- Event
- Concert
Giga-Hertz Award Premiere Concert 2026
Three world premieres between voice, interaction, and Afrofuturism
Thu, July 16, 2026 7:00 pm CEST
The opening concert is part of the Giga-Hertz festival’s Fellow Futures theme and brings together artistic approaches that explore new forms of listening. Three artistic perspectives, three world premieres: spanning participation, experimental music theater, and turntables, these works present radical concepts for counterlistening.
Three world premieres take center stage at the Giga-Hertz premiere concert: The evening presents new works by Davor Vincze, Jug Marković & Thea Soti, and NikNak (Nik Raymond), all recipients of the Giga-Hertz Production Award 2025.
During his residency at the ZKM, Davor Vincze developed Let the Spirit Guide You, a performative setting that places the audience itself at the center. His work questions structures of control and opens up spaces in which deviation and resistance become productive.
NikNak (Nik Raymond) is a pioneer at the intersection of turntablism, sound art and Afrofuturism. NikNak has been recognized for her innovative sound practice, in which she blends field recordings, experimental music production, sound design and unique scratching techniques to create immersive soundscapes and sonic fictions. As part of the concert, she will present the world premiere of her latest piece Fledgling which she created during her residency at the ZKM.
Thea Soti and Jug Marković develop collaborative works that explore voice, electronics, and contemporary modes of communication, bringing poetic and political texts into dialogue with digitally mediated listening and shared experiences shaped by the ongoing social movement in Serbia. Soti and Marković premiere their piece Trashold that was made in the studios of the SWR Experimentalstudio in Freiburg, Germany.
Performances
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World premiere
Davor Vincze “Let the Spirit Guide You”, 2026
for electronics driven by audience smartphones, ca. 15‘
Let the Spirit Guide You is a participatory performance in which the audience interacts with the system via their personal smartphones, thereby steering the flow of the show. Three participants take on active, direct roles as “elder spirits,” while the rest of the audience acts as a chorus guided by democratic voting.
A calming voice instructs the audience like a mentor – a presence one feels naturally inclined to follow. But what happens when the tone shifts? What if the tasks become pointless and the mentor grows too strict? Would we still be willing to follow so obediently?
This project interrogates our naïve tendency to comply with seemingly polite requests, our paralysis when faced with complex systems we barely understand, and our myopia to manipulation when an authority figure – be it a human, an institution, or an algorithm … purports to have our best interests at heart. It forces us to confront the delicate boundary between cooperation and complicity, challenging us to recognize when bowing to authority becomes an act of self-sabotage. Sometimes, to resist is the best way to comply.
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World premiere
NikNak “Fledgling”, 2026
for Turntables, Pioneer S7, Phase DJ, Torso S4, Erica Synths Echolator, Hologram Electronics Microcosm, Napworks Devious Pocket & TouchDesigner audioreactive visuals, 25‘
Fledgling is a “continuous” piece, partly inspired by Octavia Butler’s eponymous novel, Alex Garland‘s movie Ex Machina (2014), and closely linked to NikNak's growing fascination and exploration into Afrofuturism.
The piece explores the following themes:
- Imagine going to sleep and waking up in an android, synthetic body in the middle of a field
- That synthetic body then having vampiric traits that belong to the body, not your consciousness
- Would your heritage/ancestral legacy transfer as well?
- Innocence hiding in power, and vice versa
- Technology overstaying its welcome and eventually overriding our senses/humanity for the sake of “convenience”
- What if a computer virus gained sentience?
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World premiere
Thea Soti x Jug Marković “Trashold”, 2026
electronic duo for voices, synths & laptops, ca. 25‘
Trashold is the latest collaboration between Thea Soti and Jug Marković, continuing a shared artistic practice that began in 2021 through their work at IRCAM. Developed through a collaborative process where composing and performing evolve together, the work is driven by a shared interest in composing from within the realities of contemporary life, treating voice, electronics, and digital modes of communication not simply as technologies, but as the language of the present.
Rather than following a linear narrative, Trashold moves through different forms of language and communication: poems, conversations, voice messages, reflections, whispers, songs, synthetic sounds, and rhythms. Meaning gradually emerges through accumulation, allowing a broader context to take shape from seemingly disconnected moments.
At its core, the work reflects on thresholds – personal, social, and political. The title Trashold evokes both a point of transformation and the material that accumulates around it. Developed during the student protests that began in Serbia in early 2025, Trashold asks what brings individuals and societies to a point where silence becomes impossible. Without offering a single statement or conclusion, the piece creates a space where intimate and collective dimensions coexist, and where language continuously shifts between communication, memory, presence, and sonic expression.
Realization Live Electronics:
SWR Experimentalstudio: Johannes Burgert (Sound direction)
