Goethe-Institut Celebrates 30 Years With 30 Hours of Music This Weekend
Thirty years of culturally driven exchange with and in China is no small feat. “All our last big anniversaries (20 years, 25 years) were celebrated in 798 – there was a concert by Cui Jian on the 20th anniversary and a very high-level writers' meeting for our 25th anniversary. Now we have come to 798 to stay and we are happy to celebrate our 30 years in this lively area,” says Clemens Treter, the director of the longstanding Goethe-Institut and overseer of their ambitious 30th Anniversary on Saturday, Nov 17.
An organization devoted to strengthening the cultural ties between China and Germany, Beijing's Goethe-Institut will be home to a 30-hour, non-stop multifaceted event at its flagship 798 location that will include an array of talks, lectures, performances, a 30-hour perpetual, real-time AV collage of 60 filmed places in Beijing in Berlin (titled UmbauStadt), and a night-long program, Antipodes, described by the directors as “a temporary musical space, a space to meet, a space to think, to meet, to listen, to relax, and to celebrate.”
“For many years Goethe-Institut and its partners have linked people from the electronic and experimental music scenes in both cities and they continue a vivid exchange now,” Treter explains ahead of the event. That exchange is being brought to beautiful light by ten hours of music curated by curator and producer Markus M. Schneider. No stranger to night-long music gatherings in Berlin, Schneider's program, titled Antipodes, will give the audience a chance to soak in a diverse range of audio-visual performances by artists from various cities in China and Germany.
Speaking to the Beijinger, Schneider explains why they chose the title of Antipodes for his portion of the event: “The lineup of artists, first and foremost, represents their independent artistic practices and positions; artists walking on their own feet, often in direct opposition to artistic cliché and genre classification. This continuously independent artistic stride, being an antipode to cultural role models of any kind, requires persistence and clarity of vision, an approach through which each of these artists pursues a varied practice across media and genres that is both timeless and fearlessly defining the sounds and shapes to come.”
And what a lineup it is, full of innovators who go above and beyond, these individuals ‘use music as their artistic language.’ From Tian Peng AKA 777 of the longstanding (and perhaps first) electronic Chinese outfit Supermarket to Faded Ghost, the nocturnal pagan witch house project from renowned Shanghai artist Chacha. There’s also one of the scene’s most important and overlooked artists – the Hangzhou-based Wang Changcun (pictured at top) – “a contemporary artist, a programmer, an explorer of sounds, spaces and music” who “completely runs and operates outside any specific identity.”
The younger generation is represented by pink;money (You Long and Shen Qi) and Wang Menghan – the former described by Schneider as “visual explorers and programmers, with the background of experimental film and graphic design, investigating in new forces of the understanding of chaos and order,” while the latter is currently receiving her masters program of sound studies and sonic arts at the Berlin University of the Arts, and has a “way of making music (that) is as personal as it is conceptual.”
Finally, on the international front, there’s Belgrade-based German artist Thomas Köner, known also for his sound-based artworks as well as his more club-oriented techno project with Andy Mellwig called Porter Ricks, a band with an affinity for undersea sonar frequencies and Detroit techno.
A true celebration of culture, representing the openness and broadness of cultural activities that have made the Goethe-Institut China a cultural landmark for 30 years, this weekend's event will be a treat for anyone looking to dig deep into the art and underground music scenes currently shaking both Berlin and Beijing, or as Schneider puts it: "This night is an invitation to join all of us: the people working at the Institute, the people spending some of their lifetime to enrich Beijingers life with a multiplicity of cultural activities, and the artists and musicians, for a mutual and dense journey through music."
Click to read more about the two portions of this weekend's celebration – UmbauStadt and Antipodes – which kicks off at 2pm on Saturday through to 8pm on Sunday.
Never miss a gig: click here for a huge list of live shows in the city, updated daily.
Images courtesy of the organizers
