White Night is often associated with bright short-term impressions, abundance of impulses, moving about. Exactly for this reason the Sound Forest project for White Night is The Gospel of Noise that lets people stray from the hasty “highways” of culture, enter a contemplative space like the Anglican church and indulge in a different passage of time, lights and delicate, original sound.
This idea came about simultaneously with the desire to develop the Riga organ music tradition in the context of innovative music. The organ, “the king of instruments” is traditionally used in sacral music, but its timbral abundance makes this instrument, so very characteristic to the Latvian musical landscape, attractive also to others, particularly electronic musicians.
The artists are not required to use the organ in their compositions but they should be created with regard to at least one of the elements in the church – its space and acoustics, the emotional and contemplative atmosphere and/or the organ.
The list of artists invited to participate in this White Night event includes Voldemārs Johansons, Oskars Poikāns, Gas of Latvia (Andris Indāns). Being among the most experienced sound artists in Latvia, these musicians are known to be multiinstrumentalists with a particular interest in the acoustic properties of space. They have been requested to create special pieces for the Anglican church and White Night.
Since 2003 Ankersmit regularly tours and performs together with New York-based composer Phill Niblock and more recently as a duo with Italian electroacoustic musician Valerio Tricoli. Other collaborations have included Tony Conrad, Kevin Drumm, Jim O’Rourke, Axel Dörner, Gert-Jan Prins and Borbetomagus.
His music and installation work have been presented at Hamburger Bahnhof, KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Podewil, Berlin; ZKM, Karlsruhe; Kunsthalle Basel; Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York as well as at festivals such as Club Transmediale and Tuned City, Berlin; Night of the Unexpected, Amsterdam; Impakt, Utrecht; Musica Genera, Szczecin; Skanu Mezs, Riga; Présences Électroniques, Paris; Architectones, Arc-et-Senans; Festival de Radio France, Montpellier; Steirischer Herbst, Graz; Netmage and Angelica, Bologna and Adventures in Modern Music in Chicago.
He was educated at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam; The School of Visual Arts, New York and the Universität der Künste, Berlin.
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