“Nocturnes for a Society” invites audiences to weave a nocturnal sonic tapestry, a blanket they can wrap around themselves to drift off into an extraordinary sleep, whilst the sounds of the city can be heard in the background.

Myriam Van Imschoot and Lucas van Haesbroeck’s performance enfolds the audience in a poetic soundscape over the course of a summer night, marking the start of Radialsystem’s new series “Conjunctions”, a programme dedicated to the poetry of “being in relation”. The immersive sound experience of “Nocturnes” continues throughout the night, stretching into the early hours of the morning. The audience are active participants in an environment akin to an oasis of light, shadows, sounds, fabrics and dreams, opening space for associations and creating both an individual and shared experiential world.

Sound artist Myriam Van Imschoot and set designer Lucas van Haesbroeck draw on the legacy of American composer and sound activist Pauline Oliveros as well as the myriad traditions of communal “sounding” that people have always used to forge relations with one another. The audience plays a crucial role in this; they interact with each other, with objects and the space in accordance with a score that yields unexpected textures and atmospheres in a natural and nearly casual way. A soundscape for a deep sleep emerges from this collectively generated soundtrack – the nocturne takes on a life of its own and slumbers on through the night in its various phases and cycles of rest.

The performances are preceded by two “Embodied Practices”, whose foci are, respectively, felt production as a shared practice and the voice as a medium of community building. These two exchange sessions make up the next instalment in Radialsystem’s series of “Embodied Practices”, which collectively explore forms of preserving and transmitting corporeal practices from different cultural contexts.