Avant Art Festival

Stormfield 
[Break :: Remake] is an audiovisual performance combining electronics, creative coding, and audio-reactive visuals. Inspired by the philosophy of Kintsugi, it finds beauty in imperfection and transformation. Raw, textural sounds contrast with delicate atmospheres, creating an immersive experience where sound becomes a living, evolving language of emotion and imagination.

Lord Spikeheart

Over the past decade, Kenyan vocalist, songwriter and producer Martin Kanja, AKA Lord Spikeheart, has become a figurehead of the African metal scene cultivating a distinctive blend of guttural growls pulled from the death metal tradition, screeching screams and gravelly rap verses that seep menacingly through head-banging instrumentals.

His debut solo album ‘The Adept’, released on his own label HAEKALU Records, Africa’s premiere label dedicated to darkest and heaviest music from the Continent, has acclaimed widespread recognition from prestigious media outlets such as The Guardian, BBC Radio, Pitchfork, Arte, Dazed, The Fader, NTS, Crack, Resident Advisor and The Quietus, — captivating audiences globally from East Africa to the rest of the world as a new frontier in extreme music.

Lord Spikeheart is also known for his captivating stage presence and delivering highly energetic live performances breaking out into fun-filled, intense mosh pits. Attending a Lord Spikeheart show is a definite must-see. An electrifying experience that creates cohesion and will spread fireballed enthusiasm over the club.

Aja Ireland

Aja Ireland is a British sound and performance artist working at the intersection of experimental music, sonic choreography, and visual technologies. A recipient of the Oram Award (2018) and founder of Queer Noise Club, she is connected to the DIY scene and intermedia art. She has collaborated with Joey Holder on projects shown at the British Art Show and the Athens Biennale.

Her work is built around intensely charged sonic material: noise, industrial, deconstructed club, and future trap. She operates through distortion, rhythm, and varied textures. Her live act is based on hardware: drum machines, processed vocals, analog effects — with her own body as a medium of expression. Sound collides with costume, light, and movement. Visually, she draws on aesthetics of mutation and hybrid figures, developed in collaboration with designer LULALOOP.

The album Cryptid (Infinite Machine, 2025) was created in a period of withdrawal and loss, in response to burnout and grief. It was never meant as a concert piece, but as a personal archive. Critics described it as “an auditory experience intertwining noise, future trap, and experimental bass” (Kaltblut) and “a sonic archive of resilience, healing, and defiance” (Beatburguer).

Dis Fig

Felicia Chen is a producer, vocalist, and performer originally from New Jersey, now rooted in Berlin’s experimental scene. Her musical path began in New York’s underground, where she blended club sounds with noise, rap, metal, and pop. As a DJ, she crafts eclectic and multilayered sets, while her live performances break away from club conventions, focusing instead on vocal and bodily expression.

“I definitely have a rebellious nature and this rabid monkey side that wants to run around and shout. Then there is this vulnerable and sad side, which I find really beautiful.”

Her debut album Purge (PTP, 2019) established her distinctive style: intense, emotionally charged, balancing between noise and lyricism. In the following years, she collaborated with The Bug (In Blue, Hyperdub 2020) and the American duo The Body (Orchards of a Futile Heaven, Thrill Jockey 2024), contributing her voice, atmosphere, and production sensibility to their sound. At the same time, she took part in Trance, a durational performance series by Tianzhuo Chen – 12-hour rituals blending music and body-based art.

Space Afrika

Ambient electronic duo consisting of Joshua Tarelle Reid and Joshua Inyang, originating from Manchester. The band began their activity in 2014, initially creating music heavily inspired by dub-techno, evolving over time towards dark ambient and experimental electronics.

Space Afrika are part of a scene from north-west England (Manchester/Salford) centered around The White Hotel, which according to critics is leading a revitalization of experimental music in the region. This circle also includes artists such as aya, Blackhaine, Rainy Miller, Afrodeutsche and Iceboy Violet. The artists draw from the legacy of trip-hop (Massive Attack, Portishead), Burial-style dubstep and ambient music, supplementing these influences with “journalistic” sensitivity and fragments of radio conversations.

The success of their debut album “Somewhere Decent To Live” (2018) secured them a program on the acclaimed NTS radio, where they presented music from the borderland of ambient and field recordings. The breakthrough mixtape “hybtwibt?” (2020), created in response to the pandemic and George Floyd’s murder, was recognized by Pitchfork as the best ambient release of the year.

The album “Honest Labour” (2021) on Dais Records is a “tribute to English energy” – consisting of nineteen recordings, a “sound collage” reflecting three decades of British dance culture. DJ Mag awarded the album Album of the Month. In 2023, “A Grisaille Wedding” was released – a collaborative album with Rainy Miller featuring Mica Levi, Coby Sey, Richie Culver and others.

Space Afrika create compositions consisting of fragments of dialogues and musical textures that arrange themselves into hypnotizing sound collages. Their compositions are simultaneously intimate confessions and social commentaries, documenting the experience of living in uncertain times.