1 Drop 1000 Years at Mapping Festival
08.05.2026 Le Groove
Genève (CH)
1 DROP 1000 YEARS - Scientists agree that a drop of water travels the globe in less than 1,000 years. This drop shapes our world: it transports nutrients, heat and living organisms, while regulating our planet's climate and ecosystems. It contributes to the fundamental process of life's equilibrium.
Drawing on data from the Global Conveyor Belt, the vast ocean current that orchestrates the mixing of water from the five oceans and redistributes heat on a global scale, Martin Messier underlines the fundamental role of water as a vital substance. Yet, over the past two centuries, human action has been shaking this fragile balance: the gradual slowing of this ocean current could trigger a major climatic upheaval, threatening the entire chain of life.
In this hypnotic performance, the artist explores the tensions between the global currents that drive planetary equilibrium, and the intimate currents that resonate within each of us. Fifteen suspended devices, veritable kinetic sculptures, orchestrate the flow of water particles in real time, materializing oceanic dynamics. The patterns generated, fed by data such as the temperature and salinity of the Pacific Ocean, intertwine in a visual and sonic choreography. 1 drop 1000 years reveals itself as a masterful, poetic ballet, conveying the fragility of ecosystems and the delicate harmony that binds all things on Earth.
Humming the Ubique at Rewire 2026
09.04.2026 - 12.04.2026 Pulchri Studio
The Hague (NL)
Rewire 2026 marks the sixth edition of Proximity Music, a joint exhibition programme by Rewire and iii, exploring the intersections of music, architecture, technology, ritual, and play through immersive, multisensory installations. Running from 9 to 12 April, this year’s programme – Proximity Music: The Ongoing Hum – takes place across multiple venues in The Hague’s city centre, and features newly commissioned and adapted works by multidisciplinary artists.
Humming the Ubique by Aernoudt Jacobs
The universe is permeated with electromagnetic energies that cannot be perceived with human senses, such as infrasonic sound, ultraviolet light or cosmic radiation. Sensors distributed throughout the installation record a spectrum of electromagnetic activity: from the city to outer space. This activity is translated into artificial voices and 64 luminous colour fields through a mosaic of wafer-thin foils. The electromagnetic phenomena speak in a register one can understand instinctively, thus letting them experience the complexity and layering of the immediate, everyday environment.
Aernoudt Jacobs is a Belgian artist working primarily with the medium of sound. His work has its origins in acoustic and technological research and investigates how sounds can trigger sonic processes that will affect the observer's scope of perception. His work focuses on a central question: how can one experience the complexity, richness, and stratification of their direct, daily environment?
Concert Organism: In Turbulence at Berliner Festspiele
24.03.2026 - 25.03.2026 Spore Haus
Berlin (D)
Concert: Organism: In Turbulence
24 & 25.3.2026 at 18:30
Solo concert with a century-old pipe organ prepared robotically to sound turbulent formations.
“Organism destabilizes the socio-historical tonality of a century-old organ to liberate its turbulent materiality, robotically unleashing timbres unheard after centuries of sonic repression. In concerts, Organism’s shifting metastable states allow for its energetic thresholds to fall into and out of compatibility with one another. Navab aerodynamically shapes the resulting ecology of interdependent timbres into emergent realms, traversing microsonic polyrhythms, post-rock overspill and swampy soundscapes.” – Navid Navab
Installation Organism + Excitable Chaos at Berliner Festspiele
20.03.2026 - 29.03.2026 Spore Haus
Berlin (D)
Opening - 18.3.2026 at 17:00
A robotically prepared historic pipe organ driven by a robotically-steered chaotic pendulum
“Organism dismantles the socio‑historical tonality of the organ – civilization’s triumph over the turbulence of nature – to liberate its hidden turbulent materiality. A 1910 Casavant pipe organ, rescued from impending gentrification at a heritage site in Montréal, has had its pneumatic architecture modified to remove stabilizations that historically aimed to eliminate turbulent flow and its uncontrollable sound world, unleashing long-repressed timbres to be heard anew after centuries of sonic repression. The pipes chosen for the work exhibit the highest degree of instability, ‘edge-tone jumping’ to sound intermittently even the subtlest fluctuations, bringing the energetic interdependencies of the system to the sensory realm.
Designed to produce unpredictable compositional futures, Excitable Chaos is a nonlinear movement system animated by the rapid exchange of potential and kinetic energy between its three moving arms. Sliding pivotal-joints shift the system’s larger gravitational dynamics, while subtle adjustments to damper-weights refine its kinetic resonances, phases, and grooves. These mass-orbital modulations allow Excitable Chaos to continuously enact chaotic movement systems, each a stochastic universe unto itself, while highlighting how, in nature, even at the smallest scales of magnitude, events are key contributors to cohesive but emergent behaviors, whose next states are unknowable.
Excitable Chaos’s transductive dance with gravity (its energetic tensions, correlations, and upheavals continuously shaping and unshaping excitable worlds) is wirelessly sensed and data‑sculpted to reveal its inner liveliness. By channelling this stream of ‘lively’ data, the generative movement of Excitable Chaos can conduct Organism’s aerodynamic thresholds, drawing kinetic chaos into conversation with sonic turbulence. Each undulation opens an indeterminate cycle of cascading oscillations, while over time chaotic attractors establish self‑similar grooves. The resulting turbulent sonifications of chaos serve as meditations on the sense of more-than-oneness that spontaneously emerges in life and nature and how this wild yet steerable relationality can help us express worlds yet unknown.” – Navid Navab
Focus Navid Navab
18.03.2026 Organism on Tour
Germany
Berliner Festspiel/MaerzMusik - Münchener Biennale – Festival for New Music Theatre - Blaues Rauschen 2026
Focus Lawrence Malstaf
24.02.2026 multiple locations
Norway
- Observatorium 02025 - 02026 (work in progress) - Kittiwake hotels 9 & 10 02026 (ongoing project) - Sisters Forever (scenography) - ESSO.S 02026 - 02027 (new project)
Newsletter
08.02.2026 - 27.03.2026 Upcoming worldpremières & concerts
Strassbourg (F) - Amsterdam (NL - Brussels (B)
The [Uncertain] Spring (worldpremière)
European Union Youth Orchestra
10.03.2026 - 19:00
Pavillon Joséphine, Strasbourg (F)
Tickets
Judith (worldpremière)
HARVEST - a project by Cora Burgraaf
12.03.2026 - 20:15
Opera Forward Festival, Muziekgebouw aan’t Ij, Amsterdam (NL
Tickets
Luc Brewaeys' Symphony no. 8
4th Movement completed by Annelies Van Parys
27.03.2026 - 20:00
Klarafestival, Bozar Brussels (B)
Tickets
1 drop 1000 years at Festival ]interstice[
05.12.2025 ésam Caen/Cherbourg
Caen (F)
1 DROP 1000 YEARS - Scientists agree that a drop of water travels the globe in less than 1,000 years. This drop shapes our world: it transports nutrients, heat and living organisms, while regulating our planet's climate and ecosystems. It contributes to the fundamental process of life's equilibrium.
Drawing on data from the Global Conveyor Belt, the vast ocean current that orchestrates the mixing of water from the five oceans and redistributes heat on a global scale, Martin Messier underlines the fundamental role of water as a vital substance. Yet, over the past two centuries, human action has been shaking this fragile balance: the gradual slowing of this ocean current could trigger a major climatic upheaval, threatening the entire chain of life.
In this hypnotic performance, the artist explores the tensions between the global currents that drive planetary equilibrium, and the intimate currents that resonate within each of us. Fifteen suspended devices, veritable kinetic sculptures, orchestrate the flow of water particles in real time, materializing oceanic dynamics. The patterns generated, fed by data such as the temperature and salinity of the Pacific Ocean, intertwine in a visual and sonic choreography. 1 drop 1000 years reveals itself as a masterful, poetic ballet, conveying the fragility of ecosystems and the delicate harmony that binds all things on Earth.
1 Drop 1000 Years at IN-Sonora
23.11.2025 - 24.11.2025 Réplika Teatro & Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid
Madrid (ES)
At the occasion of the 20th anniversary of IN-SONORA Martin Messier will perform 1 DROP 1000 YEARS at Réplika Teatro in Madrid (ES) on 23 November 2025.
Martin Messier will also give a Masterclass on 24 November 2025 from 19:00 until 21:00 at the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid. Attendees will have the opportunity to meet a key figure in the international art scene, who will share his work and process.
His performance art and ability to combine technologies with natural elements (water, smoke, waves, electricity, etc.) have led him to develop a body of work that explores our perception of physical phenomena. He explores their manifestations, from the most imperceptible to the most monumental, through extraordinary devices. His performances and installations oscillate between order and chaos, creating a contemplative tension that invites the audience to a synesthetic experience, sometimes bordering on the spiritual.
Martin Messier
IN-SONORA - 1 DROP 1000 YEARS
IN-SONORA - Masterclass
1 drop 1000 year at MUTEK JAPAN
20.11.2025 MUTEK Japan
Tokyo (JP)
1 DROP 1000 YEARS - Scientists agree that a drop of water travels the globe in less than 1,000 years. This drop shapes our world: it transports nutrients, heat and living organisms, while regulating our planet's climate and ecosystems. It contributes to the fundamental process of life's equilibrium.
Drawing on data from the Global Conveyor Belt, the vast ocean current that orchestrates the mixing of water from the five oceans and redistributes heat on a global scale, Martin Messier underlines the fundamental role of water as a vital substance. Yet, over the past two centuries, human action has been shaking this fragile balance: the gradual slowing of this ocean current could trigger a major climatic upheaval, threatening the entire chain of life.
In this hypnotic performance, the artist explores the tensions between the global currents that drive planetary equilibrium, and the intimate currents that resonate within each of us. Fifteen suspended devices, veritable kinetic sculptures, orchestrate the flow of water particles in real time, materializing oceanic dynamics. The patterns generated, fed by data such as the temperature and salinity of the Pacific Ocean, intertwine in a visual and sonic choreography. 1 drop 1000 years reveals itself as a masterful, poetic ballet, conveying the fragility of ecosystems and the delicate harmony that binds all things on Earth.