04. – 12. Februar 2005
Maria am Ostbahnhof
 
The sixth edition of CTM Festival – the independent platform for electronic music that runs parallel to transmediale – evinces new structural clarity and sets opposite poles: in accustomed opulent style, the weekends are dedicated to long and lavish nights with the very best in electronic dance music, whilst throughout the week our “concert-ed” efforts take centre stage and investigate “Density” in its most positive sense: as a concentrated form of listening and looking.
 
With the festival theme [Basics!], CTM.05 navigates between poles of musical and artistic practice that seem at first glance to have little in common – and traces the connecting lines:
 
What unites the orchestral search for the sublime with digital Death Metal? Is it perhaps the reclusion of producers that live far away from big city lights? How can nerve-wracking thunderous Breakcore merge with the unpretentious-spontaneous headphone concerts of a Le Placard Festival? Are they not, paradoxical as it might seem, both based on the possibilities of global networking and immediate physical presence? And are they not both decidedly practical approaches to creating structures and situations that might facilitate experiment and participation? Is it therefore not manifest to put them on a level with a project such as Supersilent, whose music derives exclusively from spontaneous improvisation? Or with the Ambiunix sound system, whose spatial-sound research implicates the listener’s physical presence in the here and now whilst simultaneously creating fictive sonic spaces? What do the minimal sounds of Biosphere have in common with DJ Marlboro’s Baile Funk, the voice of the Brasilian favelas? Are they not both artistic reactions to the demands and stimulation of a specific environment?
 
All the forms of expression cited above pose fundamental questions: questions regarding the musical, visual and organisational structures that facilitate artistic work, open up spaces, broaden participation and debate, give artists and the audience a range of choice, and allow works to circulate as concepts; questions, too, that tend to remain invisible in the daily round of the music business, in territorial claims on defining style, in peer-group pecking orders and the stereotypical but familiar feel of the club and concert venues where we usually get to experience these artistic forms. They are important questions: it is they alone that constitute the real and basic motivation behind this year’s programme; that put the gas in the performers’ tank, so to speak. And in the light of these questions, the CTM.05 line-up reveals itself to be very much part of the answers. But that is maybe enough said. Just trust your instincts. Breathe in the potent fumes of the basics instead of analysing too much. Intuition is an excellent first step. Explore Basics!