The sound installation Appropriate In-Appropriation draws on the work of ten womxn composers presented in this year’s Academy Second Modernism, an initiative that aims to promote gender equality in music culture and thus change centuries-old inequality.
For this work, composer and sound-artist Atousa Falamarzian takes the theme of the 2026 summit ‘Considering Appropriation’ literally. Music composed by women has long been appropriated, absorbed, uncredited, or simply silenced. To create this installation each composer was asked for thirty seconds of their work. A fragment small enough to borrow, yet large enough to matter. Here, the act of taking is made visible: the thirty seconds are named, the composers are present, and the question of who owns a sound, and who gets to transform it, is left open for the listener to sit with.
That act of taking, transforming, and presenting is the subject of the work as much as the music itself. Appropriation is never neutral. It carries the history of who is listened to, who is credited, whose work is considered available, and whose voice gets the last word.
In the end what you hear is not a portrait – it is a conversation across time, held inside borrowed material.

The sound installation can be listened to during the festival centre’s opening hours.
In addition, a public presentation of the project featuring composer Atousa Falamarzian will take place on 24 May at 8pm.