2008

November 20-21, 2008 | raum 35

The interdisciplinary festival shut up and listen! kicks off for the third time in 2008. This year’s festival theme is small | silent | lowercase, so the focus is on subtle tones and restrained sound production strategies, and music and sound art projects often hover in a barely audible range. This encourages an artistic reflection of supposedly inconspicuous details and the exploration and contemplation of the basic conditions of human perception. shut up and listen! 2008 offers a podium for outstanding artistic positions which embrace these qualities and provide a refreshing change of pace to the usual competition for attention in the music industry.

The percussionist Bernd Thurner plays two instrumentally reduced works: Nader Mashayekhi’s 14 + eine Nacht for gran cassa and Alvin Lucier’s Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra for triangle. Dimitrios Polisoidis performs Klaus Lang’s delicate viola composition ägäische eisberge. Heribert Friedl and Klaus Filip coax similarly fragile sound structures from their laptops. On day two, the Canadian electronic musician i8u pairs up with Vienna-based Tim Blechmann. Clarinettists Kai Fagaschinski and Michael Thieke give us a taste of the proverbial Berlin understatement in their duo project The International Nothing, while Erin Gee relies on the versatility of her voice in Mouthpieces. On both festival days, visitors can experience a site-specific quadraphonic adaptation of Martin Supper’s sound installation gX, which makes use of only the sound of tuning forks.