Modular Organ System. Photography by Phillip Sollmann. Photo Courtesy of CTM Festival.
Trying to figure out what CTM actually is can feel a bit like listening to good experimental music – challenging and intricate and amorphous in a way that feels thought out. Experimental music itself is definitely one of the things you can get at CTM festival, but the program also includes visual installations, workshops, online talks, club nights, streaming concerts, publications, and all sorts of things at the interstices of these. Because COVID is still a fact of life, the 2022 CTM festival program has been split into two parts – Part I of the festival is on now and runs through February 6th. This part of the festival is heavier on events that are accommodating of social distancing, and a lot of it happens online, but it’s still packed with boundary-pushing collaborations between brilliant artists. There’s a lot to choose from, so we’ve put together a list of our top 5 picks for the remaining days of the festival.
Andrius Arutiunian for Incantations. Photography by Brian Roberts. Photo Courtesy of CTM Festival.
Three installations of work at the Projektraum that connect artists and thinkers from across the globe. There are so many different moving parts to this one that it would need its own article to even just describe what’s going on, but you can look forward to cosmograms, deconstructions of epistemological standpoints, unexpected life forms, and sound cleansing, among many other things.
Incantations. Sunday, January 30th, 16:00-22:00, Silent Green
Incantations is worth a visit just to find out what the thing they describe as “a six-meter-long brass object suspended from the ceiling” actually looks like (not to mention sounds like). This show incorporates Armenian spells and incantations and will be played somehow through the brass instrument. If you don’t catch it on-site, the recording will air on Deutschlandfunk Kultur later in March.
Kali Malone and Stephen O’Malley. Photography by Helena Goñi. Photo Courtesy of CTM Festival.
Modular Organ System – Day 9, 16:00-22:00, Silent Green
Kali Malone and Stephen O’Malley take over the Modular Organ System, a computer-controlled pipe organ, which was designed by Phillip Sollmann and Konrad Sprenger. The organ itself is an instrument but also a sculpture, with each part constructed from sound-generating objects; every iteration of the installation is site-specific and promises to be weird and exciting.
Keys Only. Wednesday, February 2nd, 20:00-22:00, Kulturbraueri
Members of ensemble mosaik will be playing compositions written for a set of nine different synthesizers. Promises to be funny and strange and a moment of catharsis for anyone who has ever enjoyed slamming their hands down on electric keyboards.
Jump Cut #3: Alaska Thunderfuck, William Belli, and Laganga Estranga. Image Courtesy of Danan Gingras / Animals of Distinction.
Jump Cut #3, 18:00-19:00, Hebbel am Ufer (HAU4)/Online
The big news here is that this one features Berlin’s own living legend Peaches. Multi-media artist Austin Young brings together a trio of drag performers (Alaska Thunderfuck, William Belli, and Laganga Estranga) to form what they describe as a “triple deity” that dances (Gyrates? Etherealizes?) to a soundtrack by Peaches. Tune in for what is a strong candidate to be one of the more titillating online performances in recent memory.