St. Saviour's Church - Art Academy of Latvia
26/05/2026 - 30/05/2026
Riga Performance Art Festival Starptelpa, ‘Sonic Vibrations’
& Aesthetics of Protest and Legal Mobilization Conference
Performed by Elisabeth Eisiedly, Barbù Hanel, Nateosz Kolasinski, Matilda Senatore, Suzanne Pyp, Maija Suominene, Gabi Tomé, Carlyn Katerberg, Mafalda Garcia, Emmanuelle Waeckerle
What is left if we aren’t the world is a text score for voices and instruments commissioned by and premiered at the Amsterdam Wandelweiser festival in October 2022.
The score is an invitation to address through sound such questions as: How can we keep this chaotic world at bay? How can we react to such inner and outer pandemonium?
This performance and parallel conference paper launch the What is left if we aren’t the world CD of live recordings from London, Amsterdam, Thessaloniki and Dusseldorf. (Wandelweiser editions, DE, May 20206).
"Sudden pandemonium to begin with...... Recurring occasionally as we attempt to attune ourselves to the swirling flows of our inner and outer surroundings... Until we feel or sound indistinguishable from what is there."
images by Kristaps Dublans
The performance ( 29/05/2026 11.30pm)
Call for participation for artists, performers, (non) musicians: bring acoustic instrument(s), sound making object(s), your speaking/singing voice(s). You will be given a small card with 1 of 3 instructions that you may or may not follow.
10 people responded to the call, mainly performance artists from the festival. We had a short discussion on the afternoon of the performance to discuss what it may feel like to provoke and sustain pandemonium and to distribute the 3 invitation cards offering 3 choices on when to provoke pandemonium atthe beginning and during the performance.
“Through the musical politics of What is left ..., those who take part are confronted with the question of how we could create solidarity after the end.” Ryan Dohoney (CD notes)
Aesthetics of Protest and Legal Mobilization Conference, Art Academy of Latvia, 28 – 29 May 2026
My paper What can we do now that we aren’t the world situates the score, its performance and the CD as collective artistic responses to crisis, with particular reference to the affective and social conditions shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The pandemic may be over, but pandemonium prevails. the world is crazier, the chaos more relentless, hopeless, the question is no longer ‘what is left’ as ‘what to do’, ‘how to survive, thrive even’ in such hell on earth, now that we are no longer the world yet still in the world.
Organized public protests allow us to gather and voice our discontent and remind our political leaders that we matter. But how can we resist in our everyday, in our communities, in our workplace? Where else can we practice the performative dimensions of civic resistance, of hope in action as Rebecca Solnit would say (2016).
All text scores are available from Edition Wandelweiser