Date: Monday, 9th of June 2025

Door: 19:30

Start: 20:00

Entrance: 5-12 euro

Location: Varia (Gouwstraat 3, Rotterdam)

Inviting you for a gathering of improvisations, philosophies and uncertain manifestations designed to charge the varia space with layers upon layers of fun. Between these layers we might find both practical and theoretical questionings concerning technology, art and especially sound making, challenging experiences of time, representation and love.

The program:

• Jean-Luc Guionnet and Jean-Phillipe Gross (saxophone and electronics improvisation duo)
• Yuk Hui, Sonia de Jager and Jean-Luc Guionnet (philosophical panel)
• Soaking Dry (electronics and liquid improvisation quartet)
• Siamak Abbasi (what will happen?)

Jean-Luc Guionnet

“My musical work subdivides itself into as many ways as occasions arise for me to think and act with sound and forms. Those occasions have always to do with a strong meeting with an outside element : an instrument (saxophone/organ), a theoretical idea (what is “rumour”?), and mainly a collaborating friend (Lotus Edde Khouri, Éric La Casa, Thomas Bonvalet, Seijiro Murayama) … or the long term adventure of a team (Hubbub, Ames Room, Jupiter Terminus …). There then follows a collection of themes which, in turn, influence the evolution of the musical work and define the direction of meetings to come: the thickness of the air, the pidgin, the musical instrument considered as affective automaton, sound as a signature of space, signature of objects, signature of what it is not… The coming emotion is made out of all these strata and the sliding of one over the other during the act of listening. When music is giving time.”

Jean-Philippe Gross

At the crossroads of electronic and instrumental music, Jean-Philippe Gross develops a physical relationship with sound, playing with ruptures and acoustic phenomena. In concert, he collaborates with Stéphane Garin, Marc Baron, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Clare Cooper (Nevers)… He works with the choreographer Camille Mutel. Never locked into any systematism, Jean-Philippe Gross allows himself the extremes to take advantage of a wide field of possibilities and pays particular attention to the timbre, the grain and the quality of the sound, even rough. Recent works include “Structure incidences” (2022), “Ailsa Craig” (2025) commissioned by Ina/GRM (Radio France) and “Effet d’empreinte” (2023) commissionned the Musica festival and Onceim orchestra. In 2019, he started the record label Eich. https://tanzprocesz.bandcamp.com/album/angle

Yuk Hui

Yuk Hui is Professor of Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam, where he holds the Chair of Human Conditions. Hui studied computer engineering at the University of Hong Kong, wrote a PhD thesis under Bernard Stiegler (1952-2020) at Goldsmiths University London, and obtained his Habilitation in philosophy from Leuphana University Lüneburg. Hui is author of several monographs that have been translated into more than a dozen languages, including On the Existence of Digital Objects (University of Minnesota Press, 2016), The Question Concerning Technology in China:-An Essay in Cosmotechnics (Urbanomic, 2016), Recursivity and Contingency (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019), Art and Cosmotechnics (University of Minnesota Press/e-flux, 2021), Post-Europe (Urbanomic/Sequence, 2024) and Machine and Sovereignty (University of Minnesota Press,2024). Hui is co-editor of 30 Years after Les Immatériaux: Art, Science and Theory (2015) and editor of Philosophy after Automation (Philosophy Today, Vol.65. No.2, 2021), Cybernetics for the 21st Century Vol.1 Epistemological Reconstruction (2024) among others. Since 2014, Hui has been the convenor of the Research Network for Philosophy and Technology and sits as a juror of the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture since 2020.

Sonia de Jager

Born in Buenos Aires in 1988, Sonia de Jager is a doctoral researcher at Erasmus University. She is currently completing a dissertation on the philosophy of (natural) language-modulation. The project is premised on Active Inference, a unifying framework which grounds the dynamics of cognition—extended and expanded into collectives, technological tendrils and beyond—under the axis of variational free energy-minimization. Her main interest is in exploring the productive constraints implied by this framework, and what these might mean for distant images of ourselves. The PhD project has taken the form of a so-called “living book” and can be found at: www.n-o.ooo Together with five other scholars she is the Noise Research Union (NRU), working on the concept of noise and its multiple (evolving) interpretations. They organize diagramming workshops, research seminars and collective publications. More information can be found at: www.n-r-u-.xyz She teaches at the art academy in Rotterdam, and at the design academy in Eindhoven. At both these institutions my focus is exploring philosophy through art and design (and vice versa), and motivating students to chase the philosophical implications of their interests and embeddings.

Soaking Dry

“About 15 years ago, there was a young boy in Ireland who loved improvised music—but couldn’t find anyone around who shared that passion. He grew up, moved to the city of Delft, and one day, feeling a bit disconnected from home, he logged onto Facebook. There, an ad caught his eye: ‘Improvised music at Projectruimte Attent.’ He thought, ‘That’s what I’ve always loved.’ So he got on his bike and rode all the way from Delft to Rotterdam. When he arrived at Projectruimte Attent, there were five people there—and he couldn’t believe five others in the world were into this music too. That day, he decided to move to Rotterdam, to find his people, and one day play live improvised music at Projectruimte Attent. That boy was me—and these are the people I found here, soaking dry.” – John Hill, Soaking Dry member and most frequent user of Projectruimte Attent (just a 10-minute walk south of Varia)

Siamak Abbasi

Can butterflies see their own wings? And even if they can see them, can they appreciate what is on their wings? Do pigeons have emotions? These are all questions. This is a description. Good day.