Slemani Sonic Horizon
22.10 – 03.11.2026
The 10th edition of the SPACE21 Festival transforms Slemani into a living soundscape, featuring immersive installations in public spaces, site-specific performances and more by local and international artists. Explore the city’s acoustic and ecological layers through sound archives, experimental music, and collective listening.
SPACE21 Youth Workshop engages youth in attentive listening walks, collaborative composition, and sound-making. These activities encourage participants to creatively explore Slemani’s sonic ecology and history through sound. By blending environmental awareness and artistic practice, the workshop fosters confidence and collaboration. Participants learn to map memory and place through listening, forging a deeper connection to Slemani’s past and present while inspiring new sonic perspectives.
SPACE21 Sound Gallery, in Slemani’s historic tobacco factory, transforms industrial memory into a creative hub, inviting artistic collaboration and echoing the city’s sonic and cultural past.
The Saray Building explores how this historic site’s echoes, history, and transformation shape Slemani’s evolving sonic identity and collective memory.
Hammam Mufti’s unique acoustics and history inspire visitors to Kurdish memory and culture through listening, reflection, and site-specific works.
SPACE21’s Slemani Sonic Horizon conference at the University of Sulaimani explores sonic ecology, youth empowerment, and inclusive pedagogy through talks, panels, and creative workshops.
Bus Tour offers a collective radio listening experience, reviving Kurdish bus culture and unity through shared broadcasts, music, and stories aboard a moving exhibition space.
Maryam of Al Adra Church, among Slemani’s oldest buildings, preserves memory through unique acoustics, each sound connecting visitors to the city’s enduring spirit and history.
Simon Martin, born in 1981 in Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, is a composer and artistic director of Projections libérantes, a Montreal-based company he founded in 2011. Celebrated for his “fascinating” and “hypnotic” music, Martin explores the beauty of sound emerging from silence. His works balance evocative sound phenomena with dramatic structure, shaping his unique artistic vision. Projections libérantes produces Martin’s distinctive creations, sharing his passion for the evocative, intangible qualities of sound.
