CTM 2012 – Spectral

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The thirteenth edition of the Festival took place from 30 January to 5 February 2012. As always, CTM ran parallel to and in cooperation with Berlin’s festival for art and digital culture, transmediale, which celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2012. 

With an extensive program of concerts, exhibitions, talks and lectures, the festival theme Spectral explored the reemergence of all things ghostly and dark in experimental music, avant-pop, and art. In addition to a comprehensive music program at HAU, Berghain, Passionskirche, Gretchen, Kater Holzig, .HBC and Horst Krzbrg, a discourse series developed in collaboration with the philosopher, psycho-historian and author Andreas L. Hofbauer addressed the festival’s theme by pursuing questions concerning art, theory, and music. 
 
»Ghosts Off the Shelf« was an exhibit created by the curator, art critic, and architect Thibaut de Ruyter at Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien, and explored the artistic use of the exponentially growing capacities of technical archives, particularly of analogue video, and their »inherent ghosts«. The participating artists were asked to revisit material they had recorded on antique equipment such as VHS and Betamax – works that they had long since forgotten – in order to summon hazy memories and ghosts within these old documents and to give them a new (digital) existence. The exhibit opened as part of »Vorspiel«, a comprehensive partner program within which a number of independent Berlin art, music, and media spaces presented their activities. 

»The Crystal World Open Laboratory« was an artistic lab run by artist Martin Howse, Ryan Jordan, Jonathan Kemp and Ralf Baecker. Together with a group selected participants they experimented on recovering the basic materials of discarded digital devices (gold, silver, palladium, silicon, etc.) on re-using them to construct new electro-chemical devices and arragements that applied chaotic material processes. Next to presentations and performances, the traces of the laboratory process and the artifacts created remained on display as an exhibit. As part of the project, Ralf Baecker showed his installation »Irrational Computing«, an artistic examination of the chaotic material processes underlying digital technologies.

Further installations by Nik Nowak, Anke Eckardt, Chris Salter, AUDiNT, Felix Kubin, Ursula Bogner, Alexander Christou and Laura Lòpez Paniagua took visitors beyond the safe ground of clear cause-and-effect relationships, and propelled them the uneasy »interzones« between the promises, traumas, and fuzzy logic of ubiquitous technology. The works and installations expored phantom effects of perception, the bad vibes of sonic weaponry, and the truthful or artificial mysteries that are embedded in technological memory storage.

A special focus was revisiting the Zodiak Free Arts Lab, that was once housed in the festival's venue HAU Habbel am Ufer (HAU2). Nurturing open experimentation between music, art, and performance in the late 1960s, the Zodiak Free Arts Lab provided one of the crucial focal points for the musical awakening of artists and bands such as Kluster, Ash-Ra Temple, Tangerine Dream, Human Being, and more. The multi-day program highlighted several of the Zodiak’s key figures and included a cooncert by Qluster, Wolfgang Seidel performing Conrad Schnitzler’s »Kassettenkonzert«, as well as Schnitzler’s rarely presented automated performance on disklavier, the »Piano Works«. 

transmediale and CTM once again presented collaborative projects at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, most notably highlight performance by Joshua Light Show with Manuel Göttsching, and Supersilent.

»Berlins bestes Popfestival: Der Club Transmediale widmet sich den Geistern der Vergangenheit und ihrem Angriff auf die übrige Zeit.«
→ Berliner Zeitung, Jens Balzer

»A truly stunning festival«
→ Electronic Beats

»Eine irre Geisterbeschwörung«
→ Süddeutsche Zeitung

»Am Montag geht der Club Transmediale in seine 13. Runde. Über die Jahre ist der einstige Musikflügel des Medienkunstfestivals Transmediale zu einer der aufregendsten Institutionen für popaffine musikalische Avantgarden aller Art geworden.«
→ Berliner Zeitung, Markus Schneider

»Last year we thought we’d seen the biggest line-up yet for CTM festival. But the thirteenth edition – CTM.12 – comes with an even bigger, better and musically broader bill than previous years.«
→ Electronic Beats

»Make sure to reserve an extra seat for your ectoplasm.«
→ Exberliner, D. Strauss

»Abenteuer sind mit Musik in heutiger Zeit nur noch selten zu erleben. Eine Ausnahme bildete die diesjährige [Club] Transmediale, die sich selbstgewählt dem Geisterhaften und Jenseitigen in der Musik zuwandte.«
→ Intro, Christoph Büscher

»It is exactly this deep-thinking subversive approach, along with consistently progressive programming and curation, that has kept CTM festival on the map as one of the most highly regarded and essential landmarks on Berlin’s musical calendar.«
→ Dont Panic

»With a fine pedigree in nailing the zeitgeist (…) CTM.12 steps up with a walloping line-up across a cluster of unmissable nights.«
→ TimeOut Berlin, Louise Bralley

»…Club Transmediale (CTM), the “Festival for Adventurous Music and Related Arts” that arguably is Germany’s most relevant event entirely focusing on music.«
→ No Fear Of Pop

»Festivals always fly by in an instant, but this year’s CTM doesn’t so much walk us through its week-long tenure as chew us up and spit us out. We’re welcomed back to the concrete-encrusted delights of Luton airport in what feels like the blink of an eye.«
→  The Quietus, Rory Gibb

»Wer es gern elektronisch anspruchsvoll wie vielseitig mag, sollte sich dieses Event nicht entgehen lassen.«
→ bln.fm, Ima Johnen