Tuesday, July 1st at 7pm, ISSUE Project Room hosts a free limited engagement for up to 10 ISSUE Members with RSVP. The evening consists of an intimate conversation with Thomas Ankersmit about his artistic practice with the Serge Modular analog synthesizer, his main instrument since 2006. Ankersmit is currently working on a series of pieces for the original Serge Modular systems at studios like EMS in Stockholm, GRM in Paris, as well as Harvard and CalArts in the US. Following a residency working at the historic Columbia University Computer Music Center, he’ll share his work-in-progress on the CMC’s unique Serge synthesizer and present unreleased recordings from the project so far, possibly mixed with live performance on his own Serge system. As described by The Quietus, Ankersmit’s work is “acutely visceral, brilliantly dynamic electroacoustic music … Play this loud and it starts to feel like a crack opening in reality.”
Thomas Ankersmit is a musician based in Berlin. For the past twenty years, he’s focussed on the Serge Modular synthesizer, both live and in the studio. From 2003 to 2023 he toured and collaborated intensively with New York minimalist Phill Niblock (1933-2024). He’s also performed and recorded with artists like Valerio Tricoli, Kevin Drumm, Jerome Noetinger and Thomas Lehn. His music is released on the Shelter Press, PAN and Touch labels, and combines intricate sonic detail and raw electric power, with a very physical and spatial experience of sound. Acoustic phenomena such as infrasound and otoacoustic emissions (sounds emanating from inside the head, generated by the ears themselves) play an important role in his work, as does a deliberate, creative misuse of the equipment.
