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05/02/2026

05/02/2026

Allan Gilbert Balon (b. Guadeloupe) is an artist and composer, working with sculpture, sound installation, composition and performance. Uta Guan Hey (b. China) is a writer, visual creator, and filmmaker. Together they have founded the publishing house xyä édition – a variable geometry press entity geared towards writing, sound phenomenon and inner engineering technologies – which publishes handmade books and audio.

At default, the artist duo will be presenting a performance for piano, objects, voices, and electronics, following some of their recent works: Allan’s ‘The Magnesia Suite’ (released via Recital in 2024), his site-specific installation in MoMA PS1 (New York, 2022), performances at Cafe Oto (London), iv projectspace (Brussels), and ‘O LUNA – LIVE MUSIC AT STUDIO BLEU PARIS 13/05/2025’ – a recording of Allan’s and Uta’s duo performance published via Balon’s website. The latter functions as a compendium/collage of recorded pieces, (graphic) scores, drawings, writings & performance works, showcasing Balon’s approach through multifaceted disciplinary lenses.

Balon’s ‘The Magnesia Suite’ had stricken us upon its release with its own assembled, unhurried world, where a flowing air and some (sound) poetic absurdness in its fringes is arranged around intimate piano playing, mixing in a sensation of presence throughout tape recordings, organs, field recordings, performative voice, and percussive objects.

His earlier releases have explored solo piano recordings (‘So Lo Piano Works Vol. 1’, Wry Press & Séance Centre, 2023), as well as the possibilities and limits of communication and related technologies (‘High Latency Communication’, a house of saturn, 2023), including pieces for tuba, piano and voice.

26/01/2026

The first default program of the year will take place next month, on Friday, the 27th of February — marking our debut collaboration with Korzo Theatre.

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Allan Gilbert Balon & Uta Guan Hey | Marc Baron | Nirantar Yakthumba.

For default #25, Allan Gilbert Balon (b. Guadeloupe), an artist and composer, working with sculpture, sound installation, & Uta Guan Hey (b. China), a writer, visual creator, and filmmaker, will present their duo performance for piano, objects, voices, and electronics. The performance comes after Balon’s LP ‘The Magnesia Suite’ (Recital, 2024) and a recording of Allan’s and Uta’s duo performance (released via Balon’s web page), both showcasing an intimate play with presence. Together they run the publishing house xyä édition, which publishes handmade books and audio. The Paris-based artist Marc Baron, who for almost 20 years has dedicated himself to the work of electroacoustic composition using tapes and analog processes, will be performing at default soon after his new solo album release ‘Soleil-Néon’ on Penultimate Press. His music encompasses not only the harsh but also the fragile aspects of the tools he uses, while capturing the contingencies arising from material processes that interweave acoustics, electronics, and magnetics. The complexity of sound’s qualities and their assembling is at the core of his music, posing our listening towards this specific tension between a semblance of realism and the desire for abstraction, making use of cuts and creating shifts with perspectives. Concluding our program, Nirantar Yakthumba (b. Nepal, currently based in The Hague), who in his work investigates the production and organization of tone, instrument building, and how variations in informational constraints – structure, redundancy, noise, (in)determinacy – are articulated with and within a work. He will be premiering a performance with a new instrument that he made in 2025.

As this will be the only default program taking place this spring, we are pleased to invite you to this special event.

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default #25, 27.02
Korzo Theatre, Prinsestraat 42
doors: 19.30, first performance: 20:15

Tickets (link in bio): €10/€20

poster by .__

26/01/2026

The first default program of the year will take place next month, on Friday, the 27th of February — marking our debut collaboration with

–
Allan Gilbert Balon & Uta Guan Hey | Marc Baron | Nirantar Yakthumba.

For default #25, Allan Gilbert Balon (b. Guadeloupe), an artist and composer, working with sculpture, sound installation, & Uta Guan Hey (b. China), a writer, visual creator, and filmmaker, will present their duo performance for piano, objects, voices, and electronics. The performance comes after Balon’s LP ‘The Magnesia Suite’ (Recital, 2024) and a recording of Allan’s and Uta’s duo performance (released via Balon’s web page), both showcasing an intimate play with presence. Together they run the publishing house xyä édition, which publishes handmade books and audio. The Paris-based artist Marc Baron, who for almost 20 years has dedicated himself to the work of electroacoustic composition using tapes and analog processes, will be performing at default soon after his new solo album release ‘Soleil-Néon’ on Penultimate Press. His music encompasses not only the harsh but also the fragile aspects of the tools he uses, while capturing the contingencies arising from material processes that interweave acoustics, electronics, and magnetics. The complexity of sound’s qualities and their assembling is at the core of his music, posing our listening towards this specific tension between a semblance of realism and the desire for abstraction, making use of cuts and creating shifts with perspectives. Concluding our program, Nirantar Yakthumba (b. Nepal, currently based in The Hague), who in his work investigates the production and organization of tone, instrument building, and how variations in informational constraints – structure, redundancy, noise, (in)determinacy – are articulated with and within a work. He will be premiering a performance with a new instrument that he made in 2025.

As this will be the only default program taking place this spring, we are pleased to invite you to this special event.

—
default #25, 27.02
Korzo Theatre, Prinsestraat 42
doors: 19.30, first performance: 20:15

Tickets (link in bio): €10/€20

poster by .__