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SatTo close the 2020 edition of CTM’s ongoing Rethinking Music Ecosystems series, the festival brings together eight projects with clear aims and values to briefly discuss their approaches in 8 minutes. Cashmere Radio, Circadian Rhythms, Empower Festival, mina/suspension, Nyege Nyege, Plus1, Wonderfruit, and Xeno Entities Network outline how they understand their roles as part of wider cultural ecosystems.
While the goals and trajectories of these projects differ, they all share a commitment to not thinking of themselves as individual, self-serving agents, but instead as collectives undertaking worthwhile work. Whether focusing on sustainability, collectivity, inclusivity, or other issues, the 8x8 participants challenge our shared culture, pushing it in crucial directions. The audience is welcome to share questions and thoughts at a Q&A session following the discussions.
Luke Dubuis is an artist and co-founder of of Circadian Rhythms—an NTS radio show, multidisciplinary label, and co-op. Their conceptual release formats challenge the conventions of how music can be obtained and consumed in a mostly saturated digital age.
Lukas Grundmann works with sound in installations, performances, and compositions. As one of the co-organisers of Cashmere Radio, he produces broadcasts on experimental and generative music. He teaches on the Master's program Sound Studies and Sonic Arts at the University of the Arts in Berlin.
Lou Drago is an artist, curator, writer, and radio producer/ DJ working in the field of queer, feminist and gender theories. Drago is a founding member of collective XenoEntities Network in Berlin, a collective who focuses their research on queer, gender, and feminist studies and their interactions with digital and technological cultures.
Daniela Seitz is a researcher, author, and DJ who makes things happen. As co-founder of Creamcake—an experimental platform dedicated to exploring the impact of the internet on music at the intersection of art and technology—Seitz creates new spaces for action and reflection. These include political event series Europool, and experimental conference, and annual “new hybrid” festival 3hd.
Pedro Marum is an artist, curator, and DJ based in Berlin. In his practice he explores the relationship between digital technologies and gender, queer, and feminist politics, focusing in particular on cybernetics, surveillance and capture technologies, and club culture.
Severin Most is the general manager at the independent label City Slang and one of the founding members of PLUS 1 initiative, which offers the Berlin club and music scene a way to show solidarity with refugees and to provide them with material support.
Sanni Est is a multidisciplinary artist and community organiser with roots in Brazil. Her experience in African-Brazilian drumming, dance groups, and later a frequent raver in Berlin mean that as an artist, her work merges different musical influences to create her own realm of soft darkness and rough joy through stark vocals and experimental music production.
Guillaume de Maquillé aka Gee is the Music Program Manager of Thailand's Wonderfruit Festival. He is the head of booking and he supervises the artist management and coordination.
Derek Debru co-organizes MTN Nyege Nyege Festival, "a twisted gathering where 4,000 gays come and practice open sex and evil rituals in a lush green forest," as described by an informed critic, though the organizers themselves tend to consider it to be a transformational festival.