Dissonance – the absence of harmony among musical material – is a word that perhaps quite literally embodies what it means to be in this world right now. Dissonance does not gloss things over, yet as any musician knows, it doesn’t always mean chaos either. It is not merely a disturbance, but can also be an act of sincerity or a productive impulse – the sound of the unresolved and irreconcilable, the noise of harsh reality, tension seeking resolution, difference demanding dialogue, conflict carrying within it the seeds of transformation. When we speak of dissonance in musical terms, we acknowledge that it serves a purpose: it creates movement, it generates energy, it refuses the false comfort of premature harmony. Dissonance is also not merely aesthetic, it is the lived experience of existing in multiple, often extremely contradictory realities simultaneously. The challenge is not to resolve dissonance but to learn to live within it productively, to find ways of being that honour both the cacophony and the search for connection.

This is where resonance emerges – not as the opposite of dissonance, but as its companion in a complex dance. Physically, resonance happens when one vibrating system sets another into motion at the same frequency or multiples thereof. In a broader sense, resonance becomes a way of being in meaningful relationship with others, the world around us, and ourselves. But resonance is not simple, or effortless. One might enter into uneasy or uncertain resonance, situations can flip and alienate, we might feel the need to set a limit to resonance as a resistance to the uniformity of consonance. Moments of genuine resonance – of listening, empathy, mutual connection – are both precious and precarious. They demand presence, vulnerability, and acknowledging one’s own entanglement. Resonance relies on the willingness to be moved and to stand together, even in unease, and let encounters shape us. In that shared attunement lies the possibility of renewal.

The festival theme dissonate < > resonate understands resonance and dissonance as a complex musical, social, political interrelationship. Music can fill in the gaps where words fail. It is a medium for upheaval and connecting, a mirror and an outlet, a place to negotiate complex emotions, a space for perception, worldbuilding, healing, and debate. If past editions of our festival have traced a journey from liminality through transformation toward contact, opening portals and learning to sustain ourselves and our practices, then dissonate < > resonate is an invitation to inhabit the spaces in-between, the charged fields where frequencies meet, clash, and sometimes unexpectedly unite.