MaerzMusik

MaerzMusik – Festival for Time Issues is a music festival dedicated to the politics of time. Featuring concerts, performances, installations, film presentations and discourse formats, the 10-day festival provides a transdisciplinary platform for listening and thinking together.

The festival takes place at Haus der Berliner Festspiele and other venues in Berlin, amongst them Kraftwerk Berlin, Radialsystem V, Akademie der Künste am Hanseatenweg, Kirche Am Hohenzollernplatz, Parochialkirche, daadgalerie, and silent green Kulturquartier. 

View program here.

Catherine Christer Hennix (March 16–22)
The work of Swedish sound-artist, poet and mathematician Catherine Christer Hennix is presented in two concerts and a project space dedicated to her immersive sonic practice. Among the highlights of this portrait are a new live realization of Hennix’ seminal piece “The Electric Harpsichord” and “Kalam-i-Nur,” a sound-video-light installation with occasional live performances by Hennix and The Chora(s)an Time-Court Mirage.

Julius Eastman (March 16–26)
The post-minimalist American composer, pianist and vocalist Julius Eastman (1940–1990) is at the center of a focus consisting of concerts, performances and a documentation space. The festival opening presents Eastman’s compositions for four pianos, “Evil Nigger,” ”Gay Guerilla” and “Crazy Nigger.” New performances by Hassan Khan and Jace Clayton mark the opening of “Let Sonorities Ring,” a documentation center and listening station at SAVVY Contemporary.

Alvin Lucier (March 20, 21, 24, 25, 26)
American sound pioneer and composer Alvin Lucier will be present during the entire period of the festival, performing important works since the 1960s, among them the world premiere of a new version of the spatial composition “Clocker.”

Donna Haraway—Story Telling for Earthly Survival (March 21)
An evening featuring readings, film presentations and sound performances that revolve around the hybrid worlds of American thinker and feminist Donna Haraway.

Walter Smetak (March 23)
With “Re-inventing Smetak,” Ensemble Modern rediscovers the forgotten syncretic work of composer, sculptor, instrument builder and artist Walter Smetak (1913–84), a Swiss emigrant and pioneer of Brazilian counter-culture.

“Thinking Together”—”Decolonizing Time” (March 18–24)
“Thinking Together” is a discourse format dedicated to exploring the phenomenon of time in its socio-political, philosophical and artistic dimensions. It provides a space for trans-disciplinary exchange, collective learning and unlearning. This year’s focus on “Decolonizing Time” is a proposal to think beyond Western-centric time regimes encoded in notions like “universal time,” “universal history,” “progress,” or “contemporaneity.” “Thinking Together” 2017 seeks to investigate the normative chrono-politics of modernity, in search for a multiplicity of decolonized temporalities.

The Long Now (March 25–26)
The Long Now is a place for the enduring present. A space in which time itself can unfold and the sense of time can take uncharted paths. Starting on the evening of Saturday, March 25 and with a duration of more than 30 hours, the project invites visitors to detach from the clocked pace of the present and indulge in the chronosphere of The Long Now. Embracing musical worlds from early Renaissance polyphony to the musical avant-garde, experimental electronics, Ambient and Noise, this third edition of The Long Now allows for sonic and bodily experiences of an exceptional.

Further projects
Further projects feature Uriel Barthélémi, Jennifer Walshe, Gérard Grisey, Arditti Quartet, Ictus Ensemble, Graindelavoix and Les Percussions de Strasbourg.

Featured artists & guests
Peter Ablinger, Tomomi Adachi, Arditti Quartet, Uriel Barthélémi, William Basinski, Georgina Born, Elise Boual, Caoimhín Breathnach, Isabelle Carlier, Jace Clayton, Kara-Lis Coverdale, James Elaine, Julius Eastman, Morton Feldman, Ashley Fure, Graindelavoix, Gérard Grisey, Georg Friedrich Haas, Donna Haraway, Tim Hecker, Catherine Christer Hennix, Ictus, Ensemble KNM Berlin, Hassan Khan, Arthur Kampela, Vimbayi Kaziboni, Helmut Lachenmann, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Liza Lim, Alvin Lucier, Ensemble Modern, Jason Mohaghegh, Daniel Moreira, Timothy Morton, Charlemagne Palestine, Aleksi Perälä, Enno Poppe, Eva Reiter, Wolfgang Rihm, Paulo Rios Filho, Giacinto Scelsi, Walter Smetak, Sonar Quartett, C.K. Raju, Chiyoko Szlavnics, Fabrizio Terravova, Rolando Vázquez, Mario de Vega, Ramesh Vinayakam, Claude  Vivier, Jennifer Walshe, Chris Watson, Zinc & Copper and others