CTM’s 25th anniversary is among other a time to reflect on 25 years of collaboration alongside sister festival transmediale, festival for art and digital culture. The first festival edition took place in 1999 as »club transmediale« at the now long demolished club Maria am Ostbahnhof, when CTM’s founders saw a gap adjacent to transmediale, and sought to fill it with a series of experimental club nights that intertwined sonic experiments and underground dance culture with contemporary media art. Titled 10 Tage an der Schnittstelle von Bild und Ton (10 days at the intersection of image and sound), this first edition gradually expanded and took the shape of the international platform that is CTM Festival today.
Over the years, the sister festivals have over the years produced co-commissioned works and presented collaborative concerts and events, and this year is no exception. Our collaboration will take place in three parts, with the multi-sensory installation “Oceanic Refractions,” a collaborative stage at Berghain Säule, and with the Vorspiel programme run by independent Berlin art initiatives.
Installation »Oceanic Refractions«
»Oceanic Refractions« is an immersive installation featuring testimonies of Fijian, i-Kiribati and Papua New Guinean elders on kinship, self-determination and care in the face of global ecocide. Along with reflections from these teachers, artists, fisherpeople, grandparents and chiefs, we hear field recordings of the reefs of Fiji, the oceans and mangroves of Kiribati, and the shorelines of Papua New Guinea’s Duke of York Islands. Through hyper-detailed soundscape compositions, combined with 360 videography, kinetic seating, and olfactory effects, »Oceanic Refractions« creates an unforgettable sensorial experience. Moved by listening and silence, the installation offers audiences rare insights into the environmental relations sustaining Oceania’s many worlds.
The themes addressed by the installation will be further explored through talks and lectures at both CTM Festival and transmediale, as well as through specially commissioned texts featured via the festival magazines.
transmediale x CTM Club Night
GASH Collective is a source of innovation on the more uncompromising strands of Irish underground music while focusing on supporting female, trans, queer, non-binary, and other underrepresented people in music production through parties, workshops and other collaborations. A CTM x transmediale club night at Berghain Säule shines light on some of the initiative’s key figures, opening with Baptist Goth, who appears live as a fusion of an emo trap idol and a Catholic saint, after which Americhord will drive up the bpm with a dive into deep techno and electronica. ALYXIS deepens the groove with a dark and bassy live AV set that might include interjections from a reassuring chatbot voice and housey pop edits. DJ sets from the collective’s co-founders ELLLL and Lolz span abstract experimentalism, fragmented rhythms, and bass-heavy club bangers, while GASH collective regulars and avid record collectors Eliza and Maeve O’Neill will close with a wide-ranging set drawing on electro, ebm, techno, and acid.
Vorspiel
Vorspiel is an initiative by transmediale and CTM Festival that aims to showcase the richness and diversity of Berlin's independent project spaces and artist initiatives active in music and sound, visual, and media arts, as well as connected hybrid fields. The programme takes place yearly in parallel to transmediale and CTM Festivals.
Oceanic Refractions is co-produced by CTM Festival, transmediale, and the Sonic Acts Biennale.