We are excited to present our film & talk program, as well as a special exhibition, new additions to our 2024 line-up and the long-awaited time schedules for Le Guess Who? 2024.
Time Schedules
Start your scheduling now! The time schedules for Le Guess Who? 2024, as well for U?, our freely accessible city program, are online now.
Please note: for sustainability reasons, we won't hand out printed timetables at the festival this year. You can use our official Festival App or download the printable PDF version.
Program Update
Unfortunately, due to the ongoing violence in Lebanon, Sandy Chamoun will not be able to perform at the festival. Abyusif also has to cancel his performance due to an urgent family situation.
New additions to the 2024 line-up are: the Utrecht-based DJ, music producer and curator CARISTA will provide a DJ set leading up to the performance of Theo Parrish; British contemporary electronic musician Actress, who just released a new record, in which he plunges into lo-fi darkness, all the while knowing when to let the light in; the seminal artist DJ Anderson do Paraíso is turning the unmistakable Brazilian funk beat into something radically minimal, in which silences are far more rewarded; and musician and poet Elias Rønnenfelt, who fronted Danish band Iceage for sixteen years, will present his first solo album.
Furthermore the program features Mexican contemporary dancer and choreographer Alejandra Metztli and Dutch immersive digital artist Jaco Schilp presenting Somnia, an interdisciplinair audiovisual dance performance; Ranie Ribeiro, the well-known DJ who has been deepening his identity as a harpist, composer, and stage performer; multi-instrumentalist Jespfur who also performs at U?, our freely accessible city program, meanders through the murky waters of hypnagogic pop, experimental rock, and neo-psychedelia; and the highly creative Euro-Caribbean electronic musician, composer, saxophonist, and sound artist Marc Alberto.
Talk Program
As part of Le Guess Who? 2024, we are presenting five in-dept conversations: Photographer Claudia Gschwend and writer Melanie Biedermann, who initiated a journalistic and photography project during Le Guess Who? 2022 for which they spoke to festival artists about how music relates to mental health, host the panel Music is a Hospital. In Composing for Moving Image, multidisciplinary artist Ceola Tunstall-Behrens converses with several Le Guess Who?-artists about how a creator of moving images, as well as a composer, perceive this process and its outcome.
Music possesses the unique ability to evoke feelings of solidarity, empowerment, and unity, while also facilitating deep emotional connections among people. In Beyond Barriers, Le Guess Who?-artist Marc Alberto asks the question:
A part of the talks program is presented together with our globe-spanning initiative COSMOS: In From the Ground Up – On Creating Space & Community, author Emma Warren goes in conversation with three community organizers from Detroit, Nairobi, and Rotterdam who compare notes on their respective projects. And in Music, Tech & Access, journalist and electronic music specialist Caroline Whiteley asks the question: What features have been implemented to decolonizing music making, promotion and distribution?
We're presenting the talks program on Friday, 8 November & Saturday, 9 November, at Slachtstraat Filmtheater and BAK. Anyone can attend this program for free.
Film Program
This year, we are presenting several films that have a connection to this year's music program: iwoyi: within the echo is an innovative film that investigates the radical potential of Black British music in envisioning reparative futures. The project has been developed in partnership with Errol and Alex Rita’s Touching Bass. The documentary Luzmila and the Birds explores the life and work of one of the most important women in Latin America: the world-renowned Bolivian and Indigenous singer Luzmila Carpio. Luzmila performs at Le Guess Who? 2024 on Thursday, 7 November. And Sawt Syria, presented by Sadaa Sound Syndicate, is an essay film in two parts exploring the inner-worlds of the Syrian underground music scene both within Syria and amongst its exilic diaspora in Europe.
A part of the film program is presented in collaboration with United Screens for Palestine. This is an open and decentralized collective of programmers, cultural workers and venues, responding to the paralysis brought about by the ongoing genocide as well as the increasing policing, censorship and criminalisation of everything Palestinian. As a collective, they aim to make each screening a space for conversation, learning and most of all, mobilization. As they state:
We're presenting the films on Friday, 8 November & Saturday, 9 November, at Slachtstraat Filmtheater. Anyone can attend this program for free.
Exhibition
Specially for Le Guess Who? 2024, Centraal Museum, in collaboration with Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, exhibits 'Memory Lost' on 8, 9 and 10 November, free to attend for festival visitors with their wristband. Visitors of Le Guess Who? will also receive a 50% discount on their entrance to the other exhibitions at Centraal Museum.
The film installation 'Memory Lost' is heralded as a masterpiece in the career of photographer Nan Goldin, whose work is raw, intimate and tender, often intertwined with her own life experiences and with activism. 'Memory Lost' tells the deeply personal story of the artist for whom drugs became a prison. By combining hundreds of meticulously selected still and moving images, accompanied by sounds, voice-overs and an emotional soundtrack by Mica Levi, Goldin creates a haunting, poignant experience. The images document a life revolving around drug use, addiction, rehab and relationships with other users, dealers, friends, and profiteers.
