Black Swan is a Berlin-based collective experimenting in horizontal and decentralised, infrastructure and governance. Challenging conventional decision-making and resource allocation models in the arts and culture sectors, Black Swan facilitates the development of new artist-led models of communal support, collaboration, and governance. Through democratising access to resources and funds – as evidenced in experiments led at Berlin’s Trust and KW Institute in 2021 – Black Swan is actively developing a more equitable and democratic cultural ecosystem.
A number of resources have been pledged by various partners, to allow for the realisation of a music/sound related project (this can be a new performance, release, art piece, etc). Participants selected via open call can propose their own project ideas to the group, or simply indicate a wish to experiment in collective decision-making. Using Black Swans’s digital toolkit, including a quadratic voting application known as Cygnet, participants will collectively decide how to disseminate and allocate the resources pledged to the projects.
The concepts that drive Black Swan are rooted in open source interdependency, collaborative institutional formations, and intersectional access.
Thirteen artists and collectives were selected via open call to participate in the project.
- Any Angel – doesn't nature grow tired of describing itself?
- Fjóla Gautadóttir is a former dancer making music for dancers and performers in the widest sense.
- HASHIA builds worlds through sound, music, stories, poems, and performance.
- Jorge Castillo is all about sounds and such, and is a co-founder of Berlin’s Marla records.
- kuvallini is an experimental modular synthesist from Mariupol, Ukraine, and is absorbed by the industrial and metallic atmosphere of the now-destroyed city.
- Luna Nane is an artist and creative technologist interested in AI, neural rendering, generative sound, and vivid trans utopias, among others; she works across cutting-edge technologies, interactive installations, data-sculptures, and performances.
- Martin Lundfall writes experimental, rock and dance music using modular synthesizers, trumpet, guitar, and Ableton.
- Miguel La Corte (p2p_lab) is interested in cultivating new forms of connection through music.
- MOTHER.LOADING is a creative collective interested in unionising Berlin-based artists and producing music videos and other media; collaborator Jon Aro is a producer, musician, and sound designer.
- On Land Collective /Association (or OLC/A) is a platform bringing together artists, researchers, activists, architects, and other practitioners investigating relations between sound and infrastructure.
- Portrait XO is an award winning independent researcher and artist who creates musical and visual works with traditional and non-traditional methods
- px studio is an AI audiovisual artist whose work aims to reflect on our own humanity by seeing the world through the perspective of an artificial intelligence.
- Selbstgebaute Musik is a group of artists looking for new, collective ways of thinking and music-making in order to confront the idea of the lone genius.
Resources pledged include:
- workshops courtesy of Ableton;
- a paid commission at CTM 2023;
- sessions with Kassian Troyer at the renowned Dubplates & Mastering;
- radio residencies with reboot.fm;
- studio and recording sessions at Pirate Studios;
- and Web3 and NFT support from Zora.
Morphine Raum kindly hosted the in-person introductory workshop.
This project wouldn’t have been possible without their support.