Sound Exchange
Central European enclaves of experimental musical culture
Sound Exchange was both a festival and music research project in one. The curators began by looking for the roots of experimental music culture in Central and Eastern Europe. This region possesses a vibrant scene with contacts to international musicians, artists and festivals of experimental music culture and sound art. Unfortunately, local music-compositional and sound-artistic traditions have been largely forgotten since the political upheaval of 1989. Sound Exchange tried to make these traditions audible once again and presented them in relation to current trends. The first task was to create a multilingual web documentation of these music cultures with information which is normally difficult to find. Workshops on sound art, radio art and electronic improvisation have been held in seven different cities (Budapest, Bratislava, Prague, Kraków, Riga, Vilnius and Tallinn). A festival tour of these cities was scheduled between November 2011 and November 2012. The curators of the festival collaborated with local curators to develop nationally specific programmes featuring concerts, performances and installations for presentation at other festivals, such as the Audio Art Festival in Kraków and the Ultrahang Festival in Budapest. The major concluding festival in Chemnitz featured all the cities’ concert programmes and workshops.
The Sound Exchange Festival Chemnitz in mid-November 2012 was the concluding station of the project as a whole that was organised by DOCK e.V. Berlin and the Goethe-Institut in cooperation with weltecho in Chemnitz.
Artistic directors: Carsten Seiffarth, Carsten Stabenow; Consultant: Golo Föllmer
Curators: Marek Choloniewski (PL), Milos Vojtechovsky (CZ), Slavo Krekovic (SK), Viestarts Gailitis (LV), Antanas Jasenka (LT), Zsolt Sorés (HU), Aivar Tonso (EST), Andreas Winkler and others
Artists: Milan Adamciak(SK), Arturas Bumšteinas (LT), Kaspars Groshevs (LV) Sven Grünberg (EST), Milan Grygar (CZ), Wolfgang Heisig (D), Frank Bretschneider (D), Raul Keller (EST), Ernö Kiraly (HU), Hardijs Ledins (LV), Lukasz Szalankiewicz (PL), Pal Toth (HU), Daniel Matej (SK) and others
Venues and schedule:
Krakau, Bratislava, Tallinn, Vilnius, Budapest, Riga, Prag and Chemnitz, Nov. 2011 - Nov. 2012