The 4th edition of SET, Tehran’s annual experimental music festival, is dedicated entirely to artistic dialogue with Berlin. The 5-day SET X CTM event takes place 26-30 July 2018 in Tehran, and has been conceived and organized in close collaboration with CTM.

The collaboration between SET and CTM started in 2016, when support from Goethe-Institut enabled the two partners to commission Sacred Horror in Design, a pioneering collaboration between Tehran-based artist Sote, and Berlin-based artist and Thom Yorke/Nicolas Jaar collaborator Tarik Barri, which subsequently led to the first showcase of Iranian electronic music at CTM 2017 in Berlin.

With SET X CTM, the two festivals intensify their efforts to foster cultural dialogue and to strengthen the growing network between Tehran and Berlin. Co-funded by the Goethe-Institut’s International Coproduction Fund, the festival will see the premiere of two new commissions that bring together artists from the two cities alongside a range of performances from Berlin-based and Iranian artists.

SET Experimental Art Events is an artist-run festival founded in 2015 with a specific focus on experimental music and audio/visual performance. The festival’s main emphasis is on styles of music or visuals which cannot be contained by mainstream culture’s established boundaries. SET aims to bring together individuals who, up until recent years, have found themselves out of place in the dominant music and arts canon. The festival allows them to congregate in a DIY and collective atmosphere that can help bring their ideas to fruition. In the long run, SET hopes to contribute in building a solid network of experimental artists and audiences that will act as backbone for an ever-expanding scene in Tehran.

By bringing together established and emerging experimental artists from Iran and Europe, SET aims to increase dialogue between not-so-distant cultures. These efforts contribute to the development of a more inclusive worldwide scene, and encourage the sharing and exchange of artistic practices and ideas.

DAY 3 Programme

Concert | Independent Theatre of Tehran
Rojin Sharafi
Rabih Beaini + Pouya Pouramin Ensemble (premiere, commissioned work)

Rojin Sharafi is a sound artist and composer of acoustic, electro-acoustic and electronic music based in Vienna. Her music blurs genre by borrowing elements from different epochs and styles such as noise, folk, ambient, metal, and contemporary music. Fusion textures, narrative layers, and formalistic approaches are her musical trademarks. Sharif focuses on cinema, theatre and music studies in order to make interdisciplinary dialogues between music and different mediums. She has been working on different multimedia art projects and has been collaborating with different musicians, ensembles, filmmakers, video-artists and performers like Black Page Orchestra, Ensemble Platypus, and Ensemble Phoenix Basel.
 
Lebanese-born producer and DJ Rabih Beaini has drawn multiple threads between raw, elementary electronica, outernational currents, improvisational jazz, and forward-thinking techno through both his own productions and the myriad artists he tirelessly supports via his Morphine label. In one of SETxCTM’s commissioned works, Beaini has teamed up with Iranian composer, multi-instrumentalist, and actor Pouya Pour-Amin. Pour-Amin has been involved with different music scenes during the past decade, working with Tehran`s Camerata contemporary music ensemble both as a double-bass player and a composer, or playing with his band Migrain, who have two releases on Spanish label Oido Records. He has released his own solo music, and composed music for theater, film and TB, most importantly the play “Timeloss” which toured Europe recently. His composition “Garden of Earthly Delights” accompanied the namesake painting by Bosch during its exhibition in Bruges last year.             

Workshop | Emkan Gallery
Robert Henke

Robert Henke talks about his work, and explains in detail some of his strategies, concepts, and working methods, both from a technical as well as from an artistic perspective. Depending on audience interest, this can be more focused on music, on his audiovisual concert works or on his installations.

The workshop is split into two sections; the first part providing an overview over the artists work, with audiovisual examples, the second part depends on audience interest and will be more of an open discussion.

This workshop is limited to 20 participants. Registration is required and is available on a first-come-first-served basis. Registration information is available via the SET Festival website.