sound exchange festival chemnitz

SOUND EXCHANGE began its search for the roots and current state of experimental music culture in Central and Eastern Europe in 2011. The region has a lively, international network of musicians, cultures and festivals. Nonetheless, local traditions and their protagonists – especially the underground movements – have partially been forgotten since the period of transition started in 1989. SOUND EXCHANGE ensures that these traditions remain audible and visible, and positions them in the context of current developments in local music scenes.

The SOUND EXCHANGE FESTIVAL Chemnitz is the final station of the project, and takes place from 15 – 18 November 2012. It is organized by DOCK e. V. Berlin and the Goethe Institut, in collaboration with weltecho in Chemnitz, and is funded by the Federal Cultural Foundation.

Since August 2011, SOUND EXCHANGE DAYS has cooperated with a total of seven local festivals involving concerts, performances, workshops and a travelling documentary exhibition on the experimental music scene in Central and Eastern Europe. Musicians and artists from participating countries explored and interpreted not only works by experimental music pioneers, but also developed their own new projects in the spirit of the experimental underground from the period of the Iron Curtain. SOUND EXCHANGE stimulates the exchange between generations and countries, makes history audible relate historical developments to current movements in local music scenes.

Developed by artistic directors Carsten Seiffarth and Carsten Stabenow, together with co-curators from the respective countries and local scenes, the projects display a wide stylistic spectrum of experimental music culture: electronic sound experiments, Dadaist happenings, minimal music, Fluxus, experimental electroacoustic music, intermedia, graphic notations and real-time improvisation.

The most interesting concerts, performances and exhibitions to have been created in the past months and already presented in Krakow, Bratislava, Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn, Prague and Budapest will now be shown in a one-off display during the four-day SOUND EXCHANGE FESTIVAL in Chemnitz.

See the documentation of the whole SOUND EXCHANGE project here >>>