Firefly 2026
Sat, 25 July 2026 at Floating
The new edition of the one-day festival Firefly brings together four sound artists and the nature/culture learning space Floating Berlin. Engaging with the terrain’s individual effects and actors, the artists celebrate the extraordinary resilience of the forgotten rainwater retention basin at Tempelhof Airfield, where natural ecosystems are reclaiming the human-made wetland – despite urban pollution in water and air. These local processes of resistance and regeneration serve as inspiration for the newly commissioned works.
Martin Howse explores the decomposing artistry of mycelium, linking cycles of cosmic creation and decay. Henrique Fernandes explores the rainwater basin using hydrophones and geophones, capturing its transformation through the dynamic presence and absence of water. Marta Zapparoli investigates hidden signal ecologies within the electromagnetic spectrum, activating Floating’s terrain. Axel‑Camilla Barratt‑Due develops pneumatic post-instruments that respond to the shifting qualities and dualities of air.
With a nuanced attention to locality and materiality, the artists bring elements of this specific urban environment into dialogue with art and technology. Aspects of craftsmanship and organology expand toward microorganisms, muons, water, soil and atmosphere. Attention is drawn not only to the consequences of environmental crises, but also to the ways in which ecosystems regenerate through local forces of resistance, adaptability and resilience.
Programme
16:00 – 20:00 Installation
Axel-Camilla Barratt-Due – The Lore of Large-eyed Crimson Apergy
20:00 Live performances
Martin Howse – Fruiting and rotting
Marta Zapparoli – Transductive Grounds
Henrique Fernandes – Water flux
Free admission
Martin Howse – Fruiting and rotting (new work)
Let the waters above the heavens fall and the earth will yield its fruit.
»Fruiting and rotting« is a new installation/performance work connecting cycles of cosmic creation and decay, with extremely local processes of growth and decomposition. Linking heavenly and earthly phenomena, deep relativistic time dilations and unobserved time scales of mycelial growth and deep earth composting, Fruiting and rotting refines techniques developed in works such as “Mycelium and Dust,” imagining, creating and eavesdropping on radio-networks of micro-cosmic actions and cyclical connection. Howse will work with groups of human and non-human processes at Floating University, to create an expanding observational (audible) networked ecology defined by detected instances of cosmic decay (muons) and earthly de/composition (growth of mycelium and activity of soil composts).
Martin Howse – www.1010.co.uk/org
Marta Zapparoli – Transductive Grounds (new work)
Live electromagnetic performance
»Transductive Grounds« is a site-specific electromagnetic performance by Marta Zapparoli that activates the terrain and hidden signal ecologies of Floating University Berlin. Here, the site becomes a transducer – a body that receives and converts invisible energies (radio waves, noise, electromagnetic interference and wireless signals) into a shared sonic experience. Using antennas (some hand-built), and radio receivers, VLF receivers, passive sensors and analogue technology, Zapparoli scans and amplifies the radio wave activity and ambient soundscape of the area in real time. The work explores a layered spectrum of electromagnetic interferences and ionospheric disturbances, collecting both natural and artificial emissions (including VLF signals), as well as anthropogenic interference (urban wireless infrastructure, electromagnetic smog, radio communication). These are processed live using custom analogue technology, transforming the space into a dynamic sonic topography – a performance in which transmission and contamination become both literal and metaphorical.
At its core, the work asks: What does the land receive? What do we unknowingly transmit? It invites us to hear the environment not as passive ground, but as an active receiver – absorbing histories, energies and cultural noise. Zapparoli draws attention to the unconscious signals we emit: ideologies, environmental impact and electromagnetic waste – calling for radical listening as an ecological and political act.
Marta Zapparoli – https://martazapparoli.klingt.org
Henrique Fernandes – Water flux (new work)
Building upon previous explorations developed in Liquid Aesthesia, by Henrique Fernandes in collaboration with Vincent martial and Gustavo Costa, this new sound performance expands the reflection on the presence and absence of water – as both a physical and symbolic matter – and its relevance within the context of climate change, drought, and water management. With a focus on listening and on the transposition of the acoustic and sonic qualities of the site, the work employs a set of electroacoustic devices — air and water pumps, tubes, containers, modified speakers and sensors such as hydrophones and geophones – to create a sonic ecosystem that responds to the environmental characteristics of the space. Materials gathered on-site – water, soil, and vegetal sediments – become audible agents, generating a continuous cycle between the environment and its sonic memory. Through this system, sound emerges as a trace of a transforming presence – an echo of the relationship between the human, the space, and the liquid element.
Axel-Camilla Barratt-Due – The Lore of Large-eyed Crimson Apergy (new work)
installation / performance installation
Through the deconstruction of old instruments, textures, and bodies, Axel-Camilla Barratt-Due will use pneumatic mechanics to reflect on the energy form of air. Pneumatic mechanics are systems that use air pressure. Fans and electromagnetic valves, scanners, sensors, as well as voices and bodies, will be part of the instrumental, technological and performative ways to create new vocal and pneumatic music. In the pneumatic post-instrument, the air’s various qualities and dualities such as volatile, chaotic, concentrated, powerful, diffuse and non-visible energy will be signified. The air is here, but also as a void. It can almost be described as a negation of itself and lives in the gap between ‘identity’ and ‘non-identity’.
Axel-Camilla Barratt-Due – https://camillabarrattdue.com
Location/Address
Floating Berlin
Lilienthalstraße 32
10965 Berlin, Kreuzberg
https://floating-berlin.org
Graphic Design: Roman Karrer
Artistic Direction: Dr. Karin Weissenbrunner
Funded by inm – initiative neue musik Berlin e.V.
In co-operation with Floating e.V., Berlin.