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05/02/2026

05/02/2026

Allan Gilbert Balon (b. Guadeloupe) is an artist and composer, working with sculpture, sound installation, composition and performance. Uta Guan Hey (b. China) is a writer, visual creator, and filmmaker. Together they have founded the publishing house xyä édition – a variable geometry press entity geared towards writing, sound phenomenon and inner engineering technologies – which publishes handmade books and audio.

At default, the artist duo will be presenting a performance for piano, objects, voices, and electronics, following some of their recent works: Allan’s ‘The Magnesia Suite’ (released via Recital in 2024), his site-specific installation in MoMA PS1 (New York, 2022), performances at Cafe Oto (London), iv projectspace (Brussels), and ‘O LUNA – LIVE MUSIC AT STUDIO BLEU PARIS 13/05/2025’ – a recording of Allan’s and Uta’s duo performance published via Balon’s website. The latter functions as a compendium/collage of recorded pieces, (graphic) scores, drawings, writings & performance works, showcasing Balon’s approach through multifaceted disciplinary lenses.

Balon’s ‘The Magnesia Suite’ had stricken us upon its release with its own assembled, unhurried world, where a flowing air and some (sound) poetic absurdness in its fringes is arranged around intimate piano playing, mixing in a sensation of presence throughout tape recordings, organs, field recordings, performative voice, and percussive objects.

His earlier releases have explored solo piano recordings (‘So Lo Piano Works Vol. 1’, Wry Press & Séance Centre, 2023), as well as the possibilities and limits of communication and related technologies (‘High Latency Communication’, a house of saturn, 2023), including pieces for tuba, piano and voice.

26/01/2026

The first default program of the year will take place next month, on Friday, the 27th of February — marking our debut collaboration with Korzo Theatre.

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Allan Gilbert Balon & Uta Guan Hey | Marc Baron | Nirantar Yakthumba.

For default #25, Allan Gilbert Balon (b. Guadeloupe), an artist and composer, working with sculpture, sound installation, & Uta Guan Hey (b. China), a writer, visual creator, and filmmaker, will present their duo performance for piano, objects, voices, and electronics. The performance comes after Balon’s LP ‘The Magnesia Suite’ (Recital, 2024) and a recording of Allan’s and Uta’s duo performance (released via Balon’s web page), both showcasing an intimate play with presence. Together they run the publishing house xyä édition, which publishes handmade books and audio. The Paris-based artist Marc Baron, who for almost 20 years has dedicated himself to the work of electroacoustic composition using tapes and analog processes, will be performing at default soon after his new solo album release ‘Soleil-Néon’ on Penultimate Press. His music encompasses not only the harsh but also the fragile aspects of the tools he uses, while capturing the contingencies arising from material processes that interweave acoustics, electronics, and magnetics. The complexity of sound’s qualities and their assembling is at the core of his music, posing our listening towards this specific tension between a semblance of realism and the desire for abstraction, making use of cuts and creating shifts with perspectives. Concluding our program, Nirantar Yakthumba (b. Nepal, currently based in The Hague), who in his work investigates the production and organization of tone, instrument building, and how variations in informational constraints – structure, redundancy, noise, (in)determinacy – are articulated with and within a work. He will be premiering a performance with a new instrument that he made in 2025.

As this will be the only default program taking place this spring, we are pleased to invite you to this special event.

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default #25, 27.02
Korzo Theatre, Prinsestraat 42
doors: 19.30, first performance: 20:15

Tickets (link in bio): €10/€20

poster by .__

26/01/2026

The first default program of the year will take place next month, on Friday, the 27th of February — marking our debut collaboration with

–
Allan Gilbert Balon & Uta Guan Hey | Marc Baron | Nirantar Yakthumba.

For default #25, Allan Gilbert Balon (b. Guadeloupe), an artist and composer, working with sculpture, sound installation, & Uta Guan Hey (b. China), a writer, visual creator, and filmmaker, will present their duo performance for piano, objects, voices, and electronics. The performance comes after Balon’s LP ‘The Magnesia Suite’ (Recital, 2024) and a recording of Allan’s and Uta’s duo performance (released via Balon’s web page), both showcasing an intimate play with presence. Together they run the publishing house xyä édition, which publishes handmade books and audio. The Paris-based artist Marc Baron, who for almost 20 years has dedicated himself to the work of electroacoustic composition using tapes and analog processes, will be performing at default soon after his new solo album release ‘Soleil-Néon’ on Penultimate Press. His music encompasses not only the harsh but also the fragile aspects of the tools he uses, while capturing the contingencies arising from material processes that interweave acoustics, electronics, and magnetics. The complexity of sound’s qualities and their assembling is at the core of his music, posing our listening towards this specific tension between a semblance of realism and the desire for abstraction, making use of cuts and creating shifts with perspectives. Concluding our program, Nirantar Yakthumba (b. Nepal, currently based in The Hague), who in his work investigates the production and organization of tone, instrument building, and how variations in informational constraints – structure, redundancy, noise, (in)determinacy – are articulated with and within a work. He will be premiering a performance with a new instrument that he made in 2025.

As this will be the only default program taking place this spring, we are pleased to invite you to this special event.

—
default #25, 27.02
Korzo Theatre, Prinsestraat 42
doors: 19.30, first performance: 20:15

Tickets (link in bio): €10/€20

poster by .__

25/11/2025

As we look forward to sharing this exciting program, and with our partner Korzo unveiling their spring season, we are happy to announce our first event of the upcoming year taking place on Friday, the 27th of February at Korzo Theatre.

default #25, Korzo: Allan Gilbert Balon & Uta Guan Hey, Marc Baron, Nirantar Yakthumba

For default #25, Allan Gilbert Balon (b. Guadeloupe), an artist and composer, working with sculpture, sound installation, & Uta Guan Hey (b. China), a writer, visual creator, and filmmaker, will present their duo performance for piano, objects, voices, and electronics. The performance comes after Balon’s LP ‘The Magnesia Suite’ (Recital, 2024) and a recording of Allan’s and Uta’s duo performance (released via Balon’s web page), both showcasing an intimate play with presence. Together they run the publishing house xyä édition, which publishes handmade books and audio. The Paris-based artist Marc Baron, who for almost 20 years has dedicated himself to the work of electroacoustic composition using tapes and analog processes, will be performing at default soon after his new solo album release ‘Soleil-Néon’ on Penultimate Press. His music encompasses not only the harsh but also the fragile aspects of the tools he uses, while capturing the contingencies arising from material processes that interweave acoustics, electronics, and magnetics. The complexity of sound’s qualities and their assembling is at the core of his music, posing our listening towards this specific tension between a semblance of realism and the desire for abstraction, making use of cuts and creating shifts with perspectives. Concluding our program, Nirantar Yakthumba (b. Nepal, currently based in The Hague), who in his work investigates the production and organization of tone, instrument building, and how variations in informational constraints – structure, redundancy, noise, (in)determinacy – are articulated with and within a work. He will be premiering a performance with a new instrument that he made in 2025.

As announced earlier, we are currently taking a break to better prepare for our future activities. Therefore this spring will remain quieter than the past two years. But we are very happy to invite you to this special program in the meantime.

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default #25, 27.02
Korzo Theatre, Prinsestraat 42
doors: 19.30, first performance: 20:15

Tickets & more info: defaultdenhaag.com/links

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19/02/2025

For our second instore event at 3345, taking place on Saturday, the 8th of March, default den haag is happy to present two performances by Kieran Daly and Jacob Eckhardt.
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default #23: Kieran Daly, Jacob Eckhardt

Jacob Eckhardt is a sound artist currently based in The Hague whose work deals with turntablism as a discipline deeply entwined with the materiality of its instrument – the turntable. He utilises instrument preparations to investigate how acts of sampling can be guided by the medium-specific (and thus material) malleability of physical media containers

Kieran Daly is an American composer and guitarist with a concentration in experimental monophonic music. His work focuses on a ‘skeptical, first-principles approach applied across multifarious formal contexts using iterative processes, microtuning and sliding, and pulse salience as morphological determinants’. As part of his first European tour, Kieran will be presenting a performance with ‘music for unaccompanied guitar’.

More information: https://defaultdenhaag.substack.com/p/focus-default23

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default #23, 08.03, 3345 The Hague, Noordeinde 87G, Den Haag
doors: 20:00, first performance: 20:30

Tickets | €7.5*

*recommended to buy tickets beforehand due to the limited capacity of the venue. If the tickets are sold out, there will be no ticket-sale at the door.

06/02/2025

default den haag: announcing two additional programs of the third season
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In addition to our next week’s event at The Grey Space in the Middle, we are very happy to announce that there will be two more editions coming this spring, bringing again some of our favorite artists to the Hague. On Saturday, the 8th of March, we will return to 3345 for an intimate in-store edition with Jacob Eckhardt and Kieran Daly. Continuing our collaboration with iii in the following month, on Thursday, the 17th of April, we will present an evening of performances with Vanessa Rossetto, Maya Verlaak, Áine O'Dwyer, closing off our third season how we’ve started.

These will also be (almost certainly) the last default editions of this year. To make sure that we can keep on doing what we do in more sustainable ways, and to prepare ourselves for activities in 2026, we will be taking a small break. We want to thank you for your continuous support, and hope to see you in the upcoming programs this spring which we are very excited about.

More information: https://tinyurl.com/ddhupdatethirds

Please consider subscribing to our Substack Newsletter to make us less dependent on social media platforms. Next to announcements and updates, we send out focus newsletters closer to each event, sharing more information on the planned program and the artists performing.

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default #22 is financially supported by The Municipality of The Hague and the Konrad Boehmer Foundation. The event in collaboration with iii is financially supported by The Municipality of The Hague and Creative Industries Fund NL.

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28/01/2025

On Thursday, 13th of February, we’re happy to host our next event featuring a site-specific performance by Janneke van der Putten, a duo performance by Weston Olencki & Laura C***s, and a concert by Sunik Kim.

default #22: Janneke van der Putten, Weston Olencki & Laura C***s, Sunik Kim

The Rotterdam-based artist Janneke van der Putten will be presenting her acoustic voice performance ‘Cycles: Overtones and Glottis Attack’. She is specialized in producing two or more sounds simultaneously: basic tones, harmonics, interferences – like glottal attacks – and spatial reflections. Her voice is her main tool, guiding her through physical and sonic explorations in different landscapes, engaging with specific sites and local contexts. The duo of composers-performers Weston Olencki & Laura C***s will be presenting their two pieces for two flutes: ‘Music for Two Flutes’. It involves immense, heavy physicality, exploring the instrument with both persistent power and sensitive buzzing – locating sites of intensity and spectral saturation where they aren't always found. Sunik Kim is a computer musician, writer and filmmaker currently based in Los Angeles, whose music is often described as "a frenzied electronic orchestra that sits somewhere in between free jazz, noise, and Korean shamanic music”. At default, Sunik will be presenting the first hour of a new extended piece that emerged from an intensive study of Conlon Nancarrow's usage of the tempo canon and its relation to the compression and dilation of perceptual time.

Read more on the program and the artists performing here:
https://defaultdenhaag.substack.com/p/focus-default22

23/01/2025

03/01/2025

We are happy to invite you to the first program of the year, taking place on the 23rd of January in The Grey Space in The Middle.

default #20: Sun Yizhou, Zhu Wenbo, Zhao Cong, Li Song, Able Noise

For default #20, we are excited to host three important figures from the open-thinking Beijing experimental scene as part of their first European tour. Sun Yizhou, Zhu Wenbo, and Zhao Cong have all brought forward divergent ‘music unlike music’ ideas to the post-2000 eai discourse, including performances and compositions which defy easy categorisation. While an interest in electronic devices and daily objects may be a common ground, often here the concept is more important than the tools; exploring situations, rather than predetermined outcomes. They have initiated such pivotal labels as Zoomin’ Night (Zhu Wenbo), Aloe Records (Sun Yizhou) as well as affiliated concert programs. As part of their first European tour they will be performing at default in different formations. Alongside them, the London based artist Li Song will accompany the program, whose approach with mechanical devices and portable speakers could be traced back to his time in the Beijing scene.

Concluding the lineup, the experimental outfit Able Noise – a cross-continent duo of George Knegtel and Alex Andropoulos based between The Hague and Athens. For this occasion the duo will prepare a specific, electro-acoustic approach driven live show. Putting their known alternative methods of playing baritone guitar, drums and voice in relation to a feedback system, which also includes bouzouki, portable playback devices and microphones.

default #21: conversation with Zhu Wenbo, Sun Yizhou, Zhao Cong + performances

This event will be accompanied by a free program in the Central Library on the following day involving a conversation with Sun Yizhou, Zhu Wenbo, Zhao Cong, a performance by ‘No Performance’ (the duo of Zhu Wenbo & Li Song), as well as a second solo set from Sun Yizhou – 24th of January, program starts at 18:30.

Read more information on the upcoming program here: https://tinyurl.com/focusd2021

10/12/2024

This Saturday!
default #19: Zara Joan Miller, Mette Edvardsen, Tom Mudd, Augustė Vickunaitė

In this focus newsletter, we would like to share with you more information on our upcoming program

02/12/2024

default #19: Zara Joan Miller, Mette Edvardsen, Tom Mudd, Augustė Vickunaitė

Augustė Vickunaitė is a sound experimentalist with a background in physics. Augustė exclusively employs vintage reel-to-reel tape recorders to play, record, and create sounds, articulating diverse layers of recordings including found material, field recordings, voice, music instruments, objects, and the whole spectrum of malfunctions of decaying technology. She specializes in tape music, noise, and collage music, known for her theatrical and darkly humorous approach, often exploiting errors of analog audio equipment. Her solo work encompasses tape loops and collages of found audio tapes.

Performing and improvising with her reel-to-reel set up solo since 2016, she has been actively touring during the past year, while self-releasing her album ‘Dance Alone’ back in March. The album brings forward her raw, reduced, yet groovy signature sound, inhabiting its own space in a broad lineage of hand-crafted physical tape-loop music. Augustė is furthermore an affiliate of the venturesome diy community surrounding the Vilnius’ Studium P venue.

https://augustevickunaite.bandcamp.com/album/dance-alone
https://archive.org/details/