The CTM Festival, which has been held annually in Berlin since 1999, took place between January 26th and February 4th, 2024. A 10-day program was prepared for the music and digital art festival, which supports digital arts, club experiences, and global music culture. The program consisted of concerts, workshops related to artistic, technological, and economic developments in music and media cultures, art installations, panel discussions, screenings, and presentations, in a close collaboration with various artists, guest curators, and researchers.
The festival shapes its format each year through a different theme. The 25th-anniversary theme of the CTM Festival was determined as “Sustain.” This year, under the theme of “Sustain,” music traversed various venues, from the dance floor to moments of shared artistic intimacy. Among the venues in Berlin were Berghain, silent green, radialsystem, OXI, RSO.Berlin, and Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz.
During the 10-day program, various concerts, performances, workshops, exhibitions, laboratories, conferences, talks, and discussions took place, featuring numerous artists including Skrillex, Ben Frost feat. Greg Kubacki & Tarik Barri, Through the Thinking Iceberg, Petra Hermanova: In Death’s Eyes, Anna Von Hausswolff, Zeitgeist Ireland 2024: GASH COLLECTIVE, Marshall McLuhan Lecture 2024 with Cory Doctorow, Peter Claes, Kali Malone, Quantum Computing & Sound, “Last and First Me” by NEON DANCE, and Jóhann Jóhannsson & Yair Elazar Glotman.
About CTM Festival
For 25 years, CTM has been working to explore and hosting the changing and emerging genres of music. With its roots in Berlin’s club scenes, the festival also adopts an international approach, supporting the various sounds, different experiences, and perspectives in music. While questioning the current music landscape, CTM also continually tests the boundaries of music itself. By collaborating with various artists, curators, and researchers, CTM not only produces music but also performances, exhibitions, talks, and more, sharing knowledge and experiences with participants through these projects. It responds to various global music understandings with empathy and openness, approaching them from a perspective that values music not as a parallel world, but as a powerful tool for coping with uncertainty and change, and as a platform for imagining different futures.
This Year’s Theme: “Sustain”
According to the statement made by CTM regarding the theme, the word “Sustain” comprehensively encompasses different emotions: it reflects empathy and determination alongside concerns, losses, and pains. We not only experience what is happening, but also hear what needs to be experienced and done. It emphasizes that music is not only responsive, but also a way of expressing emotions and even a tool for transformation, highlighting its ability to establish and strengthen connections between societies. It is emphasized that with less focus on commercial gains in music scenes, it will pave the way for various independent communities to shine.
Embracement of Different Genres
Festival was featuring many different artists, performances showcasing various music genres and art forms. Some of the performances hosted were as follows:
Composer and sound artist Kali Malone produces works for organ, choir, chamber music ensembles, and electroacoustic formats, using specific tuning systems within minimalist structures. Malone’s compositions are filled with harmonic textures enriched with synthetic and acoustic instrumentation, offering a remarkable depth by emitting distinct emotional, dynamic, and evocative tones. In Malone’s performance at CTM, she plays a massive organ in the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche church in Berlin, accompanied by Stephen O’Malley.
At the CTM Festival, Neon Dance presents a stunning and unique contemporary dance performance accompanied by Jóhann Jóhannsson’s 16mm black-and-white film Last and First Men (2020), inspired by Olaf Stapledon‘s groundbreaking 1930 novel. Tilda Swinton narrates the performance, while original music composed by Jóhannsson and Yair Elazar Glotman Performance draws attention with its choreographies which belong to Adrienne Hart, lighting design made by Nico De Rooij and costume design which belong to award-winning Ana Rajcevic and Mikio Sakabe.
“Inverted Vertigo,” the second collaboration between “Heith” and Berlin-based DECLINO, explores the ritualistic dimensions of live music in an audiovisual show where installation and live performance are merged, with the audience actively participating.
“Weaving Fields,” a collaboration between award-winning composer, sound, and live performance artist SØS Gunver Ryberg and visual artist and CGI director Sybil Montet, offers an audiovisual experience where mutant rhythms and advanced digital cinematography come together. SØS Gunver Ryberg’s powerful musical sound combines with Sybil’s high-speed, hypnotic CGI signature style, evoking a wave of ecological mysticism.
Electroacoustic composer Félicia Atkinson premiered her experimental oratorio “Thinking Through the Iceberg,” inspired by various writings including environmentalist Rachel Carson‘s “The Sea Around Us” and philosopher Oliver Remaud‘s “Thinking Like An Iceberg.” The piece, written for three characters, offers a thought-provoking experience about how to care for the environment and each other. Collaborating with guitarist Jules Reidy and sound artist crys cole, Atkinson’s work explores the possibilities of communicating with non-human entities, considering human voices as part of an ecology with other non-speaking beings. “Thinking Through the Iceberg” intertwines piano, guitar, various sounds, and whispers to create abstract and minimal grunge music.
Growing up in Lima, Peru, Alejandra Cárdenas, known as Ale Hop, and Laura Robles present their first collaboration, “Agua Dulce.” Their work radically deconstructs traditional rhythms of Peru and focuses on the cajón, a Peruvian box drum made by slaves from fruit crates after Spanish colonizers banned their native drums. The event also features dancer and artist Natisa Exocé Kasongo.
Petra Hermanova‘s new album, “In Death’s Eyes,” combines folk music and sacred music techniques with songs and heavily distorted drones. Accompanied by percussionist and vocalist Jon Eirik Boska and organist Elizaveta Suslova, the artist offers autoharp and vocal performances on the album’s materials. According to Hermanova, while religious music offers spiritual solace from sorrow, folk music addresses human and worldly narratives such as individual pain or joy, sin or salvation.
Riccardo La Foresta and James Ginzburg create a hypnotic loop performance exploring generative music through drum resonances and mechanical string activations. La Foresta generates acoustic drum resonances with the Drummophone, a device consisting of four bass drums that produce airflow for sound. Musician Ginzburg performs with a custom mechanized string instrument. The duo use musical instrument, object, body, action, surface, architecture, collision, contact, mechanics, breath, and resonance by deconstructing them in their performances.
Various Club Performances
At the Panorama Bar night, there were two performances featuring Skrillex. Bass researcher KENYA20HZ explores the possibilities of low frequencies through unpredictable rhythmic connections, while RHR draws from techno, bass, electro, and baile funk, inspired by his love for Brazil’s vibrant old-school dance scene. On the same night, at Berghain’s main floor, Viikatory and Dagga blend sharp electro beats with funk carioca, break, and techno.
Mandidextrous, one of the leading innovators in the Britain underground scene, offers a combination of different styles such as 4×4 dnb, speedbass, and jungletek.
Under the alias Special Request, British techno and house music figure Paul Woolford performs a set inspired by the anarchic traditions of Britain’s chaotic pirate radio stations, blending dark house, techno, and hardcore/jungle tracks.
Kampire, a member of Nyege Nyege collective, brings Uganda’s party culture to clubs and festivals worldwide through her live performances.
The main floor of RSO.Berlin hosts a new group called O Ghettão, consisting of representatives from Príncipe Discos, DJ N* Fox, DJ Danifox, and DJ Firmeza. They offer a blend of polyrhythmic Afro-deep-house, kuduro, and minimalist povera jazz styles.
MusicMakers Hacklab
MusicMakers Hacklab is an open and collaborative environment where participants work together to explore and implement new musical ideas throughout the CTM Festival week. Following an intense week of collaboration at the Radialsystem studios, a group of 10 individuals selected through an open call earns the opportunity to perform in a final showcase at the radialsystem Halle. This year, among over 100 applications, ten fellows are chosen.
Hosted by Sophia Bulgakova and Darsha Hewitt, this year’s Hacklab focuses on the theme “Sustence,” which contrasts concepts commonly used in artistic discourse such as “desire” and “hunger.” The concept of “Sustence” calls for a focus on artists’ struggles and sustainability. It encourages artists to understand their challenges and life struggles, fostering a focus on these issues.
“Oceanic Refractions” Exhibition
The “Oceanic Refractions” exhibition, featuring 360° videography, kinetic seating, and scent effects combined with an intricately detailed sound environment, offers insights into the environmental relationships that sustain Oceania, rooted in listening and silence.
The exhibition highlights the long-standing exposure of communities on the oceanic frontlines to ecosystem changes resulting from colonial-capitalist movements and emphasizes the mutual experiences of these changes among humans, lands, and waters. Its main theme underscores the interdependence of parties for survival and suggests that this understanding can be achieved by listening to regions.
Professor Nabobo-Baba‘s commentary represents one of many perspectives from Oceania that rely on such interdependencies. In “Oceanic Refractions,” images of Fiji reefs, Kiribati oceans and mangroves, and the coastlines of Papua New Guinea’s York Islands intertwine with reflections from educators, artists, fishermen, grandparents, and chiefs. Through the lens of listening and silence, “Oceanic Reflections” offers viewers rare glimpses into the environmental relationships that sustain the world of Oceania.
“I Am Your Body: Ex Silens” Performance
Another intriguing performance at the festival is “Ex Silens,” part of Marco Donnarumma‘s project, which called “I Am Your Body“, investigates deafness, sound, and (artificial) intelligence through participatory research with deaf and hard of hearing individuals. In the “Ex Silens” performance, the artist focuses on modes of perception that do not fit under the umbrella of “normal” and explores these modes of perception through real-life stories. In the performance, technologies such as cochlear implants, artificial intelligence hearing algorithms, and amplifiers are used outside their intended purposes, taking on a different function. These prosthetics are used to establish a connection between individuals and facilitate interaction among people by amplifying sounds, emitting vibrations, and creating sensory experiences during the performance. Donnarumma expands the performance to address deafness as well as the concepts of prosthetics and cyborgs, presenting the audience with a hybrid short film called Niranthea, which combines documentary, audiovisual synesthesia, and artificial intelligence hearing algorithms.
Donations from CTM 2024 to Gaza
For the past 10 years, the CTM Festival has been collecting donations for various causes and organizations. This year, in response to the devastating Israel-Gaza conflict, donations were collected for Save the Children and The Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP). The donation process at CTM was conducted in partnership with both organizations.
