Berlin Atonal is an annual festival for sonic and visual art in two distinct stages. It first took place between 1982 and 1990, relaunching in 2013 under new direction and continuing to the present day. The festival presents contemporary, interdisciplinary projects at the intersection of sound art, visual and media art, installation and performance, with an emphasis on commissioned work and world premieres. Apart from the annual event, Berlin Atonal has presented other satellite events such as The Long Now, New Assembly in Tokyo, and has collaborated with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester, Dark Mofo and Berliner Festspiele.

History

Originally staged at

SO36 The SO36 () club is a music club on Oranienstraße near Heinrichplatz in the area of Kreuzberg in Berlin, Germany. It takes its name from the historic postcode of that area, SO36, in which the SO stands for Südost (South East). The Kreuzberg dis ...

Kreuzberg Kreuzberg () is a district of Berlin, Germany. It is part of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough located south of Mitte. During the Cold War era, it was one of the poorest areas of West Berlin, but since German reunification in 1990 it ha ...

, the early years of Atonal fostered revolutionary and innovative musical acts such as

Malaria! Malaria! was an experimental electronic band from West Berlin formed in 1981 by Gudrun Gut and Bettina Köster following the dissolution of Mania D with Karin Luner, Eva Gossling later Die Krupps and Beate Bartel (of Liaisons Dangereuses). ...

Einstürzende Neubauten (, 'Collapsing New Buildings') is a German experimental music group, formed in West Berlin in 1980. The group is currently composed of founding members Blixa Bargeld (lead vocals; guitar; keyboard) and N.U. Unruh (custom-made instruments; perc ...

Test Dept Test Dept, sometimes credited as Test Department is a British industrial music group from London, England, that was one of the most important and influential early industrial music acts. Their approach was marked by the use of "found" material ...

Laibach Laibach () is a Slovenian avant-garde music group associated with the industrial, martial, and neo-classical genres. Formed in the mining town of Trbovlje (at the time in Yugoslavia) in 1980, Laibach represents the musical wing of the Neue Slo ...

, Psychic TV,

808 State 808 State are an English electronic music group formed in 1987 in Manchester, taking their name from the Roland TR-808 drum machine. They were formed by Graham Massey, Martin Price and Gerald Simpson. They released their debut album, '' New ...

Die Haut Die Haut (German for ''the skin'') were an experimental German post-punk and post-rock band in Berlin during the 1980s and 1990s, with such records as the Nick Cave collaboration ''Burnin' the Ice''. The only constant member was Christoph Dreher ...

among many others. Throughout the 1980s Berlin Atonal was at the vanguard of the progressive electronic and experimental music and art scenes, and worked to coalesce these emerging sounds in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

and worldwide into a more cohesive movement. The festival closed in 1990 as founder

Dimitri Hegemann Dietmar-Maria "Dimitri" Hegemann (born August 26, 1954) is a German nightclub owner, cultural activist and community organizer, currently living and working in Berlin, Germany. Early life and career Dimitri Hegemann was born in Werl of Westfalia ...

’s focus turned to founding the

techno Techno is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempo often varying between 120 and 150 beats per minute (bpm). The central rhythm is typically in common time (4/4) and often ch ...

club Tresor.

Current

In 2013, Berlin Atonal was relaunched at its new permanent home,

Kraftwerk Kraftwerk (, "power station") is a German band formed in Düsseldorf in 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. Widely considered innovators and pioneers of electronic music, Kraftwerk were among the first successful acts to popularize the ...

, a massive former powerplant, on the cusp of the

Mitte Mitte () is the first and most central borough of Berlin. The borough consists of six sub-entities: Mitte proper, Gesundbrunnen, Hansaviertel, Moabit, Tiergarten and Wedding. It is one of the two boroughs (the other being Friedrichshain-Kreuzb ...

and Kreuzberg areas of Berlin, under new directorship. The festival activates the powerplant for a week each year, dedicating its 8,000 square meters to featuring high concept A/V shows, site-specific performances and installations, world premiere commissions and collaborations, screenings and workshops. Each year sees hundreds of individual musicians, choreographers, sound and visual artists performing and presenting their work. The festival is now regarded as one of the most influential sonic arts events in the world. “Berlin Atonal is arguably the city’s most impressive music and arts festival,” wrote critic Megan King in 2017, “spanning a fascinating thirty-year story that is entwined with the history of the city itself.” Berlin Atonal, she argued in Culture Trip, coined Berlin as “a city that originated serious, existentialist music.”

Commissioned works and artists

Each year the festival plays host to several commissioned works. Among the artists and new collaborations who have produced new work for the festival or one of its side projects, or contributed with a specially devised project are:

Actress An actor or actress is a person who portrays a Character (arts), character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek ...

Alessandro Cortini Alessandro Cortini (born 24 May 1976) is an Italian musician best known for being the keyboard, guitar, and bass player in the industrial band Nine Inch Nails. Cortini is also the frontman for the Los Angeles-based electronic-alternative band SO ...

Alvin Lucier Alvin Augustus Lucier Jr. (May 14, 1931 – December 1, 2021) was an American composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. A long-time music professor at Wesleyan University in Mi ...

, Anika Schwarzlose,

Autechre Autechre () is an English electronic music duo consisting of Rob Brown and Sean Booth, both from Rochdale, Greater Manchester. Formed in 1987, they are among the best known acts signed to UK electronic label Warp Records, through which all of Au ...

Bruce Conner Bruce Conner (November 18, 1933 – July 7, 2008) was an American artist who worked with assemblage, film, drawing, sculpture, painting, collage, and photography. Biography Bruce Conner was born November 18, 1933 in McPherson, Kansas.His well- ...

, Cabaret Voltaire, Caterina Barbieri,

Clock DVA Clock DVA are a musical group from Sheffield, England, whose style has touched on industrial, post-punk, and EBM. They formed in 1978 by Adolphus "Adi" Newton and Steven "Judd" Turner. Along with contemporaries Heaven 17, Clock DVA's name was ...

Cyprien Gaillard Cyprien may refer to: * , a 2009 film with Catherine Deneuve * , a masculine given name * Tropical Storm Cyprien, a short-lived tropical cyclone People * Glynn Cyprien, American basketball coach * Jean-Pierre Cyprien, former French footballer ...

Glenn Branca Glenn may refer to: Name or surname * Glenn (name) * John Glenn, U.S. astronaut Cultivars * Glenn (mango) * a 6-row barley variety Places In the United States: * Glenn, California * Glenn County, California * Glenn, Georgia, a settlement ...

Iancu Dumitrescu Iancu Dumitrescu (born 15 July 1944) is a Romanian avant-garde composer. Life and works Dumitrescu was born in Sibiu, Romania. He received a master's degree in composition in Bucharest, where his teachers included Alfred Mendelsohn. Later, ...

, John Gerrard,

Jon Hassell Jon Hassell (March 22, 1937 – June 26, 2021) was an American trumpet player and composer. He was best known for developing the concept of "Fourth World" music, which describes a "unified primitive/futurist sound" combining elements of various w ...

, Le Syndicat Electronique, Leslie Winer,

Lillian Schwartz Lillian F. Schwartz (born 1927) is an American artist considered a pioneer of computer-mediated art and one of the first artists notable for basing almost her entire oeuvre on computational media. Many of her ground-breaking projects were done in t ...

Mark Lanegan Mark William Lanegan (November 25, 1964 – February 22, 2022) was an American singer, songwriter, and poet. First becoming prominent as the lead singer for the early grunge band Screaming Trees, he was also known as a member of Queens of the St ...

Mick Harris Michael John Harris (born 4 October 1967) is an English musician from Birmingham. He was the drummer for Napalm Death between 1985 and 1991, and is credited for coining the term "grindcore". After Napalm Death, Harris joined Painkiller with Joh ...

Mika Vainio Mika Tapio Vainio (May 15, 1963 – April 12, 2017) was a Finnish electronic musician. He was best known as a member of Pan Sonic. In addition to his real name, he recorded under the aliases Ø, Kentolevi, Philus, and Tekonivel. He has worked wi ...

, Paul Jebanasam,

Peter Burr Peter Burr is a digital and new media artist based in Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York, born August 3, 1980. Having received a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2002, Peter specializes in animation and installation. He has been awarded a List of G ...

Peter Zinovieff Peter Zinovieff (26 January 1933 – 23 June 2021) was a British engineer and composer. In the late 1960s, his company, Electronic Music Studios (EMS), made the VCS3, a synthesizer used by many early progressive rock bands such as Pink Floyd a ...

Shackleton Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (15 February 1874 – 5 January 1922) was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of An ...

Surgeon In modern medicine, a surgeon is a medical professional who performs surgery. Although there are different traditions in different times and places, a modern surgeon usually is also a licensed physician or received the same medical training as ...

, Strawalde, Susanne Winterling,

Tino Sehgal Tino is an Italian name or nickname, often a diminutive of the names Agostino, Costantino, Martino, Antonino, Valentino, Giustino, Sabatino, Faustino, and other names ending in -tino. Tino may refer to: People Given name * Tino Ausenda (1 ...

Tony Conrad Anthony Schmalz Conrad (March 7, 1940 – April 9, 2016) was an American video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician, composer, sound artist, teacher, and writer. Active in a variety of media since the early 1960s, he was a pioneer of both d ...

, Wang Bing,

Wolfgang Tillmans Wolfgang Tillmans (born 16 August 1968) is a German photographer. His diverse body of work is distinguished by observation of his surroundings and an ongoing investigation of the photographic medium’s foundations. Tillmans was the first photog ...

, Zhao Liang.

Side-projects

The Long Now is a collaboration between Berlin Atonal and

Berliner Festspiele The Berliner Festspiele (German for Berlin Festivals) are a series of festivals, art exhibitions, and other cultural events organized all year long by a common organization in Berlin. Events are held at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, a pre-ex ...

, closing the ten-day

MaerzMusik MaerzMusik is a festival of the Berliner Festspiele and has been held annually since 2002 in March at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele and other venues. It is the successor festival to the Musik-Biennale Berlin and is considered one of the most im ...

festival, taking place every March since 2015. The project assembles concerts, performances, electronic live-acts, sound and video installations to form a composition in time and space over 30+ continuous hours, inducing the crowd to immersive experiences of longevity and unconsciousness. Laterne is a curated programme for Australian art museum MONA’s

Dark Mofo Dark Mofo is the winter version of the MONA FOMA festival, also held in Tasmania. With many of its events taking place at night, it celebrates the darkness of the southern winter solstice and features many musical acts, large scale light insta ...

festival. Parallax was a joint project between Berlin Atonal and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester, with a programme of orchestral music from the baroque era to modern micropolyphony. Berlin Atonal Recordings is a record label set up to accompany the festival, releasing excerpts of live performances from the festival.

References

External links

*
1982 Atonal festival at SO36
photo by

Peter Lind Peter Lind (born 1961) is a Danish photographer, Contemporary artist and New Media Art artist. Peter Lind's work is based on documentary observations, and stands at the crossroads of conceptual photography, installation and Narrative structure. ...