Currents-Festival x Noise Reduction present: 
Asuna - 100 Keyboards | Kunstraum Walcheturm | 23.02.2025, 16.00

Beautiful instability

Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXDLEkW_Sa0

Naoyuki Arashi is a Japanese artist based in Kanazawa, who performs under the name "Asuna". He will present his performance "100 Keyboards", at Kunstraum Walcheturm in Zurich, by invitation of the Currents Festival and Noise Reduction on Sunday, February 23rd 2025.

"100 Keyboards" is a performative music installation featuring 100 instruments, many of which are children's toys or beginner pianos. Instead of dismissing these toylike instruments as tonally unreliable, Asuna embraces their imperfections as their primary appeal. Due to their design and construction, these keyboards may produce slight pitch fluctuations, particularly during extended use or when battery powered. Asuna transforms these natural misalignments into an evolving soundscape, fostering a dialogue between the instruments to create a floating, ever-changing, and delightful auditory experience. "100 Keyboards" invites us to dive into this beautiful arrangement of site-specific instabilities. 

The performance’s tonal structure is deeply influenced by the acoustic characteristics of each venue. Asuna carefully listens to the space and builds the sonic landscape layer by layer, responding intuitively to how the frequencies interact within the room. Each performance—whether in Tokyo, Paris, or Zurich—is a unique experience, shaped by its environment. At its core, the performance explores the phenomenon of "interference sound"—the interaction of overlapping sound waves of similar frequencies—and the moiré-like patterns generated by subtle pitch differences.

"100 Keyboards" embodies the beauty of finding harmony in imperfection, creating an artistic dialogue of empathy and connection. This resonates with the pressing challenges/fragmentations of our era, where stark political divisions have become commonplace. As musicologist Tim Rutherford-Johnson aptly stated: "As our world is reconfigured in terms of flows (and resistances), perhaps the best way past this fragmentation is to turn things on their sides, to seek out the continuities across relationships and networks at the same time as we relish the differences between individuals." (Music after the Fall: Modern Composition and Culture since 1989, University of California Press, 2017)

Prior to "100 Keyboards", the Swiss Artist Martina Berther will open the evening with a short Solo-performance. Berther (* 1984 in Chur) based in Zurich, is a Swiss bassist and composer. Her sound spectrum ranges from pop to experimental music. She tours internationally with her solo project and with her bands Ester Poly and AUL, the author Simone Lappert and with the singer Sophie Hunger. She also writes music for films, theatre and installations and works as a curator. Martina Berther has received numerous awards for her work, including the Swiss Music Prize 2020.

Currents Festival x Noise Reduction
Asuna – 100 Keyboards
Sunday, February 23rd 2025 @ Kunstraum Walcheturm Zurich, 4pm
Support: Martina Berther (solo)
Space Creation by MushRoom
Get Tickets here: https://eventfrog.ch/Asuna100

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