Introducing a new series of video interviews made during the 2016 vs. Interpretation Festival. In the upcoming months we will be offering a series of video interviews produced during the festival, featuring the following artists who appeared at vs. Interpretation: Mazen Kerbaj, Bob Ostertag, Hans Van Koolwijk, Praed, Christof Kurzmann, Lê Quan Ninh, Christine Abdelnour, Phil Minton, Ute Wassermann, and Sarah Washington.
The second iteration of the
vs. Interpretation festival, organized by the
Agosto Foundation, took place last spring, and in it, a wide variety of international performers and musicians participated in exploring the current state of improvised music and sound art, combining performances, graphic art, installations, and public events.
We kick off with
Mazen Kerbaj, a Lebanese visual artist and musician. During vs. Interpretation, Kerbaj exhibited an array of colorful and inventive drawings on A4 paper, in the visual idiom of comics and the graphic novel. Sometimes comical, sometimes tragic, and often a combination of the two, these drawings were hung at Studio Alta where Kerbaj performed with the group
Rouba3i, which included three other musicians featured at the festival including:
Tony Buck,
Sharif Sehnaoui, and
Christine Abdelnour. In addition to his concert at Studio Alta, Kerbaj also performed solo at the Old Wastewater Treatment Plant in Bubeneč, just one of the captivating spaces that vs. Interpretation took place in.
All interviews were filmed by Dominik Žižka and conducted by Petr Slabý.
