DEMO:POLIS – Decentralized Music

Composers and ensembles experiment with musical models of communitarisation. In the context of the exhibition "DEMO:POLIS - The Right to Public Space", Niklas Seidl, François Sarhan and Ensemble hand werk, Neele Hülcker and  MAM.Manufaktur für aktuelle Musik, as well as Matthias Kaul and the Ensemble LUX:NM, are working on ideas for a public, mobile music. They will develop and carry out their concepts in respective one-week localized sessions in and around the AdK building on Hanseatenweg. In addition to ensemble presentations on Tuesdays as final touches to the working phases of their projects (5 Apr, 12 Apr, 19 Apr, 8 pm), they will be regularly on the move in the exhibition space with “street music” interventions (3 Apr, 10 Apr, 17 Apr, 3–6 pm) that test the changing well-being and perceptional qualities of music.

Two different “Horizontals” span the entire project period: In Elude Rephrase, Maximilian Marcoll condenses musical processes to acoustic graffiti in alternating instrumental and studio work; and the Electrical Walks by Christina Kubisch, using induction headphones, guide participants on unusual electromagnetic walking tours through the surrounding areas of the AdK.

Curator: Stefan Streich

30 March until 5 April (Week 1)
François Sarhan, Niklas Seidl & Ensemble hand werk, Cologne
IN & OUT – DECENTRALIZED CENTRAL
Together with the composer François Sarhan, Niklas Seidl and hand werk will jointly install pieces and sound situations – both already existing works and some developed especially for the project – in different spaces at the Akademie der Künste. The musicians will explore new areas of the building; daily and publicly. They will implant music (directly or projected over loudspeakers from other locations), react to the results and vary the sounds, cast and contents. Little by little a spoken-performative, situational form of music will be created.
Tuesday, 5 April, 8 pm, Concert with works by François Sarhan, Niklas Seidl, Maximilian Marcoll

6 April until 12 April (Week 2)
Neele Hülcker & das Ensemble MAM.Manufaktur für aktuelle Musik, Frankfurt
ASMR-STUDIO
The ensemble MAM.Manufaktur für aktuelle Musik and the composer Neele Hülcker deal with ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response), a mass phenomenon which has increased to millions of videos on the Internet since 2010. Soft noises and whispering is intended to trigger pleasant static-like tingling sensations on the scalp, which promises relaxation and well-being.The musicians will set up an ASMR studio, complete with headphones, loudspeakers and mobile listening stations, which explore the phenomenon from various artistic perspectives.The multifunctional space is open to the public for two hours daily, as an exhibition space, concert room and film studio. Visitors take part in the investigations and sound productions in a
comfortable atmosphere. However, an absolute commandment to whisper is in effect. Live actions and a YouTube channel (specifically set up for this purpose) complete the setting.
Tuesday, 12 April, 8 pm: Concert with works by Neele Hülcker, Paul Hübner

13 April until 19 April (Week 3)
Matthias Kaul & Ensemble LUX:NM, Berlin
DECENTRALIZING THE IMMOBILE
The Ensemble LUX:NM and the composer and performer Matthias Kaul experimentally transfer to instruments a technique known in the digital world as “morphing.” Microphones and wires transmit the sound of the “immobile” concert grand from one instrument to the next so that a new sound is created at the end of the chain from many particularw sounds.Even the building’s other immobile features, such as banisters and built-in cabinets, are connected to one another in a similar manner, recorded and set into (virtual) motion through sound. The installations using Soundlazer loudspeakers also employ technically elaborate means to vary the theme of mobility vs. immobility. And throughout the building visitors will find Matthias Kaul’s Walkmen, small “hearing aids,” which only produces sound if the listener moves with them and senses the materials of the building acoustically.
Tuesday, 19 April, 8 pm, Concert with works by Matthias Kaul, Jaroslaw Plonka, Jef Chippewa


30 March until 19 April
Horizontal 1
Maximilian Marcoll
ELUDE, REPHRASE
The composer Maximilian Marcoll creates a continuous series of miniatures for performer and electronics. He will produce recordings of and with individual soloists of the three ensembles over a three-week period. Loudspeaker pieces and rewritten, re-instrumentalized source material, are created from these recordings. In a spiral-shaped, potentially infinite process, the known and the new are indissolubly combined. As in a model representing publicness, it only reveals itself in details, never completely.

12 March until 29 May
Horitonzal 2
Christina Kubisch: ELECTRICAL WALKS BERLIN
The sound artist Christina Kubisch has discovered a very unique type of listening space behind the urban scenery: Using special electromagnetic headphones, she is able to make signals and electromagnetic fields audible and experienceable, whose acoustics change our everyday perceptions. Subterranean electric cables, parking garages, subway stations and smartphones leave behind magnetic traces, and hidden safety systems appear as rhythmic structures. A walking tour in the public spaces around the AdK building makes participants familiar with this fascinating world.