Cosmic Awakening at Haus der Kulturen der Welt / 10-13.11.2022

For the Garden Gaia project, Hendrik Weber aka Pantha du Prince puts together ideas of ecology and aesthetics, nature and humankind in a variety of media. The music, released as an album at the end of August 2022, translates formative processes in nature into oscillating sound poetry that mediates between echoes of techno and avant-garde. With the Chor der Kulturen der Welt and percussionists, as well as partly self-built sound generators, Weber now brings it to the stage as a comprehensive audiovisual performance, which in turn represents a world of its own.

Gelbart doesn’t just bring music to the stage, but pushes open the gate to other worlds. In his composition The Portal, Finally he undertakes a sound experiment with influences from avant-garde jazz, soundtracks of early science fiction films and works of classical modernism. The Portal, Finally asks whether first contact with another universe can happen this very evening. The composer and media artist gathers a 14-piece ensemble with instruments such as harp, harpsichord and electronics under a large triangle.

The musical influences of Makimakkuk, a rapper, DJ, music producer and artist from Ramallah, are as diverse as her activities. As an emcee, she is known for a tone that is both abstract and serious and at times sarcastic as she flows through personal, social and political issues. Since becoming internationally known through a collaboration with Sun Glitters, she has steadily expanded her musical scope: She brings hip-hop as well as varieties of bass and club music, pop and R’n’B as well as folkloric forms and their contemporary adaptations into productive dialogue.

Kuunatic’s psych-rock is more than transcultural; it’s interplanetary. Of course, the Tokyo trio draws its inspiration from Jamaican dub, various forms of Japanese music, Krautrock, British post-punk and various rhythmic and vocal traditions – thus from pretty much all corners of the earth. However, it already set off for the eponymous planet with its debut EP Kuurandia and made its musical home there.

To call I Snuck Off the Slave Ship a monumental piece of music is certainly accurate given its length of nearly 18 minutes. But the tone poem at the center of Lonnie Holley’s celebrated album Mith was by no means monolithic. The flowing character of the music is underscored even more by the short film of the same name. In his directorial debut, many of Holley’s artistic activities over the past decades flow into one another. First presented at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, the short film, shot in collaboration with Cyrus Moussavi, combines the self-taught artist’s sculptural works with images, sounds and words in a way that is as immersive as it is impressionistic. The past and present of the USA are condensed, the personal politically charged.

Nídia is one of the leading producers from the environment of Príncipe Discos. The Lisbon-based label is the focal point of the city’s batida scene and thus a platform for renegotiating Afro-Portuguese dance music in the club setting. Nídia has collaborated with Kelela, Fever Ray and Yaeji, and gave Lafawndah’s track Tourist an award-winning remix. She regularly releases new music through her own channels and in 2020, in addition to the two EPs Badjuda Sukulbembe and S/T, she released Não Fales Nela Que A Mentes through Príncipe Discos, an album that took the tempo from her sound, inspired by the rhythms of kuduro and other dance styles like tarraxo. Nídia’s music remains uncategorizable. Its visionary character reveals itself most directly on the dance floor.

To call Klein’s approach multidisciplinary falls short. It is omnidisciplinary. Whether it’s her feature film debut Care, her visual art such as, most recently, her collaboration with Josiane MH Pozi at Berlin’s Galerie Buchholz, her numerous web design projects or her work in the field of sound and music, everything is constantly woven together and interweaves with each other. As a composer, producer and vocal artist, Klein, with radical consistency, also brings together elements from R’n’B songwriting or rap with avant-garde methods and forms inspired by classical music. For her latest album Harmattan, she became a one-person orchestra, recording everything from piano to string instruments and saxophone on her own. And live? Consequently, anything can happen.

As a filmmaker, curator and sound researcher, not to mention a musician, Kristen Gallerneaux engages in a kind of productive spectral analysis exploring the ghostly traces inscribed in media. Her debut album Strung Figures reflects on the string games used by Indigenous peoples of North America for narrative purposes and passing on knowledge. Rhythmically, it moves between electronic pop and club music, but counters this with manipulated field recordings and samples, synthetic sounds and noisy sonic textures that give the music an eerie character. The album thus follows in the tradition of her previous musical works for film and radio, but also ties in with her monograph High Static, Dead Lines: Sonic Spectres & the Object Hereafter.