Colonialism isn’t over, it’s just less visible. As a curator of the Berlin-based label Global Pop First Wave, Holger Lund feels entangled in neo-colonial paradoxes. An essay about the westernization of pop music and why its decolonization is inevitable.
Photography is a signifier of time, says our author Sumugan Sivanesan. In his photo series on the 2019 edition of «The Long Now» at Maerz Musik festival, he emphasizes the corporeal relations between performer, audience, and architecture.
Music plays an important role in diaspora communities. But it doesn't just unify its members, it also acts as a tool for political control. A comment on the problematic balance between nationalist propaganda and ethnic identity.
«Clash of Gods» is theatre, dance, DJ-set and audio-visual media collage. The performance by Thomas Burkhalter and Christophe Jaquet leads midst into the battle for cultural, political, moral interpretations and definitions of our world.
Christophe Jaquet describes in his fan confession, that the radical musician, thinker, hacker, philanthrope, activist, and curious figure Goodiepal saved him from being depressed about the future of music.
In the Japanese «aidoru bunka» (idol culture), grown men kneel down to mimic their infantile stars. When watching Kyoko Miyake's film Toyko Idols, musicologist Oliver Seibt sees a strong connection between this ritual and the sacred.
Filmmaker Michè Calandra Achode sketches out the future of African music in Europe.
In the film «Oulaya's Wedding», one is thrown into the middle of a traditional wedding in the Western Sahara. But is the overwhelming proximity to the filmed Sahraoui culture able to bypass exoticism, asks the director and archivist Christopher Kirkley.
The Slovenian band Laibach has been invited to perform in North Korea. Friedemann Pestel says: this tour differs clearly from cultural diplomacy in the traditional sense.
