CTM Festival
CTM connects multi-perspective experiences, critical reflection, hedonism, and collaborative learning via a yearly festival and continuous collaborative projects, publications, commissions, concerts, club nights, and more. Though international in its approach, CTM remains deeply rooted in and committed to Berlin’s DIY and club scenes, from which it emerged in 1999.
Listening and dancing within the gaps between musics, communities, and scenes, CTM defies easy categorisation and tests the current possibilities and limits of sound and music. Programming supports a multitude of voices, backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives – CTM is for all forms of music as long as they dare to experiment, question, and demonstrate conviction. CTM is an independent, non-profit initiative built, from the very start, on constant collaboration. Through a multi-perspective approach, we aim to respond to the diversity of an increasingly polycentric, polychromatic, and hybrid (music) world, always with empathy, openness, and a desire to counter global asymmetries.
GMEA
GMEA - National Center for Music Creation of Albi-Tarn was founded in 1981. Among eight other centres in France, it is part of a network certified by the French Ministry of Culture. A leading organisation for musical creation in Occitanie, the GMEA develops its activity through commissions, residences, production of new works, and research. These works are shared with various audiences through education, mediation, and transmission. Open to all the experimental sound practices of our time, GMEA supports and accompanies the emergence of new musical forms. The GMEA - National Center for Music Creation of Albi-Tarn is supported by the Ministry of Culture - DRAC Occitanie, the Département du Tarn, the Ville d'Albi, the Région Occitanie, and occasionally by SACEM, SPEDIDAM, ONDA, and CNM.
OUT.RA
OUT.RA – Associação Cultural is a non-profit cultural entity based in Barreiro, Portugal. Since its inception in 2009, it has organised and produced the annual OUT.FEST festival, one of the leading experimental music events on the continent. OUT.RA's work at the national and local level has always been closely connected to their city's memories and cultural heritage, celebrating both Barreiro's former identity as a blue-collar, politically engaged city as well as its architectural features, strongly connected to heavy industry and railroads, which provide invaluable opportunities to interact with its musical programmes and events. In addition to its work in musical programming, OUT.RA is highly active in other cultural fields, leading or participating in projects such as Cidade Som (an archival project for field recordings in or near Barreiro) or Sonica Ekrano (a documentary film festival dedicated to music) at the national level, and EU-funded projects such as UNEARTHING THE MUSIC (UMCSEET and its continuation UMSCENE, dedicated to exploring experimental music-making in countries under totalitarian regimes during the second half of the 20th century), or REMAIIN (an exploration of non-European cultural influences on the experimental, avant-garde and innovative music of the present and the past in Europe). OUT.RA's main activities are co-funded by the Barreiro Municipality and the Portuguese Arts Council.
Q-O2
Q-O2 werkplaats is an arts laboratory for experimental music and sound art. Since 2006, the organisation has been structurally funded by the Flemish Government and VGC Brussels and has had its own space in the Brussels canal zone. Here, they organise residencies for artists, focussing on artistic research and reflection over the production of finished works. The public output of this research takes a variety of forms including showings, concerts, thematic projects, symposia, publications, workshops, and the annual festival Oscillation. Q-O2 practices collaborative and transversal methods, and welcomes cross-overs into other disciplines, in various urban and social contexts, as well as collaborations with both local and international partners. Q-O2 has taken part in three Creative Europe projects, of which twice as a lead organisation. Since 2016, Q-O2 has run the publishing-house umland; an imprint for books on sonic cultures, artistic creation, and critical reflection.
Skaņu mežs
Skaņu mežs is a festival for adventurous (innovative, experimental, avant-garde, etc.) music which has been running in Riga, Latvia since 2003, usually in the beginning of October. Additionally, Skaņu mežs programs regular one-off events between its festivals. Seeing as all forms of modern music have an experimental dimension, there is always a wide variety of musical genres represented at the festival; from electro-acoustic music, free improvisation, contemporary composition and noise to interesting shifts in dance music, hip-hop and rock or metal. Skaņu mežs is a member of festival network ICAS (International Cities of Advanced Sound) and a co-founder of the SHAPE platform as well as one of its two coordinators. SHAPE platform for innovative music and audiovisual art is supported by the Creative Europe programme of the EU. Skaņu mežs is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia, Riga City Council, the Latvian State Endowment for Culture.
tekhnē
tekhnē is a collaborative project in which six European organisations aim to explore the emancipatory potential of technology in music and sound art. By engaging critically and creatively with technology, and by putting the focus on the user rather than the developer, technologies and methodologies can be demystified and lead to more autonomous mindsets towards the tools around us.
Many moments of social and artistic change have been historically brought about by shifts in technology. Taking this as inspiration, the project seeks to contribute to the wider ongoing conversations around technology and sound cultures. tekhnē will provide a platform for creatives and cultural workers via a combination of research, experimentation, creation, education, and dissemination offered in the form of residencies, commissions, workshops, performances, exhibitions, talks, publications, and radio broadcasts.
The project aims for a balance between theoretical reflection and practical implementation, providing experiences to people who wish to interact in inventive ways with different types of technology. tekhnē aims to support a more inclusive field, and to use sound and music as a vehicle to this end.
TRAFO
TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, which is located in Szczecin, the Polish capital of the German-Polish border region Pomerania, since 2013. Artists taking part in the project will be accommodated and provided with one of the exhibition rooms as a working studio and exhibition or presentation space. TRAFO introduces the audience to the tools of art by putting them in various contexts and transdisciplinary relationships. Visual works interact with literature, music, theatre, social sciences and new technologies, placing them in complex cultural, sociopolitical, economic and existential domains. The program of TRAFO consists of exhibitions, research and residency programs, publishing activities, meetings, concerts, lectures. TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art in Szczecin is a public art institution organized and financed by the City of Szczecin. Additional funding comes from programs from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and EEA grants. For the project, TRAFO will collaborate with The Academy of Arts Szczecin. Academy founded in 2010 is a new, dynamic university that combines three different faculties under one roof: music, visual arts and new media. By adopting the name 'Academy of Arts' instead of the usual name 'Academy of Fine Arts', the university points to its ambition to create an academic unit in which music and fine arts collaborate and inspire each other. The person responsible for this collaboration will be artist and occasional curator Zorka Wollny.