NEXT festival and RASK Collective present Festival for Spontaneous Arts. During the past week, 10 artists from Iceland, Norway, and Slovakia took part in an artist residency focused on improvised arts at Mengi. The artists will share the residency’s outcome at two concerts with respective programs on Friday 1 October, starting at 18:00 and 21:00. Doors open 30 minutes before, and the event will conclude with an afterparty at Stereo bar.

Participating artists are Anna Čonková (SK), Ás Dís (IS), Daniel Meyer Grønvold (NO), Digital Sigga (IS), Erika Coyle (SK), Guoste Tamulynaite (NO), Heida Karine Johannesdottir (NO), Jakub Šulík (SK), Ragnar Árni Ólafsson (IS), and Örlygur Arnalds (IS).

The Festival is a part of ‘NOISS (Norway–Iceland–Slovakia): New Musics for New Audiences’ – an audience development, capacity building and transnational mobility project promoting the values of creativity, artistic freedom and collaboration in contemporary music. Through developing a collaborative approach to the production of innovative forms of music and sonic art, we want to create a community of change-makers able to respond to key critical, social and political challenges that our countries are now facing. The project activities consist of a jointly curated programme of artistic performances and new collaborations presented at the NEXT Festival of advanced music in Bratislava and in Spissky Hrhov, Oslo and Reykjavik, a public discourse programme linking music with relevant social and cultural topics, and activities supporting capacity building of the project partners and audience development in contemporary music.

Co-organisers of the project are organisations from Slovakia (A4 – Space for Contemporary Culture / Bratislava, EQO / Spišský Hrhov), Antalova Music from Oslo / Norway and RASK Collective from Reykjavik / Iceland. This event is curated by Sól Ey and organised together with Adrian Myhr, Bart Bruinsma, Michaela Antalová, Snæbjörn Jack, and Slavo Krekovic. The event will be documented by Agalma Music. Graphic design was made by Gunnhildur Ýrr Gunnarsdóttir.