Returning to our core winter dates after two unpredictable pandemic years, this 24th edition of CTM will move its festival headquarters over to silent green for an edition that features a focus on South Asian electronic music thanks to a large-scale collaboration with curator, researcher, and sound artist Paul Purgas, a showcase of collaborations between African and German artists via the Afropollination project, and sonic portals that run the gamut of psychotropic journeys, intimate melancholia, experiences of war, ceremonies of grief and renewal, and full-blown hyperdrive club nights.

The CTM 2023 festival programme grows with:

3OK (Zoë Mc Pherson, DJ Diaki, Jay Mitta) (INT)
ABADIR (EG/DE)
Ahadadream (UK)
Asep Nayak (ID)
Black Cadmium (NL)
INSHINZI (Bloomfeld b2b Phatstoki feat Miziguruka) (INT)
Binghi & Astan KA (INT)
Christina Wheeler (US/DE) – «The Totality of Blackness Trilogy«
Coby Sey (UK)
Crystallmess (FR)
Diana Azzuz & Nazanin Noori (INT)
Happy New Tears (NL/DE)
DJ HVAD (DK)
Falyakon (PS/DE)
Jessica Ekomane & Afrorack (INT)
jpeg.love (DE)
Katarina Gryvul & Alex Guevara (INT)
Keeley Forsyth (UK)
Limpe Fuchs & Afrorack (DE/UG)
Lush Lata (IN)
Marie Davidson DJ set (CA)
Menzi & Debmaster (INT)
Merche Blasco (ES / US)
Nala Brown (NL)
Nana and Zai (TZ)
NZIRIA (IT)
Participatory Audio Lab (INT) – »Collective Control 0«
Poulomi Desai (UK)
Puce Mary (DK)
Queen Asher feat Rehema Tajiri (TZ)
Ruhail Qaisar (IN)
Sara Persico (IT/DE)
Siu Mata b2b Amor Satyr (FR)
Standard Deviation x Remote Control (INT) pres »Ridne«
The Body (US)
Violet (PT)
¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U (JP)
Zand (UK)

Special Project: »We Found Our Own Reality« – an exploration of India's first electronic music studio and its resonances into today, curated by Paul Purgas, and featuring Suren Seneviratne (UK),  Poulomi Desai (UK), Imran Perretta (UK), Nabihah Iqbal (UK), Rahila Haque (UK), Regina Bittner (DE), You Nakai (JP/US), Lush Lata (IN), and a film programme curated by Nancy Adajania (IN).

And the MusicMakers Hacklab 2023 fellows detailed below.

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Festival passes and tickets to select festival events are on sale in limited quantities. Festivalgoers can choose between the CTM Pass, which grants access to most of the festival’s events, or the Connect Pass which offers additional access to transmediale festival programming. Tickets to further events will become  available in the coming weeks.

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»We Found Our Own Reality« examines the cultural, political, and post-colonial echoes of South Asia’s avant-garde sonic pioneers, proposing an alternative reading of Modernist history that weaves together threads of the past with speculations of the future. At the core of the project is a large-scale exhibition at silent green Betonhalle, bringing together architecture, furniture, textiles, and sound to explore India's first electronic music studio, founded in 1969 at the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad – as well as a new soundwork, developed by Paul Purgas from a collection of unheard recordings by five previously unknown Indian electronic composers.

Several supporting events will take place around the exhibition, including the »Zigzag Afterlives« film programme curated by Nancy Adajania, and a one-day discourse programme that will reflect upon exchanges and resonances between the Indian and global experimental music and design communities both historically and into the present. Also the exhibition’s geometry will set the scene for a series of live musical events where Imran Perretta, Nabihah Iqbal, Paul Purgas, Poulomi Desai, and Suren Seneviratne will step into a dialogue with the sonic echoes of the NID’s electronic music studio through a series of improvisational performances presented across the exhibition’s duration.

Further club and concert performances will expand upon the South Asian narratives of the project, with artists such as: DJ HVAD, Ahadadream, Lush Lata, Poulomi Desai, and Ruhail Qaisar.

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A notable programme feature this edition is Afropollination – A TURN-2 funded project by Piranha Arts Berlin and Boutique Foundation /  Nyege Nyege together with CTM Festival, MS Stubnitz, Festsaal Kreuzberg, and Radio Cosmo. The project aims to encapsulate the process of artistic and social cultural pollination, facilitating creative encounters between artists, genres, disciplines, identities, ideas, cultures, technologies, and communities from various regions of Africa and Germany.

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The MusicMakers Hacklab is an open, collaborative environment where participants work together during CTM Festival week at the silent green Ateliers, to explore and realise new musical ideas. It culminates in a public finale performance on Sunday 5 February Hebbel am Ufer (HAU 2). Hosted by Verónica Mota and Peter Kirn, 15 fellows selected via open call will work together to explore the theme of »Rifts« – the connective possibilities of disruption / collapse along boundaries: Alan Affichard, Corazón De Robota, Filip Ruisl, Juliana Santacruz, Katarzyna Debska, Laura Guarch, Lia Mice, Maoyi Qiu, Matrix Navrot, Saana Pohjonen, Sophia Bulgakova, Stefan Maier, Sumugan Sivanesan, Willstone Sibamwenda, Yin Cheng-Kokott.

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The Participative Audio Lab (PAL) is a newly-formed initiative focused on collective creation and the development of open source tools that allow artists to create and distribute their own participative musical experiences without the need of coding skills. The group was initiated this autumn thanks to support from the initiative »Prototyping Sonic Institutions« organised by Black Swan and CTM Festival 2022.

At CTM 2023, PAL will present their first creation, a live participative music installation, at HAU2 and via a dedicated website participativeaudiolab.com. Developed via an open-call hackathon, »Collective Control 0« – or »cc0« – allows users to create and register collective compositions remotely.

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Funded by
Senate Department of Culture and Europe | Goethe-Institut | Auswärtiges Amt | »dive in. Programme for Digital Interactions« of the German Federal Cultural Foundation with funding of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM) through the »Neustart Kultur« programme | NEUSTART KULTUR, Initiative Musik, Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media | Fonds TURN2 of the Federal Cultural Foundation of Germany | Musikfonds

In Cooperation with
transmediale 2023 | HAU Hebbel am Ufer | Berghain | silent green | radialsystem | RSO.Berlin | Festsaal Kreuzberg | Morphine Raum

Programme Partner
Afropollination | SHAPE+ | Deutschlandfunk Kultur Hörspiel / Klangkunst | ORF Ö1 Kunstradio | CDM | German Association for Music Business and Music Culture Research | Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) | Paderborn University | The Electronic Music Studio at the Technical University of Berlin | PODIUM Esslingen | Centre d’Art Waza Lubumbashi | DAAD Artist-in-Berlin Program | Refuge Worldwide 

Supported by
Becks | Complete Audio | Pirate Studios | SAE | WALL AG | Electronic Studio of the Technical University Berlin

Media Partner
Deutschlandfunk Kultur | The Wire | Full Moon Zine | RBB radio eins | Refuge Worldwide | die Tageszeitung