shut up and listen! 2025
PAST_20 → NEXT_∞
Friday, October 17, 2025 @ echoraum, 9:00 PM
Damjan Jovičin: Merciful Sound Shield – music and social engagement in Belgrade today
Lecture
Merciful Sound Shield – music and social engagement in Belgrade today
Merciful soundshield is a sonic activist piece that addresses the misuse of sound. It is an initiative that brought together students and professors from the Faculty of Music in Belgrade in the Student Cultural Centre on 5th of April 2025. First performance included a large percussion installation made of Javanese gamelan and Kolintang from north Sulawesi joined by strings. The ensemble made sound masses and initiated the process of developing consciousness through sound, as well as an attempt to overcome the violence through the power of sound making. The second version, created for chamber orchestra, was performed in open space on Student square on May 10th and conducted by the composer.
Damjan Jovičin
Damjan Jovičin is a composer from Belgrade who works with a wide range of genres and peculiar art combinations from rudimentary traditional Balkan polyphonic singing, Javanese gamelan and kolintang from Sulawesi, through alternative rock and jazz, over free improvisation, all the way to classical symphony orchestra. He also creates music for movies and theatre, art happenings and multimedia artwork. Damjan holds a doctorate in music composition from Faculty of music in Belgrade. One of his missions is to complement the depths of traditional music with erudition of contemporary classical music and reverse: to bring the concept of freedom he perceives in traditional music to other genres. In any way different backgrounds can impact the new music he is making, he lets them do so, and observe the alchemy that emerges. Damjan has the strong urge to have an experience for himself and the audience, to make everyone immersed in music.