Refugees of the Symbolic Network – أَسيرًا في مَصانعُ الحُلمُ is now out! An interview about the metaphysics of this album is coming out in @thewiremagazine September issue with Daryl Worthington.
As an archaeoacoustic study, this work examines sonic architectures of ancient sacred sites. The King’s Chamber, built from rose granite with high quartz content, functions as a resonator and oracle. Its acoustics reshaping syllables, augmenting emphasis, and unearthing utterances which lay dormant through aeons of silence. Just as pyramid spells were invoked to secure safe passage through the underworld, RotSN navigates the liminal terrain between exile and home, word and silence, inscription and disappearance.
This process is an inquiry into ritualistic submission to utterance as a natural force. It seeks to precipitate a funerary sonic practice; a type of chant to mourn and resist in the same breath. To etch a codex of voices of the forsaken, the refugees of the symbolic network, the countless lives buried in the belly of the whale that is called history.
Pre-order your vinyl copy on Bandcamp — Links in bio
Stream on Spotify (or another less evil platform)
Live launch on 8th August at Boundary Condition, St James Garlickhythe
Endlessly grateful for all the artists who worked with me on this project, Ruben Sonnoli, Nina Hitz, Youssef Hassan and Robin Hayward, Cornelia Pierce, Daniela Huerta, Daryl Worthington, and to PRS Foundation and Help Musicians for funding this project.
Artwork by Cornelia Pierce & Daniela Huerta
The Wire is under an existential late-stage capitalism threat, due to rising production & distribution costs. Support independent press ~ grab a copy of The Wire!
Some issues my work appears in:
- 451: Onsite at Chinabot, Cafe Oto
- 450: Onsite at Sonic Electronics, IKLECTIK Art Lab
/home/
Excerpt (3) from Refugees of the Symbolic Network live at Radiophrenia 2025, The Glad Cafe (Glasgow).
Keyboards by Ruben Sonnoli
Vocals, Electronics & Field Recordings by Cerpintxt
Film: Select excerpts from The Color of Pomegranate (1969) & Legend of the Suram Fortress (1985) by Sergei Parajanov
Videography by Vilte Vaitkute.
Radiophrenia is supported by @goetheinstitut_glasgow and @creativescots
Refugees of the Symbolic Network is supported by @prsfoundation and @helpmusicians
The Wire is under an existential late-stage capitalism threat, due to rising production & distribution costs. Support independent press ~ grab a copy of The Wire!
Some issues my work appears in:
- 503/504: Time Out of Joint by Daryl Worthington
- 500: Refugees of the Symbolic Network live at Boundary Condition by Ilia Rogatchevski
- 499: Funerary Rites for Lost Souls by Daryl Worthington
/home/
Excerpt (2) from Refugees of the Symbolic Network live at Radiophrenia 2025, The Glad Cafe (Glasgow).
Keyboards by Ruben Sonnoli
Vocals, Electronics & Field Recordings by Cerpintxt
Film: Kiev Frescoes by Sergei Parajanov (1966)
Videography by Vilte Vaitkute.
Radiophrenia is supported by Goethe Institut and Creative Scotland.
Refugees of the Symbolic Network is supported by @prsfoundation and @helpmusicians
Excerpt (1) from Refugees of the Symbolic Network live at Radiophrenia 2025, The Glad Cafe (Glasgow).
Keyboards by Ruben Sonnoli
Vocals, Electronics & Field Recordings by Cerpintxt
Film: Kiev Frescoes by Sergei Parajanov (1966)
Videography by Vilte Vaitkute.
Radiophrenia is supported by Goethe Institut and Creative Scotland.
Refugees of the Symbolic Network is supported by @prsfoundation and @helpmusicians
Refugees of the Symbolic Network - أَسيرًا في مَصانعُ الحُلمُ
‘the hostile gods have seen that she incites the Eyeless One against those who shall stretch forth their arms’ – Coffin Text, Spell 451
The hostile gods are enemies of the deceased. The subject is a marginal, wandering presence cut off from collective cosmic hierarchies. Dialectically, these refugees are catalysts for transformation; their displacement exposes contradictions within the symbolic order. In a similar vein to Egyptian mythology, the work compounds as a group of protective utterances meant to encapsulate the subject by binding the dark forces which alienate them from Maʽat; by naming the forces, invoking their entrapment and stripping them of their power.
Photography by Yasmine Akim at CHASM, The Old Church.
Refugees of the Symbolic Network is supported by @prsfoundation and @helpmusicians
Refugees of the Symbolic Network is a series of funeral music spatialized in the convolution reverb of the King's Chamber of the Giza Pyramid, deconstructing the work of Izz al-Din Manasirah & Sargon Boulus.
As an archaeoacoustic study, this work examines sonic architectures of ancient sacred sites. This process is an inquiry into ritualistic submission to utterance as a natural force; to etch a codex of voices of the forsaken, refugees of the symbolic network, the countless lives buried in the belly of the whale that is called history.
Sound: The Eyeless Against Those Who Stretch Forth Their Arms - Cerpintxt
Vignette: Cornelia Pierce & Daniela Huerta
Limited Edition 12" Vinyl available
/album/refugees-of-the-symbolic-network
Refugees of the Symbolic Network is supported by @prsfoundation and @helpmusicians
Excited to perform at Malevolent Audio Systems first event, focused on new music, post-rock, neoclassical radiophonic electronica, and augmented electroacoustic entropy. Next Friday 1st May at The Betsey Trotwood.
I'll be presenting a set of early sketches from a new project on the procedural act and ritual of making art, positioned as self-discursive material pointed inwards towards itself. As a sonic inquiry into cyclical temporality and the fragility of language systems, the compositions deploy chance operations and live vocals within a vessel of proportional constraints, projecting a form of chaotic symmetry in the material.
Tickets available on Dice https://dice.fm/event/6dk67q-holr-agate-cerpintxt-1st-may-the-betsey-trotwood-london-tickets?lng=en
Photography by Daniel Cohn at Avalon Cafe.
Final Tickets for Boundary Condition
Last chance to join the ceremony tomorrow. Ticket sales close at midnight.
Doors: 5:30pm General admission tickets will be available on the door.
The programme will be livestreamed on Radio Alhara for those who can’t join us.
Haedong Lee & Yidan Kim - Ecology of Death and Annihilation: A Ceremony for Things that Wither 죽음과 소멸의 생태계 : 사라지는 것들을 위한 세레모니
Rooted in diverse ritual cultures from across the world, Haedong Lee and Yidan Kim's latest work is presented as a contemporary ceremony, a multi-disciplinary performance that pulls together various elements from the duo’s rigorous study of various ceremonial practices across East Asia and the wider Asian continent, and shamanic cultures found in West Africa and throughout Europe. Ringing various bells Lee has collected or created, playing wooden and metal percussive instruments used in rituals that span different cultures, chanting and overlaying hallucinatory synthesized and processed sounds, the two artists create a uniquely contemporary interpretation of ritual soundscapes, braiding remnants of folk songs with oblique ceremonial forms.
Lineup:
- Dirar Kalash, Cerpintxt & Ruben perform a free improv live set
- Arna Beth presents a 3D printed computational sound-reactive sculpture
- Beachers presents Horns of Death
- Baris Ucar & Martin Osman present installation ‘a map of collapsing fractals in an unraveling trace’
- Ruben presents Chambers
- OLO
/boundarycondition
Boundary Condition at St James Garlickhythe, London will be livestreamed on Radio Alhara on 25th April. The broadcast will stream the full programme of site-responsive, audiovisual live performances and installations presented through an 8.4 ambisonic sound system:
- Haedong Lee & Yidan Kim present Ecology of Death and Annihilation: A Ceremony for Things that Wither
- Dirar Kalash, Cerpintxt & Ruben
- Arna Beth presents 3D printed computational sound-reactive sculpture
- Beachers presents Horns of Death
- Ruben presents Chambers
- OLO
- Baris Ucar & Martin Osman present installation ‘a map of collapsing fractals in an unraveling trace’
Second release tickets
/boundarycondition
Boundary Condition is a series of durational events investigating parallels between dark-jazz, hauntology, and music concrete as nostalgia-centric practices, trickling from the persistence and antagonistic fragmentation of memory. The project deploys a practice-as-research model discoursing the various archetypes of atrophy through electroacoustics and studies on erosion, memory, and the politics of time.
Photography by @00bars at Boundary Condition - Performance by @roxhsana
Boundary Condition: 25th April 2026, St James Garlickhythe
Haedong Lee & Yidan Kim - Ecology of Death and Annihilation: A Ceremony for Things that Wither �죽음과 소멸의 생태계 : 사라지는 것들을 위한 세레모니 first emerged in 2021, when it was debuted at Seoul's Oil Tank Culture Park, and it stretches Lee and Kim's art through the past and present and far into the future. Hypothesizing art itself is itself an ancient ritual, the performance establishes itself as a contemporary hybrid, where sounds, movements and smells mimic each others' temporal motions, appearing and disappearing to provoke consciousness itself.
Born in South Korea and currently based in London, Lee and Kim are both seasoned interdisciplinary artists, with Lee concentrating his interest on sound and Kim primarily working with smell. And for almost a decade, their work has overlapped repeatedly as they have developed a way to harmonize their respective skills, exploring the history of ritual, ceremonial and multi-sensory experiences by merging installation and performance. Kim's interests took them to the Korean Traditional Incense Cultural Association, where they received a formal training in incense ceremony, allowing them to refine their approach to olfactory imagery. Lee meanwhile spent time imagining sound sculptures with metal, wood and the by-products of the Anthropocene, objects that allow him to reflect on ecological and civilizational crises while practicing restraint and control.
Limited tickets available
/boundarycondition
