the now in sound
- Activism
Why New Yorks’ underground doesn’t give a fuck about Trump or why satirical rap in Pakistan can be life threatening.
- Affect
About the micropolitical qualities of sound as a non-conscious experience of intensity.
- Alienation
How do musicians fill or widen the gap of feeling at home in a world that is radically unhomely?
- Appropriation
About the ups and downs of cross-cultural creativity: Korean reggae, vaporwave, and the worldwide Hindu Holi festival.
- Belonging
A form of attachement beyond categories like home or nation but to people, feelings, or sounds across the globe.
- Body
From hypersexualised dance culture in baile funk to the empowering body culture in queer lifestyles.
- Capitalism
How does this ideology, but also its sheer physical expressions such as labor affect cultural production? From hip hop’s «bling» culture to critical evaluations of cultural funding.
- Censorship
From political music in the GDR, the trouble of punk musicians in China and the dangerous life of kurdish folk singers in Turkey.
- City
Why do people in Karachi yell rather than talk and how does the sound of Dakar or Luanda affect music production?
- Class
From classism in techno clubs to clashing ideals of masculinity in Brazilian «bate bola».
- Colonialism
From Beyoncés colonial stagings in mainstream pop to the ethical problems of Western people «documenting» non-Western cultures.
- Community
From Bangladeshi electronica to global «black midi» micro scenes.
- Counter-Culture
From Muslim taqwacore to how the rave scene in Athens counters the financial crisis.
- Cultural Diplomacy
Can a small chinese radio show about Uyghur music stand against the censorshop of the Communist Party of China? Are art residencies useful?
- Dance
From breakdance in Baghdad, the rebel dance pantsula in South Africa to the role of intoxications in club music: Dance can be a form a self-expression or self-loosing.
- Diaspora
Does the global appropriation of kuduro exploit or reshape the identity of Angolans? How are «local» music genres like guayla sustained outside of Eritrea?
- Digitization
Digitization means empowerment: for niche musicians, queer artists and native aliens that connect online to create safe spaces.
- DIY
Can a bedroom producer change the world? How do artists operate in undersupplied conditions?
- Encounter
What happens when a Muscovite electronic producer meets Circassian folk musicians? What rules are needed for intercultural cooperation between individuals?
- Ethics
What happens when U.S.-blogger collects african music and offers it for free? What is the difference between «textually signaled» and «textually unsignaled»?
- Exotica
From Self-Orientalism in Arab music to the sheer exploitation of Brazilian funk music by acclaimed artists: how exotica examine aesthetics playing with the other and cultural misunderstandings.
- Gender
Why is a female Black Brazilian MC from a favela frightening the middle class? Is the reggaeton dance «perreo» misogynist or a symbol of female empowerment?
- Listening
A generative practice that promotes different knowledge. One that listens is never at a distance but always in the middle of the sound heard.
- Loneliness
Loneliness can feel like isolation, but can also be a positive solitude by keeping distance from the worlds’ chaos.
- Migration
What happens, when artists move from one to another country? For example, when an Arab artist replaces the big tractors in her the village with big jeeps of the West.
- Money
Musicians need to pay rent and taxes. But their relationship to money is highly ambigious.
- Music Business
About fees, selling records, and public funding: How musicians strive for a living in the digital era.
- Music Production
Why does a Kenyan producer of the instrumental style EDM add vocals to his tracks? This topic is about HOW things are done, not WHAT.
- Music Video
Watch how cutting-edge music from Brazil to Singapore is represented in moving images.
- Nature
From instruments made of plastic waste of the ocean to questions about a futurist naturalism which embraces technology for aesthetic emancipation.
- New Geographies
Why Asia is not a continent and how the aesthetics of the NON Worldwide collective create new utopian notions of multi-centred origins.
- Nostalgia
From the music format «78 rpm», the melancholic echoes of a dubbed out rave night in London, and parodic mockings of «perfect house wifes» by female Nigerian pop musicians.
- Othering
Does one really need the other in order to understand oneself?
- Parody
From post-digital pop mocking the music history to Romanian folk music turning into a meme culture.
- Perception
What is «Treble Culture»? How does what one hears affect what one sees?
- Place
Place remains important. Either for traditional minorities such as the Chinese Lisu or hyper-connected techno producers.
- Power
How did the internet change the power dynamic in global music? How does Egyptian hip hop attempt to articulate truth to power?
- Protest
About Tunisian rappers risking their life to criticize politics and musicians affirming 21st century misery in order to push it into its dissolution.
- Queer
Queer is a verb, not a noun. Thinking & acting queerly is to think across boundaries, beyond what is deemed to be normal.
- Race
How artistis deal with this non-natural but political category as a result of its ideological dominance.
- Remix
How artists deal with the practice that some call «time-travel» and others «audiotopia».
- Sampling
Sampling is political: about the use of chicken clucks or bomb sounds in current music.
- Sound
Does a crematorium really have worst sounds in the world? Is there a sound free of any symbolic meaning?
- Soundscape
How do acoustic environments affect human life? In which way can a city entail sounds of repression?
- Technology
How does the artits’ relationship to the gear affect music? How to make the climate change audible?
- Utopia
From afrofuturist parallel worlds to decoding strategies of emancipatory sounds: Examinations of music striving for a life worth living.
- Voice
From the political implications of human voice to its potential of un-making sense.
- War
How does Syrian death metal sound in the midst of the civil war? Where is the border between political aesthetization and inappropriate exploitation of death?
- Youth
From Korean visual kei to Brazilian rasterinha, or the dangers of suddenly rising to fame at a young age.
- –Bern (CH)Wie hat sich der Klavierbau weiterentwickelt und welche pianistischen Gestaltungsmöglichkeiten eröffnen sich neu? Das explorative und kollaborative Performance-Projekt Hyperplexia kann man jetzt live erleben.
- –The TIMEZONES podcast series plunges into the world of artists and their practices, asking: what does living and working in culture and the arts involve in different countries, cities, and contexts today?
- –Bern (CH)We are excited to announce the screening of the film Contradict – Ideas for a New World by Thomas Burkhalter and Peter Guyer at the opening night of the 4th EthnoKino Film Festival.
- –Vienna (AT)Norient director Thomas Burkhalter will hold an audiovisual lecture and discussion under the title «Challenges of World Building – The Norient Perspective» at Unsafe+Sounds festival for challenging sounds and discourse.
- Book€29.00What happens to curatorial practices when treated as multi-voiced, pluralistic, and process-based? The 32 contributors from all over the world, ask what curatorship could be when it is freed from its elitist notions.
- Book€29.00What does it mean to process field recordings from the Ukrainian war in an electronic music track? How can the sampling of an Armenian keyboard melody be read as a critique of traditional gender roles?
- Compilation€15.00The TIMEZONES podcast series plunges into the world of artists and their practices, asking: what does living and working in culture and the arts involve in different contexts today? Season 4 travels from Kampala to Cairo, Lima, Hanoi and Karachi.
- Download€6.00«TIMEZONES» – Episode 19. According to the rapper and comedian Ali Gul Pir, Karachi is the most misunderstood place in the world. This podcast episode will give you a «real» feel of what it’s like to be an artist in this city of a million plus dreams, hopes, and problems.