Even if you’re more of a home bird in January, a good reason to get out is the CTM Festival, which begins again this Friday (24.01.2020). This year’s title is “Liminal”, the ephemeral space located on different thresholds – those areas of transformation, transition and extreme. To help you make sense of the packed festival schedule, here are our highlights. Like every year, the group exhibition at Kunstraum Bethanien is a must: at Interstitial Spaces, various artists explore multi-dimensional spaces with videos, sounds, interactions, photographs and performances. In “You Will Go Away One Day But I Will Not“, Maria Thereza Alves and Lucrecia Dalt transform the Botanical Gardens into a sound-art piece that puts western botanical practices up for debate. CTM offers not just sounds, but structured electronic music too. We are especially looking forward to Icelandic cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir’s live performance of her award-winning soundtrack to the series “Chernobyl” and the Danish sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard, whose “Opus Mors” musical work studies the four phases of death. Sure not to disappoint, CTM is just the thing to lure you out the door even in the dreary winter weather. (Text: Hanna Komornitzyk / Photos: Voijd für CTM & Astrid Gnosis & Adrian Morillo)

CTM Liminal 
24.01.–02.02.2020; Tickets online.
@ctmfestival
 
Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin–Kreuzberg; map
Group exhibition: Interstitial Spaces
Daily 10–22h

Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum Berlin, Königin-Luise-Str.6–8, Berlin–Dahlem; map
Installation: You Will Go Away One Day But I Will Not
Daily 9–19h

Silent Green Kulturquartier, Gerichtstr.35, 13347 Berlin–Wedding; map
Concert: Hildur Guðnadóttir – Chernobyl, 29. & 30.01., 20h
Performance: Jacob Kirkegaard – Opus Mors, 02.02., 15h (Betonhalle)

When musicians modify their pianos, they open up a whole world of musical possibilities. With a five-day program of piano-based explorations, the KW gallery is celebrating just this. The highlight: 24 “prepared pianos” taken from Italian patron Francesco Conz’s (1935-2010) Archivio Conz collection of avant-garde artworks. The instruments are “prepared” by placing objects between or on the strings, and the exhibition is a testament to the musicians who have experimented with their keys and strings through the ages. These visual displays challenge the idea of the piano as the tool of the privileged virtuoso, and bring together works from major avant-garde artists including Ay-O, Dorothy Iannone, Carolee Schneemann, Nam June Paik, as well as Ben Patterson, whose piano – that most staid of instruments – is turned into a tropical wonder with a whole array of exotic plants. Alongside the exhibited pianos is a series of music and visual performances. Our tip: grab a ticket for Charlemagne Palestine’s show, featuring his minimalist synth and organ sounds. (Text: Benji Haughton / Photos: Courtesy of Archivio Conz)

KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Auguststr.69, 10117 Berlin–Mitte; map
Pause: Broken Sound/Remote Music. Prepared pianos from the Archivio Conz collection. 16.–19.01.2020
Concert from Charlemagne Palestine, 17.01.2020, 20h30. Tickets at the KW box office.
@kwinstitutefcontemporaryart

Can the way we speak have a direct impact on our lives? According to Lawrence Abu Hamdan, the answer is yes: in his multilayered audiovisual installations, the British-Lebanese artist visualizes not only sound and the structural elements of language, but its political potential. His solo exhibition “The Voice Before the Law” at Hamburger Bahnhof shows how language is central to prejudice and discrimination. Language itself becomes evidence in the photo series “Disputed Utterance”: the term refers to criminal cases in which the accused are convicted solely on the basis of sound recordings that are hard to understand or ambiguous. The video work “This whole time there were no landmines” uses mobile phone footage of a 2011 confrontation between the Israeli military and Palestinian demonstrators in the Golan Heights. Eight monitors mounted along a narrow corridor reconstruct the acoustic phenomena of the site, ultimately rendering emotionality through immersiveness and the visualization of unheard voices – an exceptional approach that must be seen if not heard. (Text: Hanna Komornitzyk / Photos: Maureen Paley & Staatliche Museen zu Berlin & Lawrence Abu Hamdan)

Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Invalidenstr. 50–51, 10557 Berlin–Moabit; map
Lawrence Abu Hamdan: The Voice Before the Law: 26.10.2019–09.02.2020
Tue–Fri 10–18h (Thu until 20h), Sat–Sun 11–18h
@lawrenceabuhamdan