SOUND(ING) SYSTEMS

20. March 2021 – 24. April 2021

live stream

SOUND(ING) SYSTEMS
An exciting interactive program to compliment and expand Nik Nowak’s installation Schizo Sonics currently exhibiting at Berlin’s KINDL Center for Contemporary Art (13.9.2020 – 15.5.2021.)

The bonus concept will unfold via a one-day symposium and three live performances during 20.03.2021 – 24.04.21.

( All elements to be streamed )

SOUND(ING) SYSTEMS examines the history of the Cold War via the so-called ‘Lautsprecherkrieg’ (loudspeaker war) and the ‘Studio am Stacheldraht’ (Studio at the Barbed Wire) in Berlin. The program focuses on the surprising political entanglements of Jamaican and Korean sound systems in the global struggle between the great powers fighting for ideological influence; the controversial use of acoustic weapons in Cuba as well as the politicization of subcultural movements. A critical analysis of the ideological demands made on sound systems separate to the Cold War, examining the global transformations of sound system cultures.

What factors might account for both how, and why, sound system culture, (in its varied, wide-reaching global forms), and the medium of sound itself, have become gravitational spheres to which the military, covert government agencies, cultural producers, and theorists alike have been increasingly drawn since the onset of the (first) Cold War? At which point did sound politics become an increasingly important weapon in the cultural-political armory for factions of the fine arts, philosophy, scientific research, sound research, feminist and queer discourse and practice, as well as for
clubs and subculture?