27 July 2023

Festival Opening – Time to Listen: The Ecological Crisis in Sound and Music

Sound installations, concert, reading and presentations
Friday, 18 August 2023, from 6 pm, Hanseatenweg

The Akademie der Künste invites you to the opening of the festival Time to Listen: The Ecological Crisis in Sound and Music from 6 pm on 18 August. Kathrin Röggla, writer and vice-president of the Akademie der Künste, will open proceedings with a talk on the Akademie’s current position on climate change and sustainability. How can art “talk” about these issues and support the necessary process of transforming society? These are questions that are also tackled by composer Iris ter Schiphorst. Cécile Wajsbrot will read from her Adieu à l’hiver (Farewell to Winter), an episodic series about the extinction of the human race. Carola Bauckholt and Karin Hellqvist take field recordings of glaciers and ice as the starting point for their composition Solastalgia, which focuses on the sense of “solastalgia” we feel when faced with the reality or prospect of nature dwindling as a result of the climate crisis – a feeling of loss that we must learn to cope with. The evening concert by Marcus Maeder is a translation into sound of the measurement data from CO₂ stations in the Amazon rainforest, from the sewage farms in Hobrechtsfelde and biodiversity data from fungal communities in soils. Prior to the concert, there will be an introductory talk by FU biologist Matthias Rillig.

The exhibition halls and outdoor spaces of the Akademie building on Hanseatenweg feature seven sound installations with international artists talking about their perceptions of the ecological crisis: they give audible expression to the processes of destruction and climate change and create spaces of memory and knowledge that allow us to imagine future forms of coexistence. Jacob Kirkegaard’s two haunting audio works model the acoustic rhythms of factory farming and waste management. The installations by Claudia González Godoy and Susie Ibarra take an ecofeminist approach to the realities of life in Chile and Morocco. Two of the installations run on sustainable energy. Winfried Ritsch’s sound flowers, which he builds together with a group of teenagers in the context of a workshop, create sound using solar energy and fill the Akademie’s ornamental Reed Garden with subtle sounds. Daniel Rothman’s installation requires the audience to pedal a bicycle themselves in order to power the sound system, which plunges them into a bioacoustic refuge in California.

The Akademie der Künste’s programme is integral to its sense of mission, providing intellectual stimulus and education on the theme of sustainability. The festival “Time to Listen: The Ecological Crisis in Sound and Music” is part of an ongoing series of events devoted to climate change and the environmental crisis and ushers in a programme focused on this theme in autumn 2023. The Akademie’s own institutional reality is also under scrutiny here. Participation, cultural education and sustainable modes of production are key objectives in connection with this.

Event details
Time to Listen: The Ecological Crisis in Sound and Music
Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin
18 August to 3 September 2023

Opening event
Friday, 18 August, from 6 pm, free admission
Talk, concert, exhibition opening with Carola Bauckholt / Karin Hellqvist / Eric Lanz, Berliner Frauen-Vokalensemble, Marcus Maeder, Iris ter Schiphorst, Matthias Rillig, Kathrin Röggla, Cécile Wajsbrot

Exhibition
19 August to 3 September 2023
Tue–Fri, 2–7 pm; Sat + Sun 12–7 pm, €6/4

Programme
www.adk.de/time-to-listen

Press contact:
On behalf of the Akademie der Künste: Christiane Dramé, fabrikpublik, christiane.drame@fabrikpublik.de, tel.: 0173-874 19 39

Dorothea Walther, walther@adk.de, tel.: 030 20057-1531