14.00-16.00
Building and Amplifying Female Networks
Roundtable talk with AGF (female:pressure), Kok Siew-Wai (KLEX Festival), Cheryl Ong (Playfreely), Joee Mejias (HERESY), Anisa Putri (merahmudamemudar), Riska Farasonalia (Kolektif Betina) and members of the audience
Moderator: Brigitta Isabella

This event features several short presentations by women with pivotal roles as artists and organisers in music and related artistic fields. They will share their experiences and discuss the importance of mentorship and networks. The event will also act as a platform for members of the public to start dialogues, exchange ideas, and cross-pollinate their own work.

The session will begin with a talk by AGF on female:pressure, an international network of female-identifying, transgender, and non-binary artists working in the fields of electronic music and digital arts. Founded in 1998, female:pressure is now a worldwide resource of talent, marking its 20th year with 2,200 members in 75 countries. Since 2013, female:pressure has also been publishing the FACTS Survey to collect data on the gender ratio of artists performing at high profile international electronic music festivals. In her talk, AGF recaps the founding and history of the network, its statistical findings, and points her ears and eyes to the future.

Directly following, several women active as both artists and organisers in Southeast Asia will share key perspectives of their work and the networks that they participate in: Kok Siew-Wai (artist, KLEX Festival founder, and professor at the Faculty of Creative Multimedia, Multimedia University Kuala Lumpur), Cheryl Ong (member of The Observatory band and organiser of new music initiatives Playfreely & BlackKaji), Anisa Putri from merahmudamemudar, a young feminist collective that publishes the fememenisme zine, Joee Mejias from HERESY (Manila), a Manila-based art platform for women working with sound and interdisciplinary media, and Riska Farasonalia (artist, journalist, and member of inter-local feminist collective Kolektif Betina).

A closing discussion will focus on best practices for both organisers and artists. Members of the public are warmly invited to join in the discussion, sharing their own questions and experiences.

16.00–16.30
Break

16.30-17.30
Breaking Through the White Noise – Artist Strategies in a New Digital Environment
Roundtable talk with Yudhistira (Vice Magazine), Michail Stangl (Boiler Room, CTM Festival), Indra Menus (Jogja Noise Bombing) and members of the audience.

With the rise and growing importance of online broadcasting and the diversification of social media channels, artists have to navigate a more complex landscape of media channels than ever before, each coming with its own set of formats, requirements, and opportunities. The situation becomes even more complex for artists with limited access to the world’s main musical infrastructures and channels. Language barriers, socioeconomic factors, cultural biases, a lack of powerful local/regional infrastructures, or an artistic approach that is not easy to translate outside of its regional context all play a role. This session aims to provide an overview about the current digital environment and deliver an insight into various strategies that artists can apply to shape their career and digital presence. Artists, labels, journalists, and anyone interested is invited to join the discussion.
 
18.00-19.00
Break

19.00-21.00
Sound and New Identities in Southeast Asia
Speakers: Rully Shabara, Wukir Suryadi, Caliph8, David Tarigan
Moderator: Irfan Darajat

An array of tensions affect the formation of identities. In each attempt emerges a particular balance between tradition and modernity, of local and global cultures, of individual versus collective thinking, of hybridity and categorisation/division. A lack of open discussion and experimentation with identity constructs can easily lead down the path of essentialism, helping fuel right-wing fundamentalist movements or nationalist projects with simplistic soundbites and ‘comforting’ nostalgic images of simpler times. Or, on the other end of the spectrum, the protest song. Music and art are invaluable tools in imagining different worlds, ways of life, and states of being, thanks to their inherently open-ended processes and their ability to touch us on an emotional, imaginative, and experiential level.

This panel unites a range of artists that consistently explore, bend, and blend the old and the new. How can sound and music make space to express, test, and explore new hybrid identities or new visions of what a contemporary Southeast Asian, Indonesian, or Filipino identity can be? How can hybrid and changing identities be expressed in sound? What kind of formats, rituals, or related modes of expression might also play a role?