Kookoo enters its next round. Under the theme many gardens will begin…, hosts Mieko Suzuki and Ara have invited Marta Zapparoli, Lai Tsung-Yun, and JD J.
‘Another way of sharing. Another way of being alive to each other. Aware of each other’s sounding waves. Communicating energy. Communicating stillness for each other.’ This is what Maryanne Amacher, in the early 1970s, envisioned as a new musical practice. One that according to the influential composer would enable you to transcend the boundaries of routine experience and confined spaces, achieving something that is as simple as it is astonishing: ‘We begin listening to each other.’
Amacher’s approach is the main inspiration for this Kookoo night in March as well as for the work of sound artist and performer Marta Zapparoli. At Ohm, she offers one of her multi-layered live sets, making use of analogue tape, DIY-built antennas, and radio receivers. By incorporating invisible presences of the electromagnetic field into her performance in real time, Zapparoli opens up a channel to realities that are there, constantly lingering, but usually go unnoticed. In more than just in a metaphorical sense, her music enables agency for the overlooked, the unheard, the yet-to-flourish.
While Zapparoli challenges the ‘technological nature’ that dominates anthropocentric reality in order to achieve a new awareness, Lai Tsung-Yun, aka LTY, investigates the cross-pollination of electric circuits, feedback, and environmental noise. Since 2013, Lai has been the curator of Lacking Sound Festival, Taiwan’s most renowned platform for sound art performance. Currently based in Paris, he premieres a new live set at Kookoo, incorporating modular synthesis, algorithmic composition, and real-time processing.
Jaba Ujmajuridze, aka JD J, is returning to Kookoo for a second appearance, after his boundless, mind-bending DJ excursions in early 2025—and after having established an offshoot of Tbilisi’s Mutant Radio in Berlin-Neukölln: a studio that functions as a community space for sharing and appreciating sounding waves that spread out in all directions, for transcending listening routines, much like JD J’s own spontaneous and unpredictable sets.
Kookoo’s resident fine artists, Carly Fischer and Yukihiro Taguchi, aka mokume Berlin, as well as the hosts Mieko Suzuki and Ara contribute their visual and sounds, confident that, as Maryanne Amacher said, ‘many gardens will begin’.
