We have added another exciting concert to the CTM 2023 – Portals programme: The works of Tashi Wada explore resonance and dissonance through alternate tunings and extended harmony, using simple structures to generate rich and unanticipated perceptual effects. He will appear together with core collaborator Julia Holter to create a transportive portal of sonic textures and mysteries on CTM 2023's closing day.

This two-day discourse programme by GROUP50:50 and Fondazione Studio Rizoma Palermo invites artists, activists, and thinkers from Europe and Africa to further discuss the foundations for a transnational restitution movement. A group of artists and scholars including Elia Rediger, Mwazulu Diyabanza, Patrick Mudekereza, Sara Imani and more will discuss the significance of intangible cultural heritage and music for the restitution process in a series of lectures, performances, and screenings in Berlin. What happens to all the knowledge and music extracted by missionaries, ethnographers, salesmen, and officials of the colonial powers, that have been locked away in European archives? How can they be made accessible again for people in the African countries and regions whose heritage they represent?

The programme accompanies the presentation of »The Ghosts are Returning,« a post-documentary music performance about seven pygmy skeletons brought to Geneva from Congo by a Swiss doctor in the 1950s.

Featuring live performances, screenings, installations, and many other artistic interventions, this opening event gives a taste of what to expect for the Vorspiel 2023 programme. The opening night will span multiple locations within silent green including Kuppelhalle, the transmediale studio, other Ateliers, and the venue’s beautiful garden, before moving over to Panke for a club night.

Vorspiel is an initiative by transmediale and CTM 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.

Please take a look at full programme of events and projects on vorspiel.berlin.

How and when do we prepare for an emergency? What does it do to our bodies, and what kinds of responsibility does it evoke, practically and emotionally? Kyiv-based artist Anna Kravets, one of this year’s Radio Lab commission winners, is seeking participants to take part in intimate sessions exploring emotional emergency, and contribute to her Radio Lab audio piece. An open call for participants is currently out.

Read more and apply

Two new articles have launched our 2023 Portals magazine commissions.

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay's essay »Re-sounding Souths« gives an examination of the ongoing failure of decolonising musical approaches and advocates for an equitable sonic confluence that acknowledges the contributions and perspectives of the Global Souths in contemporary sound practices.

Composer Aleksandra Słyż will hold a short residency at CTM 2023 to re-score »Softness, Flashes, Floating Rage,« a monumental 26-minute long track off her latest album, using the spatial possibilities of MONOM's 4DSOUND system. In her conversation »Composing Means Slowing Down the Action« she talks to Agata Klichowska about the visibility of artists from Eastern Europe, her creative methods, slow cinema, and future plans.

Browse the CTM Magazine

Festival passes and tickets 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.

Buy Passes & Tickets

Funded by
Senate Department of Culture and Europe | Goethe-Institut | Auswärtiges Amt | Co-funded by the European Union | Federal Agency for Civic Education | »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 e.V.

In Cooperation with
Berghain | Festsaal Kreuzberg | HAU Hebbel am Ufer | KW Institute for Contemporary Art | Morphine Raum | MONOM | Panke | radialsystem | RSO.Berlin | silent green | transmediale 2023

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 | Fablab Neukölln | Workish.Berlin | 42 Berlin

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

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