Out of Nothing, A Sonic Frontier: Ex Nihilo and the Midwestern Edge

From September 11–13, Omaha starts behaving like a sonic frontier. Festival Ex Nihilo 2025—organized by Soundarte.net and Soundry—braids Mexico and the Midwest into a three-day conduit for experimental sound, film, and collective attention. The name is a declaration: from nothing (ex nihilo).

Architecture as Instrument

Joslyn Castle & Gardens becomes a chamber for video art, experimental film, and ensemble performance—old stone hosting new signal.
The Church Art House turns liturgy into decibels: noise, electronic improvisation, and vocal experiment as a kind of rite.
Benson Theatre closes the festival with a saturated electroacoustic night—modular, ambient, folktrónica—pulling the Benson Creative District into focus.

Thursday: Syncing with Bemis

The festival’s Thursday program is timed so people can glide straight from Ex Nihilo’s opener to Bemis Center’s evening agenda: a Curator-Led Tour at 7:00–8:00 pm, followed by Live @ LOW END at 8:00–9:30 pm with Ganavya—a crystalline bit of programming adjacency that lets the city breathe as one long corridor of sound.

Lineup: A Living Map (Mexico ↔ Midwest)

This year’s roster sketches a restless atlas of practices: Jen McEvoy, Rosa Nelson, Cadena Nacional, Everardo Felipe, Dylan Barry, Smith & Jessen, Mighty Vitamins, Cast Off Form, PMN904, GMT, Sucks Teeth, Steve Urbauer, Spidercat, Alex Jacobsen, Wesley Groves, Stacey Barelos, Folktrónica Experimental Ensemble (with Connor Luedtke), Matthew Ryals, Static Soul & Benjamin Gear X.

Two through-lines anchor that list:

NoiseFest → Ex Nihilo: Many of these artists—Smith & Jessen, Cast Off Form, GMT, and collaborators—are pillars of Omaha’s No Coast Noise scene and prior NoiseFest editions at Project Project; there’s no NoiseFest this year, but the circuitry persists inside Ex Nihilo.
Under the Radar → Now: Alex Jacobsen and Dr. Stacey Barelos helped shape the city’s experimental DNA through Omaha Under the Radar; this week, Jacobsen performs and Barelos both performs and teaches—evidence that Omaha’s avant-gardes are cumulative.

Saturday Workshop: Soundry

On Saturday, Sept 13 at noon inside Petshop Gallery (Benson Creative District), Dr. Stacey Barelos leads The Soundry Institute Workshop—a hands-on session treating sound as material and method, blending listening, visual composition, and performance. Barelos’s Soundry lineage—long grown in Omaha—makes the workshop an anchor for public access.

Binational Continuum

Ex Nihilo was born in Guanajuato, Mexico, and its April edition set this week’s Omaha currents in motion. The binational loop—artists, methods, and audiences moving in both directions—turns the festival into an engine for shared vocabulary rather than a one-off spectacle.

Radical Accessibility

The festival emphasizes multi-channel entry points—live performance, streaming, workshops—and pay-what-you-want access pathways that match the experimental ethos with equitable practice.

Week-at-a-Glance (so you don’t miss the thread)

THU Sep 11 — We start and Noon with Visual Art (Jen McEvoy) then the Opening Night (Carriage House → Bemis flow)
Films + experimental sets at Joslyn Castle’s Carriage House, then head to Bemis for a Curator-Led Tour (7–8 pm) and LOW END: Ganavya (8–9:30 pm).
FRI Sep 12 — Electroacoustic Depth
The Church Art House hosts electroacoustic works; elsewhere, Ex Nihilo programming continues with experimental performance.
SAT Sep 13 — Workshop + Finale + Two After-Currents
12:00 pm — Soundry Institute Workshop with Dr. Stacey Barelos at Petshop (Benson).
Evening — Benson Theatre closes the festival with modular/ambient/folktrónica.
After-party — Shakedown: heavy electronics before midnight (21+).
Benson Rave at Petshop ( EDM driven night, 21+).
SUN Sept 14 — Project Project (1818 Vinton), this showcase keeps the momentum alive with touring acts Butt Mommy, Professor A, and Melon Sprout, joined by local support from Susannah Couture and PMN904. True to Omaha’s experimental ethos, the evening is pay-what-you-can, making space for anyone to step into the current of raw, uncompromising sound.

The sonic wave doesn’t stop when Ex Nihilo ends.

Why Omaha, Why the Midwest, Why Now

If you trace Omaha’s last decade, a pattern emerges: institutional platforms like Bemis and its LOW END program have normalized free concerts, serious sound art, and a long-view commitment to the medium—while DIY formations (Omaha Under the Radar, No Coast Noise/NoiseFest, Project Project, Petshop Gallery and other artist-run spaces) have kept the ground nimble, and brave. That is the engine.

Ex Nihilo 2025 doesn’t arrive to replace any of that. It arrives to connect it—to make the week feel like one continuous piece of music moving through multiple bodies, rooms, and neighborhoods. Out of nothing? Hardly. Out of history, coordination, and the stubborn Midwest habit of building culture by hand.