The first-time collaboration between CTM Festival x WeSA is a cultural exchange between Berlin and Seoul, bringing us together with South Korea’s only dedicated A/V experimental sound festival. Founded in 2014, WeSA has grown into a year-round institution, combining its annual festival with the WeSA Academy, a platform for workshops, studios, and performance spaces that nurture and support emerging Korean artists. Four Seoul artists will appear at CTM 2026, including the person at WeSA’s center.
An integral architect of Korea’s experimental scene, GAZAEBAL’s career began as a New York sound engineer with artists like Wu-Tang Clan and producing for K-pop projects before pushing into algorithmic composition and live A/V performances with Tacit Group. His solo work in recent years has embraced deep, evolving aural consistencies, documented in releases such as Texture Music: 2011–2020. Not only a facilitator but a performer, GAZAEBAL will showcase these expansive sonic landscapes, reflecting both precision engineering and innate immersion with his meticulous analogue synth electronics: dark, evocative drones and modulations that draw the listener into the deep end.
A specially conceived collaboration between Tohal Kyna and Italian artist Sara Persico merges Kyna’s heavy stacks of raw noise with Persico’s experimental vocal and electronic layers. Kyna’s noise-driven sound, influenced by Pan Sonic and Merzbow, balances like a blade on Persico’s talent for pulling voices from the most solid of objects. The alias of Yejin Jang, Yetsuby embodies the permeability between experimental prowess and dancefloor power, a quality that pops in her solo projects and her duo Salamanda. Sound artist ABOPF navigates the chasms between bass and IDM, ambient and hip-hop. Armed with a drive to dissolve perception into hybrid sounds, her interest in consciousness and fantasy creates an environment both deeply internal and expansively shared.
In November 2025, our collaboration led as well into Seoul at WeSA, with Jessica Ekomane leading a Max/MSP workshop and performing a generative concert exploring rhythm and perception. Thomas Ankersmit demonstrates his singular approach to the Serge Modular system in both a hands-on workshop and a solo performance, and Mouse on Mars’ Jan St. Werner offering a lecture-performance on sound, space, and perception followed by an evening concert. Finally, Sara Persico will present her solo work as well as her collaboration with Tohal Kyna. Crossing boundaries between improvisation and structure as well as local and international practices, this exciting collaboration presents a collective cross-continental space for listening and invention.
Supported by the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and KOFICE as part of Kore·A·Round Culture 2025, and by Goethe-Institut Seoul.