Meet the Makers: Jessica Sligter

What, exactly, do we think of when we hear the term ‘experimental’ in relation to music? This Meet the Makers Conversation features Jessica Sligter, an experimental musician and composer who works at the interface of different genres and disciplines via the materials of voice, electronics, space, text and concept. Sligter is originally from Utrecht but has spent much of her career in Berlin, Norway, and elsewhere. Since 2021 she has served as Artistic Director at Nuts & Bolts, an association that promotes decentralized and experimental discourses and activities in music technology in Germany and Norway. Notwithstanding her close affinity with experimental electronics, Sligter also draws influence from various popular and improvised musics too and is Head of Jazz & Pop at ArtEZ in Arnhem. Having been fascinated by and involved with shapenote singing for over a decade, Sligter recently composed “For A Closer Walk” for her group The Shapes, a piece that examines and experiments with the practices of a small shapenote singing community in Hoboken, Georgia, USA.

Sligter is perhaps best known for her beautifully sobering album Polycrisis:yes! (2018), which reflects on the rhetoric of crisis used by various European politicians. Released through the record label Butler & Butler, Polycrisis:yes! was hailed by The Wire as “a terrifying, brilliant album that wails up its desolation at the European catastrophe of our times.”

In conversation with Dr Ed Katrak Spencer, Sligter will reflect on various threads of ‘experimental music’ in Norway, Germany, and the Netherlands as well as on issues of gender inequality in these contexts. The event will showcase some of Sligter’s music and culminate in an open conversation with all in attendance.

All are welcome at this essential and unmissable event, which will be followed by drinks.

If you wish to attend, RSVP via this link.

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Meet the Makers is a series by The Creative Humanities Academy, a platform that fosters collaboration and knowledge exchange between cultural and creative professionals and academic researchers and students. Here you will find the full Meet the Makers programme and archive.