Four years on from its rebirth, Atonal has earned itself the title as “The Ground-Zero” for new forms of sonic expression and techno culture advancement. Each year, the capacious venue Kraftwerk turns into a playground for the architects of Berlin’s electronic and experimental music scene, which could easily be described as the festival version of a Berghain night/day out. Video art installations, audio-visual and laser shows also speak to the building’s dark spaces, all harking back to its original function as a GDR power station.
Sprawling the venue’s myriad levels were a number of exhibition vessels, each pounding with a unique and rotating programme. The only constant throughout the five-day event was New York-based artist Rose Kallal’s immersive 16mm loop installations which were housed in the basement. Saturated and mesmeric, they combined traditional and computer animation techniques with video synthesis and feedback – all as nonlinear looping prisms.
Photo: Camille Blake
Greeting the swathes of drone and techno aficionados in the main entrance was Sabrina Ratté’s “Common Areas”. A congregation of video works presented on retro television monitors, the images flatly phased in and out of soft digital patterns. Sliced up by geometric black lines, the static two dimensionality of the installation added a calming surface level to the electrifying interventions permeating deep inside the venue.
The feverish Projektionsraum offered a balance between the site-specific panoramic exhibition space and a behemoth audiovisual work, backdropping heavy and intoxicating performances in Kraftwerk’s iconic auditorium. Each day featured a new presentation from a roster of artists including Carla Chan’s large algorithmic video piece “The Melting Black” and Yuxi Cao’s self-generative software “Macrocosm”. Luis Sanz’s acoustic experiment entitled “STM~Intemporal” filled the protracted screen, and Valentina Berthelon and Tobias Freund’s collaborative project Recent Arts presented “And so on to Infinity”. Atonal darling Rainer Kohlberger was back again to present his algorithmic drone compositions “Never Comes Tomorrow”.
Photo: Camille Blake
This year, the Kraftwerk control room – or the Schaltzentrale – became a verdant, intimate studio abounding with plants and slouching armchairs. The modular synthesisers, which were central to the durational performance, commanded a first-class schooling in the art of patching. Meanwhile, Stage Null on the ground floor was a pleasing new addition to the programme. Dedicated to site-specific light installations by Marcel Weber, Andrej Boleslavsky and Roly Porter, “Acceleration Space” was a custom engineered piece that tripped between slow and hyper-fast vicissitudes of light. Its varying intervals of depth coupled with the space’s architectural contours, made sensorial impressions that prompted a heightened, immersive state.
With such a rigorous and involved programme, it would have been easy to overlook some of the pared down events taking place on the Null Stage. A highlight was the understated yet remarkable one-off retrospective of early film and synthesised video works by Steina and Woody Vasulka; founders of the seminal New York-based multimedia centre The Kitchen.
The final showdown saw Robin Fox present “RGB”, his infamous live laser performance that converts sound directly into light geometry. The bombardment of visual and sonic information is purported to unlock parts of the brain that are rarely used. In doing so, the mechanics of the light drawing are made audible for a synaesthetic experience. The technical gravity of the frenetic laser performance was the perfect coda for five days of noise and fizzing visual experimentation, but it requires a prolonged recovery period due to sensorial overload. Until next year rolls back around, at least.
Photo: Camille Blake
More information on Berlin Atonal is available at berlin-atonal.com