Familiar sounds and terrifying noises. The fleeting fragments of remembered melodies, favorite songs, the noise in our home street. We live in our sound world, it gives us orientation, feeling, and energy. Subjective, intimate – and yet the acoustic perception is the result of history, of the colonial formation. What we understand as “music”, as “beautiful”, “harmonious”, “contemporary”, as “literary”, “relevant” or “true” is formed by a history of appreciation and depreciation of sounds, practices, and bodies. Our hearing, understanding, and sound creation were shaped in long frequencies, but stubbornness creates friction, waves of resistance, and echoes of solidarity. Can these clashing interferences register or yield sonic confrontations? Can changes in hearing, understanding, and appreciation be shaped?
»Decolonial Frequencies« is a series of events over the entire 2021/22 theatre season. More than 20 artists, black perspectives, queer approaches, Asian-diasporic occupations, post-migrant traditions, and voices of color, create numerous performances, lectures, and concerts in their constructed acoustic spaces – with critical amplitude, in gyrating oscillation, and in uncontrollable interference.
Decolonial Frequencies is curated by meLê yamomo at the Theater Ballhaus Naunynstrasse.
Premieres
The Sound of Misunderstanding – Dhvanivala’s Sonic Explorations
Festival Opening: In the early 1960s a young Indian student comes to Darmstadt to do a PhD in physics. Cold War era – atomic physics is popular. It’s the time of post-colonial aspirations…
Gaung – Unpredictable Resonance
Gaung – Unpredictable Resonance. Before the first note sounds, the room is already filled. Even the gods expect a special sound. We see an instrument and imagine its sound, we desire the first note,…
sonus – the sound within us
sonus – the sound within us. What is the sound of memory? How do we listen to memory in its multitude – to histories? The sound of history is ephemeral. And yet it…
Eigenschwingungen – Forces of Overtones
Eigenschwingungen – Forces of Overtones. The encounter: there is no sound without a second, third, fourth one. Something always resonates. But what? European music history prefers fundamental tones; they are considered “harmonious”. Bells,…
Remix Almanya – A Post-Migrant Hip-Hop Narrative
Remix Almanya – A Post-Migrant Hip-Hop Narrative. We put together a story. A story which has become a remix of rap, migration and empowerment, in which the ambivalent echo of four decades of…
Overlapping Waves
Overlapping Waves. The continental, imperial thinking covers the landscape. Hills and valleys are measured. Sounds and relationships are measured. But is that even possible? What happens if the landscape is mostly made up…
Unknown Frequencies
Unknown Frequencies. We live in a noisy place. We live in the city. Because here the simultaneity of voices prevails. In Unknown Frequencies, Marque-Lin, performance artist, and Emilio Cordero Checa, sound and light designer,…
Tuning In To Resonances
Tuning In To Resonances. It’s a contemporary survival technique: one checks websites and articles, in order to create a picture of someone before meeting them. Especially before flying 10,000km to meet a person…
Synthesized Planet
Synthesized Planet. Is it possible to travel with the help of sound? To unknown places? We know, since the sound events of Sun Ra, that sound has a driving energy. It is an…
For more information you can visit the Theater Ballhaus Naunynstrasse website.
Many many thanks to the unwavering support of Ballhaus Naunynstrasse artistic director, Wagner Carvalho and head dramaturg, Fabian Larsson. The spring 2022 edition was enriched by the artistic support of Julien Enzanza and TRVΛNIΛ. The festival was made possible through the production management of Rita Ventura and Camila de Abreu, technical direction of Jens Schneider, sound engineering by Rotem Yaniv, lighting design by Nicolás Russi Andretta, costume design and management by Elke Keil, and with the support of the stage crew: Ingo König and Ronald Smith Paul. The poster was fabulously designed by Marcelo Vilela Da Silva.
»Decolonial Frequencies« is funded by the Berlin Senate for Culture and Europe.