»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.

The project includes the »Zigzag Afterlives« film programme curated by Nancy Adajania, and a one-day discourse programme, and a series of live musical events where Imran Perretta, Nabihah Iqbal, Paul Purgas, Poulomi Desai, and Suren Seneviratne. The exhibition opens Friday 27 January and runs daily until Sunday 5 February at silent green Betonhalle.

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The Discourse programme will provide multiple points of entry into the festival theme of »Portals.« Beginning with the Research Networking Day on Saturday 29 January, the programme will continue daily with talks about practices that bridge traditional and modern temporalities and aesthetics, digital folklore, insights into Uganda's singeli scene, and expectations around cultural production in times of war, among other. Most talks will be streamed via and archived on CTM's YouTube channel.

Discourse programme overview

Research Networking Day overview

A final artist-to-artist session has been announced for Thursday 2 February.

Unequivocally one of the most magnificent musical mavericks of the 20th century, the late Maryanne Amacher was a composer of large-scale, fixed-duration sound installations and a highly original thinker in the areas of sound perception, spatialisation, and aural architecture. »GLIA,« a work for seven or eight instruments and electronics commissioned in 2006 for the Berlin-based Ensemble Zwischentöne, was performed a single time in Berlin, directed and overseen by Amacher together with the then director of Ensemble Zwischentöne Peter Ablinger and Bill Dietz (its current director). While there were thoughts for further collaboration and elaboration of the work afterwards, Amacher tragically passed away shortly before this could happen. Since then, Bill Dietz has conducted intensive research into reconstructing »GLIA« for future performance. In this intimate session at Morphine Raum, Dietz will present a talk which will contextualise the piece within Amacher's body of work, and will discuss her approach to installation and instrumentation.

Together Refuge Worldwide and CTM will be bringing daily radio shows with festival artists over CTM’s 10 days, a DJ workshop with Happy New Tears at Refuge’s studio, as well as a dedicated dancefloor at RSO.Berlin. This expansive partnership will feature artists such as Binghi & Astan KA, Hanaby, Menzi & Debmaster, Om Unit, Philou Louzolo, Undo Despot, Violet and more.

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Goethe-Institut in Exile is a project that aims to provide meeting places, safe spaces, and platforms for cultural workers who can no longer work in their home countries due to war. The initiative aims to maintain spaces for dissent, dialogue, and intercultural exchange for artists and intellectuals from countries where the Goethe-Institut and other international cultural institutions have had to close their doors due to war or censorship.

Running parallel to CTM 2023 will be a programme at ACUD highlighting Iranian and Ukrainian artists and inputs, including an exhibition, workshop, concerts and more. The final two presentations take place within CTM 2023.

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More articles have been published this week within our CTM 2023 Portals theme.

Ahead of presenting the next phase of »We Found our Own Reality,« an ongoing research project by Paul Purgas that looks into the histories of experimental and electronic music in India from the 1960s into the present, Purgas details his journey to the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad in search of a lost Moog synthesiser in the essay »Ahmedabad's Moog.« The synth in question was devised by the company’s founder Bob Moog specifically for India, but was subsequently lost as the studio closed its doors.

Also related to the project is Rahila Haque's essay »Giba Sarabhai: A Partial Portrait.« Much has been written on the immense influence that learning about the Indian classical music tradition and Indian philosophy had on John Cage through his meeting and friendship with the Indian musician Gita Sarabhai. But there is less information on the impact that this exchange had on Gita and what she took away from her studies with Cage on Western music. Working towards a more balanced shared history and understanding of this intercultural exchange, curator, writer, and researcher Rahila Haque portraits the little-known life of this extraordinary musical mind.

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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.

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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