ICA’s theatre will feature late night programmes of DJs, live sets and UK premieres, spanning forward-thinking club sounds to sub-bass and spatial sound, visceral postmodern opera through to gabber and apocalyptic noise. In the cinema, screenings and live audiovisual projects respond to experiences of war in Ukraine, as a starting point towards cross-border resistance and understanding. A Saturday-night afterparty at Venue MOT will close the two-day programme. The programmes are supported by Goethe-Institut London and Goethe-Institut in Exile.
Friday 20 October
18:30 Cinema
- Standard Deviation x Remote Control pres »Ridne« part 1
- Mariana Berezovska pres »Rybachka«: Katarina Gryvul & Alex Guevara – live AV
21:00 Theatre
- Stefanie Egedy – live
- Nadah El Shazly & Elvin Brandhi: Pollution Opera (A/V) feat. Omar El Sadek – live
- Sote – live
- Born In Flamez
- Sarah Farina
Saturday 21 October
18:30 Cinema
- Standard Deviation x Remote Control pres »RIDNE« part 2
- Mariana Berezovska pres »Rybachka«: Diana Azzuz & Nazanin Noori – live AV
21:00 Theatre
- Opium Hum
- Prison Religion – live
- PLUS44KALIGULA – live
- Gabber Modus Operandi – live
- Diana Azzuz
23:00 Venue MOT
- Aquarian
- Born in Flamez
- Rainy Miller (DJ)
- Manuka Honey
- Opium Hum
As two voices pushing the standards of the accepted feminine vocal spectrum in very different ways, Nadah El Shazly and Elvin Brandhi collide into Pollution Opera, a brand-new project embracing dissonance and looking at what a postmodern opera would sound like. They appear in support of a forthcoming album on Danse Noire, with visuals by Omar El Sadek.
Stefanie Egedy presents »A Sub-Bass Dose«, her live performance exploring the potential of sound waves – with a special focus on low-end emanations from high-powered subwoofers – to reverberate bodies and nervous systems into more relaxed states.
A pivotal figure of the electronic music scene in the Middle East, Sote alters musical modal codes from their original tonality and rhythmic tradition to achieve vivid synthetic soundscapes. Much of his output deals with a continual exploration of a relentlessly maximalist aesthetic. At ICA Sote will give a taste of new live material in the works, creating a hellish club inferno that picks up from the polyrhythmic madness of his seminal release, Hardcore Sounds from Tehran.
Gabber Modus Operandi will perform their mind-bending fusion of gabber, rave, punk, and noise with a number of uniquely Indonesian sounds such as jathilan (a trance dance in which a spirit possesses the body), dangdut koplo (a subgenre of a popular folk music), and funkot (reminiscent of both European happy hardcore as well as dangdut). Having infected dancefloors worldwide, hyperactive MC Ican Harem and producer Kasimyn will finally land in London for their long-awaited UK debut.
Prison Religion’s sound is a genuine reaction to the world around them: we are already in the apocalypse. The duo manifest as a caustic wall of sound, with heavy beats akin to public gunshots, mumbled screams like breaking glass, thumping flourishes of techno or weighty drones. Just as hard bop challenged established jazz back in the 1950s, their latest record is one that channels the exploratory nature of jazz, constantly subverting and up-ending where you think their music will take you at any given moment.
Cally Statham, better known as the stage name PLUS44KALIGULA is a songwriter, electronic music producer, composer and performance artist from Oldham. Initially inspired by her step dad’s old glam rock record collection and her gran's love of classical and jazz music, Statham’s later discoveries of Bowie's Thin White Duke, and artists such as Laurie Anderson and Scott Walker have made for a dark and dramatic music and performance style, blending teen pop structures into howling choirs of biblical angels.
Standard Deviation affiliate Diana Azzuz seeks to challenge notions of sound explicitly by disobeying common expectations and preconceptions. Her DJ sets layer relentless techno with the darker sides of drum&bass, jungle, and other fast-paced genres.
Sarah Farina is known for sprinkling positivity and joy over the darkest bassy sounds. An innovative, skillful DJ, she’s the smiling antithesis of genre cliques and scene elitists.
Two of CTM Festival’s curatorial team will support the nights with DJ sets. Born in Flamez torches typical notions of identity and genre, letting new forms rise from the ashes. Opium Hum is known for his oversized interest in adventurous electronic music and his eclectic sets covering a broad range of dance-floor focussed sounds, often highlighting the genres happening at the margins of underground dance music.
CTM Festival is also known for its intentional blend of hedonistic and ear-opening experiences with politically-engaged artistic works. The cinema programme, designed with Mariana Berezovska, the initiatives Standard Deviation x Remote Control, and presented together with the project Goethe-Institut in Exile, invites us to visualise the experiences and realities of people who have to defend themselves against war and state oppression in various places.
Standard Deviation x Remote Control bring us directly to Ukraine, where people continue to resist Russia’s brutal full-scale war of aggression. Their joint project »RIDNE« (Рідне, Ukrainian for »native/dear«) is a series of videos shot over 2022 and 2023 in various locations in the country. The videos, shot in first-person perspective, were set to music by musicians who are closely connected to the respective place shown in each video, whether it is their own hometown, a personal place of solace, or a place that symbolises something of their own experience of war. In the first part of »RIDNE«, tofudj walks through the ghostly darkness of the city of Kyiv, blacked-out by Russian bombing, while Diana Azzuz sets scenes on the border to Poland to music, reflecting on experiences of her own flight. Mykolaiv native bsw reimagines a walk through the ravaged streets of his city as a quest-like adventure. Odesa’s Undo Despot scores familiar city scenes including her usual beach spot, which no longer feels the same, and Kharkiv-based artist Panghoud guides us through the new realities of his hometown turned battleground. The second block of »RIDNE« works explore five new locations, each bearing the marks of past and present battles as well as regions seemingly untouched by the war that are permeated by tension. In Bucha, we witness the enduring pain inflicted by Russian occupants on the local population. In Kharkiv Oblast, we delve into the effects of volunteer relief efforts. Aspects of the Kakhovka Dam catastrophe and its devastating impact on the local biosphere are portrayed in visits to Kherson and Zaporizhia. Lastly, we walk through a seemingly unaffected village where palpable tension lurks beneath.
Following the screenings will be a presentation of live AV works conceived by Borshch magazine co-founder Mariana Berezovska, under a wider project »Rybachka.« On the first evening, musician Katarina Gryvul collaborates with Peruvian multimedia artist Alex Guevara, while on day two Syrian-Ukrainian artist Diana Azzuz presents her visual work to the music of Iranian musician and artist Nazanin Noori. The title Rybachka (Рибачка, Ukrainian for »the fisherman's wife«) is borrowed from the poem of the same name by Lina Kostenko, one of Ukraine's most important poets. In it, Kostenko depicts a vivid expression of the state of having to endure persistent uncertainty, between fear and hope, as people in situations of war, crisis, and flight must endure time and again. As an ongoing project, »Rybachka« aims to bring together artists from different backgrounds in order to deconstruct pain together, to raise awareness of the less obvious consequences of war and violent conflicts, and to search for ways of healing through artistic means.
The music will flow late into the night with a closing afterparty at Venue MOT on Saturday night. Drawing his sound from both sides of the Atlantic, Aquarian combines Drexcyian electro, old school jungle, and mutated strains of rave music with vertical singularity. The Houndstooth, UNO, and Bedouin affiliate brings raw and arresting DJ sets aimed squarely at the dancefloor.
At the forefront of Latinx-infused UK club music, Manuka Honey's productions have featured on NAAFI, Promesses, Daytimers, and YCO. As a selector, Manuka’s adoration of the Latinx diaspora’s sounds is exuded by her beautifully chaotic DJ sets that have pummeled the sound systems of clubs and festivals internationally.
Rainy Miller will replace Evita Manji.
Opium Hum and Born in Flamez, two of CTM Festival’s curators, will support the night.
Evita Manji - Spandrel? (PAN 136) by PAN
Evita Manji - Spandrel? (PAN 136) by PAN
The theatre programme is supported by Goethe-Institut London.
The cinema programme is presented in collaboration with the project Goethe-Institut in Exile, which aims to provide meeting places, safe spaces, and platforms for cultural workers who can no longer work in their home countries due to war. The initiative aims to maintain spaces for dissent, dialogue, and intercultural exchange for artists and intellectuals from countries where the Goethe-Institut and other international cultural institutions have had to close their doors due to war or censorship.
»RIDNE« original concept: Remote Control
Concept and site design: Carsten Goertz
Video direction: Kurt Heuvens
Art direction: RAM
Curation and artist relations: Nastya Zamorskaya
Curatorial direction: Paul Georg
Production manager: Anastasiia Syradoieva, Valyk Khast
Project supervisor: Rouven Brües
Music contributors: Diana Azzuz, Undo Despot, tofudj, Panghoud, bsw and more
Camera operators: Kurt Heuvens, Volodymyr Polukhin, Yehor Terletskyi and more.
»Rybachka« original concept: Mariana Berezovska