CONNECTING INTERNATIONAL CITIES OF ADVANCED SOUND
// 05. – 08. SEPTEMBER 2012
// Festsaal Kreuzberg, Monarch, Paloma, West Germany, and more
CTM festival co-founded the
ICAS – International Cities of Advanced Sound network, a group of 34 organisations and festivals on 5 continents that joined forces to (co-)create projects and foster discourse, and thereby promote artistic development at the interface of music, art, technology, and society. Shortly thereafter, the ICAS SUITE was developed as an open and collaborative festival format for the whole network: all members are free to host an edition of the ICAS SUITE in their respective home cities. The concept implies the invitation of the network’s members and of further music initiatives to join the curatorial process to shape a unique, collaborative music event.
Following the successful
pilot run in 2011, CTM Festival presents the second ICAS SUITE BERLIN during the 2nd
Berlin Music Week. Running 5 to 8 September 2012, the 4-day ICAS SUITE BERLIN forges ever new links between the city's burgeoning arts scene and music initiatives around the globe. It sees ICAS member organizations join forces with Berlin labels and music initiatives to test new collaborations and projects in concerts and club nights at
Festsaal Kreuzberg,
Monarch,
West-Germany, and the newly-refurbished
Paloma, involving the most exciting artists in their networks.
The ICAS SUITE BERLIN is intended as much as a platform of discovery for the general public as an ideal context for networking that aims to spark new and sustainable relations beneath music professionals. And what better framework than Berlin and its quickly evolving Music Week? Berlin’s outstanding music scene assembles for the nth degree during this exceptional week to create a vibrant display of our local activity. But music in Berlin does not feed on itself; its current vitality is unimaginable without a steady and versatile international exchange. With cooperation as its fundamental idea, the ICAS SUITE BERLIN aims to display and amplify the vibrant undercurrents of collaboration that enrich current music cultures.
This way, the ICAS SUITE BERLIN within the Berlin Music Week provides a forum for independent music initiatives, whose non-conformist appetite for new sounds, tireless perseverance, and open-mindedness form the creative mold from which the most forwardthinking music of today evolves – in Berlin and elsewhere.
The ICAS SUITE BERLIN’s broad musical spectrum reflects ICAS members’ open-ended approach to the rich panorama of contemporary and experimental music presently teasing the fringes of forced marketability. In an eclectic mix of club music, avant-Pop, experimentation, ambient, noise, and improvisation, the ICAS SUITE BERLIN club nights, concerts, and performances showcase established as well as up-and-coming artists.
The ICAS SUITE BERLIN is a part of the five-year project initiative
Networking Tomorrow’s Art for an Unknown Future, dedicated to exploring diverse aspects of the future of music culture, its social role, and its repercussions, which was launched by the network’s European strand (
ECAS – European Cities of Advanced Sound), with funding from the European Commission’s
Culture Programme. What is the status quo, which tools are of use in independent cultural production, which measures can be taken to promote self-empowerment, what have we learned to date, what should we leave behind, and what must we take with us into the future? These are only a few of the questions that the initiative seeks to explore– and possibly answer – by commissioning artistic work, convening interdisciplinary symposia, organising network encounters and workshops, and underscoring the lot with the latest in experimental music.
Links:
› ecasnetwork.org
› berlin-music-week.de
