Is a River Alive?

During Kunstnacht, BLIK opens its doors for the very first time – a new cultural space in progress on the Honig terrain.

Together with Omstand and the Arnhem-based collective Fetishism in Sound, visitors are invited for a first look behind the scenes.

This isn’t a polished programme, but an expedition through a space filled with dust, ideas, and future plans. With sound as the guide, the audience is led through temporary installations, informal performances, and unexpected encounters — a journey through what already exists and what’s still to come.

Subprogramme:

• Spatial installation

In a darkened room, a specially composed soundscape echoes throughout the space.
Created by the team of Fetishism in Sound in collaboration with composers Tamara Laverman and Baz Laarakkers, the piece incorporates field recordings from the River Waal. Visitors are invited to position themselves in the middle of the river’s mystery — and to listen. What would a river reveal or cry out, if it could speak?

The title of the soundscape refers to the book Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane. Across the globe, a growing movement seeks to recognise the rights and vitality of rivers and other natural systems — even enshrining these rights in law to protect them from destruction.

🕒 Open: 19:00 – 00:00

• Sound walk

On their way from the city centre to the Honig complex, visitors can listen to a guided sound walk on their smartphones. The piece is specially composed for this route and occasion by the Fetishism in Sound team, in collaboration with Tamara Laverman and Baz Laarakkers.

Environmental sounds from the area have been incorporated, so that the listening experience closely mirrors the physical surroundings of the walk.

🕒 Start times:

• 19:00 - 19:20
  

• 20:00 – 20:20

• 21:00 – 21:20

• 22:00 – 22:20

• 23:00 – 23:20

• Interactive installation

Join in and create group compositions!
Together with composers/musicians Tamara Laverman and Baz Laarakkers, visitors are invited to co-create unique sound pieces. Your smartphone becomes an instrument: triggering distinctive sounds collected in and around the Honig building in recent months. Many were recorded using materials and objects from the space itself.

Through these sounds, visitors connect to the building and its environment. When blended live with the composers’ instruments, a one-night-only piece of music is created — one that could only happen here and now.

🕒 Open: 19:00 – 00:00