04:30 pm
Laris / Lara Bäucker Vocals, objects
Hatem Hamdy Vocals, electronics
Joaquín Macedo Modular synthesizer
Hearing, embracing and celebrating differences: four musical traditions, four biographies in a first-time musical encounter. The FUTURE NOW Ensemble &ñịoن explores what happens when different musical upbringings challenge and contradict one another. Through a collaborative creative process involving misunderstandings, unexpected common ground and the gentle unlearning of habits, a composition emerges which will be performed for the first time at FUTURE NOW Musical Diaries.
The ensemble consists of Berlin-based musicians working across disciplines. The Argentinian composer and sound artist Joaquín Macedo is dedicated to experimental music and collaboration with performers. For Laris / Lara Bäucker, the search for a connection with the audience is at the heart of their musical practice – through voice, performance and composition. As a composer, sound engineer and video artist, Vinh Tran, a Berliner with Vietnamese roots, works across an analogue-digital continuum. He modifies guitars with acoustic distortion devices, plays algorithmically derived patterns on the piano or uses the laptop as an instrument. Hatem Hamdy, born and raised in Cairo, combines Arab and Western traditions, drawing equally on his perspectives as an engineer and composer.
The result of this multifaceted encounter? No one is here representing a particular culture. Instead, music emerges from a shared process: not four individuals working side-by-side, but a shared collaboration that allows everyone to shine.
Vinh Tran is a composer, performer, sound engineer and video artist based in Berlin. His works have been presented at leading festivals of contemporary and experimental music, including the Kontakte Festival, ZKM next_generation and the Klangwerkstatt Berlin. Working within the analogue-digital continuum, he plays algorithmically derived patterns on the piano, prepares guitars with acoustic distortion devices, and uses the laptop interface as a musical instrument. His performances focus on the interaction between body and machine, questioning the boundaries between nature and culture through these assemblages. Drawing on his experience as a German-born artist with a Vietnamese background, he explores the contrasts that shape both musical and social perception, such as organic versus synthetic, East versus West, and human versus technology. As a specialist in electronic and electroacoustic music performances, he has provided live sound engineering and technical implementation for performances and installations at the Bauhaus Festival Dessau, the Schwules Museum and MEHRLICHT!MUSIK. Trained as a sound engineer at the Berlin University of the Arts, he is convinced that the best recordings arise from a close synergy between artist and producer.
Laris / Lara Bäucker (born in Berlin in 2000) creates, conceives and performs in the fields of contemporary music, music theatre and performance art. From 2019 to 2025, Laris Bäucker studied composition in Berlin under Mathias Hinke and Marc Sabat and spent a year studying in Zurich with Isabel Mundry. Laris is currently continuing their studies at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen. In their artistic practice, Laris explores the relationships between sound and physicality and how performances can facilitate an intimate encounter – with oneself, a community, non-human actors and subordinate perspectives. Various collaborations have taken Laris to the Schauspielhaus Zürich (So schön, 2023), C-Lab in Taipei, the Hessian State Theatre in Wiesbaden (feldfuge and Die Königin der Frösche, 2025), the ZKM in Karlsruhe and the Mariendom in Linz. Laris also works as a performing instrumentalist and singer and is involved in the Germany-wide network Freies Musiktheater.
Hatem Hamdy hails from Maadi on the Nile, south of Cairo; he is a music lover whose perception of music has been shaped by the rich sounds of everyday life in Egypt. His artistic journey has taken him from a predominantly Western understanding of beauty and refinement towards a more open way of listening, one that allows different sonic realities to flourish side by side. Having studied engineering in Egypt and composition at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), his music seeks its own language – in a cultural landscape where, despite claims of openness, voices from the Global South are often only permitted to be heard within predetermined boundaries.
Joaquín Macedo, born in Buenos Aires, has lived in Berlin since 2015. He works as a composer in the field of experimental music and closely links his artistic practice with artistic research. Collaboration with performers is at the heart of his work. He understands sound as a spatial force that creates, shifts and infiltrates spaces.
He studied electronic music composition with Guillermo Pozzati at the Universidad Nacional de las Artes (Argentina) and experimental music theatre with Daniel Ott at the Berlin University of the Arts. In 2026, he completed his PhD at the Hamburg University of Music and Theatre with his dissertation Sound as para(-)site Phantom.
His works have been performed internationally, including in Greece, Switzerland, Argentina and Germany, as well as at festivals such as Forum Wallis, Klangwerkstatt Berlin and Ultraschall. He has taught at the Berlin University of the Arts and the UNA in Buenos Aires. Joaquín Macedo is a member of the editorial board of the Journal for Artistic Research.