Marko Ciciliani - artistic director ChampdAction.LAbO, composer and audiovisual artist
Stefano D'Alessio - music, media-art, visuals
Frederik De Bleser - designer / developer / researcher in interactive media
Martina Menegon - music, media-art, visuals
Ine Vanoeveren - flutist, artistic researcher
Angélique Willkie - performer, singer, dramaturge, pedagogue
Coaches
Marko Ciciliani - artistic director ChampdAction.LAbO, composer and audiovisual artist
Marko Ciciliani (Zagreb, 1970) is a composer, audiovisual artist, performer and researcher based in Austria. The focus of his work lies in the composition of performative electronic music, mostly in audiovisual contexts. Interactive video, light design and laser graphics often play an integral part in his compositions.
Ciciliani's music has been performed in more than forty-five countries across Eurasia, Oceania and the Americas. As a result of his interdisciplinary practice his work can be found in different genres. It has been programmed at festivals and concert series of electronic experimental music such as Experimental Intermedia, NYC, Club Transmediale, Berlin, SuperDeluxe, Tokyo, Ibrasotope, São Paolo or Findars, Kuala Lumpur; by festivals for post-avantgarde music such as Donaueschinger Musiktage, Wien Modern, Ultraschall Berlin, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival or Maerzmusik; just as well as in the context of media art, as in the festival Ars Electronica or with iMAL, Brussels.
His work has been released on five full-length CDs and two multimedia books containing transdisciplinary and audiovisual works. In addition, his music can be found on more than a dozen compilation CDs.
In 2009 Marko Ciciliani was the recipient of the prestigious Villa Aurora Stipend, a three-month artist residency in Los Angeles. He has been granted numerous project-residencies at STEIM, Amsterdam, ICST, Zürich and ZKM, Karlsruhe. In 2015 Ciciliani was granted funding for an artistic research project titled “GAPPP – Gamified Audiovisual Performance and Performance Practice”. It is funded as part of the PEEK program of the Austrian Science Fund and runs from 2016-20.
Ciciliani is tenured Professor for Computer Music Composition and Sound Design at the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. Since 2014 he has taught as tutor at the “Summer Courses for Contemporary Music Darmstadt”. He has furthermore regularly been invited as coach to the multidisciplinary course LAbO in Antwerp, organized by ChampDAction. Starting with 2020 he will serve as Artistic Director of this annual course.
- -
Stefano D'Alessio - music, media-art, visuals
MAI Instructor
Stefano D’Alessio (1987 Italy) is a New Media artist and composer, lives and works in Vienna (Austria). He creates interactive performances and installations, combining visuals, sound, physical computing and performance through programming.
His research addresses the digitization of the human in new technologies, virtual representations of the “real” and the distortions and perceptive amplifications caused by them. His work involves the human body as a subject for analyzing, coding, and decoding processes of the real/physical, into digital/abstract, questioning the ephemeral limits between machine and body, artificial intelligence and consciousness.
With a degree in Visual Art and Theatre at the IUAV University of Venice, Stefano D’Alessio is regularly teaching new media for interactive arts with Klaus Obermaier, at bachelor, master, and post-graduate master courses at the IUAV University and at the Linz University of Arts.
Since 2010 he regularly collaborates with Martina Menegon and Klaus Obermaier on different art projects, furthermore he realized music and interactive visuals for various artists, musicians, choreographers and theatre directors.
Martina Menegon - music, media-art, visuals
Martina Menegon is an artist and educator.
She works with interactive, virtual and mixed reality art, that creates an intimate and complex assemblage of physical and virtual elements and explores the contemporary self and its synthetic corporeality. She is the co-founder of AFK - Away From Keyboard, a member of the Radiance Research Platform for artistic VR experience and of the Saloon Wien. She currently teaches at the Transmediale Kunst department of the University of Applied Art in Vienna and at the Art University of Linz, as well as regularly collaborating with Klaus Obermaier and Stefano D’Alessio.
Martina Menegon currently lives and works in Vienna.
Kinga Jaczewska - dance
Kinga Jaczewska (Warsaw, 1991) is an Antwerp based artist. She studied dance, performance and choreography in schools such London Contemporary Dance School (UK) Northern School of Contemporary Dance (UK) and most recently P.A.R.T.S (BE). Since her graduation Kinga continues to develop her work own which aside of performance includes video work, installation, photography and text.
Kinga is also active as a dancer and performer and has been most recently involved in work by Ayelen Parolin (BE/AR), Rosa Omarsdottir (IS) or Karl Van Welden (BE).
Ine Vanoeveren - flutist, artistic researcher
Belgian flutist and Doctor of Musical Arts, Ine Vanoeveren (b. 1986), is specialized in contemporary music performance. She obtained her Master’s degree at the Conservatoire Royal de Musique de Liège, in the class of prof. Toon Fret, a MAS in Contemporary Music Performance and Interpretation in the class of Mario Caroli, at the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana and a DMA in Contemporary Music Performance in the class of Prof. John Fonville, at the University of California, San Diego.
She performed at several contemporary music festivals and concert series, such as Lanterna Rossa in Lugano, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Wednesdays @7 in San Diego, Festival Musica Sacra Maastricht, Images Sonores in Liège, Complicated Europeans Festival in New York, FIME in São Paulo and the prestigious Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles. In 2017, Ine toured through the US with her solo program UN(!)limited(?) and lectured at several renowned universities, such as University of California, San Diego, New York University, City University of New York and McGill University at Montréal, Canada.
Ine won awards at the Action Classics Competition, Benelux Fluitconcours and was rewarded with a Belgian American Educational Foundation grant in 2013, to continue her research in contemporary music performance in the US. In 2016 she was awarded with the Kranichsteiner Stipendienpreise for Interpretation by the Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt.
During her doctoral research, Ine focused on the development of new extended techniques on flute and on the music for flute solo by Brian Ferneyhough. Her doctoral project, ‘confined walls of unity’, is a series of lectures, papers and a solo recital, consisting of his integral oeuvre for flute solo.
Wim Henderickx - composer
Wim Henderickx is a Flemish composer, based in Antwerp. He studied compositon and percussion at the Royal Conservatoire in Antwerp and sonology at Ircam in Paris and at the Conservatoire of Music in The Hague.
COMPOSITIONS
Many of his works are influenced by oriental music and philosophy. He wrote works for opera, music theatre, orchestra, choirs, windband and chamber music. Electronics are often an important feature in his music. Following a journey around India and Nepal he composed the Tantric Cycle. Commissioned by the Queen Elisabeth Competition, he composed Canzone for voice and piano, for the semi finals of the 2008 edition. In October 2016 Blossomings for choir, trumpet and electronics premiered at LSO St Luke's in London with the BBC Singers, Marco Blaauw (trumpet) and Martyn Brabbins (conductor). Requiem was commissioned by Opera Ballet Vlaanderen in 2017, a collaboration with choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
He has been Composer in Residence at Muziektheater Transparant since 1996 and he joined the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra as Artist in Residence in 2013.
FULL CDs
The 3 Ragas were recorded in 1999 with the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Grant Llewellyn. The CD Tejas & Other Orchestral Works was released by the same orchestra in 2011 and was conducted by Martyn Brabbins. The full CDs Disappearing in Light (2011) and Triptych (2015) were developed in collaboration with the HERMESensemble & Jorrit Tamminga (electronics).
The latest Double CD was released by the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra in 2016, containing Symphony No.1, Groove! and the solo + orchestral version of Empty Mind I.
PUBLISHER
Wim Henderickx's scores are published by Norsk Musikforlag in Oslo, Norway.
TEACHING
Wim Henderickx is professor of composition at the Royal Conservatoire in Antwerp: www.ap.be and at the Conservatoire in Amsterdam: www.conservatoriumvanamsterdam.nl. He is also the main coach on the annual SoundMIne Summer Composition Course for young composers, which is organised by Musica, Impulse Centre for Music.
AWARDS
He received numerous awards, such as the Prize for Contemporary Music Flanders-Québec in 1993. In 2006 he was nominated for the Flanders Culture Prizes and in 2011 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Lier (BE), his birthplace. He was appointed as a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium (KVAB) for Science and the Arts in 2015.
Frederik De Bleser - designer / developer / researcher in interactive media
Frederik De Bleser is a PhD researcher and professor at the Sint Lucas School of Arts in Antwerp, Belgium. His research focuses on the link between art and technology, developing free software tools for generative design and data visualisation. He co-founded the Experimental Media Research Group (EMRG) in 2004. He coordinates the Studio Data bachelor program and teaches in the technology lab in the master.
Using NodeBox as a tool he has organised data visualisation workshops in France, Italy, Finland, Poland, Lithuania and Canada. His open-source work is included in tools and applications reaching millions of people.
He has worked commercially creating visualisations for one of the largest Belgian newspapers and an interactive art installation for the Research Foundation Flanders. In his free time he is a coach for Hack Your Future, organizing and teaching web development to refugees. He lives with his wife and two children near Antwerp.
Angélique Willkie - performer, singer, dramaturge, pedagogue
A multidisciplinary artist and graduate of The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, Angélique Willkie pursued a career in Europe over 25 years, where she performed with dance companies and independent projects throughout Europe, most notably Alain Platel/Les Ballets C. de la B., Jan Lauwers/Needcompany, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Helena Waldmann and as a singer with the Belgian world-music group Zap Mama, bands Arno, dEUS, 7Dub, DAAU, Ez3kiel, and Zita Swoon Group, with jazz vocalist David Linx and contemporary composers Walter Hus, Kaat De Windt and Fabrizio Cassol.
Performer, singer, dramaturge and pedagogue, Angélique has been among the more sought-after contemporary technique teachers on the European professional circuit, teaching companies, schools and festivals including ImpulsTanz (Vienna), Henny Jurriens Stichting (Amsterdam), SEAD (Salzburg), Wim Vandekeybus/Ultima Vez (Brussels), Circuit-Est centre chorégraphique (Montreal) among others. She spent eight years at École Supérieure des Arts du Cirque (ESAC) in Brussels as a teacher and dramaturgical advisor to the students as well as Pedagogical Coordinator of the school under Gérard Fasoli, current director of the Centre national des arts du cirque (CNAC) in France.
Her dramaturgical work has included projects in dance-, music- and circus-theatre with artists as varied as Belgian theatre director/choreographer Isabella Soupart, French trapezist Mélissa Von Vépy and Dutch choreographers Arno Schuitemaker and Pia Meuthen/PanamaPictures. An ongoing collaboration of over 10 years, Angélique and Pia have actively explored approaches to incorporating circus disciplines into dance-theatre productions, developing a hybrid aesthetic and movement language that is fully anchored in both art forms.
Now based in Montreal and actively involved in the professional dance community as teacher, mentor, performer and dramaturg, Angélique has contributed to the work of choreographers Lara Kramer, Mélanie Demers, Frédérick Gravel, Clara Furey and Helen Simard among others.
Assistant Professor in the Department of Contemporary Dance at Montreal’s Concordia University and co-director of LePARC, the performing arts research cluster of Concordia’s Milieux Institute of Arts, Culture and Technology, her current research interests are firmly anchored in interdisciplinary artistic creation with a specific focus on decolonized and expanded dramaturgies and, more specifically, on the dramaturgy of the performer.
