Sound and music open portals to other realities and to the experiences of others. As such they transport us to real, speculative, and imaginary worlds, which in turn always point back to the reality of a world’s creator. These wormholes allow us to engage with utopian longings, the complex stories of social and artistic movements, alternative histories, collective identities, or deeply personal experiences. Yet in thinking about music as portals and practices of world-building, one must inevitably also deal with questions of access and exclusion.
CTM 2023 uses the metaphor of Portals as curatorial shapes through which, on the one hand, we attempt to make contact with specific modes of experience, histories, communities, and speculative futures, and, on the other, reflect on the preconditions, thresholds, regulation, and fundamental function of sound and music as gateways to other realities. Read the full Portals theme text here.
Two open calls are now announced. Together with Deutschlandfunk Kultur – Hörspiel / Klangkunst and in collaboration with Goethe-Institut, ORF musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst, and Ö1 Kunstradio, our yearly CTM Radio Lab open call seeks proposals from artists worldwide with an interest in exploring the hybrid possibilities of radio and live performance. The Research Networking Day open call invites students and junior researchers to submit proposals to present their research and exchange with other colleagues and researchers working on related ideas.