The fifth edition of the Seanaps Festival 2021 will take place in Leipzig from September 23 to 26, 2021. The festival sees itself as a space for dialogue, linking artistic, participatory, socio-cultural and (cultural) political ideas and concepts. The cross-disciplinary program consists of eight live concerts, walk-in sound installations, interventions in public spaces, a radio lab, an open air film program, readings and panel discussions, as well as several workshops. The invited local, national and international guests from various networks of experimental music, anti- racist educational and cultural work, as well as artistic mediation formats form plural perspectives on current social processes. The auditory events of the festival will be broadcast both digitally and analogously via the festival's own radio stream and through several takeovers of free and public radio stations.

2021 Edition

From Thursday to Sunday, two musical positions will be presented daily at the Westbahnhof. The performances deal acoustically and atmospherically with the given site-specific characteristics. The Westbahnhof is a venue in the Bürgerbahnhof Plagwitz in a former station waiting hall and serves as a performance space for the first time this year. Performances will be staged whose means range between the linking of light and sound, prepared machines, sound sculptures, idiosyncratic ways of playing classical and traditional instruments, the human voice, vibrating objects, acoustic shadows and modified sound generators. The performance forms oscillate between different art forms and cross genres, ranging from free improvisations and Dadaist opera performances to microtonal and polyrhythmic compositions.

The Music Program

Under the title In-Visibilities. Make the Connection! this year's festival accompanying discourse program is dedicated to a socio-cultural and multi-generational approach. Together with various institutions, collectives and initiatives that are engaged in anti-racist educational and cultural work in different ways, we not only want to establish a connection between the invited guests and the visitors, but also create space to critically question and reflect on what cultural work means against the background of history, theory, cultural-political developments and current practice.

In five different formats, the discourse program offers opportunities for encounter and exchange. In heiter bis wolkig and on the lawn in front of the Luru Kino, two listening stations invite visitors to listen to the Seanaps Radiolab program together from Thursday to Sunday. The first discourse film program on Friday and Saturday evening is curated by the film festival makers of parasound, Leipzig and Soundwatch, Berlin and will be presented on the open air screen of the Luru Kino.

On Saturday, the stage of heiter bis wolkig will be transformed into a discussion platform where cultural producers and workers will talk about their experiences, challenges and their current projects, followed by questions and suggestions from the audience. Guests will include The German Museum of Black Entertainment and Black Music, Germany's leading museum for black culture, popular music and history, and representatives of die KOMPLIZENSCHAFT, an initiative of artists and cultural workers in Saxony who are committed to respectful social exchange. On Sunday, the day will begin with a picnic on the lawn in front of the Luru Kino for young and old. Afterwards we invite especially the youngest to the reading hour in the heiter bis wolkig.

The Discourse Program

For the third time, a temporary radio station will be set up for the Seanaps Festival as a laboratory for radiophonic experiments. This year, the Radiolab hosts three artists as laboratory operators who explore the spaces of the radio medium from the station's headquarter in Villa Plagwitz: Actress, theater maker and musician Ana Berkenhoff, sound artist Adam Frankiewicz, and film and radio maker Sara Lehn.
In addition, Radiolab receives guest contributions from, among others, Lukas Grundmann (Cashmere Radio), Lukas Holfeld (Kunst Spektakel Revolution/Wutpilger Streifzüge), Caspar Leder (Radio F.R.E.I.), Elissa Stolman (Cashmere Radio), Elisa Ueberschär & Tanja Krone (30 Stunden Runder Tisch) and builds radio bridges to Community Radio Tbilisi in Georgia and the exhibition 'doku.ARGU.Experi.PIg.' in Berlin.
Accompanying the Seanaps Festival, the radio also provides insights into the backgrounds and approaches of the invited artists and live streams the concert program from the Westbahnhof, which is presented by Jasmina Al-Qaisi and Nina Guo.
Radiolab broadcasts daily from 10 a.m. online via the stream of the radio collective Sphere Radio. Through networking with the local free radio stations and cooperatives Radio Blau (Leipzig), Radio CORAX (Halle) and Cashmere Radio (Berlin), the program will also be receivable via FM.

The Radiolab