インフラ INFRA 2017
インフラ INFRA is an examination of the infrastructures that rule the modern world. Those infrastructures provide an environment for an ecosystem where artists, musicians and performers locate and navigate their work, one that has changed dramatically since the emergence of the Internet. It’s here that インフラ INFRA’s global, interdisciplinary and independent state of mind exists.
Organised by Berlin-based music platform 3hd Festival and Japanese-run online gallery EBM(T), the multimedia and international program of concerts, performances, exhibitions and talks, proposes a break from institutional and market-based boundaries for musicians, artists, and performers. It will take place across venues in Tokyo, over one week from August 19 to 26.
インフラ INFRA will provide access and awareness for a number of under-recognized artists from a range of cultural contexts, offering an insight into how its participants use new technology to develop their own practices, while also engaging in a network of circulation enabled by the Internet. The festival is committed to exploring and promoting creative practices at the intersection of music, technology and contemporary art, arguing for providing structures, spaces and methods to support that. In addition, インフラ INFRA understands itself as a space where people of all genders and identities are treated equally and where women are supported and encouraged, in particular.
Representing artists from various media such as painting, sculpture, video and installation, as well as performance and talk events, インフラ INFRA presents a new and diverse perspective of contemporary art and beyond.
Goals and Background
The Internet has revitalised art and music culture. The democratisation of access on a global scale has empowered artists, freed information, started conversations and sparked incredible new levels of creativity. The contemporary art and music of today has become more ambiguous and varied than ever. The spheres of the avant-garde, new and experimental music, can no longer be clearly separated. Working at these intersections, a new generation of artists focuses on compositional complexities and the manipulation of sound created from online and virtual experimentation with technology. Their artistic practices include work drawing from a diverse range of cultural backgrounds and socio-political situations; the outcome of which exists between the club and the art gallery. インフラ INFRA showcases these unconventional hybrids to map out its current expansion of diversity and supports emerging European and Asian artists in Tokyo.
Tokyo and Berlin have a vital high-octane and high-tech music and Internet art scene. Japan has played a hugely influential role in the development of electronic music globally. It is the birthplace of many innovative music-production technologies, video games, sampling cultures, niche pop cultures and many inspiring conceptions of what the future might sound like. For this reason, 3hd Festival and EBM(T) have conceptualized the インフラ INFRA collaboration, a platform that will help facilitate, publicise and promote this unique cluster of international artists.
The program will take place at Hara Museum, WWWß, Institut français, Park Hotel in Tokyo and represent a broad range of electronic and meditative music, as well as an exhibition and discursive program at Yamamoto Gendai Gallery. It aims to stimulate a cross-cultural and artistic exchange, along with unrivalled opportunities for the participants to be seen and heard in Japan.
Project Partners
EBM(T)
EBM(T) is an online gallery and virtual sound space, founded by Japanese artists Nile Koetting and Nozomu Matsumoto in 2014. The project explores the correlation between image and sound, time and space through virtual exhibitions, presented in both English and Japanese. To date, 14 sound projects have been brought to life with the help of this platform. Their most recent group exhibition, entitled Sensing by the Post-Internet Generation, which ran at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, realized a ringtone project called ‘Fuku-Tone’ together with producer James Ferraro. Matsumoto and Koetting share the same enthusiasm for a post-internet mindset, artificial intelligence, club culture, music, poetry and video games situated between the arts and science.
3hd Festival
Celebrating cross-genres, event organiser Daniela Seitz has been producing live concerts and showcases in Berlin as part of Creamcake with Anja Weigl since 2011. In doing so, she helps promote the city as a sustainable location for music at the intersection of digital culture and art. Through her curatorial work, she not only supports and promotes emerging Berlin-based and international artists, but also highlights recent developments in post-internet music.
Since 2015, Seitz has also been in charge of co-organizing the annual 3hd Festival. Creamcake and 3hd have cooperated with a number of prestigious institutions – Akademie der Künste, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Kunstverein München and Südblock among them – while observing its commitment to staying queer and open-minded. The two organisations also established a label in 2016, putting out successful releases with artists such as coucou chloe, COOL FOR YOU, Organ Tapes, SKY H1, Keiska and 333 Boyz. Their work has enabled the development of a local and international community.