Crippled Symmetries

With “Crippled Symmetries”, the Ensemble KNM Berlin is organising a festival for contemporary music in Berlin and initiating a concert series with international partners, featuring site-specific performances in Athens, Busan, Kiel, Lima and Nantou (TW).
The focus is on the ‘cyclical’ in contemporary music, examining how repetition and rituals from shamanic and ritual musical traditions flow into contemporary music and art forms in the respective countries.
The starting point is Morton Feldman’s piece, “Crippled Symmetry”, which works with seemingly arbitrary repetitions and shifts in sound patterns. Inspired by the imperfect symmetry of Anatolian carpets, Feldman blends Western and non-Western aesthetics, creating music that reflects the interplay of everyday life, art, craft, nature, ritual, and abstraction. The festival will explore this concept by focusing on pieces with a long performance time, a ritualistic or shamanic character, works incorporating recycled materials, and music with a strong connection to nature.
International collaborations are a key feature of the programme: in Busan, South Korea, live electronic sound installations will be created from recycled packaging material (Rodriguez/Waller), while in Berlin, a local shamanic dance culture from Busan will be restaged. Zesses Seglia’s “Crippled Memory” will be premiered in Athens and Berlin. For the Frequenz Festival in Kiel, the Ensemble KNM is developing a commissioned piece that explores Indian mantras as healing tools. A sound parcourse will be created at the Yu-Hsiu Museum of Art in Nantou, Taiwan, while in Lima, Peru, the ritual music traditions of Indigenous groups will be combined with contemporary art forms such as visuals and video works.

Artistic direction: Thomas Bruns
Artists: Ensemble KNM Berlin, Cube Band, ensemble 0 
Composers: Tristan Perich, AnA Maria Rodriguez, Zesses Seglias, Petra Strahovnik, Juan Felipe Waller, Eunseon Yu (KR), Gyu Bong Yi (KR), Morton Feldman

Performances
29–30 October 2025, Busan
6 December 2025, Villa Elisabeth, Berlin
17–19 April 2026, Villa Elisabeth and St. Elisabeth Church, Berlin

10–11 May 2026, Frequenz Festival, Kiel
21 Mai 2026, Alternative Stage, Greek National Opera, Athens 
October 2026, Goethe-Institut Lima