Anchored by the CTM 2017 Exhibition “Critical Constellations of the Audio-Machine in Mexico” that examines the history and current status of sound art and electronic music in Mexico, CTM Festival’s Mexico focus is expanded with divergent voices in the music programme.

Planned in collaboration with exhibition curator Carlos Prieto Acevedo, the second of two nights at HAU2 belongs to Liminar, Mexico’s foremost ensemble for contemporary music, which will premiere a new work by Mexican composer Carlos Sandoval. "Mexican National Anthem (As I Recall it from my Childhood)" will fuse the sounds and images from Sandoval`s own video work with a score performed by Liminar and a solo soprano. Ensemble member and guitarist José Manuel Alcántara will perform solo, highlighting a series of electroacoustic compositions by early Mexican experimenters. Alexander Bruck will perform a piece for viola and tape by composer Manuel Enríquez. It’ is the first performance of the piece since the composer'’s death in 1994 – the tape was long buried in Enríquez's archive and only recently became accessible through the Fonoteca Nacional de México. Transforming a piece by Mexican composer Conlon Nancarrow, mezzo soprano Loré Lixenberg will create a multichannel vocal tour de force from an original written for mechanical pianola.

Liminar will also appear in a special partner programme at Radialsystem in the first of four evenings conceptualised and produced by Ensemble KNM Berlin. The series, titled Die Welt nach Tiepolo, presents the four parts of Hughes Dufourt’s epochal "d’après Tiepolo" composition cycle, beginning with the "L’Amerique d’après Tiepolo" movement. Included in the first event are works by American composers Julián Carillo, Juan Felipe Waller and James Tenney.

CTM 2017’s Mexico focus is supported by the FONCA (National Fund for the Arts and Culture, Mexico), AMEXCID (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mexico / Dual year Mexico-Germany program), Fundación Cultural Bancomer, and the Embassy of Mexico in Berlin.