Spider Network survives on structure in order to set up events, still all kinds of imaginations are welcome to enter the web: “You just have to show initiative and the framework.” That open invite is vital in the context of Reykjavík's experimental scene, venue closures are a frequent restriction. “It’s just as bad as it’s ever been, and not showing signs of getting better, but we’ve learned to cope with it better,” Ronja speaks on the situation. Spider Network’s efforts have given way to transformation opportunities in the final days of a departing venue.
Spaces elsewhere have struggled with a growing problem in noise complaints, be it a resident or tourist in a luxury apartment or hotel, despite cases when sound was, evidently, not escaping buildings. At 2025’s FALCONFEST with activist collective No Borders, Spider Network’s 12-hour noise fundraiser for refugees and immigrants in Iceland received a noise complaint from a nearby resident. After spending hours of work setting up a huge outdoor stage, they were forced to move everything indoors.
“We had just finished setting up these huge speakers, which Konrad [Groen] almost died pulling up,” says organiser and co-founder Jökull Máni Reynisson. “So we're like, ‘You know what? Fuck it. We can make the best of it.’ We pulled the huge speakers back down again, and we set up just the absolute loudest and biggest possible thing we could inside. We turned the bad situation into a good one."
Stories of closures and noise complaints, though talk of the town, are only more reason for Spider Network to “make more noise, be louder, more visible, more experimental, and take our space,” in Mik’s opinion. “I think the most fitting thing is like, yeah, do a noise festival,” Ronja says. Each member wears their politics on their sleeve, with Vasileva clarifying a conscious resistance to the male-dominated reputation of noise music. “We try to keep the ratio of women artists equal or greater to that of male artists. Or non-binary. Just not cis male white dudes playing boring noise.”