Boeykens / XEEN

Boeykens/XEEN is an experimental duo formed between Berlin-based tubist Orlando de Boeykens and Iranian electronic musician Xeen (Zhina Ardalan). Their collaboration began in autumn 2020 when the Klangteppich festival asked Zhina Ardalan which musician in Berlin she would most want to work with. Her answer was immediate: a tuba player. The festival connected her with Orlando de Boeykens, and despite the physical distance — Ardalan was in Istanbul, Boeykens in Berlin — the duo prepared and premiered their performance live in cross-border transmission at فرشی از آوا III (Klangteppich Festival for Music of the Iranian Diaspora, Berlin, 2021), recorded at tak – Theater Aufbau Kreuzberg. Their performance is a 38-minute arc that celebrates noise and microtonality, reduction and opulence, spoken texts and layered textures. The tuba moves through long microtonal tones, breaths, and extended techniques, while Xeen's electronics surround and dissolve it — distorted, searching, and intimate. The spoken texts woven into the performance draw from writers including Gertrude Stein, exploring themes of time, existence, freedom, and the limits of perception. Together, the duo creates a space where geographic distance becomes irrelevant, and where two very different instruments — the most physical of brass instruments and the most ethereal of electronic tools — find an unlikely, tender common language.