On the opening night of the 6th edition of the V-F-X Ljubljana festival, two musicians will be presented: NÂR with a cinema concert and a 16mm projection by Loïc Verdillon, which through image and sound evokes memories of Beirut and southern Lebanon, and Radio Hito, whose work blurs the boundaries between the classical tradition of the art song, contemporary chanson, and ambient electronics.
For the opening ceremony, NÂR will present a collaboration with Lebanese photographer Nader Bahsoun and French Filmmaker Loïc Verdillon, featuring 16mm film projections. A journey of wonder through the streets of Beirut and Southern Lebanon – the stillness of the sea, or perhaps the silence it lends us for a moment, its majestic way of taming the dragons in our chests and gently reminding us that behind the waves lies the sun – its light, its warmth, its power of transformation.
NÂR x Loïc Verdillon x Nader Bahsoun: To the birds that will come next
“This performance is meant as a poem; it bears in its womb images, sounds, and textures that live within us, that shaped us and continue to be part of our collective memory. We’ll just follow ghosts in the dusty corners of the city. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you might catch children at play. And if you’re not too blinded by the fancy facades or your own inner noise, if you’re there to listen, you might hear its heartbeat. If you stay still – you might even witness the beauty in its violence, its wounds. The scars we wear like war paint. What if learning how to lose gracefully was the main purpose of life? Then we are masters of it. What if all the blood spilled on the soil of our lands made it a kind of living creature and the prayers constantly sung were made to remind us that the only weight we should carry is Love. The only war worth dying for is Love. Every soul we’ve lost for this land will continue to protect it – fiercely, as spirits and ghosts. A reminder that nothing they do can ever kill what they fear most.”
Radio Hito
Radio Hito is the moniker of Brussels-based Italian-Vietnamese artist Zen Mỹ Nguyễn, whose work dissolves the boundaries between the classical Lied tradition, contemporary chanson, and ambient electronics. Her debut album, L’uso e gli attributi del cuore, released this April, is a ten-part song cycle inspired by the minimalist poetry of Claude Royet-Journoud. Built on a foundation of radical economy, Nguyễn swaps the grand piano for a Casio keyboard, resulting in a collection of haunting, delicate chansons for the digital age.
BIO
Nader Bahsoun (b. 1995) is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist from southern Lebanon whose work delves into memory, identity, and the complexities of history through photography, archival research, and documentary methods. With a focus on photography, his practice seeks to uncover, recontextualize, and transform remnants of the past into dynamic narratives that challenge how memory is seen and understood.
NÂR (DIY electronics, Free music) is a Lebanese multi-instrumentalist, singer and composer based in Beirut. In a constant metamorphosis, she works with various instruments, her voice and different objects she finds. Abrasive, hypnotic, NÂR’s performances are sonic experiments and live improvisations often led by short sentences on repeat like mantras. Her music takes its roots in a very large spectrum of sounds, inspiration or genre such as Middle Eastern music, north African trance, industrial and electronic music. In 2021, NÂR started working on a unique instrument essentially composed of old clocks and bells giving birth to a new dimension in her practice. The musician sees her performances as “a succession of sacred mistakes”.
Loïc Verdillon is a filmmaker, musician and printmaker. His current research focuses on sound, its materiality and its forms. Since 2016, he has been co-directing and working at the Atelier MTK independent cinema laboratory in Grenoble, where he makes films and performances in 16mm. He has presented Expanded Cinema performances of films and organized 16mm workshops around the world, including in Norway, Italy, Switzerland, the United States, Canada, Germany, France, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Latvia and Indonesia.
Full festival programme: https://www.vfx-ljubljana.si/
6. Festival of experimental audiovisual practices / 12.–17. 5. 2026
Organization: SCCA-Ljubljana, KUD Channel Zero, and Kino Šiška.
With the support of the Ministry of Culture and the City of Ljubljana.
The performance by Radio Hito is part of the Level Up series, supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and Liveurope.
