Sacrum Profanum Festival
November 6, venue: Sky7Cracow
8:00 pm Across the North Sea: hcmf// x Sacrum Profanum
Two contemporary music festivals: UK’s hcmf// and Poland’s Sacrum Profanum joins forces to open a stream of ideas and music. We build upon the legacy of experimental music studios to create new links between modern electronic scenes. Interconnecting Across the North Sea for an inspiring exchange of programs and artists.
8:00 pm Mariam Rezaei – British-Iranian turntablist and composer, creating at the intersection of noise, hip-hop, and contemporary music, combining these elements with vinyl manipulations and the turntable treated as an instrument.
9:00 pm Cath Roberts – British artist, saxophonist, and organizer whose work explores free improvisation, composition, and music at the nexus of these fields; she has recently been improvising with electronics and objects, even without the saxophone, which has opened up entirely new territories for her.
Mariam Rezaei – turntables
Cath Roberts – saxophone, electronics
Concert realized as part of the Across the North Sea project in collaboration with hcmf// and partnership with British Council Poland. Across the North Sea is part of the U.K./Poland Season 2025. Sacrum Profanum curated two Polish electronic artists - Aleksandra Słyż and Martyna Basta to perform in November in Huddersfield at hcmf//.
November 7, Venue: MOCAK
6:00 PM InstaImprovisation I
INSTAIMPROVISATIONS are the main concert series of this year's festival, featuring improvisations that interact with EVERYTHING WAS FOREVER UNTIL IT WAS NO MORE installation. From the performers and composers invited to the festival, each day we pair two artists who haven't worked together before and invite them to improvise within and alongside Konrad Smoleński's sound work. Each of them works with sound delay and processing, key elements of installation. The first InstaImprovisation will be performed by British saxophonist Cath Roberts and British-Iranian turntablist Mariam Rezaei.
In collaboration with MOCAK and the National Centre for Culture, we are featuring Konrad Smoleński's renowned sound installation, EVERYTHING WAS FOREVER UNTIL IT WAS NO MORE, which represented Poland at the Venice Biennale in 2013. We operate sustainably, guided by the idea of artistic ecology and reintroducing important, existing works into circulation. Smoleński's work consists of two bronze bells whose striking is recorded and processed, then played back through walls of speakers. A crucial element is the vibrating floor, which also serves as a stage for concerts that interact with the installation. The artist, breaking stereotypes and expectations, creates a sphere of experience that invited musicians and the audience will enter. The boundaries between the music stage and the art space are blurred.
Cath Roberts – saxophones
Mariam Rezaei – turntables
This concert is realized in partnership with the British Council in Poland as part of the UK/Poland Season 2025.
This is one of our bilateral events:
Poland - Sacrum Profanum Festival, 6 - 11 November 2025, Kraków
UK - hcmf//, 21-30 November 2025, Huddersfield