Dystopia Festival

21 – 30 September 2018

Berlin

Dystopian thinking on social and political repression, the uncertainties of technology, and massive environmental interference, will be debated and explored in sound installations and performances at this 10 days sound arts festival in Berlin.

‘Dystopia is in business. She looks at us in film and literature as well as in world politics. Authoritarian-led states, the global power of Internet corporations and ecological catastrophes: they add up to a vision of the future of terror. But dystopia is not only disturbing. Precisely because it is fictional, it is a time-diagnostic tool – and “a warning not to let it go that far”, as the philosopher Ágnes Heller emphasizes. Thus the dystopia exerts a broad fascination. Like Utopia, it is a creation of passionate imagination, not of hope but of fear. Utopia and dystopia are two sides of the same coin: every utopian pursuit of social perfection inevitably restricts individual freedom, as Gregory Claeys explains in his lecture on Teufelsberg. Topias – spaces and places – with their atmospheres, stories and potentials play a central role in sound art. The DYSTOPIA Sound Art Festival picks up places with an unusual past and an open future and transforms them with sound-artistic positions from different cultures.’ 

The festival includes sound installation by Peter Cusack & Katharina Bévand, Dystopic Mirage. The work explores the ruins of Ani, an ancient city in eastern Turkey, and some thoughts on dystopia and place. Read more about the work on the Dystopia website.

Read the full festival schedule, booking and location information on the Dystopia website.