Send + Receive: a festival of sound

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Send + Receive: a festival of sound

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send + receive is an annual festival based in Winnipeg, Canada focused on audio art and experimental music practices.

send + receive is an international festival that investigates the disciplines of experimental music and sound art, and is one of the longest standing media arts festivals in North America focusing exclusively on sound-based work. It presents an invaluable opportunity for showcasing the innovative work of Manitoban, Canadian and international artists. send + receive addresses the need for a critical and intimate platform for audio based art locally, nationally & internationally. With feedback from the public, collaborating arts groups, and artists, send + receive meets the creative and technical needs of professional artists. send + receive began in 1998 as a project of Video Pool Media Arts Centre in response to new modes of creation and distribution emerging from technological developments in communications and audio/music industries. In 2001, due to an increase in interest for the event by local, national and international communities, send + receive became an incorporated entity, further enabling growth in creative and critical programming. The central activity of send + receive is an annual festival focused on sound: its production, its applications, its meanings, and its theories of production and reception. s+r also co-presents screenings, installations, curatorial projects and performances throughout the year. Aware that Winnipeg is situated in relative cultural and geographical isolation, send + receive develops programs that address this context through critical and technological investigations.

10/14/2026

send + receive v28 starts tomorrow at the West End Cultural Centre! Tickets are on sale and passes are available until showtime tomorrow, don't miss a day! https://www.eventbrite.ca/o/26200555989

10/09/2026

Open from October 16th to November 20th at Poolside Gallery and in collaboration with Video Pool Media Arts Centre ——Soufrière Si Longtemps is a cinematic essay unfolding on the slopes of La Soufrière (Guadeloupe). At the crossroads of epistemology and biology, the work explores the enigma of self-generating life and the limits of perception, questioning the reflexive loop of living systems.

Born in Les Abymes, Guadeloupe, composer and multidisciplinary artist Allan Gilbert Balon centers his phonographic and installation practice on the exploration of memorial interiority and liminal perception. Co-founder of xyä édition with Uta Guan Hyë, his work has been exhibited at New York’s MoMA PS1 and released through contemporary and experimental imprints such as Recital Program and Séance Centre.

His debut album, The Magnesia Suite (2024), extends the historical lineage of Erik Satie’s furniture music alongside the asceticism of American minimalism (Charlemagne Palestine, Alvin Curran). Through a contemplative approach to the piano—evoking temporal elongation and harmonic plasticity found in Thelonious Monk and Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou—coupled with tape manipulation and radio static, Balon constructs an architecture of muted dissonance that blurs the boundary between subjective interiority and environmental space.

Join us for an opening reception Friday October 16th at 6:00pm and then head over to the Sudanese Community Centre for more send + receive!

10/02/2026

v28 closes with an evening of slow and ecstatic chamber music and field recording, including a collaboration between Andrew Weathers and Savant Flaneur and a solo performance by artist and composer Allan Gilbert Balon.

Born in Les Abymes, Guadeloupe, composer and multidisciplinary artist Allan Gilbert Balon centers his phonographic and installation practice on the exploration of memorial interiority and liminal perception. Co-founder of xyä édition with Uta Guan Hyë, his work has been exhibited at New York’s MoMA PS1 and released through contemporary and experimental imprints such as Recital Program and Séance Centre.

His debut album, The Magnesia Suite, extends the historical lineage of Erik Satie’s furniture music alongside the asceticism of American minimalism. Through a contemplative approach to the piano—evoking temporal elongation and harmonic plasticity found in Thelonious Monk and Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou—coupled with tape manipulation and radio static, Balon constructs an architecture of muted dissonance that blurs the boundary between subjective interiority and environmental space.

Andrew Weathers is a composer, improviser, and intermedia artist currently based in Pueblo, Colorado after spending formative time in West Texas, the Bay Area, and North Carolina. His work is primarily concerned with place, site, duration, and repetition, explored through field recording, psychogeographic methods, and recursive resonances. Weathers has collaborated alongside a wide swath of artists inhabiting disparate currents of media, approaches, and aesthetics.

In 2008, Weathers founded Full Spectrum Records, beginning a long-standing commitment to curation and cultivation that went on to encompass a number of projects for Other Minds Records and Rural Situationism. After 16 years and 175 releases, Full Spectrum came to an end in 2024. He currently curates the imprints Editions Glomar and Bastard Countryside and continues to work as an in-demand producer and audio engineer.

09/28/2026

Day Three of send + receive v28 enlists voice and breath, reed and corn, in an audio-visual concert with Matt Robidoux, Karen Ng, and Sweet Lips, featuring Colby Richardson.

Toronto-based improviser Karen Ng has established herself as a unique musical force nationally and internationally. One of Canada’s leading improvisers “with a breathtakingly wide musical scope” (Musicworks) she also collaborates regularly with creative and ad hoc ensembles in the wider improvising scene across Canada, in Europe and the US. She has released one tape (Here 2018) of solo saxophone and clarinet music independently and her first full length album Backwards Blue was released in October 2025 on Halocline Trance.

Matt Robidoux (they/he) is a San Francisco based composer, improviser, and educator interested in sound-gesture causality and the convergence of movement and sound as it relates to free improvisation and accessibility. Their primary instrument is the “corn synth” (Kinetically Operated Randomness Network), a modular system that interprets physical input from two “ears of corn” sculptures cast in aluminum.

Sweet Lips is the artistic collaboration between Owen Kurtz and Sierra Weston. They make avant-pop music that explores the cultural and technical frameworks of the genre using experimental performance and recording approaches. “Sweet Lips Debut” was released December 2024 on the Ministry of Phonic Services Label. They also make multi-media installation work which has shown at the plumb and 24 hr atm lotto in Toronto. Excerpts from these projects were released as “Sweet Lips Singles” in November 2025.

Colby Richardson is a Toronto-based media artist working within experimental film, sound art, performance, and installation. His practice is entangled with the technological detritus that he has collected. His inspiration is found in piles of half-functioning video equipment, discarded consumer electronics, lightbulbs, radios, children’s toys, old iphones, dyson airblades, strobe lights, and anything that spins. His work is playful, formalist, and exploratory, and often involves collaborations with other artists, including Sweet Lips and Karen Ng for this year’s s+r.

09/13/2026

‘Hocketus’ by Savant Flâneur comes out this Saturday, September 26th—which happens to be Nuit Blanche in Winnipeg. To celebrate, Savant Flâneur will be joined by Thomas Toews, Zoë LeBrun, Tristan Zaba, McKenzie Warriner, and Luana Moth for a permutatory, multi-voiced version of the album’s concept, with visuals by George Dyck.

Join Savant Flâneur and friends on Saturday September 26th from 7-11pm at the south end of Stephen Juba Park for a night of surprising, constraint-based improvisations. Find more info at culturedays.ca.

05/26/2026

Wednesday, July 8th at the West End Cultural Centre— crys cole and Oren Ambarchi return to Winnipeg, fresh off the 2026 release of ‘Sparkling or Silent,’ a detailed, richly associative electroacoustic collaboration on the Portraits GRM label. Do not miss this rare prairie appearance, featuring a performance from Hazel Fog. Advance tickets are on sale now.

crys cole is a Canadian sound artist working in composition, performance, sculpture and installation. Generating subtle and imperfect sounds through haptic gestures and seemingly mundane materials, she creates textural works that continuously retune the ear. 
Oren Ambarchi is a composer and multi-instrumentalist with longstanding interests in transcending conventional instrumental approaches. His work focuses mainly on the exploration of the guitar, “re-routing the instrument into a zone of alien abstraction where it’s no longer easily identifiable as itself. Instead, it’s a laboratory for extended sonic investigation”. (The Wire, UK).

Hazel Fog envelops the listener in analogue textures and warbling drone, weaving allusive field recordings into sheets of magnetic abstraction.

05/09/2026

Pet Retina and i.o return to Winnipeg on Sunday, May 24th for a special outdoor show with Princess Dasha and Thomas Toews + During. Text 204-330-5507 for the address—don’t miss this springtime ritual.

Address

43/221 McDermot Street
Winnipeg, MB
R3B0S2

Website

http://www.sendandreceive.org/

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