#UNFINISHED22 lineup: the art of improvisation

Meet Our?#U22?Hosts

?At UNFINISHED, we firmly believe that everyone has hidden talents. Part of our mission is precisely to give ourselves a chance to discover our secret gifts – the very ones that society too often stirs us away from. It therefore comes as no surprise that?#UNFINISHED22’s?two hosts are also polymaths!?

Tamika Abaka-Wood , whom we met online last year during her?analog conversation with Jason Eppink?through Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, is bringing to Bucharest her participatory sound project?Dial an Ancestor. Activated by ancestors past, present, and future using their voices, the hotline she created to collect testimonies will be maintained and evolved for at least 100 years.

?Tamika will be co-hosting with? Ian Daly , our MC since 2018, who will not only welcome and accompany us during the entire festival but also share another side of his identity, better known under his stage name?Refrakt. For those of you in Bucharest, you can join Refrakt for his pre-festival late night DJ set at?Control?on Tuesday, September 27th starting at 1:30 AM. And for everyone else, look out for his tunes on Saturday giving the beat to UNFINISHED’s first ever dance battle.

Dialogues in Motion

?Joining us from?Kaori Ito’s dance company?are dancers?Issue Park?[also known as Bboy Issue] and Louis Gillard, who will engage in a totally different kind of dialogue. Their dance practice is as hybrid and experimental as we are, mixing breaking with martial arts, contemporary dance and Korean dance.

In-person Perk

In-person participants will be able to join Issue and Louis for dance workshops, to loosen up what you think dance is and get a hang of street dance basics, ahead of Saturday’s performance. All ages welcome and no dancing experience required!

Improvisation in Tape

?Artist and designer?Niklaus Troxler?has spent a lifetime drawing parallels between the freedom of jazz and the freeform of design. We’re humbled to show a mini outdoor retrospective of his festival posters as well as host a live-taping performance by Niklaus, created live in the middle of the festival in our UNFINISHED Garden, as an improvised collaboration with Alexandra Neaga & Cristian Borcan .

Recentering our Core

?This year, an extra inspiring team of wellness instructors is joining us every morning to get our energies flowing and our minds ready for maximum openness. Mindfulness teacher and psychologist? Simona Chesaraicu ?returns to UNFINISHED alongside two new teachers:

Avisek Majumdar, mindfulness trainer, yoga teacher, and organizational wellbeing consultant, as well as?Ana Popescu, a sound healer gong master and teacher of Kundalini yoga and multiple techniques of yoga, breath work, and meditation. (PS: Ana's also an actress! But more on that later…)

Music Off the Script

?Remember? Matheus Leston ? If not, you surely will the second you’ll hear his tunes. We love his music so much that we’ve used it to introduce and wrap-up every single piece of content we’ve produced in the last two years. Now, finally, we get to experience his music live in Bucharest! To celebrate the occasion, Leston will perform?Orquestra Vermelha,a traveling set bridging art and technology where he plays with shadows of other musicians who are not on the stage.

?Another familiar voice we’re eager to meet in real life is singer-songwriter?Macul. After taking us on a?musical tour of his home in Munich?last year, Macul is going to help (re)discover our own garden, and take us around a walking music set to open the festival on Thursday, September 29th.

Are you in yet? If not,?apply here?– for both online and in-person.

Eager to see you soon,

The UNFINISHED team,