Katharina Rosenberger und Roberto Maqueda
Katharina Rosenberger, born in Zurich, is a composer and sound artist. She studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Michael Finnissy, where she also developed a growing interest in free improvisation. She later completed her doctorate at Columbia University in New York under the supervision of Tristan Murail and George Lewis, investigating participatory frameworks that enable audiences to influence sound transformations and compositional structures through bodily movement. From this research, she developed an artistic practice situated between acoustic and electronic composition, installation, and performative formats.
Her works often emerge through process-based and experimental approaches, most recently in close collaboration with Musikfabrik, PHACE, mosaik, CNZ, Contrechamps, Eklekto, and the Zurich Opera House. She understands music-making as a social, anti-hierarchical act embedded within cultural, political, and spatial contexts.
Since 2020, she has been a co-founder and, together with Lisa Nolte, co-artistic director of SONIC MATTER, a platform and festival for experimental music in Zurich that provides an open space for diverse musical practices. Her focus on participation, diversity, and structural openness also informs her research into the sustainable design of transcultural collaborations.
She is Professor of Composition at the HEM – Haute école de musique de Genève and has received numerous distinctions, including the Swiss Music Prize (2023), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2019), and the Mediaproject Award / Sitemapping from the Swiss Federal Office of Culture (2007/2011) in Bern.
Roberto Maqueda identifies himself as a heterodox artist operating in the spheres of experimental art, electronic music, and club culture. He is based in Basel. As a percussionist, he has taken up the art of drumming to a new level by applying engineering and sound automation to rhythms and building systems that revolve around the integration of separately performing acoustic and electronic music studios.
In the club scene, his techno alias Mitospora merges club sounds with sonic experimentation, navigating the boundary between underground and noise. Mitospora transforms raw energy into a shared experience—where dance and deep listening converge.
He co-directs FOG Festival (Basel) and from before co-directed EXIT Festival (Montevideo). He also headed reConvert, now the studio that produces his works. He has been at such festivals as SONICA, Indigo, Manifeste, SPOR or MaerzMusik.
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