Being a musician in a different world

Description

Making music (professionally) depends on a relatively stable cultural, social, economical and, in fine, environmental context. And this context in our days is at high risk: scientific research on environmental issues unmistakably shows that climate change and other crises (water, dramatical decrease of biodiversity, long lasting respectively so called „eternal“ chemicals, microplastics in the ground and the water, etc.) have become a reality and threaten the world we live in, including social and cultural aspects. But, even if there are many (and very welcome) efforts to reduce our environmental impact, most people continue to live more or less as before, as if these problems were not as big as they are or, even worse, as if they did not exist at all. The gap between the two perspectives is extremely large and seems to be unbridgeable. One thing, however, is clear: one day in the near future, nature (of which all of us are part) will oblige us to drastically reduce the consumption of resources of all kinds, i. e. to change profoundly our habits, and our way of life. Nobody knows when and how this will happen, nobody knows what exactly will happen, we only know that it will happen. And, if signs do not lie, it will happen much earlier than for a long time expected. That’s why the point of departure of the workshop will be the time after drastic changes have taken place.

The workshop’s basic idea is simple and challenging at the same time: reflecting together what making music under completely different conditions might look like, for example, with only limited or almost no possibillities of travelling – what would such a scenario allow and imply?

Musicians dealing with contemporary music, composers as well as performers, are used to face challenges. And the workshop would like to draw on this potential in order to explore options and possibilities regarding the topic. The aim is not to depict a dystopia but quite the contrary: to develop scenarios for future music making. Enno Poppe, in a conversation, recently put it that way: „I am fully convinced that people always, under whatever conditions, will make new music!“

The workshop will consist of the following elements:

– 22 July (10.00–11.30): an introductory session including the presentation of the project and, on the organizational level, the formation of (autonomous) groups of interested participants in order to get by brain storming ideas supposed to be developed

– 24 July: a gathering together with all groups in order to share and collect the ideas, to identify the most promising, and to decide which of them are to be developed and explored further by the groups (coached, if necessary, by the tutors)

– 27 & 28 July (17.00–19.00 each): two working sessions in the Open Space dedicated each to present and discuss one or more of the developed ideas in the plenum

The room for the kick-off meeting will be announced here shortly.
Background materials in the form of links or texts will be shared with all participants.