Cona at the Niansa 2k25 Festival

live sound events and a soundwalk
8 June 2025
Rakov Škocjan
Soundscapes where art, science, and nature intertwine to explore new ways of listening.

Cona is participating in the Niansa 2k25 festival, taking place on 8 June 2025 at Rakov Škocjan. We are presenting four projects that explore sound as a space of memory, ecology, and future speculations.

ALL EVENTS

BBtrem, Juan José López Díez: tremolo
live performance (composition preview)

tremolo explores the occurrence and communication levels of vibrational sound in insects within specific ecosystems. It examines the corporeality of sound in selected organisms as they interact with space. The project brings together two artists and one scientist with nature conservation institutions. It focuses on ecosystems of the “third landscape”—abandoned urban spaces where wilderness resists human intervention. Through sonic research, tremolo raises questions about biodiversity, destructive practices of the Anthropocene, and the potential for sound-ecological coexistence.

Brane Zorman (BBtrem) is a composer, sound and intermedia artist, and producer. He researches spatial sound, sound ecologies, and multichannel compositions, often in connection with conservation projects.

Boštjan Perovšek (BBtrem) is a composer and sound designer specializing in bioacoustic music based on animal sounds, particularly insects.

Juan José López Díez is a biotremologist researching vibrational communication in insects, bridging art and science through sound.

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Jata C: Wandromedars
live performance

We travel through space on the spaceship Earth, traversed by strings of paths in all directions. We Wandromedars leave sound trails and slowly spiral towards unification with Andromeda.

Jata C (beepblip, OR poiesis, Boštjan Perovšek, Bojana Šaljić Podešva, Brane Zorman) is a collective of artists interested in acoustic ecology, field recordings, and bioacoustics. They combine auditory perception with ecological and post-humanist themes, proposing indigenous sonic environments. Their compositions transform recordings from their immediate surroundings into speculative projections of the future and sensitive perceptions of the present.

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Karmen Ponikvar: Species of Spaces
live performance

Her performance Species of Spaces will gently stimulate the senses through sound, focusing on the fragility of sonic gestures and the richness of tiny, ephemeral sonic details. Guided by natural rhythms, fluent bodies and intermaterial vibrational qualities, she seeks to uncover fictional ways of understanding the epoch that we live in.

Karmen Ponikvar is a sound artist and performer from Slovenia, currently based in The Hague, studying sound at the Institute of Sonology. Her work focuses on attentive listening, microtonal structures, spatial imaginaries, and speculative perception philosophies.

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Irena Pivka: Listening-with Meadows
soundwalk

You are invited to a sonic exploration of the meadow as an ecosystem, where plants are not just passive, green backdrops but active interlocutors. We will walk among the voices of the wind, insects, and the quiet workings of the root system, listening to the meadow as a space of interspecies relationships and mutual influences. With a postcolonial perspective, we will move beyond anthropocentric views and listen to plants beyond their economic and aesthetic value. How can the meadow teach us new ways of coexisting? How does the soundscape reveal invisible connections between species? This walk opens a space for listening that is not only human but multispecies and reciprocal.

Irena Pivka is an artist and producer working at the intersection of contemporary art, sound, and space. Together with Brane Zorman, she leads the Cona institute, creating projects intertwining artistic research, ecology, and social engagement.