Welcome to the 17th Edition

CTM 2016 – New Geographies

Welcome to the 17th edition of CTM Festival! 

CTM 2016 – New Geographies examines today’s rapidly collapsing borders and emerging new topographies. Tensions between globalisation and physically bound cultural identities, online worlds that renege the ties of locality, blurring of traditional notions of gender and ethnicity, and intensifying feedback between natural and manmade are examined by the artists, special projects, commissioned works, lecturers and contributors to the festival’s programme. Concerts, performances, an exhibition, discourse programme and more aim to offer a musical framework and sonic entry point into these questions, and to provide the conceptual tools needed to approach this increasing hybridity with greater openness.

Here’s a programme overview to help you find your bearings during the 10-day journey. We look forward to welcoming you in Berlin!

CTM 2016 Trailer

CTM 2016 Theme

New Geographies

Our worlds seem more than ever to be undergoing rapid change and crisis. Conditions and parameters that were formerly firmly held or forced into place are shifting into one another and rendering self-contained identities and places into a thing of the past. All levels of society are witnessing the polarizing effects of increased interdependence and of a growing hybridity beyond comfortable categorizations. Many become encapsulated by fear of this unknown horizon while others hope for more openness, equality and opportunity. It is within this multiplying and sometimes disorienting landscape in flux, set into motion by an ever growing array of technologies and infrastructures and the age-old constants of conflict and inequality that CTM’s 2016 edition attempts to take a stand with its "New Geographies" theme.

Documentation

CTM 2016 Festival in Review

A selection of CTM 2016 reviews of that can be found on the internet, plus the festival in sound and image.

CTM 2016 Exhibition

Seismographic Sounds

CTM 2016 will host a special edition of the "Seismographic Sounds. Visions of a New World" exhibition, curated by Swiss-based Norient (Network for Local and Global Sounds and Media Culture), an innovative network exploring issues of globalization and digitization. The exhibition features polyphonic, shrill, quiet, playful and contradictory tracks, video clips, and sound collages from 250 contributors from over 50 countries, which counter pessimistic views that globalisation and digitalisation have led to cultural uniformity and the destruction of the world’s musical heritage.

I/O Explore: Drop-In Workshop with Ableton

Mentors from Ableton’s Sound Team will setup a three-day drop-in workshop in the Kunstquartier Bethanien's Projektraum, challenging music makers and tinkerers to explore new possibilities for interaction and interesting ways to extend music and performance. Open from Thursday 4.2. to Saturday 6.2., daily 12 - 18h, the workshop explores the Max for Live Connection Kit, a free toolkit currently under development for Ableton Live. Daily presentations will take place at 14h and 17h.

Listen to CTM 2016 Artists

CTM 2016 X RBMA Radio

RBMA Radio has pulled a great selection of recording from their archives, offering a taste of what to expect at CTM 2016.

Kinetic Audiovisual Installation and Performance

Deep Web

Deep Web is a monumental immersive audiovisual installation created by light artist Christopher Bauder and composer and musician Robert Henke. Sublimating the spectacular industrial architecture of Kraftwerk Berlin, Deep Web plunges the audience into a ballet of iridescent kinetic light and surround sound. The work will be presented daily within CTM 2016 Festival. It will close with the presentation of a special enhanced live performance version on Sunday 7 February.

CTM 2016 New Geographies Magazine

A 104 page publication that proposes multiple perspectives to CTM 2016's New Geographies theme. The CTM 2016 Magazine costs 5 € at the festival Infocounter.

CTM / transmediale Collaborative Concert

Still Be Here

Commissioned by CTM Festival and transmediale for their joint 2016 editions, Still Be Here is a unique collaborative performance that draws us into the multiplying realities of a 21st Century pop star, and traces the dynamics at play between fans, corporations and social desires. Following an idea by artist Mari Matsutoya, Still Be Here is collectively created with music producer Laurel Halo, award-winning choreographer and visual artist Darren Johnston, virtual artist LaTurbo Avedon and produced by digital artist Martin Sulzer.

Special Concert

An Evening with Abdel Karim Shaar

On invitation by guest curator Rabih Beaini, legendary Lebanese singer Abdel Karim Shaar appears in an especially memorable evening. Like the masterful Umm Kulthum, a legendary Egyptian songwriter, singer, and actress, Shaar is closely linked to the traditional concept of tarab, which describes music’s evocation of emotional catharsis. On February 1st, the antique ballroom Heimathafen Neukölln will host a special variété concert in the style of one of Shaar’s classic performances at Beirut's Metro Al-Madina theatre. The singer will be accompanied by his band of oud, qanon, violin and riq players.

Festival for Art and Digital Culture

transmediale 2016 – Conversation Piece

From 3 to 7 February CTM's sister festival, transmediale, reboots itself with a new performative and participatory format for its 29th edition. With the Conversation Piece title, the event creates an intensive space of exchanges, murmurs, and transitions, with dialogues initiated before the event and continued afterwards.

Taking place at the iconic House of World Cultures, a dense programme of conferences, screenings, workshops and performances – some of which presented in collaboration with CTM – invite visitors for critical debate and exchange.

CTM x Red Bull Music Academy Closing Concert & Afterparty

Whatever is After

For the second year in a row, CTM joins forces with Red Bull Music Academy for the presentation of the 17th edition’s grand finale. Together the two partners have assembled an exciting roster, including: Floating Points [UK] – Live, Pole & MFO [DE], Ah! Kosmos [TR], and Rabih Beaini [LB], Love Cult [RU], Nan Kolè [IT], DJ Lakhe [ZA]

Open Collaborative Laboratory

MusicMakers Hacklab

MusicMakers Hacklab is a weeklong open, collaborative laboratory hosted by Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music and noise artist and instrument builder Ewa Justka. It allows practitioners from a range of disciplines to find new ways of exploring cross-cultural hybrids that imagine future topographies of sound and music performance.

Interested artists and developers from various disciplines are encouraged to submit music project ideas until December 11 to become Hacklab Fellows, learning and collaborating with master artist/technologists.

Sound Heterogeneous Art and Performance in Europe

SHAPE X CTM 2016

A 3-year initiative co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, the SHAPE project reunites 16 European non-profit organisations active within the ICAS – International Cities of Advanced Sound network to create a platform that aims to support, promote, and exchange innovative and aspiring emergent musicians and interdisciplinary artists with an interest in sound. Several supported artists and educational / networking initiatives appear at CTM 2016.

CTM and transmediale city-wide partner programme

Vorspiel 2016

Now in its fourth year, Vorspiel takes place as a city-wide programme where over 30 Berlin-based initiatives and venues invite the public to a series of exhibition openings, performances, interventions, artist talks, and special events. Connecting a wide array of cultural institutions, independent spaces, and art venues, Vorspiel 2016 highlights the diversity of Berlin’s lively and multifaceted cultural life. Vorspiel opens January 15 and runs until the end of CTM and transmediale.

Connecting Radio Art & Performance

CTM 2016 Radio Lab

Returning for a third edition, the CTM 2016 Radio Lab is dedicated to exploring the pairing of the specific artistic possibilities of radio with the potentials of live performance or installation. The Lab programme will present projects by Deena Abdelwahed and Marija Bozinovska Jones w JG Biberkopf. Projects are commissioned by Deutschlandradio Kultur – Hörspiel/Klangkunst and CTM Festival, in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, the SoCCoS – the Sound of Culture, the Culture of Sound initiative, Ö1 Kunstradio, and ORF musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst.

Installation

Force Field

Working at the interface of art and science for over a decade, Amsterdam-based Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand develop "Force Field," an installation-in-progress, together with computational artist Paul Prudence, acoustic physicist Alexander Miltsen, and the Hydrodynamics Laboratory of the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. Developed during a two-week residency prior to CTM 2016, the work will be on show as an installation during the festival.

Benefit Event with Pauline Oliveros & Ione

Listening for Peace

On Saturday, 6.2 at HAU1, after Pauline Oliveros’s initiative, she and her partner and collaborator Ione offer a benefit event dedicated to the philosophy and practice of "Deep Listening". All proceeds will be donated to the emergency refugee shelter at the Turnhalle of the Hector-Peterson-Schule, which neighbors the HAU3 in Kreuzberg.

Live from Berlin

NTS Radio X CTM 2016

CTM will collaborate with Dalston's NTS Radio to provide a live radio broadcast that extends the reaches of the festival's tentacles by giving CTM artists the chance to elaborate on their live sets in an informal context.