19/09-22/09 ➔ Conflux Festival

Conflux is a festival exploring multisensory encounters, urgent ideas, contemporary art and experimental music.

Taking place across various locations throughout Rotterdam from September 19 – 22, 2024, Conflux invited attendees to experience a program of audiovisual performances, public art interventions, multimedia commissions, experimental club nights, and talks reflecting on the festival theme "Symbiotic Realities."

Festival exhibition at Katoenhuis

Perception was a vital conduit between the external world and inner experience, shaping the very foundation of how reality was understood and constructed. At Conflux Festival, the exhibition invited artists to explore and challenge these processes by presenting works that offered alternative views on how sensory systems mediated and sometimes distorted relationships with the surrounding world. Through abstract fields of light, immersive soundscapes, dynamic video patterns, and innovative interventions, the artists reimagined the boundaries of perception, reflecting on the festival's theme, "Symbiotic Realities."

"Symbiotic Realities" called for a deeper reflection on the interconnectedness between human consciousness, technology, and the environment, suggesting that reality was not a fixed concept but a fluid and evolving experience shaped by myriad forces. In this spirit, the exhibition served as a laboratory for sensory experimentation, where the audience was invited to experience how perception itself could be stretched, reconfigured, or augmented, forging new connections between the organic and the digital, the natural and the constructed.

Hosted at Katoenhuis, a multifunctional hub for immersive experiences and technology, the exhibition was open from Friday afternoon, September 20th, through Sunday evening, September 22nd. Visitors found themselves immersed in a series of experimental light and sound installations and artworks that challenged conventional ideas about how reality was perceived, encouraging them to engage actively with the sensory interplay that defined existence in an increasingly interconnected world.

The exhibition featured works by Jeroen Alexander Meijer, Renzo van Steenbergen & Kristjan Pütsep, Macular, Mariska de Groot & Dieter Vandoren, Sabrina Ratté, Mint Park, Klara Ravat & Saåad, Alberta Balsam, Fronte Vacuo, Nicky Assmann & Joris Strijbos. 

Credit: Boudewijn Bollmann