Documentation

CTM 2017 Festival in Review

A selection of CTM 2017 reviews of that can be found online, plus the festival in sound and image.

CTM 2017 Theme

Fear Anger Love

A major aim of the CTM Festival since its inception has been to make space for radical forms of musical expression and dissonant emotions. Under the title FEAR ANGER LOVE, CTM 2017 will focus explicitly on such emotions found in or through music and will examine the diverse strategies that are applied to unleash or harness them. Read more about the 2017 theme.

Exploring the Past and Present of Experimental Music and Sound Art in Mexico

Mexico Focus

Two compelling evenings at HAU Hebbel am Ufer (HAU2) as well as performances at Berghain and Radialsystem will extend a festival-wide focus on Mexico anchored by the CTM 2017 exhibition "Critical Constellations of the Audio-Machine in Mexico," which examines the history and current status of sound art and electronic music in the country.

Installation

SOL

Immerse yourself in a splendid void. With his new installation, "SOL", Kurt Hentschläger creates a radically minimalistic environment by attempting to recalibrate visitors’ senses, leading them into the far reaches of their perception along subjective and objective realities. The installation builds on loss of control, shifts in awareness and a feeling of dislocation and timelessness. The world premiere of "SOL" will be presented in the cavernous Halle am Berghain during CTM 2017.

Festival for Art and Digital Culture

transmediale 2017 – ever elusive

transmediale will celebrate its 30th anniversary with an entire month of activities at Haus der Kulturen der Welt and other venues, starting 2 February until 5 March 2017. Their ever elusive theme refers both to the elusiveness of media cultures in constant transition and to transmediale itself, as a project that is constantly shifting ground. In searching for where agency and power lie in today’s media systems, transmediale’s 30th edition offers a nuanced outlook on the nonhuman and its role as an influential motor of change. 

CTM 2017 Exhibition

Critical Constellations of the Audio-Machine in Mexico

This year’s exhibition takes as its focus the history and current state of electronic music and sound art in Mexico, guiding visitors through the various different musical styles and sound experiments that have emerged in the country since the beginning of the 20th century.

Curated by sound researcher Carlos Prieto Acevedo, a number of active members in the Mexican sound art community have contributed pieces specifically for this exhibition, including Ariel Guzik, Angélica Castelló, Guillermo Galindo, Roberto Morales, Verónica Gerber, Mario de Vega and Carlos Sandoval. Talks and performances featuring Mexican music from the last 20 years as well as reworks and reconstructions of pieces from the beginnings of experimental music in Mexico link the exhibition to a larger international context.

CTM 2017 – Final Music Programme Additions

CTM 2017 presents Elysia Crampton and King Britt at the new Festsaal Kreuzberg. Other final confirmations include DJ Stingray, DJ Luki and Kassen and DEBONAIR at Berghain, Traxman and Sky H1 filling out Prince Charles, and Dragoș Rusu, İpek İpekçioğlu, Shins-K and Bass Gang at YAAM. Stay tuned for details of our daytime programme coming later this month!

The CTM 2017 Finale

CTM 2017 x RBMA

CTM joins forces with Red Bull Music Academy to close its 18th edition on sonically divergent notes. For a third year in a row, the two partners have collaboratively assembled two back-to-back events with artists such as The Bug vs Dylan Carlson of Earth, Mike Q with Berlin Vogueing Out, Nils Bech, Toxe, Marie Davidson & more. Talks, masterclasses and RBMA sessions are also announced.

2nd Programme Announcement

CTM 2017 – Second Wave of Confirmed Artists & Projects

Following our first festival announcement in October, we are pleased to release the second wave of artists and projects confirmed for CTM 2017 FEAR ANGER LOVE. Through 10 days of special projects, commissioned works, performances ranging from extreme noise explorations to contemporary club sounds and an intensive daytime programme, this 18th edition continues CTM Festival’s ongoing intent to make space for radical forms of musical expression and dissonant emotion.

CTM's 18th edition will take place 27 January – 5 February 2017.

1st Programme Announcement

CTM 2017 – First Wave of Confirmed Artists & Projects

CTM 2017 will examine the unhinging and emancipatory potential of resonant (musical) emotion to recurrently question and challenge the status quo. The first programme announcement highlights a large number of commissioned works and premieres, performances, an intensive daytime programme, and an outlook that continues to search the fringes of current music geographies. Complementing the CTM 2017 exhibition "Critical Constellations of the Audio Machine in Mexico" by Carlos Prieto Acevedo and the installation "SOL" by Kurt Hentschläger are performances and works by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Tanya Tagaq, NON Worldwide, Princess Nokia, Actress, Moor Mother, Tommy Genesis & more.

CTM's 18th edition takes place from 27 January until 5 February 2017 at various venues in Berlin.

Sound Heterogeneous Art and Performance in Europe

SHAPE X CTM 2017

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 2017.

Listen to CTM 2017 Artists

CTM 2017 X RBMA Radio

RBMA Radio has pulled a great selection of shows from their archives, offering a taste of what to expect at CTM 2017.

Live from Berlin

Berlin Community Radio x CTM

CTM will collaborate with BCR – Berlin Community 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.

Special Collaboration Project

NON Worldwide

The globally distributed collective NON Worldwide will appear with five of its members: Chino Amobi, Nkisi, Angel Ho, Embaci and DJ Lady Lane, for a performance event created together with choreographer Ligia Lewis. Comprised of artists and producers from Africa and the African diaspora, NON and its collaborators are committed to fucking with the powers that be through sound and live performance.

World Premiere

Thomas Ankersmit "Infra"

Dutch composer/performer Thomas Ankersmit will return to CTM to present his new multi-layered composition "Infra." The work, which employs both a computer and modular synthesizer explores the artistic, musical, and perceptual potential of infrasound, which is the pitch/frequency region around and below the lower threshold of the human hearing range.

Special Guest

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge

As a member of seminal band Throbbing Gristle, the legendary, transgressive counter-cultural icon Genesis Breyer P-Orridge infused the nascent industrial genre with shock tactics, performance art and subversive, hybrid aesthetics. Together with bands / "fellowships" Psychic TV and Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, she also experimented with magick, occultism and religious cultism. Genesis will perform at CTM 2017 with Aaron Dilloway (Wolf Eyes), as well as be present for a screening of "Bight of the Twin" by Hazel Hill McCarthy III.

Iranian artist showcase

CTM x SET Festival

CTM 2017 will team up with the Tehran-based SET Festival for experimental art to present works at the forefront of the Iranian capital’s electronic music scene. Next to Siavash Amini, and 9T Antiope, Sote will premiere a new piece developed in collaboration with instrumentalists Arash Bolouri and Behrouz Pashaei, and with video artist Tarik Barri.

Open Collaborative Laboratory

MusicMakers Hacklab

MusicMakers Hacklab is a weeklong open, collaborative laboratory hosted by Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music and invited artist/researcher Byrke Lou. 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.

Connecting Radio Art & Performance

CTM 2017 Radio Lab

Returning for a fourth edition, the CTM 2017 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 Rima Najdi with Kathy Alberici and Ana Nieves Moya, and Julian Bonequi. Projects are commissioned by Deutschlandradio Kultur – Hörspiel/Klangkunst and CTM Festival, in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, Ö1 Kunstradio and ORF musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst, the SoCCoS – the Sound of Culture, the Culture of Sound initiative. Media partner: The Wire.

Research Networking Day

The Research Networking Day (RND) is a yearly CTM Festival initiative co-organised by Humboldt University’s Department of Musicology. RND provides a platform to exchange ideas and experiences for students and researchers from different European graduate and postgraduate programmes traversing the fields of audio, arts, media, design and related theoretical disciplines. The presentation programme will be published before the holidays.

Installation

Primitives

"Primitives" is a video installation by Alan Warburton on display during the festival week. It explores the intersection of entertainment and science using cutting-edge CGI "crowd simulation" software. This technology is normally used in Hollywood blockbuster films to fill out cities, stadiums and battlefields and also by researchers, architects, scientists and engineers working in crisis mapping, city planning and events management. His AV project explores this simulation software to "liberate the digital crowd" and allow it to live and explore more experimental parameters.

CTM & transmediale collaborative performance

Amnesia Scanner & Bill Kouligas present Lexachast

Lexachast, a collaboration between PAN label founder Bill Kouligas, futuristic sound design duo Amnesia Scanner and Dutch designer Harm van den Dorpel, will appear two evenings in a row for the CTM/transmediale collaborative performances at Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

Citywide Pre-festival Programme

Vorspiel 2017

Now in its fifth year, the city-wide Vorspiel programme unites over 30 Berlin-based initiatives and venues in a programme featuring exhibition openings, performances, interventions, artist talks, and special events.