Elms Willdick is a sonical marriage between Karen Willems and Stijn Dickel.
Elms Willdick is a deranged playground with traditional instruments (but often used in an non conventional way), field recordings, amplified objects, voices, performances and scenographical discoveries. Elms Willdick is an ode to freedom, intuition, creativity, adventure and to non-formalized listening.

“Elms Willdick is a musical live duo that explores sounds, rhythms and harmonies in an intuitive way. Occasionally they flirt with musical genres and traditions, but once they get too close, they quickly run away from it. They also leave their instrument, which they feel most at home, to help shape their musical zoo with the metronome, bicycle chain and megaphone. Their performances are infectious and exude an ode to play, improvisation and imagination.” Concertgebouw Brugge

Elms Willdick loves the zoo, but often we need to focus on one animal. One of the animals we want take a closer look at is human interaction and social distancing. During one of the residencies where we ought to beware of social distancing. So we worked with two guitars and one string which was attached from the one guitar to the other with a distance of 1,5m. The pitch of the extended guitars depends on the tension between the two performers.
The way the performers strike and pull the guitars determines the overtones. The micro-tonality and sonically nuances require performative precision and problematize inter-human dynamics and interaction.

Video by © Dominiek Claeys.