Thomas Ankersmit / Marcelo Aguirre & Jens Brand

It is for this reason that Dutch-born musician and artist Thomas Ankersmit, who divides his time between Berlin and Amsterdam, has focused on the tonal possibilities offered by analogue audio technologies for many years now. “Stress Patterns” is a four channel audio composition for Serge analogue modular synthesizer, contact microphones and computer. In his concert, Thomas Ankersmit combines recordings he made of old original Serge synthesizers at the CalArts Electronic Music Studios with a live performance on his own instrument.

Argentine musician Marcelo Aguirre and Berlin-based artist Jens Brand have named their three-part performance for percussion and video “Zé Bif – bloody conceptualism in three parts”. Their point of departure is the congruence of several aspects of death metal – extremely loud, extremely fast, extremely slow – with certain characteristics of conceptual art – extreme focus, extreme structure. There is as little room for death metal music in conceptual art as there is for the concept in death metal, say the artists. Marcelo Aguirre and Jens Brand want to change this.