Residency #3: Germ (France) | July 20-26 2026 | Coordinated by Muzzix
The aim of this residency is to encourage sound artists to shift their creative practices by making the natural environment – in this case, the French Pyrenees mountains – a driving force of the artistic process.
They experimented with new approaches and musical forms while highlighting the richness of the natural heritage. Their work also sought to foster new connections with the sonic environment, the territory and its history, as well as with local residents and hikers. Over the course of seven days, the artists carried out sound explorations and actions in nature, and hosted public gatherings where they collectively shared, through sound, the experience of this immersion.
Public presentations:
Saturday 25th of July | 14:00
sound walk starting at the Centre de Montagne de Germ
If bad weather, the concert will be in various locations of the Centre de Montagne de Germ
Saturday 25th of July | 17:00
concert at the Cabane d’Ourtiga
If bad weather, the concert will be at the Centre de Montagne de Germ
Sunday 26th of July | 11:00
concert in the Germ village
Discover the artistisc team:
Ilia Belorukov is a musician from St. Petersburg, Russia, based in Novi Sad, Serbia since 2022. He works in improvised, noise and electroacoustic music. Ilia practices an experimental approach to sound extraction using saxophone, modular synthesizer and other instruments. His works have been released on labels such as Clean Feed, SOFA, Moving Furniture, Astral Spirits, Notice Recordings, Raw Tonk, Cronica, Mikroton and many others. He founded the Intonema label and was one of the curators of Spina!Rec label. He has organized concerts and co-curated several festivals in Russia and continues to arrange events in Serbia. Recent activities included writings for Jazzist website and as musicworm on Telegram channel as well as working as mixing and mastering engineer for own projects and different musicians and labels. […]
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Porto, 1976. Gustavo Costa sonic vision is described by a constant permeability to various musical styles but with a common denominator: experimentation and the constant desire for stylistic renewal.
Active in the underground scene since the early 90s, he maintained an interest and parallel activity in the academic world, studying percussion, musical technologies, sonology, theory, composition and digital media, and teaching at various higher education institutions in Portugal. In a period of 30 years, he was part of countless bands and formations from various stylistic spectra, collaborating with hundreds of musicians and performing regularly around the globe.
In recent years he has concentrated a large part of his activity in Sonoscopia, the collective and association of which he is a founder and where he dedicates himself to the sonic exploration through various formats of creation and collaboration. […]
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Ivann Cruz studied classical guitar and turned to jazz and improvised music. He graduated from the Conservatoire National de Région of Lille in jazz section, and from The University of Lille with a Master’s degree in Musical Composition and a DEA in Aesthetics and Arts Practice. During his university education he studied musical improvisation with Fred Van Hove. He was a member of the C.R.I.M.E, an improvised and experimental music collective based at la malterie in Lille and is an active member of the Muzzix collective since its creation in 2010.
He invests a lot in interpretation, composition, improvisation and experimentation in solo or through projects as eclectic as numerous: TOC, Le Grand Orchestre de Muzzix, Otto, OGR, TOCC Beat Club, Aphar’s Cave, Des Pieds et des mains…
He has performed on many stages in France and abroad (tours in Europe, USA, Canada).
He regularly composes and performs stage music for the theater or film-concerts.In 2014 he composed and created the documentary performance Trading Litany, and in 2019, the multimedia project Puzzle, based on an augmented guitar device developed with Loïc Reboursière and Olivier Lautem. In 2024, he created the immersive sound and olfactory experience Neroli (Brian Eno).
During his studies and activity as a performer/improviser, he met and worked with : Ars Nova ensemble, Sakina Abdou, Didier Aschour, Olivier Benoit, Jean-François Canape, Médéric Collignon, Philippe Deschepper, Marc Ducret, Satoko Fuji, Michel Godart, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Tom Johnson, Liz Kosack, Ingrid Laubrock, Thierry Madiot, Gérard Marais, Jean-Marc Montera, Peter Orins, Anthony Pateras, Edward Perraud, Michael Pisaro, Christian Pruvost, Dave Rempis, James Saunders, Jérémie Ternoy, Fred Van Hove, Camel Zekri…
In theater, he has worked as a composer or performer with the companies : Interlude T/O, Cendres la Rouge, the company of the Oiseau Mouche, Thierry Roisin and Blandine Savetier, Arnaud Anckaert, Thierry Poquet and Eolie Songe.
For cinema, he composed the music for the film How it begins (Chloé Wasp – Le Fresnoy) and for the video installation And you want to travel blind (Chloé Wasp – Le Fresnoy).
He regularly leads workshops on the practice of collective improvisation (Conservatories of Lille and Tourcoing).
His artistic approach consists in questioning the processes which are activated between on the one hand, a sound world composed in the moment and on the other hand, the instrumental gesture and the constraints of the environment where it unfolds. Since 2021, he has been developing a work that brings together natural environments and improvised musical creation while integrating an eco-responsible dimension to this approach. […]
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Gintė Preisaitė is a Lithuanian artist based in Copenhagen where she works with piano, electronics, composition, improvisation, field recordings.
Through a variety of timbres, textures, collaged melodies and percussive figures she is interested in transcending the sound of acoustic instruments and electronic processing of contemporary compositions into the space she feels connected to and personal with. She moves in between the ambient-drone-dream pop and experimental songwriting exploring escapism and memory topics through sound and different collisions between her classical and improvisation background meeting conventional, playful sample based material with vocals.
Gintė is very active in organizing and playing solo as well as in various constellations and ensembles in Copenhagen and abroad.
Past release: https://baraboro.bandcamp.com/album/spring-mass […]
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Clara Torner (Barcelona, 1997) is an emerging voice in Barcelona’s free improvisation and experimental music scene. With a background in classical and contemporary performance, she turned to free improvisation to explore a new relationship with the cello and sound creation.
She builds spontaneous sonic ecosystems through extended techniques and a prepared cello, drawing on fragmentation, memory, and the expressive power of gesture. Her sound ranges from subtle and crystalline textures to energetic and noisy layers, often collaborating with dance and visual arts.
She is part of RANGES Collective—founded in 2024 during a residency at Casa della Musica in Montaldeo—and HYPAR, an experimental duo for cello and live electronics with Gerard Erruz. She has participated in projects including the Art Quartet (Genís Bages), Eidos Daimonium (Diego Caicedo), Flying Trees (Sarah Clamans), and the Signs of Freedom Ensemble (Iván González). […]
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Biliana Voutchkova is a dynamic, thoroughly engaged composer-performer, violinist, interdisciplinary artist, improvisor and curator with highly individual, unconventional artistic language. Through the prism of listening, her early education in classical music, and the years of development as contemporary artist-performer, she explores states of spontaneity and intuitive resonance embodied in her multifaceted activities. Her work spans a wide range of sound, vision, movement and includes concert performances of improvisation, contemporary composition and original site specific work, exhibitions, long durational / multidisciplinary performances, audiovisual works and installation formats with focus on the interconnection between inner world and sound space. Biliana works internationally as a soloist and in collaboration with renowned artists and ensembles. She is the founder and curator of the DARA String Festival and the touring DARA Strings, faculty at the Academy of Arts Bern/HKB Bern, SHAPE+ Platform artist for 2022/2023, recipient of the Berlin Residency Stipend at Cité des Arts / Paris and Villa Aurora / Los Angeles, the Composition Stipend from the Berliner Senate, and multiple awards and grants. She has releases onthe labels Unsounds, Another Timbre, Elsewhere, Relative Pitch Records, Confront Recordings, Underflow Records, Inexhaustible Editions and Cafe Oto’s Takuroku.
“I am now mostly interested in creating new work, collaborative or solo, composed or improvised, acoustic, electro-acoustic, audio-visual or multidisciplinary, always allowing space for spontaneity and response to the current moment and place. I connect to intuition and the knowledge locked within us, searching for the circumstances that enable them to arise to the surface. Through sound and deep listening, I engage with the ephemeral, transient and dreamworld through various kinds of verbal and non-verbal communication, tracing the connectivity between people, places, and all of life, allowing the occurrence of touching and meaningful experiences.” […]
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Petr Vrba is one of the most active figures in Czech experimental music and a tireless promoter of free improvisation. He plays trumpet, clarinet, synthesizers, and other electronic instruments. He collaborates with filmmakers, dancers, and visual artists and regularly performs with important figures on the European free improvisation scene (including Axel Dörner, Thomas Lehn, Xavier Charles, Peter Orins and Franz Hautzinger) and experimental and sound artists such as Birgit Ulher, Yan Jun, Jérôme Noetinger, eRikm, and others. He co-founded and is a permanent member of the Prague Improvisation Orchestra and the groups Poisonous Frequencies, The MoND, Kesherul Neg Pineg, 4& and others. He has performed at festivals in Australia, North America, Europe, and Asia. He has released over fifty albums on labels such as Inexhaustible Edition, Circum-Disc, Another Timbre, Mikroton, Corvo, mappa, Kandala, and others, and on Czech labels such as Polí 5, Meteorismo, Klangundkrach, 13 raw, etc.
For over a quarter of a century, he has been broadcasting on Radio 1 (among other things, he is the co-author of the program 13 syrových), organizing concerts and festivals, and was the dramaturgist of the now defunct “communication space” Školská 28. In the late 1990s, he studied traditional gamelan instruments at the Institute of Art of Indonesia in Yogyakarta.
“As a trumpet player, Vrba explores the use of the trumpet in new contexts and the creation of new contexts through other means, both acoustic and electronic. In doing so, he demonstrates remarkable inventiveness driven by his fascination with the acoustic experience.” (composer and educator Jaroslav Šťastný aka Peter Graham on PV) […]
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