Ctm 2017 Fear Anger Love

PRESS RELEASE 2 November 2016

CTM 2017 FEAR ANGER LOVE

FESTIVAL FOR ADVENTUROUS MUSIC & ART, BERLIN 18th EDITION, 27 JANUARY – 5 FEBRUARY 2017

FIRST ACTS AND PROJECTS ANNOUNCED

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, as well to 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 returns to its constellation of exciting nightlife and cultural venues in Berlin, including HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berghain, Yaam, and Heimathafen Neukölln. CTM also enters the cavernous Halle am Berghain for the first time, for the world premiere of Kurt Hentschläger’s “Sol”, an installation that celebrates loss of control, shifts in perception and a feeling of dislocation and timelessness. The exhibition, titled “Critical Constellations of the Audio-Machine in Mexico” is created in close collaboration with researcher and curator Carlos Prieto Acevedo. 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. The MusicMakers Hacklab, created with Peter Kirn (CDM) is back for a 5th edition this year with the “Emotional Invention” theme. An open call for participants is now out. We are also looking for junior researchers/students and emerging artists working in sound and related fields, that wish to share their ideas and findings at the Research Networking Day. Stay tuned for the second CTM 2017 announcement in late November. The full CTM 2017 programme will be available in January 2017. › www.ctm-festival.de

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FIRST PROGRAMME ANNOUNCEMENT

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 P. Orridge with Aaron Dilloway [UK/US] / Julian Bonequi – “The Death of the Anthropocene [MX] / Monolake – “VLSI Surround” [DE] / NON Worldwide [INT] in collaboration with Ligia Lewis, feat. Chino Amobi, Nkisi, Angel Ho, Dedekind Cut, Embaci, DJ Lady Lane / Moor Mother [US] / 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] The world premiere of the installation “SOL” by Kurt Hentschläger [AT] Supported by CTM’s exhibition Critical Constellations of the Audio-Machine in Mexico by Carlos Prieto Acevedo [MX].

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 six of its members: Chino Amobi, Nkisi, Angel Ho, Dedekind Cut, Embaci and DJ Lady Lane, for a performance event created together with 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.

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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’s capable of resurrecting memories of Cannibal Ox or early M.I.A. while drowning them in sleek rhythms worthy 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, is similarly 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.

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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 be developing his “Embodied Gestures” work commissioned via the ENCAC audiovisual network to find “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, and the “Critical Constellations of the Audio-Machine in Mexico” exhibition. 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.

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OPEN CALL – MUSICMAKERS HACKLAB 2017 “EMOTIONAL INVENTION”

MusicMakers Hacklab is a weeklong open collaborative laboratory hosted by Peter Kirn (createdigitalmusic.com) and artist/researcher Byrke Lou. The lab allows practitioners from a range of disciplines to engage in producing cross-cultural hybrids that imagine what future topographies of sound and music performance might be. Now entering its 5th edition within the CTM Festival, the Hacklab takes on the theme of“Emotional Invention,” asking: what can we say about our relationship with technological tools and objects beyond the rational? The phrase "expression" is commonly associated with musical technology, but what is being expressed, and how? In the 2017 Hacklab, participants will explore the irrational and non- rational, the sense of mind as more than simply computer, delving into the deeper frontiers of our own human wetware. Following an open call for artists/performers, scientists, and experimenters, the selected Hacklab participants will collaborate for a few days to build new systems and instruments that refer to the “Emotional Invention” theme and then play these systems and instruments live in a public showcase at the conclusion of the week. In a spirit of sharing and community, the Hacklab will host a series of public lectures, and also be open to walk-ins from both hackers and the general public. Interested artists and developers from various disciplines are encouraged to submit music project ideas to become Hacklab Fellows. Submission Deadline: 30 November 2016. More information and to apply: http://www.ctm-festival.de/festival-2017/transfer/musicmakers-hacklab/

The MusicMakers Hacklab at CTM 2017 is kindly supported by Native Instruments, ENCAC, and the SHAPE Platform.

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OPEN CALL – RESEARCH NETWORKING DAY

Date: 29.1.2017 | 12:00 – 18:00 The Research Networking Day (RND) is a yearly CTM Festival initiative co-organised by Humboldt University’s Department of Musicology. RND provides a platform to exchange ideas and experiences for students and researchers from different European graduate and postgraduate programmes traversing the fields of audio, arts, media, design and related theoretical disciplines. Students and researchers present projects and findings connected to the CTM 2017 festival theme Fear Anger Love in 10-minute sessions, linked by several discussion rounds and completed by a keynote lecture. This call seeks innovative and critical submissions from all areas of study addressing the scope of music and emotion. We invite students and junior scientists to present their research at an international platform that provides a good opportunity to meet various colleagues and researchers working on related ideas. Persons pursuing higher levels of research/studies are also welcome to submit a proposal. Presentations should take place in English. Please send your presentation proposal with an abstract of max. 200 words and a short bio to [email protected] with subject: RND Fear Anger Love. Application deadline: 30 November 2016. The presentation programme will be announced before the holidays. Unfortunately we cannot grant any funding for travel and accommodation, but participants will receive a CTM 2017 festival pass.

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INSTALLATION KURT HENTSCHLAEGER – “SOL”

Immerse yourself in an endless and magnificent nothingness and lose all sense of time. With his new installation, “SOL”, Kurt Hentschläger creates a radically minimalistic environment by depriving visitors of their senses, sublimely leading them into physically perceptible boundaries along subjective and objective realities. The installation celebrates loss of control, shifts in perception and a feeling of dislocation and timelessness. The world premiere of “SOL” will be presented in the cavernous Halle am Berghain during CTM 2017. Born in Linz and currently based in Chicago, Kurt Hentschläger creates immersive audiovisual installations and performances. He was part of seminal duo Granular Synthesis between 1992 and 2003. His works have been presented internationally at the Venice Biennale, The Venice Biennale for Theatre in Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), PS1 New York, Creative Time New York, MAC – Montreal Contemporary Art Museum, MAK – Contemporary Art Museum Austria, ZKM Karlsruhe, National Museum of China in Beijing, National Museum for Contemporary Art in Seoul, ICC Tokyo, Arte Alameda Mexico City, Sharja Art Foundation, and at MONA – Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania.

“SOL” at CTM 2017 is supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum and the ENCAC network Co-commissioned by OK Offenes Kulturhaus Oberösterreich, Linz Co-produced by CTM Festival Curator: Isabelle Meiffert Management: Richard Castelli / Epidemic Production Assistance Chicago: Pablo Monterrubio Benet, Yan Zhou Technical Supervisor Touring: Alexander Boehmler Thanks to: Martin Sturm, Genoveva Ruckert

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CTM 2017 EXHIBITION: “CRITICAL CONSTELLATIONS OF THE AUDIO-MACHINE IN MEXICO” Opening: 27.1.2017 | 19h. Exhibition runs: 28.1. – 19.3.2017. Free entry. Curated by Carlos Prieto Acevedo in collaboration with CTM

This year’s exhibition takes as its focus the history and current state of electronic music and sound art in Mexico, guiding visitors through the various different musical styles and sound experiments that have emerged in the country since the beginning of the 20th century. Curated by sound researcher Carlos Prieto Acevedo, a number of active members in the Mexican sound art community have contributed pieces specifically for this exhibition, including Ariel Guzik, Angélica Castelló, Guillermo Galindo, Roberto Morales, Verónica Gerber, Mario de Vega and Carlos Sandoval. Talks and performances featuring Mexican music from the last 20 years as well as reworks and reconstructions of pieces from the beginnings of experimental music in Mexico link the exhibition to a larger international context. Modernity and its influence on musicians and artists since the beginning of the 20th century; nationalism and identity; the role of machines in modernization; and the neo-liberal economic and political project that has engulfed Mexico since the 1990s are all turning points that have reflected themselves in musical and artistic production. Reflecting these themes, the exhibition is organized in the form of a constellation of experiences that unfold in 5 sections – Indo-Futurism, The Mexican Cosmopolis, The Monstrous, Emanations and Epilogue. It avoids chronological narratives, instead favouring connections and assemblages that respond to the logics of rupture, astonishment, the accident, curiosity, promise, survival and fragility and to the possibility of reinventing life in the wake of an identity and cultural crisis within the essentialist project of the nation. Focusing primarily on the aesthetics of sound, the exhibition will also reveal a larger cultural context by highlighting overlaps with visual arts, literature and cinema. It expands upon Carlos Acevedo’s book, Voltage Variations : Conversations with Mexican Sound Artists and Electronic Musicians, which was presented at CTM Festival in January 2014.

“Constellations of the Audio-Machine in Mexico” at CTM 2017 is funded by the FONCA (National Fund for the Arts and Culture, Mexico), AMEXCID (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mexico / Dual year Mexico- Germany program) and Fundación Cultural Bancomer.

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THEME – FEAR ANGER LOVE

Fear, Anger and Love are entry points into confrontation with desire, empathy, despair, grief, euphoria, hatred, fragility, disgust, nihilism, rage, loneliness and other sensations. Music conjures emotions more intensely than most art forms, and makes it possible to experience the ambiguous effects and possibilities of intentional emotionalisation. CTM 2017 Fear Anger Love seeks to present musicians and artists that are working with emotion in various ways to respond to urgent societal issues and conflicts that increasingly seem to be emotionally driven. The worrisome upswing of political populism clearly demonstrates the relentless power of emotions to boil over into dangerous explosive forces. Whenever successfully deployed, its calculated emotions amplify resentment, supporting bigotry and homogenizing, reactionary policies. Yet, if things get out of hand, such tactics don’t simply fail, but the emotions unleashed might flare up into even greater instability. Wherever we look these days, the emotionalisation of politics prevents solutions, exacerbates polarisation and escalates conflicts. But are emotions themselves the problem, or is it the way in which they are exploited by those who virtuosically play with mass media’s mechanisms in order to mobilise anti-democratic, essentialist and nationalist agendas? Don’t emotions also give a powerful voice to those who are excluded from equal participation, and their demands for more just, diverse, inclusive and open societies? How do we distinguish between progressive and reactionary, or democratic versus anti-democratic, use of emotion? And what does this all have to do with music?

As an art uniquely placed to express and engender emotions, music has always been firmly tied to the explosive janus of its emotionality. In fact, the debate about the manipulative, seductive, or emancipatory potential of resonant emotion is as old as music itself. As far back as ancient times, music’s potential to threaten moral and political order due to its physical power and hypnotic sensuality was apprehensively discussed. It was feared that music could undermine individual autonomy, induce uncontrollable group dynamics, feminise and soften male self- control. Musical sirens threatened delusion and ruin. This problem was met with the attempt to spiritualise music by coupling it to a heavenly harmony and by describing it in purely mathematical terms, such as to detach it from our real bodies. Even today musical positions exist, which abandon its emotional possibilities and search for a rational, context-free music or conceptually driven social criticism. Such movements are not least due to the experiences of 20th century totalitarian systems and of the hegemonizing mechanisms of the cultural industry.

But don’t we need emotions as much as we should fear them? And is analytical criticism really the primary task of music and art? On the other end of the spectrum stands a music that wants to be an expression of radical subjective feelings. Such music is born out of personal and social conflicts, and rallies against the suppression of dissonant feelings and types of experience. If not channelled strategically and manipulatively, real emotions, however difficult they may be, give us access to experiences beyond social norms. They inevitably bring into focus the social conditions and conflicts that both trigger intensive reactions and are simultaneously their target. They challenge individuals and societies to consider how to deal both with emotions and with those enthused by them, to ask how open we can be, how much space we want to give those with a different emotional makeup, and how great a capacity we have for integration and resilience.

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FESTIVAL PASSES, TICKETS AND PRESS ACCREDITATION

CTM 2017 early-bird passes are now on sale! Festivalgoers can choose from CTM 2017 Gold and regular passes, as well as CTM / transmediale 2017 Connect Passes that grant access to both festivals. Available while quantities last. Press accreditation will open on 7 November, with an application deadline of 8 January 2017. Tickets to individual events will be gradually made available as of December. For more information, and to purchase please visit: http://www.ctm-festival.de/festival-2017/tickets/

PRESS CONTACT

Guido Möbius › [email protected] › +49 (0) 30 29002161

FESTIVAL CONTACT

CTM Festival Veteranenstr. 21, 10119 Berlin › [email protected] › +49 (0)30 4404 1852

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CTM 2017 PARTNERS & FUNDERS

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

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