CTM 2025 will span venues silent green, radialsystem, Volksbühne, MONOM, Berghain, Oxi, RSO.Berlin, Morphine Raum, and more. For this edition, we’ll be jumping into Alte Münze for the first time as we fully take over the three floors of its labyrinthine basement with concerts and high-octane sounds.
CTM 2025 will exploring a series of new and ongoing thematic strands.
The »Resynthesising the Traditional«thread explores how traditional art forms and aesthetics can be reinterpreted within modern sound and performance, outside of (self-)exoticisation and the uneven power dynamics created by mass-cultural and other stereotypes. Centred around the »Resynthesising the Traditional« artistic lab, this theme will also be reflected in concerts and discourse sessions throughout the festival.
The »Stranger AI« thematic strand continues our examination of artificial intelligence in sound, this year with an extra tinge of immersive audio and the disruption and creative anarchy within AI’s evolving role in music and art, notably through the »Wilding AI« artistic lab. Shaped as a mix of theoretical and hands-on components, and including public skills-sharing sessions, the lab culminates with a public presentation session Sunday 26 January. This thematic strand will likewise be rounded out with further concerts and discursive inputs. Together with sister festival transmediale we’ll furthermore be presenting the transmediale x CTM Synthesis two-concert series at HKW where artists engage with and critique the tools and potentials of machine learning and AI in how we relate to our histories and current realities. Expanding the world of AI into spatial sound, the »MONOM Archive« series of listening sessions will be presented with MONOM, featuring commissioned works that have been created especially for their powerful spatial sound environment, where each artist’s unique vision is expanded with 4DSOUND technology.
The theme of »Affection« will be explored through commissioned works for the CTM Radio Lab, which engages with the hybrid possibilities of radio and live performance, as well as several artist talks.
The CTM 2025 Discourse programme will explore all the above themes, along with the Research Networking Day which is presented in collaboration with the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), Freie Universität Berlin, and the Berlin-based network and project space Trust.
At Morphine Raum our A2A Transmission workshop series brings artists from various unique practices to share skills and experiences with other fellow creatives. A series of d&b Soundscape workshops and concerts will take place in a dedicated space. Daily Refuge Worldwide x CTM broadcasts will bring daily transmissions from a range of artistic voices presented in the music programme.
This year includes a collaboration with Dancecult for the conference »DC25: Preserving and Archiving Electronic Music and Dance Cultures«. The open call inviting proposals is now closed and the conference programme will be revealed in December.
As in every year, our sister festival transmediale will be running in parallel to CTM, a cornucopia of hybrid art seeking cultural transformation from a post-digital perspective.
Given the Berlin government’s chaotic budget planning and severe cuts to the city’s overall funding including culture, the fact that a festival like CTM 2025 can take place at all at this very moment in time is anything but a given. We are resolutely focused on creating an inviting and enrichening event more than ever despite the bumpy last few months, while standing in solidarity with all our colleagues in Berlin's cultural landscape who are currently facing significant to existential fights against a policy that does not sufficiently recognise the essential importance and fragility of diverse cultural initiatives for inclusive democracy, social cohesion, and the prosperity of the city of Berlin.
