Serge Verstockt

Belgian composer and artistic director. Born on 1957-02-28 in Brasschaat, Belgium. Founded ChampdAction in 1988, which is housed in De Singel in Antwerp, where he lives.

Both his parents were visual artists. His father Mark was known as a pioneer in a contemporary form of contructivism. Serge received his first music lessons on the organ, later the piano. He attended the Brussels Conservatory, where he studied solphege and sound engineering, and image and sound editing at the RITS (National institute for the dissemination of theatre and culture). At the age of 18, he also took on the clarinet at the Royal Music Conservatory in Antwerp with artist 926838. Through Joris Delaet’s SEM (Studio for Experimental Music), he came into contact with techniques of electronic sound manipulation. From 1983 to 1985 he studied at the Instituut Voor Sonologie in Utrecht with artist 144051. In 1985 he organised the Antwerp Electronic Music Days and taught at the conservatory in Arnhem.

Verstockt has also been active as a performer, including concerts with the artist 4274121. In the early 1980s there was a lack of professional ensembles interested in performing contemporary music in Belgium. In order to try to meet this demand, he set up the ensemble artist 196569 in 1988. In 1997, he resigned officially as artistic director, although an intensive collaboration has continued on the artistic level. He has received composition commissions from the Antwerpen Stad Aan De Stroom project, IPEM, De Singel, Antwerp 93 and November Music. From 1997 to 1999, Verstockt was junior fellow of the KBC Chair for New Music in the department of musicology at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

Serge Verstockt is an exponent of modernism, but also of postmodernism since he has worked with human beatboxers, heavy metal grunters and other musical improvisers or noisemakers. Starting out, he believed new technologies would lead to new ways of expression, systematically exploring how to make art with computers and electronics - a modernist approach.