Explore an overview of the final acts that will join the 2024 programme, as well as information on the Discourse programme where artists and scholars will speak on their practices and research related to »Sustain.«
Final Announcement
The CTM 2024 programme is completed by:
- Anastasia Kristensen (DK)
- Assyouti (EG/DE)
- Femme Bass Mafia with HIỀN ĐIÊN (VN/DE), MSJY (DE), PONYO (DE), Dangermami(DE)
- Golden Girl$$$ (TZ)
- Heinali with u-matic & telematique (UA/DE)
- Lamsi (NL)
- Marco Donnarumma (IT/DE) – »Ex Silens«
- Mars Morningstar (US/DE)
- Moneyama (DE)
- Oldyungmayn (EG/DE)
- rbf.linh (VN/NL)
- SHERELLE (UK)
- Soft Break (NL)
- Swan Meat (DE)
- Virgen María & Naive Supreme(ES/UK) pres »PTSD«
The Sustain Discourse programme covering several themes from the intersection of sound and climate, the role of sound in identity and protest music, sound perception in d/Deaf and hard of hearing communities, quantum computing and sound, a spotlight on Ireland, and more with: Aldana Duoraan (CZ), AM Kanngieser (AU/DE), crys cole (CA/DE), Daniel Irrgang (DE), Dara Smith (IE/DE), Eduardo Reck Miranda (BR/DE), Edy Fung (IE), Eugénie Mérieau (FR), Félicia Atkinson (FR), Gesche Joost (DE), Giada Dalla Bontà (DK), Hazey Haze (IE), Heinali (UA), Kate Butler (IE), KMRU (KE/DE), Luis-Manuel Garcia Mispireta (CA/UK), Lolz (IE), Marco Donnarumma (IT/DE), Mere Nailatikau (FJ), Muiredach O’Riain (IE), Prof. Oliver Benson (DE), Pinky Htut Aung (MM/FR), Pisitakun (TH/DE), Stas Shärifulla (INT), Stefanie Alisch (FR), Victoria Sarangova (INT)
A workshop series on d&b Soundscape will be offered, details coming soon.
Plus a partner event: »Ligeti 100.101« concerts and talks with: Andrea Szigetvári (HU), Samu Gryllus (HU / AT), Boris Hegenbart (DE), Ágnes Klára Máthé (HU), Ákos Lovász (HU), Georg Friedrich Volkert (IT / DE), Miriam Jochmann (AT), Daria Redkina (UA), Victor Burton (CA)
CTM Concerts
Channelling historical instruments like the gigantic theorbo lute, the baroque alto viola, and the baroque oboe, as Heinali the Ukrainian composer and musician Oleh Shpudeiko resynthesises early music with a modular synthesiser, exploring intersections of past and present. In exploring the roles of providence and contingency, he provides a bridge with which to connect the worlds of High Mediaeval polyphony and modular synthesis. The SHAPE+ supported artist will be joined by the Berlin-based visual artist u-matic&telematique, who hold a particular fascination for intangible processes including perception and the sense of time.
What is deafness if not another mode of perception? What is a cyborg if not an exploded mirror of today’s corporeal experience? »Ex Silens« is part of the series I Am Your Body, a long-term project by Marco Donnarumma that investigates deafness, sound, and (artificial) intelligence through participatory research driven by and with d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing people. In »Ex Silens,« hearing algorithms, AI, and cochlear prostheses are morphed into new means of sensing; they do not try to repair a loss with a gain, but rather magnify a kaleidoscopic sound world that’s always been there. Radically intimate, the prostheses are organs of sharing: they amplify sounds from the performer’s muscle, heartbeat, and blood flow, diffuse vibrations through the bodies of audience and performer, and in doing so, resonate sensible forms of being.
CTM 2024 Club Acts
Joining the main floor lineup at OXI will be sludgetrance avenging angel Swan Meat, and harsh break chaos from Berlin-via-Cairo bass distortionist Assyouti. As half of the duo Animistic Beliefs, rbf.linh plays with dark and unpolished dance floor sounds layered with her signature punk vocals. Opening OXI’s second floor will be Cressida, whose sound is a cross-pollination of two sonic spectrums – the rhythmic, dystopian force of techno, fused with a sound embedded in various points of the UK hardcore continuum. Lamsifuses a great love for hip hop with an ear to genres he grew up around in his native Amsterdam, from garage, to house and dance music. A titan of the UK music scene Scratcha DVA aka Scratchclart has not only left a monumental dent on UK funky and grime, but led the British reinterpretation and innovation of South-African gqom and amapiano. At CTM he appears with vocalist, MC, and self-professed mother of afrorave Toya Delazy to tell a bass-heavy story through sounds connecting Berlin to London, Durban, and Cape Town. The SHAPE+ supported Oldyungmayn transects an exhilarating musical lexicon of 90s era rave, sharpened sound design, and a wide spectrum of music from fellow Middle Eastern producers. Early encounters with her native Rotterdam’s jungle, dubstep and grime scene are heavily reflected in sets by Soft Break, full of unexpected twists and turns.
Two new acts complete the lineup on RSO.Berlin’s main floor. Situated in the sounds of dance-oriented avant-garde, Anastasia Kristensen enthusiastically researches off-grid electronics and blends them into kaleidoscopic, electrifying sets. Berlin crate digger Barb Nerdy will open the night with a steady ascent from instrumentals and ambient to locked down bass grooves. A project created by a passionate music crew wishing to create safer spaces for sharing visions of bass music, Berlin’s Femme Bass Mafia will take over RSO.Berlin’s Summe Floor. Representing the crew will be HIỀN ĐIÊN, MSJY, PONYO, and Dangermami. A key figure in the UK’s bass and club scene, SHERELLEwill join FBM to deliver her signature fast-paced club heaters across a spectrum of footwork, jungle, and drum & bass. The floor will be rounded out with an appearance from Flore, who digs into musical and cultural roots in Jamaican sound systems, breaks and drum, and bass, expanding into atmospheric journeys that map new bass continents.
The programme at Berghain is completed with Nyege Nyege regulars Golden Girl$$$, the Tanzanian dance queens turned musicians Nana and Zai who set Panorama Bar on fire at least year’s festival, rolling out singeli hits peppered with vocals at a minimum of 200 bpm. »PTSD« is a reflection on the trauma, despair and perturbation brought on by suicide and the grief that follows, blending hardcore, ambient, and ASMR elements into a musical diary of recent years. This world premiere presented at CTM will be channelled on stage by Virgen María as a liberating ritual of ecstasy and catharsis against the backdrop of Naive Supreme’s extreme take on club music.
Mars Morningstar(an alias of Quest?onmarc) transmutates stillness from chaos, levitating through selections from the realms of post punk, grindcore, blackened experimental, hair raising ambient, liminal drone, sludge soaked soundscapes and beyond. A resident of Accra’s Oroko radio, Moneyama takes part in exploring and deconstructing the narrative of African and diasporic artist communities and presenting them in new ways, with healthy doses of dance and UKG. Longtime London tastemaker and NTS radio resident Raji Rags will stitch together a closing set of seamlessly blended low-end genres, with detours into breakneck speeds.
CTM 2024 Discourse Programme
The CTM 2024 Discourse programme will touch upon different aspects of the »Sustain« theme. Talks by SHAPE+ supported artists will come from two musicians who have held short residencies at CTM, to deepen specific aspects of their current work. The Ukrainian artist Heilaniwill explore the perils and wonders of working with mediaeval music in our times, its transhistoricity and alterity – including 13th century compositions as time dilating black holes, possessed synthesisers exploring the boundaries of divine determinism, and catastrophic polyphony traversing the wartime reality. Together with the art and media scholar Daniel Irrgang, the artists Félicia Atkinson and crys cole will speak on their approaches to activate non-human voices for the new work »Thinking Through the Iceberg«.
AM Kanngieser, Mere Nailatikau, and KMRU will speak about their installation »Oceanic Refractions,« touching among other on how the work was conceptualised and created, on the Pacific context in which it is grounded, as well as on the techniques and ethics of working with testimony and field recordings.
Supported by the DAAD Artist-in-Berlin Program, Pisitakun Kuantalaeng will be joined by the specialist in Thai law and politics Eugénie Mérieau to discuss the political underpinnings of his long-term artistic project»The Three Sound of Revolution,« reaching into neighbouring Myanmar through insights from the artist and activist Pinky Htut Aung. The discussion will be moderated by Stefanie Alisch.
Aldana Duoraan, Stas Shärifulla, and Victoria Sarangova will lead a session incorporating sonic, performative, and discussion formats to explore strategies of how to sustain collective identity in the face of assimilation. Each rooted within different ethnicities – respectively Sakha, Bashquort, Oirad-Kalmyk – located in the expansive and heterogeneous territories subjugated by the Russian Empire, the artists will delve into the concept of re-synthesis as a critical approach to rebuilding one’s (sonic) culture by effectively sidestepping the colonial gaze. Hosting will be the scholar Giada Dalla Bontà.
Several inputs into music/dance culture will also take place. DJ and writer Kate Butler will be joined by rapper Hazey Haze (Aaron Hayes); Laura O’Connell, aka DJ Lolz of GASH Collective; and Dara Smith, aka Arad and one half of Lakker in a session exploring the dynamics between Ireland and electronic music-making hubs around the world, including Ireland’s post-colonial relationship with Britain and the sectarian context of Northern Ireland. In a separate talk, the scholar and avid club goer Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta will highlight some of the findings of his new book, Together, Somehow: Music, Affect, and Intimacy on the Dancefloor, which examines how people find ways to get along and share a dancefloor, a vibe, and a sound.
Complementing his performance of »Ex Silens«, part of the long-term project I Am Your Body that investigates deafness, sound, and (artificial) intelligence through participatory research driven by and with d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing people, Marco Donnarumma will present a discussion on and screening of the short film Niranthea. Assembling the voices of six d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing people that are at the core of the project, the film offers a poetic reflection on the unlearning of normative conceptions of sound and body technology.
Goethe-Institut’s »Studio Quantum« will present a series of exploratory talks and groundbreaking performances around quantum technologies and music. Professor Oliver Benson (Humboldt University) will kickstart the afternoon with an insightful introduction to quantum technologies, before being joined by Professor Gesche Joost (Universität der Künste Berlin) to spotlight how quantum technologies intersect with creativity. Professor Eduardo Reck Miranda (ICCMR, Plymouth University) and his colleagues will discuss their research into harnessing quantum computers to create music, including a look at the technology behind Miranda’s live performance later this same evening. Studio Quantum Artist-in-Residence Edy Fung and musician/composer Muiredach O’Riain will share a short performance of new work created as part of Edy’s residency. In the early evening, Eduardo Reck Miranda will perform a concert of Quantum Computer Music with Federico Visi, Maria Aguado, Paulo Itaborai, Dino Vicente, Pete Thomas, and Colin Harrington, showcasing pioneering systems and performances developed by Miranda’s team at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR), Plymouth, UK. This programme is supported by Goethe-Institut, Studio Quantum, and Zeitgeist Irland 24. Zeitgeist Irland 24, an initiative of Culture Ireland and the Embassy of Ireland in Germany.
CTM 2024 Magazine
An article by Eduardo Reck Miranda, giving an introduction into Quantum Computing and its potential uses in sound and music, launches the 2024 series of writings which will complement programming at the festival and examine the theme of Sustain from multiple angles beyond the concert stage. Read Miranda’s article »Quantum Computer Music: What the Heck?« and look forward to more essays and interviews coming soon.
Partner Event: Ligeti 100.101
Concert and discussion with: Andrea Szigetvári (HU), Samu Gryllus (HU / AT), Boris Hegenbart (DE), Ágnes Klára Máthé (HU), Ákos Lovász (HU), Georg Friedrich Volkert (IT / DE), Miriam Jochmann (AT) Daria Redkina (UA), Victor Burton (CA)
The Ligeti 100.101 project celebrates 100 years since the composer György Ligeti's birth by inviting nine artists to research the composer's oeuvre through a creative process, where a deep understanding of his methods, thought, and metaphors provides inspiration for the creation of new pieces performed by an ensemble of electronic musicians.
The artists were invited to work with Ligeti's ideas using computers, analogue/digital synthesisers, and algorithmic processes more than five decades after the composer abandoned electronic devices. Their re-enactment, re-interpretation, and re-thinking of historical compositional methods is an experiment to see how far 21st century technological/musical tools can extend Ligeti’s ideas. The works are created by two students (and/or alumni) and their mentors, from three universities (mdw-Vienna, LFZE-Budapest, and UdK-Berlin).
Participants shared knowledge and ideas about Ligeti's compositional techniques, the workflows of the creative process, and the performative relationships of the pieces to be composed and realised during the project. The project and concert series was launched by the House of Music Hungary. Following concerts hosted by the music academies of Vienna and Budapest, this third and final concert will be hosted by UdK in Berlin.
A project by: Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Wien, Lehrgang für elektroakustische und experimentelle Musik; Franz Liszt Musikakademie Budapest; Masterstudiengang Sound Studies and Sonic Arts, Universität der Künste Berlin; Haus der Musik Ungarn; Collegium Hungaricum Wien; Collegium Hungaricum Berlin; BMC - Budapest Music Center.
Festival Passes and Tickets
Festival passes are on sale now in limited quantities. Festival goers can choose between the CTM Pass, which grants access to most of the festival’s events, or the Connect Pass which offers additional access to transmediale festival programming. New this year, we are also offering Weekend Passes for each CTM Festival weekend respectively.
Tickets to individual events are also online.