these uncertain spaces, confronting listeners with unresolved feelings and realities that often remain difficult to articulate.

Kara-Lis Coverdale

(Location: Orgelpark)

At Amsterdam's Orgelpark, acclaimed electronic composer and organist Kara-Lis Coverdale presented an immersive and delicate performance in 4DSOUND that transposed the monumental hall into a space of resonance and attentiveness. Moving between acoustic and electronic sound, Coverdale's composition allowed tones to linger, overlap, and dissolve into one another, reverberating upwards towards the hall’s glass ceiling. The sonic environment she crafted seemed composed of memory, timbre, and spectral sensitivity. At times, her performance approached a near-spiritual experience, inviting the audience into a state of contemplation, as distinctions between sound, space, and self gradually became entangled.

Crawler (Zohar & Castle) ft. Gervaise

(Location: de Brakke Grond)

With A Sound Experiment by Crawler (Harry Castle and Rachella Groen, aka Zohar) and writer Gervaise, the listening space at de Brakke Grond became a site of growing tension. Gervaise's storytelling unfolded slowly and intensely, his voice accompanied by dense layers of sub-bass, feedback, fractured textures, and sharp percussive elements that gradually accumulated throughout the performance. As the piece progressed, the sonic environment became increasingly immersive. Sound rolled through the venue in waves, producing a lingering sense of unease and, at times, even claustrophobia. The slow build-up possessed a quality close to cinematic, as though listeners were being drawn through a narrative whose outcome remained just out of reach. This tension was sustained until the performance's final stages, when a sudden acceleration in sound ushered in a long-awaited catharsis, bringing release to an experience that remained difficult to shake off.

Charlène Dannancier

(Location: Tillatec)

Located within a former technical school, Tillatec provided one of the festival's most expansive settings, combining performances, audiovisual works, scenography, installation-based interventions, and a club night across its classrooms and industrial spaces. All within one ongoing 12-hour programme.

Within this wider environment, Charlène Dannancier’s site-specific performance It Might Be Otherwise unfolded through repeated shifts between spotlight and complete darkness, creating a constantly destabilising experience in which visual and sonic cues seemed equally unstable. Both intimate and unsettling, the performance shifted between control and release, keeping the audience in a prolonged state of anticipation.

At moments, bass-heavy passages and fractured rhythmic structures evoked elements of contemporary club culture, creating an unexpected tension with the work’s operatic qualities. While certain cycles appeared to build towards a release, it never fully arrived. Instead, any sense of resolution remained out of reach.

Lova Ranung

(Location: Tillatec)

Presented as part of FIBER's audiovisual programme at Tillatec, Lova Ranung's I Will Keep You Right Here imagined a digital ecosystem in constant motion. Dust, particles, and fragments continuously divided, merged, and reorganised across the screen, animated by an underlying rhythm of breath. At once delicate and strangely alive, the digital animation linked pixels to particles and particles to bodies, proposing a network of relations that extended beyond the screen itself. In dialogue with the festival's broader themes, I Will Keep You Right Here suggested how seemingly invisible forces and interactions can accumulate into larger forms of connection and transformation.

Abdullah Miniawy Trio

(Location: Bimhuis)

As part of FIBER's closing concert at BIMHUIS, Abdullah Miniawy Trio engaged the audience in a tender act of collective listening through an emotionally charged performance. Egyptian poet, singer, and composer Abdullah Miniawy's voice, accompanied by spacious brass passages, created an intensity that seemed to settle over the entire room. At times intimate and at others expansive, the performance explored themes of spirituality, migration, and collective experience, creating a shared moment of reflection. What proved most striking was the emotional weight carried by Miniawy's voice. Even without understanding the language itself, the feeling behind it reverberated throughout the hall, as stillness settled over the audience and attention remained fixed.

KUNTARI

(Location: Bimhuis)

Closing the evening at BIMHUIS, KUNTARI delivered what was perhaps the festival's most intense performance. Built around percussive guitar, roto toms, rhythmic patterns, and vocal expressions inspired by animal mating calls, the duo created an experience that felt raw, primal, and deeply physical. Their music is so distinctive that they describe it through their own genre, "primal-core", merging Indonesian musical traditions with noise, metal, and experimental sound. The result was a performance that felt more like a sonic ritual than a concert, balancing ancestral echoes with experimental intensity. What made the experience particularly striking was the contrast between the musicians' stage presence and the work itself. Speaking to the audience, the duo reflected on how they had once dreamed of performing at BIMHUIS while pursuing more conventional jazz careers, yet never felt especially remarkable within those contexts. There was something fitting in the fact that it was through KUNTARI’s uncompromising practice that they eventually arrived on the venue's stage. The audience was completely with them throughout, as the festival's closing concert became a moment of collective energy and release.

As listening is increasingly shaped by personalised algorithms, headphones, and on-demand forms of audio consumption, FIBER repeatedly challenged the notion of listening as a solitary act. Instead, the festival emphasized modes of attention rooted in reciprocity, presence, and community. It offered a glimpse of how a broader shift in digital culture might already be taking place: a move towards more embodied and relational ways of engaging with the world around us.