Zita Swoon Group creates multi disciplinary or intercultural artistic productions and always departs from original music. Their sound covers a large musical spectrum and is always personal and authentic. Instrumental and vocal music as well as visual imagery and movement are present in the realizations.
The collective was started in the early nineties and has become one of the most successful Belgian bands. Since the early years Zita Swoon has had an inexhaustible capacity for innovation and has gradually changed into the polymorph collective Zita Swoon Group.
Zita Swoon Group is a group of artists of diverse origin. They like sharing their different backgrounds with their band companions. They are artists with an open mind and they never repeat themselves on stage. Stef Kamil Carlens is the artistic leader and driving force. He is composer, songwriter, musician and visual artist.
Man is central for Carlens. Man comes to the world, eats, drinks, plays, builds, organizes and reproduces. Man creates its own world within the world, with no regard to the past, the future or other inhabitants of that world, not even inhabitants of their own kind. But at the same time, man is also victim to the ghosts of his actions. Because every step we make affects the world, Zita Swoon Group wants to think about tomorrow. With an outspoken ecological and global conscience, Zita Swoon Group creates productions that are linked to society and immediately speak to a large audience.
Starting with collaborations with other artists as choreographs, dancers or theatre producers, Zita Swoon Group is a platform for the creation of new hybrid productions with a lot of room for experimentation and creative adventures.
‘The coming years Zita Swoon Group wants to focus more on the formal aspects and content of our concerts and realize an equal relationship between vocal and instrumental work. Musically, Zita Swoon Group continues to zoom in on the different aspects of our work: melody, harmony, experimentation and rhythm. The latter is prominent in all of our projects and is becoming even more important and defined through our collaboration with artists from different disciplines or cultures. Concerning content, our concerts are becoming more complete and we look for a clear concept for each project. Zita Swoon Group wants to bridge other disciplines and our performances need to become more visual and multidisciplinary. Visual aspects have always been very present, but we’re delving even deeper in the years to come and we’re starting a dialog with artists from the dance, theatre and visual arts worlds. We challenge each other’s disciplines in exploring how much movement and sound can stand of each other. When does sound take over from movement and vice versa. How do we protect the fragility of both extremes, and how can they empower each other? The voice is also an important instrument. Aside from writing melodies for it, we are going to sing more in different languages mixed together. This will create a paradox vibe of confusion and sense of belonging. Human relations transcend language’s limitations, they exist on so many other levels.’ Stef Kamil Carlens
The productions are organized by Wolvin / Zita Swoon Group vzw.