To present her exciting new album Platform, CTM and transmediale – festival for art & digital culture have asked Holly Herndon to invite a range of artists who either contributed to the album or, in a likemined way, explore themes of surveillance states, neo-feudalism and big data, actively critiquing and searching for ways to circumvent systemic inequality and to anticipate new ways to live in a post-post-capitalist world.

Blending the worlds of contemporary and electronic club music, San Francisco-based Holly Herndon appears in support of her upcoming second full length, Platform, out May 19 on RVNG INTL / 4AD. Sampling the domestic and digital environments of her daily life, Herndon challenges the dystopic potential of a surveillance state and the specter of a monoculture by launching an appeal for discussion and progress within dance music’s conversation, towards new ways to share and transmediate our individual and collective experiences.

To achieve Platform, Herndon has opened up her process to vital artists and thinkers from her creative circle,to underscores the need for new fantasies and strategic collective action. Among the collaborators are composer and drag performer Colin Self, contemporary artist Spencer Longo, rogue production outfit Amnesia Scanner, Ensemble Dal Niente’s soprano voice Amanda DeBoer Bartlett, Berlin Community Radio’s ASMR ambassador Claire Tolan, and radical Dutch design studio Metahaven. Influence of long-time collaborator and digital-DIY artist Mat Dryhurst is also echoed throughout.

The night begins with an ASMR session by Claire Tolan, a Berlin-based artist and programmer who focuses exploring human-computer interaction, online communities (intimacy, privacy), and information structures and theory. Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is a phenomenon defined as a pleasurable “tingling” sensation in the scalp and spine provoked by soft sounds such as whispering and hair brushing. The sounds are produced in video role plays and circulated mostly via YouTube videos that mimic everyday situations of closeness. Linking the intimacy of ASMR roleplays to the intrusive intimacy of mass surveillance, Tolan’s recent work investigates the phenomenon as something that goes beyond an idiosyncratic method to sooth and relax, leading towards a community that seeks remedies for chronic societal psychic distress fuelled by the conditions of liquid modernity and the mass surveillance apparatus that sprawls through its core.

Janus-championed producer and Berlin Current participants Amnesia Scanner will be presenting a special live version of their audioplay, titled "AS ANGELS RIG HOOK", which pushes the act’s surreal alien music into a “blend of stream-of-consciousness spoken word, hi-tech club textures and futuristic sound effects.” (FACT magazine). Accompanied by a non-narrative text that strays from Blade Runner to ASMR to hacker culture, this utopian/dystopian post/human soundworld is slated to be Amnesia Scanner’s next official release, after 2014’s killer AS LIVE [][][] [][] mixtape.

Finally, vocalist, digital songwriter, producer, performer, poet AGF, aka Antye Greie-Ripatti, aka poemproducer known for her artistic exploration of dibgital technology through the deconstruction of language and communication. She converts her writings into electronic music and digital media often instrumentalising the human voice with heavy digital processing. For Polymorphism AGF will revisit some of her most know work as well as introduce new from her recent poetry edition A Deep Mysterious Tone as well as unheard work-in-progress pieces from her upcoming solo record A Secret Code From the Future.

Her collaborative projects include German electronic duo Laub, The Lappetites, AGF/DELAY (with Vladislav Delay), and she has also worked with Craig Armstrong, Ellen Allien, gudrun Gut, Eliane Radigue among others.

Presented in collaboration with Berghain and transmediale – festival for art & digital culture.

Berlin Current is a collaborative initiative from CTM Festival, Berghain, Boiler Room Berlin, BLN.FM, No Fear of Pop, and ICAS. Sponsored by the Musicboard Berlin.