Music

2020, Jul 16 — Aug 23

20 Sunsets

Concerts, films, readings
Open air on the roof terrace

For the 20 Sunsets festival, HKW invites the city to its rooftop terrace at dusk. On six weekends there will be concert sets, films, readings, and talks by and with Berlin’s international artists and cultural professionals.

May–November 2020

The Disappearance of Music

Until autumn 2020 Video series
Nov 12–15, 2020 Concerts, talks and more

Is music conceivable without musicians, instruments and recordings? “Traditional” instruments are becoming less and less important; easily accessible programs now make it possible to produce professional tracks even on a smartphone and software tools like auto-tune are becoming normalized.

Partners

from 2020

On Music

Panels, concerts, DJ set, installations

Who will research, analyse and critic music? Where will the dialog about music take place in the future? And what does sound cultures tell us about the global present? The new series On Music will address these questions – with panels, live music, films and performances at the HKW restaurant Weltwirtschaft.

Postponed to summer 2021

Wassermusik: Mississippi

Festival

The Mississippi as the cradle of American music: Jazz and funk originated in New Orleans, the blues in its delta, rock ’n’ roll in Memphis. In concerts, films and literature, Wassermusik 2021 will explore the importance of the river for the history of music und current music cultures.

Past Projects

Ideas for Music, Copyright and Access

2019, Nov 21 — 24

Right the Right

Ideas for Music, Copyright and Access
Concerts, talks, performances

Copyright is in crisis. Since digitization at the latest it’s become clear that the many design flaws in copyright law impede the work of creative people. Musicians in particular struggle with the lack of legal certainty and inscrutable payment mechanisms. Digital technologies not only transform creative practices in music and media culture, but also how supply and access are regulated, such as by content filters.

Tracing Aural Histories via Sonic Transmigrations

2019, Nov 01 — 17

Afro-Sonic Mapping

Installation, concerts, talks

What musical patterns have been preserved in the sounds of the African Diaspora, thus defying time and forced migration? What sonic affinities exist between Dakar and New Orleans or between Lagos, Kingston and New York City? How did post-colonial appropriations and transatlantic transfer processes become inscribed in contemporary rhythms?

2019, Jul 05 — 27

Wassermusik: Black Atlantic Revisited

Festival
Concerts, films, conference

In 1993 Paul Gilroy’s book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness was published. In it, he examines how the history of the Black Atlantic diaspora defied art and knowledge to find new forms. Music is of particular importance in this context. The focus of Wassermusik in 2019 – entitled Black Atlantic Revisited – is on the South Atlantic and its musical cultures.

2019, Mar 21 — 24

Find the File

Concerts, panels, films, lectures, installations

From record collections to streaming services, from ethnological sound archives to remixed tracks, from audiotapes of wartime radio stations to reissue hype – the way we handle musical material from the past is changing. A discursive music festival on the questions: How is music collected, preserved, selected and reactivated today? What do collections and archives represent? And what can be found in them?

2015–2019

Technosphärenklänge

The omnipresent, increasingly intelligent device-world is becoming networked to form ever larger infrastructures. How can music respond to the complex intertwining of natural, social and technical processes

Walk-in radio archive and platform for listening knowledge

2018, Nov 01 — Dec 10

Radiophonic Spaces

Walk-in radio archive and platform for listening knowledge

What significance does listening knowledge have in our present-day shaped by visual cultures? How are the cultures, aesthetics and politics of transmission and reception changing? In a walk-in radio archive visitors can discover more than 200 works of radio art by John Cage, Friederike Mayröcker, Milo Rau and many others.

2018, Oct 18 — 21

100 Years of Copyright

Concerts, talks, films, installations, performances, publication

A titanic struggle is currently raging over copyright: Publishers and labels are battling over exploitation and remuneration with representatives of the digital economy. Where are the interests of the artists and consumers while the future conditions for creative work are being negotiated? How is cultural production impaired when copyright and artistic freedom are played against one another?

Goodbye UK – and Thank You for the Music

2018, Jul 27 — Aug 18

Wassermusik

Goodbye UK – and Thank You for the Music
Concerts, films, talks

In 2018, Wassermusik takes the Brexit as an opportunity to pay homage to the extraordinary musical creativity that made the United Kingdom the world’s leading pop nation, alongside the US, in terms of music as well as thought, fashion, style and other concepts. Entitled Goodbye UK – and Thank You for the Music, the festival traces the “Britishness” of pop music and investigates its mode of action.

2018, Apr 26 — 29

100 Years of Beat

Concerts, DJ sets, talks, films, performances, installations

The first drum set came on the market in 1918 and triggered a musical revolution: It took over urban dance music and established the triad of bass drum, snare and hi-hat as the combination used the world over. While percussion in European music had long only had an embellishing function, now the drummed backbeat became the heartbeat of music. In others words, African diasporic beat practices in North America and the Caribbean completely realigned European-defined music.

2017, Nov 09 — 12

No! Music

Theme Days
Concerts, films, talks, installations

When there are no more gaps in the system, negation is the last resort. No! Music is searching for dissent in music: artists who work counter to the music industry, musicians who explore discomfort in the face of market mechanisms, or who even experiment with the negation of sound itself; and sounds that are not allowed to be heard – censored and forbidden music.

2017, Jul 21 — Aug 13

Wassermusik X

Festival
Concerts, films, talks

This summer festival held on the loveliest rooftop terrace in all of Berlin celebrates its tenth anniversary. This year’s Wassermusik is dedicated to all those musicians who have given us special moments over the last years, and to all those who have been in the program but were unable to make it to Berlin.

2017, Apr 06 — 09

Free! Music

Concerts, films, talks

How free can music be? Musicians, thinkers and artists dealt with this question in a variety of contexts in the twentieth century. Music should be free and should be freed again and again: freed of the restrictions that tonality or notational systems impose upon it, freed of the limitations of conventional instruments.