SLEEK’s Top Picks: CTM Festival Part 2 2022

Following on from its first instalment earlier this year, CTM Festival is back with a carefully curated selection of boundary-pushing experimental events in the realm of art, installation, music and performance. From discussions about the role music can play in sociality, to club nights at Berghain, Part 2 of the Berlin-based event is a focus on connecting multi-perspective experiences through hedonistic electronic music and art, building an intersection where collaboration meets critical reflection. As always, there are so many events from the festival’s schedule to choose from and so, we’ve curated a list of our top 5 for its remaining days.

Music as a Means of Reorganising Sociality: Discourse | Fri, 27th May 2022 13:00 – 19:30 | Kunstquartier Bethanien. 

Throughout the day, guest speakers gather to discuss the rich and inextricable interactions between music and sociality, asking how music cultures actively shape social life, and vice versa. At 13:00, a panel discusses the Alkisah Network, an experiment in distributed community building and transglobal local engagement. Furthering the conversation of club music as a means of social connection, a lecture-performance by Geoffrey Mak, in the format of a guided meditation, takes place at 15:30. Through his confessional lecture, Mak examines how club music can be a way of connecting deeper with your psyche, beginning with the practice of breathwork and attention. To round off the panel discussion, Edward George and Dhanveer Singh Brar meet for a conversation to explore a set of theoretical impulses for a possible film, from the context of The Last Angel of History. If you can’t join IRL, make sure to catch the live stream on Youtube.

Lockdown Lessons: Discourse | Sat, 28th May 2022 12:30 – 19:00 | Kunstquartier Bethanien

The final discourse event for CTM 2022 is in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, which has sought global solutions and ideas that can be learned from the pandemic. CTM invited a panel of artists, experts and activists from different parts of the world to discuss a wide range of positions and who will present their visions of the post-pandemic world.

RSO.Berlin 3: CTM for Ukraine: Club Night | Sat, 28th May 2022 22:00 – 06:00 | RSO.Berlin

On Saturday evening, CTM invites an eclectic selection of voices from Ukraine’s experimental and electronic music scene for a night of forwarding-thinking sounds and styles at RSO Berlin. Bringing together the likes of Katarina Gryvul, Diana Azzuz and Rina Priduvalova, the showcase aims to remind both audiences and those in the industry to continue supporting Ukrainian artists in their fight for freedom and peace.

/ orcl /: Location based installation. 

Pussykrew is a collective of award-winning directors and immersive media artists who explore the space between the physical and the digital, investigating futuristic landscapes through 3D, real-time performance, photogrammetry and VR sculpting. / orcl / is a location-based augmented reality experience for those in search of metamorphosis and connection in the digital realm. AI-powered avatars encourage viewers to reclaim their energy. QR codes have been placed across several CTM festival venues, for viewers to interact with an interactive ritual where human and non-human forces meet.

Vandals: Installation | 24-27 May 2022 | Berghain Säule

Running throughout CTM’s concerts at Berghain, Vandals is a 30-minute multi-channel audio-visual installation that explores the space between collapse and reformation, a space of self-destruction while simultaneously being a space in which one can return to the self. Created by visual artist Theresa Baumgartner, musician Sam Slater, and performer/choreographer Lukas Malkowski, the installation investigates inevitability through movement, creating sudden moments of suspension where the audience is unsure of the subject’s trajectory.

Find out more about CTM Festival 2022 here.