In the lecture Sonic Acts for the End of the World, theorist and writer Eleni Ikoniadou confronts a world in which state authoritarianism, fascist policing, ecological devastation, and live-streamed genocide have become normalised and legitimised as governing principles. Faced with forms of violence that are not only enacted but also mediated, aestheticised, and absorbed into the systems of power that produce them, art’s political promise to generate counter-narratives appears increasingly exhausted. For nearly three decades, fiction, speculation, and sonic thought and practice have been pursued for their potential to escape Western anthropocentric frameworks and (re)imagine cosmic kinships and futures beyond colonial spacetime. But what happens to these possibilities when the liberal arts and academic institutions that sustain them are themselves exposed as instruments of capitalist violence?
Drawing from sonic theory, Black radical thought, and Indigenous and Afro-diasporic perspectives, Ikoniadou insists that the aesthetic act – to paraphrase Toni Morrison – must become dangerous again. In doing so, she challenges philosophical abstraction and the art world’s ability to absorb dissent, turn it into style, and ensure that nothing really changes. At stake is a more radical proposition: that the world shaped by colonialism, capitalism, and Western modernity must not simply be reimagined, but brought to an end, making space for other temporalities, lifeworlds, and modes of existence already operating beyond its terms.
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Sonic Acts Biennial 2026 was a citywide arts manifestation taking place from 5 February to 29 March across 23 locations in Amsterdam. Titled Melted for Love, the programme was visited by more than 21.000 people and featured cutting-edge performances, contemporary sound experiments, and multidisciplinary art by over 200 international artists.
The Symposium, which took place at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam on 28 February and 1 March 2026, brought together performances and lectures by Yuk Hui, Flavia Dzodan, Steve Goodman (Kode9), Eleni Ikoniadou, Salomé Voegelin, Ayesha Hameed & Aimée Theriot, Margarida Mendes, Yazan Khalili, pantea, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Busher Kanj, Amr Mdah & Fabio Cervi, and ILYICH.
→ Continue reading at 2026.sonicacts.com
CREDITS
Production: Sonic Acts
Camera, editing, sound: Engage! TV
Intro sound: KMRU & Aho Ssan
Design: Knoth & Renner with Anja Kaiser
This video is realised as part of New Perspectives for Action, a project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union.
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