Skaņu Mežs 2025 announces free-entry opening event

The 2025 edition of the Skaņu Mežs festival for experimental music will take place on October 3 and 4 at the venue Hanzas Perons (16A Hanzas street). In anticipation of the main event, an opening night will be held at the photo studio and event space SunsStudo (9A Magoņu street). Admission to the opening event is free, and it begins at 19:00.

The evening will feature performances by the electroacoustic duo Elka Bong in collaboration with violinist Katt Hernandez, Estonian experimental artist and musician Kiwanoid, American noise musician and sound collagist Twig Harper in collaboration with visual artist collective Baltic Analog Lab, and Latvian DJ and visual artist Elīna Gesta, also known as DEE.

Elka Bong is an experimental electronic music duo consisting of Al Margolis and Walter Wright. Since 1984, Margolis has been running the noise and electroacoustic music project If, Bwana—an acronym derived from the phrase “It's Funny, But We Are Not Amused.” He’s also operated two influential labels: Sound of Pig, considered an iconic force in the American noise music cassette underground, and Pogus Productions, which releases contemporary and experimental music on CD. Among others, Margolis has collaborated with Pauline Oliveros and Phill Niblock. His colleague Walter Wright is a video artist and programmer who integrates both disciplines into his avant-garde music projects. His primary artistic motivation is “to improvise in order to feel more present in the world.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l638RkhlG0 

Joining the duo on stage will be violinist Katt Hernandez. After 13 years of active involvement in the U.S. experimental music scene, she relocated to Sweden in 2010, where she continues to participate in both improvised and contemporary music projects. She has collaborated with Lotte Anker, Raymond Strid, and Johan Graden, and has performed with Mats Gustafsson’s ensemble Fire! Orchestra. Following her Master’s degree in composition from the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, she earned a PhD from Lund University in 2023.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAZ-vilHMZA

Kiwanoid (alias KIWA) is an Estonian multichannel artist, and pioneer of contemporary experimental art since the 1990s. He has participated in more than 400 exhibitions and festivals around the world, including Moderna Museet, (Malmö, Sweden), Tate Modern (London, UK), Stedelijk (Amsterdam, Netherlands), the Kitchen (NYC, US). He actively explores and blends different media, all together functioning as a hypertextual research of meaning-making and cultural codes, collective and personal myths.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1mHZnzW0ZY

Twig Harper is a sound artist and performer whose work emerged from the Midwest noise underground in the ’90s with projects like Nautical Almanac. Co-founder/operator of Baltimore’s legendary Tarantula Hill collective for 2 decades and currently lives in Los Angeles. Harper has spent decades pushing the limits of analog electronics, broken circuits, tape manipulation, and psychoacoustic trickery. His performances are equal parts ecstatic cartoon nightmares and sonic sleight of hand, focused on deep attention to sound’s transformative possibilities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAOl7pfnkvc

Baltic Analog Lab is an artist collective in Riga, founded in 2016, dedicated to research and promotion of analog film and photography techniques. The lab organizes film screenings, workshops, lectures, interdisciplinary audiovisual art events, as well as the international experimental film festival Process. This year, BAL is collaborating with Skaņu Mežs on a joint artist residency program, hosting artists from around the world each month.

At Skaņu Mežs, two BAL members - Ieva Balode and Sintija Andersone will perform a special live analogue projection and light performance, accompanying the music of Twig Harper.

Elīna Gesta is a video artist who performs under the name DEE at music events in Riga and abroad, exploring the intersection between sound and visual art. She has recently begun sharing her music selections with a wider audience—ranging from Italian futurism to contemporary electronic releases. For several years, she’s been hosting the Skaņu Mežs radio show on Radio NABA. Her DJ set will close the event.