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. With special projects and commissions, performances, an intensive daytime programme and an outlook that continues to search the fringes of current music geographies, CTM 2017 will examine the unhinging and emancipatory potential of resonant (musical) emotion to recurrently question and challenge the status quo.

From 27 January – 5 February 2017, CTM 2017 Fear Anger Love returns to its constellation of exciting nightlife and cultural venues in Berlin, including HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berghain, Yaam, and Heimathafen Neukölln. Early Bird passes are now available until quantities last.

The CTM 2017 music programme will feature:

• Actress [UK]
• “Bight of the Twin," film by Hazel Hill McCarthy III [US]
• CTM x Set [IR] feat Sote with Arash Bolouri, Behrou Pashaei and Tarik Barri, Siavash Amini, 9T Antiope
• Enrique Tomás – “Embodied Gestures” [ES]
• Gazelle Twin – “Kingdome Come” [UK]
• Genesis Breyer P-Orridge with Aaron Dilloway [UK/US]
• Julian Bonequi – “The Death of the Anthropocene [MX]
• Monolake – “VLSI Surround” [DE]
• Moor Mother [US]
• NON Worldwide present "The Great Disappointment" [INT]: Ligia Lewis, Chino Amobi, nkisi, Angel Ho, Embaci, DJ Lady Lane, Justin F. Kennedy, Jonathan Gonzalez, Efraim Ashbel
• Princess Nokia [US]
• Rima Najdi with Kathy Alberici and Ana Nieves Moya – “Happy New Fear” [INT]
• Tanya Tagaq [CA]
• Thomas Ankersmit – “INFRA” [NL]
• Tommy Genesis [CA]
• Vomir [FR]

As well as the world premiere installation:

• “SOL” by Kurt Hentschläger [AT]

CTM enters the cavernous Halle am Berghain for the first time for the world premiere of Kurt Hentschläger’s "SOL," an installation that builds on loss of control, shifts in awareness and feelings of dislocation and timelessness.

And the CTM 2017 exhibition:

• "Critical Constellations of the Audio-Machine in Mexico" by Carlos Prieto Acevedo

The exhibition, titled "Critical Constellations of the Audio-Machine in Mexico," will be created in close collaboration with researcher and curator Carlos Prieto Acevedo [MX]. It traces the history and current state of electronic music and sound art in Mexico. It pays special attention to the interactions between sonic imaginaries and the nation’s collective struggles with survival, fragility and identity.

We are thrilled to present the legendary, transgressive counter-cultural icon Genesis Breyer P-Orridge for a concert and film screening celebrating her rich history as a radical in both music and identity/gender politics. P-Orridge will perform together with former Wolf Eyes member and adventurous solo noise artist Aaron Dilloway. Director Hazel Hill McCarthy III will also be present for the screening of “Bight of the Twin,” a film created together with Genesis that follows what became an emotional search for Lady Jaye Breyer, P-Orridge’s deceased life partner. During a journey to Benin to explore the origins of Vodoun (Voodoo), P-Orridge was “serendipitously initiated” into an ancient ritual known as the “twin fetish,” a practice that held the promise of reconnecting her with Breyer’s spirit.

The globally distributed collective NON Worldwide will appear with members: Chino Amobi, nkisi, Angel Ho, Embaci and DJ Lady Lane, Justin F. Kennedy, Jonathan Gonzalez, Efraim Ashbel and choreographer Ligia Lewis. NON achieved rapid success in its short two years of existence due to its multifaceted campaign of critique through genre bending musical explorations that twist and re-imagine pop culture and its derivatives. 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. Somewhere between variety show and spectacular abstraction, the vision of NON will meet the physical duress of Lewis’ powerful and energetic choreography in a hybrid live event co-produced with longtime CTM partner, HAU Hebbel am Ufer.

CTM will team up with the Tehran-based SET Festival to present works at the forefront of the Iranian experimental electronic music scene. In a new commission, Ata 'Sote' Ebtekar will collaborate with celebrated audiovisual composer Tarik Barri and performers Arash Bolouri and Behrouz Pashaei on a project merging electronics with traditional acoustic instruments for a "Persian techno apocalypse." Two additional acts, Siavash Amini and 9T Antiope, will likewise help to represent a nascent culture of sonic experimentation burgeoning in Tehran. This recent upsurge of creative activity is broadly a result of Iranian citizens’ ingenuity and resourcefulness in making the most of the piecemeal reform occurring over the past several years alongside internet-based research and grassroots artistic exertions. The programme is a collaboration with Goethe Institut, and contributes to the cultural programme complementing the exhibition "Die Teheran Sammlung" (The Tehran Collection), which will be presented at Gemäldegalerie Berlin from 04.12.2016 to 05.03.2017.

NYC-born individualist and trailblazer Princess Nokia fuses music styles of diverse diasporas and reaches out through fresh, brassy lyrics to fringe characters and category hybrids across the world: "banjee girls in Harlem, teen brides in the Middle East, gay boys in East Asia. Labels no longer matter." Another figure representing the increasing prominence of iconoclastic female artists in underground hip hop is Vancouver native Tommy Genesis. Signed to Father’s Awful Records for her 2015 debut LP, Genesis delights in weaving provocative lyrics around straightforward taste for sadomasochism and lusty memories, contrasting these with more contemplative, suggestive videos. A quietly rising voice catering to deep-web Soundcloud nerds around the globe, she drowns her lyrics in sleek rhythms reminiscent of Future or Young Thug.

Philadelphia Afrofuturist Moor Mother, who attests that "sci-fi is reality," will contribute the sonic activism she has described as "project-housing bop," "slaveship punk," and "witch rap." Her music is a vessel for addressing the history of struggle and loss and the necessity of rebellion and endurance in the American black community.

Tanya Tagaq is a Canadian Inuk throat singer from Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. Through guttural groans, colossal breathing, and deeply spiritualistic performances, she translates ancient vocal traditions into a postmodern language. She approaches politics as directly as she does sound, understanding art as a weapon with which to fight for women’s and indigenous rights. Her appearance will commemorate the October 2016 release of her album, Retribution.

Actress has always made it his business to expose the sensitive nerve endings of London rave culture. Years of experimentation and refinement have earned him a sound that lives and revels in the emotional haze between the strict grid lines of techno and 2-step.

Shape platform supported artist Thomas Ankersmit, who is devoted to music at its most intrusive and gargantuan, will present his new multi-layered composition, "Infra," at Berghain. The work explores the artistic, musical, and perceptual potential of infrasound, triggering strong emotional reactions from unease and angst to awe and even spiritual catharsis.

Radical prophet of anti-music Romain Perrot aka Vomir is known for his uncompromising "harsh noise walls." For him, static sound at the limits of listenability is an opportunity for both isolation and immersion, embodying an existential nihilism and the wish to withdraw from society at large.

Known for her restless, uneasy industrial pop, Gazelle Twin will return to CTM 2017 to present her latest work, "Kingdom Come." The audiovisual performance, created together with filmmakers Chris Turner and Tash Tung, is inspired by J.G. Ballard’s final novel of the same name and explores contemporary suburban consumerism, terrorism and the rise of the political far right across Europe.

Fast-forwarding into future sci-fi scenarios, Mexican artist Julian Bonequi’s commissioned work, "The Death of the Anthropocene," imagines a series of one-on-one encounters between ordinary people and mysterious visitors – mutants, composite human-robot-animals, aliens… – painting humorous yet grim pictures of the future of humanity. Bonequi is one of two winners of the CTM 2017 Radio Lab, which with broadcasters Deutschlandradio Kultur and ORF as well as the SoCCoS sound art network supports works that pair the artistic possibilities of radio with the reaches of live performance or installation. In "Happy New Fear," the second selected work, Rima Najdi aims to explore an environment of anxiety and control via a narrative built around Madame Bomba, a character first created in 2014 when Najdi wore a fake cartoon TNT bomb around her chest while roaming the streets of her hometown Beirut. For this project she will collaborate with musician Kathy Alberici (of Drum Eyes fame) and visual artist Ana Nieves Moya.

CTM alumnus Robert Henke, whose accomplishments both as a producer and an engineer have irreversibly shaped the international electronic music landscape, will showcase VLSI, his newest album as Monolake, in a special surround-sound Berghain appearance.

Another instrument builder, Enrique Tomás, will develop his "Embodied Gestures" work, commissioned via the ENCAC audiovisual network, to find out: "how can we encode our musical intentions within digital instruments?". Tomás considers musical sensibility, empathy and emotional intensity as triggers of creative processes and musical experience.

Supporting CTM’s vast musical scope, the daytime Transfer programme at the Kunstquartier Bethanien will tie together the Discourse series of workshops, talks, and screenings; the 5th edition of the MusicMakers Hacklab; the Research Networking Day created together with Humboldt University’s Chair of Transcultural Musicology; the installation "Sol" by Kurt Hentschlager (at Halle am Berghain); and the “Critical Constellations of the Audio-Machine in Mexico” exhibition.

Both the MusicMakers Hacklab and Research Networking Day have current open calls for participants, with a common application deadline of 30 November.

As always, CTM will be held parallel to and in collaboration with transmediale – festival for art and digital culture. Together, the two festivals constitute the world’s largest platform for reflection on new technologies and digital culture. 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 and transmediale will also present the pre-festival Vorspiel 2017 programme, which invites Berlin-based venues, initiatives, artists and collectives partners to develop programmes reflecting on CTM and transmediale festival themes. An open call for participants is out now with a deadline of 20 November.

Stay tuned for the second CTM 2017 announcement in November. The full CTM 2017 programme will be available in January 2017.