On Strike Berlinale concludes with a short-film program titled Nation Isn’t Mother, taken from Sanzgiri’s film Two Refusals. The title reflects the shared character of the films’ exploration of the meaning of nation: oppressor, savior, a place to flee, a non-place, a site of love, memory, and resistance. The screening is followed by a discussion with the directors via video chat moderated by Tobi Haslett. 

•  Death Mask, John Greyson (2023, Canada, 10 min)

This experimental opera reenacts the lesser-known history of Chinese medical student Li Shiu Tong, and his lover Magnus Hirschfeld, a much older German sexologist and gay rights pioneer during Nazi Germany.

•  Two Refusals (Would We Recognize Ourselves Unbroken?), Suniel Sanzgiri (2024, 35 min)

An experimental film focusing on interwoven narratives around the mutual struggle against Portuguese colonialism between India and Africa, and the bonds of solidarity that developed between the two continents. Told through a mix of interviews and fictional narratives, Two Refusals utilizes a blend of CGI animation, super 16mm film, and hand-processed and destroyed archival film to uncover lost layers of world-building, kinship, and the material and immaterial network of relations that developed between historical figures in Goa, Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea-Bissau.

•  Atmospheric Arrivals, Ayo Tsalithaba (2021, 6 min)

A restless spirit returns home through time, space, and memory. This film is at once a living archive/poly temporal memory bank and a love letter to my other selves. Tsalithaba says, "I am inspired by the work of Akwaeke Emezi, Keguro Macharia, Sylvia Wynter, José Esteban Muñoz, and others who have pushed me to think about queer elsewheres and Black diasporic desire and (be)longing. This film has helped me articulate what I call 'atmospheric arrival', which refers to the ways in which one can come into being through imagination and by reaching across spacetimes to 'fetch' the self."   

•  Illanga Aliko (The Sun Is Missing), Advik Beni (2021, 8 min)

An experimental landscape film with an element of poetry. The film follows the son of the professional mourner who has now taken up the mantle of his father. He is confused. He does not want to mourn anymore, but it is all he knows how to do. He goes to the local flea market and purchases some chickens for a sacrificial ceremony in the name of his ancestors. Soon enough he is traversing the vast mountainous landscape of Kwa-Zulu Natal as he struggles to find a place where he belongs.

Record release concert 

Sophie Agnel (piano) & Joke Lanz (turntables) present their duo recording Ella (iDEAL Recordings and Klanggalerie 2025) 

Agnel and Lanz's first duo recording follows on the success of their trio album Animals (Klanggalerie 2023) with drummer Michael Vatcher. Eyal Hareuveni of Salt Peanuts writes, "Like in the previous collaboration, Agnel and Joke Lanz exchange brilliant, Dadaist sonic punches that simultaneously, empty this hyperactive, free improvised interplay of any high-brow importance but inject into it healthy doses of subversive, highly imaginative, and inventive ideas."

Oker  

Torstein Lavik Larsen (trumpet), Fredrik Rasten (acoustic guitar), Adrian Fiskum Myhr (double bass) & Jan Martin Gismervik (drums, percussion)

Oker is an acoustic experimental quartet whose music combines fine-tuned tonalities, deconstructed grooves, acoustic noise, and other sonic events. A certain minimalist or stoic approach to sound production is an overarching and recurring element in all of Oker’s music, differentiating their sound from that found in much of improvised music and free jazz. Oker has released two records to date, Husene våre er museer (SOFA music, 2018) and Susurrus (Shhpuma 2021), with a third album slated for the fall.

Lia Kohl, solo for cello & electronics

Lia Kohl creates and performs sonic landscapes utilizing cello, synthesizers, field recordings, and live radio to explore the mundane and profound possibilities of sound. Kohl's releases to date include two solo albums, The Ceiling Reposes (American Dreams Records 2023) and Normal Sounds (Moon Glyph 2024), and a duo with Macie Stewart Recipe for a Boiled Egg (Astril Spirits 2020).

Dylan Kerr & Michael Speers, duo for voices, electronics, and whistles

A wolf tone is an undesirable, unstable, and often uncontrollable sound that occurs when the pitch of a played note is close to a strong natural resonant frequency of the instrument's body. Dylan Kerr and Michael Speers invoke wolfing voices through Irish rebel songs.

Lawrence McGuire, I’m not an Irish ˈMan(t)lˌpēs for amplified and acoustic voice, woodblocks, and broken speakers

Together with his synthetic counterpart, Lawrence will recite his recent series of nonsense poems titled I’m not an Irish ˈMan(t)lˌpēs. Prolonged activities in asemic writing and private performances of Ultra-Lettrist poetry led him to stage a vocal standoff between his own fleshy, oral apparatus and his digitally modeled vocal tract. A competition in phonatory gymnastics where the “proto-voice” wins. 

Sam Dunscombe, Self Unsame Again Always New for clarinet and synthesized sound (commissioned in 2023 by INA GRM for the acousmonium, presented here in quadraphonic+ diffusion)

Max Eilbacher, A Glimpse of the Laughing Star for electronics and speakers

Sam Dunscombe is a Tone Ingénue working at the crossroads of experimental music, audio engineering, and spectralism. Sam has a keen interest in the ways that music allows for novel experiences of time, which has led to explorations in sound synthesis, just-intonation, improvisation, the performance of complex-notated repertoire, field recording, studio engineering, computer programming, and live electronic performance.

Max Eilbacher works with sound. That work materializes in a variety of forms: compositions, musical performances, conceptual systems, perceptual choreography, installations, and theoretical sculpture. No matter how the final work may be categorized, the art typically utilizes speakers and sound waves. A frequent concern throughout the works is an inquiry into the inextricable and complex relationship between sound and experience. At each incident of sound, a phenomenological abyss must be transversed. He is aware the listener is the agent taking such a leap. Composition (or whatever may be emanating from a speaker) is the practical enactment of such a leap. 

The second edition of Multiplex features a screening of Jack’s Straw Castle (2009) by Turner Prize nominee Rosalind Nashashibi. (The rest of the program to be announced shortly.)

Multiplex, curated by Zach Hart and Bryony Dawson, is a new series featuring experimental and artists' films, readings, and performances.

To celebrate Dean Roberts’ 50th birthday, the Dean Roberts Arcade Band will host a memorial concert at KM28. Using his landmark recording Arcade (All Cracked Medias, Mille Plateaux, 1999) as a starting point, the group will musically explore memories, mourning, love, laughter and friendship. Dean Roberts passed on August 10, 2024.

Andrea Belfi, Boris Hauf, Emanuele Porcinai, Elisabeth Porcinai, Andre Vida and special guests

So Sner  Susanna Gartmayer (bass clarinet) & Stefan Schneider (electronics) present their latest release, The Well (TAK 2024). Schneider and Gartmayer began their collaboration in 2015, recording the first half of the album Reime in Kraftwerk’s former Kling Klang studio. The second part was recorded in the summer of 2020 in Düsseldorf-Kaiserswerth at Stammhaus church, whose interior wood paneling facilitated the organic sense of acoustics. 

Susanna Gartmayer has worked as a musician and composer in various realms including experimental rock, improvisation and multimedia sound performance since the early 2000s.  Stefan Schneider is a founding member of Düsseldorfs electronic outfit Kreidler and has also been a third of the internationally acclaimed trio To Rococo Rot. He has also pursued numerous collaborations with, among others, Joachim Roedelius, Arto Lindsay, Bill Wells, Dieter Moebius, Klaus Dinger, Sofia Jernberg, Koshiro Hino, John McEntire, and visual artist Katharina Grosse. 

Miki Yui (electronics) presents her eight solo album As If (Hallow Ground 2024). Since 1999, Yui has been known for her uniquely minimalist and organic approach towards music. From a tiny delicate hiss to a distant hum, electronic sounds and field recordings are woven into music with a narrative tension. She has collaborated with Klaus Dinger, Rolf Julius, Asmus Tietchens and Rie Nakajima and performs with Carl Stone in the duo Realistic Monk.

A celebration festival of the life and music of Radu Malfatti, featuring compositions for large and small ensembles and improvisations

Day 1 Program (all works by Radu Malfatti)

Orchesterklang (2009) for large ensemble

Düsseldof Vielfaches (2007) for large ensemble

Kid Ailack 3 (2008) for shō and two electric guitars 

Improvisation by large ensemble 

with Radu Malfatti, Rasha Ragab, Christoph Nicolaus, Germaine Sjijstermans, Catherine Lamb, Deborah Walker, Michiko Ogawa, Sam Dunscombe, Koen Nutters, Heather Frasch, Rebecca Lane, Biliana Voutchkovoa, Quentin Tolimieri, Joe Kudirka, Ángeles  Rojas, Derek Shirley, Alexander Markvart, Eric Wong, Seiji Morimoto, Bryan Eubanks, Christian Kesten, Hannes Lingens, Lucio Capece

A celebration festival of the life and music of Radu Malfatti, featuring compositions for large and small ensembles and improvisations

Day 2 Program (all works by Radu Malfatti)

Naryamu Sextet (2010)  

Reizoku (2025) for large ensemble  

Solo improvisation for bass harmonica and playback

with Radu Malfatti, Rasha Ragab, Christoph Nicolaus, Germaine Sjijstermans, Catherine Lamb, Deborah Walker, Michiko Ogawa, Sam Dunscombe, Koen Nutters, Heather Frasch, Rebecca Lane, Biliana Voutchkovoa, Quentin Tolimieri, Joe Kudirka, Ángeles  Rojas, Derek Shirley, Alexander Markvart, Eric Wong, Seiji Morimoto, Bryan Eubanks, Christian Kesten, Hannes Lingens, Lucio Capece