20 June 2023

Time to Listen: The Ecological Crisis in Sound and Music

Festival with sound installations, concerts, a symposium, and public space actions
18 August – 3 September 2023, Hanseatenweg

With the Time to Listen festival, the Akademie der Künste explores how the ecological crisis becomes audible in sound and music. The festival takes place from 18  August to 3 September at the Akademie der Künste on Hanseatenweg. It includes an exhibition with sound installations, concerts, a symposium and actions in public spaces.

International artists react to the urgency of the climate and environmental crisis using musical means. They make the global perspective and worldwide concerns visible and develop scenarios where people and natural ecosystems re-establish their symbiotic relationship, reinterpret Indigenous concepts of nature and allow environmentally neutral technologies to produce sound.
Seven large-scale sound installations in the exhibition halls and the outdoor areas of the Akademie building invite visitors to listen to desert formations on the edge of the Sahara, the dwindling numbers of sturgeon in the Baltic Sea and solar sound flowers. A versatile concert programme ‒ by Carola Bauckholt, Marcus Maeder, the AcousticEcology Lab Mexico and Sarah Nemtsov, et al. ‒ assembles pieces that capture the last refuges of biodiversity in the soil and rainforests, melting glaciers and waste incineration in India. A symposium on 19‒20 August, aligned with inm / field notes, concerns the extent to which hearing or listening is a precondition for deep understanding and engaging with the environment – especially in global contexts. In Arnold Dreyblatt’s Kill the Light – a house without electricity on 27 August, the audience is divided into small tour groups that go through the dark building on Hanseatenweg to explore unknown locations through artistic articulation. At the Kunstfestival Moabit “Ortstermin” (Moabit Art Festival) on 2‒3 September, members of the Akademie der Künste and guests perform and interact with Manos Tsangaris’ “Nachhaltigkeitsbude” (“sustainability booth”) in public spaces, featuring speech-choir actions, readings, climate talks and theatre miniatures.

The Akademie der Künste views itself and its programmes as a source of ideas and a mediator on the subject of sustainability. The festival Time to Listen: The Ecological Crisis in Sound and Music continues a series of events dedicated to the climate and environmental crisis and initiates a main focus programme on this subject in autumn 2023. Participation, cultural education and sustainable production methods are central concerns of the Akademie der Künste.

Event Information

Time to Listen: The Ecological Crisis in Sound and Music
18 August – 3 September, Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin

Opening
Friday, 18 August, starting at 6 pm, free admission
Lecture, concert, exhibition opening with Carola Bauckholt / Karin Hellqvist / Eric Lanz, the Berliner Frauen-Vokalensemble, Marcus Maeder, Iris ter Schiphorst, Matthias Rillig, Kathrin Röggla, Cécile Wajsbrot

Exhibition
19 August – 3 September, Tue – Fri, 2–7 pm, Sat + Sun, 12–7 pm, € 6/4
Sound installations by Peter Ablinger, FrauVonDa, Claudia González Godoy, Susan Ibarra, Jacob Kirkegaard, Winfried Ritsch, Daniel Rothman

Concert
Saturday, 19 August, 4 + 8 pm, € 13/7
With Karin Hellqvist, Jacob Kirkegaard, Liza Lim, David Monacchi, Kristine Tjøgersen, Karen Power / Loré Lixenberg

Concert
Sunday, 20 August, 7:30 pm, € 13/7
With ensemble mosaik, Rama Gottfried, Sarah Nemtsov / Shmuel Hoffman & Anton von Heiseler, Acoustic Ecology Lab Mexico (Fernando Domínguez, Judith Egger, Tania Rubio, Sabine Vogel)

Concert
Saturday, 2 September, 7 pm, free admission
With Ute Wassermann, Nina Dragičević, Anna Hetzer

Sustainability in Contemporary Music
Saturday, 19 August + Sunday, 20 August, 11 am–7 pm, free admission
Symposium

Arnold Dreyblatt: Kill the Light – a house without electricity
Sunday, 27 August, 7 pm–2 am, tour € 3, Warm-up starting at 6 pm

Open House – “Nachhaltigkeitsbude” (“Sustainability booth”)
Saturday, 2 September + Sunday, 3 September, 12–7 pm, Hanseatenweg + Ottopark, free admission, interdisciplinary programme with Peter Ablinger, Ulrike Draesner, representatives of the European Alliance of Academies (Iris ter Schiphorst, Jovana Popic, Cécile Wajsbrot), Marcus Maeder, Kathrin Röggla, Manos Tsangaris, Michaela Vieser / Isaac Yuen

Additional events: (Eco-acoustic) tours and workshops for children and teens

Press Contact:
On behalf of the Akademie der Künste: Christiane Dramé, fabrikpublik, christiane.drame@fabrikpublik.de, Tel.: + 49 173-874 19 39

Dorothea Walther, walther@adk.de, Tel.: + 49 (0)30 200 57-1531