Shuffle events tackle themes linked to innovative and avant-garde contemporary artistic practices that reflect today’s society, and contribute to strengthening collective awareness on current issues and to nurturing critical reflection.

Shuffle is always part of a pre-existing event, such a festival, an exhibition or a conference. Its agile concept aims to create a sustainable network of cultural players and people interested in contemporary art in Switzerland and abroad.

For its first edition, Shuffle’s theme is Music as Social Practice. This theme ties in with the host of Shuffle, the Usinesonore Festival, a music festival whose aim is to promote contemporary sound arts in popular culture.

How can sound as an art form work as a vehicle for fostering social inclusion, group identity and sense of belonging?

On this topic a call for projects for artists in their first 5 years of career was launched in November 2023 and 7 Swiss and international guests of honor have been invited to present their related artistic practice.

Shuffle invited 7 Swiss and international artists whose artistic practice aligns with the theme of the day, Music as Social Practice, and showcases innovative, inspiring and committed artistic perspectives.

The public will have the chance to learn about each artist during a brief presentation on the morning of June 7. This will be followed by an original participatory meal with plenty of opportunity for discussion. Later in the afternoon, the public will have the opportunity to participate in salons. These interactive sessions will enable the artists to invite the public to explore and experience their artistic universe.

Each edition of Shuffle will be accompanied by a graphic review created by a live-illustrator.

For this edition, Zurich-based illustrator Kati Rickenbach will capture through her impressions the day’s highlights and discussions.

This graphic review of the day aims to serve as an archive, as a visual trace of the event, but also as a means of disseminating and sharing the event through its original perspective of presenting the addressed themes.

The public is invited to take part in a performative and participatory meal. A gastronomical journey offered by KOMÅ.

KOMÅ is an interdisciplinary studio located between South America and Switzerland. The studio combines food practices, artistic research and visual communication, to foster encounters, dialogues and cultural exchanges around the topics of migration, identity and coexistence.

KOMÅ projects aim to reconcile the relationship between past/present, center/periphery and man/nature. The current scenarios of the food work revolve around pop-up food experiences, creative installations and catering, and experiments through the act of eating.

Aya Metwalli (*1988) is an Egyptian vocalist, improviser and composer-performer skilled in singing microtonal Arabic maqam. Described as “a musical enigma” by The Guardian and a musician who’s “crafted a spellbinding brand of anti-pop” by Pitchfork, Aya uses analog synthesizers to produce gritty textures and strange, unsettling soundscapes announcing the arrival of a grim reaper who never comes.

Over the past few years, she performed at festivals such as Jazzwerkstatt in Switzerland, Onassis Stegi Tectonics in Greece, Norbergfestival in Sweden, La Magnifique Avant Garde in France, Irtijal Festival in Lebanon among others, as well as performed pieces for the Biennale Interstellaire des espaces d’art de Genève and the Singapore Biennale at Singapore Art Museum (SAM). She’s also been featured in Nicolas Jaar’s audiovisual installation Retaining the Energy, but Losing the Image at Het HEM in the Netherlands and Gilles Aubry’s sound installation The Whistle at OTO Sound Museum in Zürich

With the performance “En’chante’ment” Aya evokes the witch-hunt and highlights the perception of women throughout history.

Where: Café Mille Or

When: June 7 during Déambulation Foisonnante (Tickets available on Usinesonore Festival’s website)

Jasper Simeon Mehler (*1996, he/none) works with sonorous worlds and kinetic sculptures.

Their artistic practice is centered on hidden disability, specifically on memory, wellbeing and togetherness. Jasper has been able to turn so-called weakness such as fragility and stigma into strengths: a short-coming can have the capability of being brilliantly different and eye opening. Neurodiversity enables him to humorously break with normative patterns. His visual approach to art lies in inflatable sculptures that find inspiration in nature, specifically in networks such as mycelia, roots or cobweb structures. Jasper finds themself most comfortable in between bewildering rhythms, enmeshed field recordings and noise-polluted synths. Furthermore, his interest lies in the omni-dimensionality of music: what can be heightened, transformed and recognized in the mind of the listener.

With the installation “Do you hear the gap?”, this neuro-divergent artist invites us to enter his world, to perceive his everyday life.

Where: Ground floor boutique „Les 2 pièces“, Rue du Marché 6

When:

– June 1: 5-7:30 pm
– June 2: 2-6 pm
– June 4: 5-8pm
– June 6: 5-8pm
– June 7:10am-6pm

Valérian (*1992) et Flurina (*1997) both come from classical music backgrounds, and have worked together on a range of experimental projects exploring social issues and questioning the formats in which music is shared and listened to.

Their latest joint project OUBLIS (Kosmos Luzern, 2023) is an interdisciplinary music theater about Alzheimer’s disease, which stages classical and electronic music using performative means.

Flurina Zehnder studied composition at ZHdK, Zurich and  currently at HKB, Bern. She is a prizewinner in the « Junges Lied – Zürich » competition, where she won 1st prize for her composition for piano and mezzo-soprano « … » on a text by Thilo Krause, as well as 2nd prize in the GMTH improvisation competition in Salzburg with the ensemble Aspirateur Spatial. She works in a wide range of fields, including composition, electronic music, piano, free improvisation and interdisciplinary projects, such as music for the theatre and music for installations and video.

Valérian Bitschnau is a Swiss-Italian tenor, performer, architect and stage designer. He studied architecture at the EPFL, Lausanne and TU Munich. He then studied opera singing with Scot Weir (ZHdK, Zurich) and Valérie Guillorit (Paris). He specialized afterwards with a Master’s degree in Music and art performance at HSLU, Luzern, which enables him to deepen his research into new interdisciplinary formats. He won the second prize in the « Montforter Zwischentöne » international competition for new concert formats in Feldkirch (Austria) in 2022.

The duo worked on an installation entitled “crieur-euse: public” with which the public can interact. The day’s recordings will be delivered at the end of the afternoon.

Where: in front of the Usinesonore Tent

When:

– June 4: interactions from 2pm to 6pm; delivery at 8pm

–  June 6: interactions from 2pm to 6pm; delivery at 8pm

– June 7: interactions from 10am to 6pm; delivery during Déambulation Foisonnante (Tickets available on Usinesonore Festival’s website)
– June 8: interactions from 10am to 6pm; delivery at 8pm

Photographer, filmmaker, curator and video artist in the field of theatre/live and music performances

Claudia Popovici was born in Romania and grew up in Germany. She studied art and photography at the Zurich University of the Arts in Zurich and in São Paulo. She works as a photographer, filmmaker, curator and video artist in the field of theatre/live and music performances, where she focuses on the act of documentation. She is part of the collective Les Mémoires d’Helène and is a cultural producer for art festivals in Zurich.

Since March 2021 she is part of the international curatorial team of the Norient Festival -The world through sound and image, a format that aims to document and connect subcultures. As a curator, she moves across the spectrum of the documentary, audio- visual and music research and explores its phenomena in the contemporary world. In 2023 she was the artistic director of the 12th edition of the Norient Festival, where she focuses on the impact of music communities around the world.

Art historian, curator and editor

Olivier Kaiser is a Swiss historian, curator and publisher. He is founder and director of Arta Sperto, a nomadic structure that curates, produces, organizes and publishes artistic projects, mainly multi-and transdisciplinary. Arta Sperto conceives and organizes two biennial exhibition-festivals in Geneva, Dance First Think Later, dedicated to the converging terrains between dance, performance and visual arts, and KorSonoR, devoted to sound and visual arts.

He regularly writes about artists and sits on various artistic juries and commissions.

From the end of 2008 to the end of 2018, he was co-director, with Jean-Paul Felley, of the Centre culturel suisse in Paris, the French branch of Pro Helvetia. From 1994 to 2011, he was co-founder and co-director, with Jean- Paul Felley, of attitudes, an independent artistic structure based in Geneva that has also carried out projects elsewhere in Switzerland and Europe, as well as in Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile and Beirut.

Music producer and composer for multidisciplinary projects

The blend of electronic/bass music and a strong visual universe has become the brand of Swiss-based producer FlexFab. His style incorporates genres such as trap, bass or club music, mixed with sounds and influences from various horizons. This approach allowed him to create his own sound signature, for which he’s recognized today.

The versatile producer cumulates over 5 million streams with his single Zoo, toured intensively (Tokyo, Séoul, Shanghai, Belgrade, Phnom Penh, Saigon, Bogotà, Lima Quito, Nairobi, Amsterdam, Dublin, Berlin, Bruxelles and Paris …), remixed Ibeyi or Bishop Briggs, created music for classical orchestras, nominated/won several awards (Swiss music awards, M4music, Swiss live talents…)

He wrote the soundtrack for the Sundance-nominated project Interlooped, and previously collaborated with artists such as South African Batuk, US rapper Mouthe, Malaysian singer The Venopian Solitude, Egyptian rapper Rozzma, Brazilian Mc Kitinho, Kenyan artist Muthoni Drummer Queen, among others.