Awarded by Deutschlandfunk Kultur – Radio Art/Klangkunst and CTM Festival, in collaboration with ORF musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst festival, Ö1 Kunstradio, The Wire magazine, and Goethe-Institut, the CTM 2021 Radio Lab open call sought unusual explorations of the artistic possibilities of radio and live performance or installation mediums, while also addressing the CTM 2021 – Transformation festival theme. The jury consisted of: Audrey Chen (independent artist), Elisabeth Zimmerman (Producer, ORF Kunstradio), Jan Rohlf (Co-Director, CTM Festival), Marcus Gammel (Curator, Deutschlandfunk Kultur Radio Art / Klangkunst), and Shane Woolman (The Wire magazine).
The winning works will be premiered at CTM Festival in January 2021, with radio versions to be broadcast via Deutschlandfunk Kultur in spring 2021. The works will also be presented by the ORF Austrian Broadcasting Service via one of their platforms: the ORF Zeit-Ton or Ö1 Kunstradio shows, or the ORF musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst festival in Graz in autumn 2021.
The Kontinuum call searched for generative audio work to be played 24/7 over the period of 365 days – offering a singular audio channel to be modulated by one artist (or team of artists) over a period of one year. The jury consisted of Audrey Chen (independent artist), Elisabeth Zimmerman (Producer, ORF Kunstradio), Jan Rohlf (Co-Director, CTM Festival), Lukas Grundmann (Cashmere Radio), and Marcus Gammel (Curator, Deutschlandfunk Kultur Radio Art / Klangkunst).
The Kontinuum stream will feature regularly on Deutschlandfunk Kultur, the cultural channel of Germany’s national public radio, as well as the ORF Ö1 Kunstradio programme, and will be accessible via a dedicated website. It will be broadcast whenever there is a gap in the schedule as a way to break from news, talks, radio dramas, documentaries, and music, onto a different but ever-present sonic reality. The stream will be presented at and start in conjunction with CTM Festival 2021. This year a second Kontinuum commission will be additionally produced directly for radio.
Deutschlandfunk Kultur – Radio Art / Klangkunst
The weekly »Klangkunst« (»Sound Art«) broadcast (formerly »Hörspiel Werkstatt«) was launched in January 1995 by Deutschlandfunk Kultur, German National Radio’s cultural programme. The broadcast was established to extend the formal possibilities of radio play, to experiment with new genres, and to introduce listeners to outstanding examples of international sound art. The programme covers the entire range of new radio art, from experimental sound play to poetry, text-sound collages, soundscapes, multilingual compositions, and electronic and digital radio performances. International networking and exchange among international radio artists are critical dimensions of the programme. Klangkunst is understood as a laboratory for testing the widest possible range of sounds. The programme draws from the varied motifs of diverse sonic environments, creating new amalgams of sound dramaturgy, narrative structures, compositional arcs, and characteristics of radio as a medium. Klangkunst is a member of the Ars Acustica group of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).
Goethe-Institut
The Goethe-Institut is the Federal Republic of Germany’s worldwide cultural institute. It promotes knowledge of the German language abroad and fosters international cultural cooperation. The Goethe-Institut provides a comprehensive picture of Germany by disseminating information on the country’s cultural, social, and political life. Through a network of Goethe-Institut offices, centres, cultural societies, and reading rooms / language examination and learning centers, the Goethe-Institut has promoted worldwide cultural and educational policy for over sixty years.
Ö1 Radiokunst – Kunstradio
Ö1 Kunstradio was founded in 1987 by Heidi Grundmann as a weekly space for radio-art on Österreich 1 – the cultural channel of the ORF, the Austrian National Radio station. The organisation gives artists a point of access into the unique context of national public radio. Via many innovative projects, artists from very different backgrounds have linked the space and infrastructure of Austian public radio with independent radio stations around the world, with private artist studios, and with all kinds of performance and installation spaces to realise an astonishing array of artistic reflection of radio as a medium and technology. In 1995, Kunstradio On Line (http://kunstradio.at) was founded by artists, and has since become a unique site and archive of radio art as well as an art project in its own right.
ORF musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst
ORF musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst is Austria’s festival platform for contemporary and experimental music. Functioning as a kind of laboratory, musikprotokoll invites the audience to embark on an exploratory journey to discover the latest developments and trends in music, with all the artistic risks that this entails. From orchestral music with the ORF Radio Symphonieorchester Wien to chamber music, from live performances to sound installations, musikprotokoll highlights a wide range of intriguingly heterogeneous forms and genres and presents works that are for the most part developed and produced specifically for the festival.
Founded by Emil Breisach in 1968, musikprotokoll is organised annually by ORF (Austrian Broadcasting Corporation). It is a co-production of the ORF’s two stations, Radio Österreich 1 (Ö1) and Radio Steiermark, which broadcast presented works in cooperation with the steirischer herbst festival.
The Wire
The Wire is an independent, monthly music magazine covering a wide range of alternative, underground, and non-mainstream musics. The Wire celebrates and interrogates the most visionary and inspiring, subversive and radical, marginalised and undervalued musicians on the planet, past and present, in the realms of avant rock, electronica, hip hop, new jazz, modern composition, traditional musics, and beyond. Passionate, intelligent, and provocative, The Wire wages war on the mundane, and the mediocre. Its office is based in London, but it serves an international readership.