Time to Listen: Program Day 2

DAY TWO: Friday, 31. Octobre 2025

9:30 Registration and welcome coffee | Foyer

10:00 Parallel Sessions 

• New Alliances – Contemporary Music in Geopolitical Change | Panel | Studiofoyer
  Europe is undergoing profound transformations – politically, in terms of security, economically, and culturally. The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, the growing importance of Central and Eastern European perspectives, new border policies, and longstanding conflicts challenge Europe’s self-image. This panel discusses how the European musical landscape is changing under these conditions and what significance these changes hold for artistic alliances.
  • Les Vynogradov (Kyiv Contemporary Music Days)
  • Gabriella Gál (EM GUIDE)
  • Monika Mattiesen (AFEKT Festival)
  • Iris ter Schiphorst (Europäische Allianz der Akademien)
  • Tuuli Lindeberg (Musica nova Helsinki) – Moderation
     
• Peter Cusack: Sound, Listen, Search | Listening Game | Outside
  This participatory workshop combines soundwalk and game of listen and search, inviting participants to locate a hidden live-streaming audio box using only their ears. The device, placed in an outdoor area near the Akademie der Künste, transmits real-time environmental sound via the mobile network. Participants receive a link to listen on their phones and must find the box by carefully attending to ambient clues and by making their own sounds, clapping, whistling, or using small instruments, to track their proximity based on the delay and volume of the streamed response.
  Participants are encouraged to note the most interesting sounds they hear and, upon finding the box, speak about them into the microphone—sharing reflections with other listeners online or on-site. The project playfully explores perception, sonic awareness, and the act of listening as a form of navigation and connection.

11:00 Miriam Akkermann, Adham Hafez and Katharina Rosenberger: Transcending Curatorial Boundaries: Exploring Intercultural Collaborations in Contemporary Music | World Café | Studiofoyer
Europe’s contemporary classical music scene often remains self-referential and tends to favour familiar names and aesthetics, reinforcing a narrow canon under the guise of universality. This session explores the urgent need for more open, collaborative, and reflective curatorial approaches in contemporary music festivals. Building on discourses from Curatorial Studies, particularly the concept of “becoming porous”, the research project “Transcending” (HES-SO Switzerland) by Katharina Rosenberger, in collaboration with Prof. Miriam Akkermann (Freie Universität Berlin) and curator/theorist Adham Hafez (Wizara, Cairo), investigates how intercultural curatorial practices can foster artistic dialogue, cultural representation, and long-term collaboration.
The session introduces the project’s methodology: comparative case studies of festivals in Europe and the Arab world, as well as perspectives from curators/artists in Vietnam and Indonesia. A central tool is the development of a “festival score” – a curatorial model promoting audience participation and intercultural exchange.
Following a short introduction, participants will work in small groups to share their own experiences and challenges around intercultural exchange in contemporary music and art. 

12:30 Lunch Break

13:30 Parallel Sessions

• Ariel William Orah (ID/DE), Samuel Johnstone (UK/DE), and Pisitakun Kuantaleng (TH/DE) “Grounding local responses to global polycrisis: sonic reflections on ‘Landslide’ exhibition” | Presentation and Talk | Clubraum
  “Landslide” is a translocal, process-based exhibition initiated by Soydivision Berlin. Rooted in the district of Schöneweide, it brings together Berlin-based sound artists from Indonesia, Thailand, and the UK to explore displacement, ecological collapse, and sonic memory. The project frames ecological breakdown as part of a broader polycrisis, entangled with social fragmentation, geopolitical instability, and the resurgence of nationalist ideologies. Soydivision’s proposition is that tackling the climate emergency must involve both outward movement, toward international dialogue and solidarity and inward movement, toward grounding practices of listening, care, and co-creation in specific places and communities.
  The session will share insights from “Landslide” as a “living exhibition” grounded in local community while engaging international dialogue. It an introduction to the exhibition's core values, a performative presentation of selected works and workshop excerpts, and a guided discussion on how sound-based practices can link global networks with local communities.
   
• Peter Cusack (Second Round): Sound, Listen, Search | Listening Game | Outside
  This participatory workshop combines soundwalk and game of listen and search, inviting participants to locate a hidden live-streaming audio box using only their ears. The device, placed in an outdoor area near the Akademie der Künste, transmits real-time environmental sound via the mobile network. Participants receive a link to listen on their phones and must find the box by carefully attending to ambient clues and by making their own sounds, clapping, whistling, or using small instruments, to track their proximity based on the delay and volume of the streamed response.
  Participants are encouraged to note the most interesting sounds they hear and, upon finding the box, speak about them into the microphone—sharing reflections with other listeners online or on-site. The project playfully explores perception, sonic awareness, and the act of listening as a form of navigation and connection.
   
• Open Session | Besprechungsraum
  An Open Session is a flexible discussion format where participants can spontaneously propose topics they care about. The topics are collected on the first day during the Welcome Round.

14:30 Parallel Sessions

• Anthea Caddy and Magda Mayas: Sounding Care – Sonic Practices of Care under Systemic Pressure | Presentation and Talk | Clubraum
  Sounding Care (2024–) is an ongoing, artist-led research project by Anthea Caddy and Magda Mayas exploring how sound functions within care ethics and politics. The project examines how sound and spatiality can challenge, map, and reshape care practices through voice, mapping out intersecting structures and infrastructures of care in response to precarity, censorship, ideological division, and the erosion of public cultural spaces.
  Caddy and Mayas are active members of the Toolkit of Care Research Group (COST Action) and the Sound SIG of the Society for Artistic Research. Their work aims to engage with broader transdisciplinary dialogues on sound, care, and politics.
  At the Time to Listen conference, they will present Sounding Care as a framework for discussing how sonic and artistic research practices contribute to collective care. They will share insights from ongoing collaborations and introduce a planned sound installation at Berlin's Wasserspeicher (Nov 2025), featuring over 30 voices from the city's artistic community projected into space via parabolic loudspeakers. The session invites dialogue on sound as inquiry, resistance, and repair.
   
• Periphery as a state of mind | Panel | Studiofoyer
  Periphery is more than a geographical concept. It also describes social, cultural, and political conditions. It involves lack of visibility, unequal distribution of resources, absence of representation, and exclusion from power. This panel aims to explore how “periphery” can also be a state of mind, a conscious distancing or a form of resistance against dominant narratives.
  • Kamila Metwaly (MaerzMusik)
  • Josten Myburgh (Audible Edge Festival)
  • Ariel Wiliam Ora (Soy Division)
  • Simon James Phillips (Composer/Musician and Artistic Director of SENSE for the Gwaertler Stiftung)
  • Salomé Voegelin (Sound SIG Group)
  • Moderation: Lydia Rilling (Donaueschinger Musiktage) 
    
    You can read "We Are Many, But Probably Not a Thing" - An Essay Reflection from the Topic „Periphery as a State of Mind“ by Ariel William Orah here.
     

15:30 Coffee Break

15:45 Emilio Gordoa, Josten Myburgh, Sabine Vogel “Tracing Presence On Land” | Concert and Talk | Studiofoyer
“Tracing Presence on Land” is a transnational musical collaboration between percussionist Emilio Gordoa (Mexico), saxophonist Josten Myburgh (Australia), and flautist Sabine Vogel (Germany). The project explores how music can emerge from deep engagement with specific landscapes and communities. So far the group has worked in Noongar Boodja (Australia), Cuernavaca and Tepoztlán (Mexico), and Paretz, Bavaria, and Berlin (Germany). Working mainly outdoors or in culturally significant sites, the trio blends field recording, improvisation, and composition to develop a musical language rooted in place and memory. Their approach rejects rigid human–non-human divides, embracing relational and reciprocal modes of listening and sounding.
The group's creative process also involves engagement with indigenous cultural protocol and ceremonies, and reflection on how ecological forces like climate change and tourism impact their practice.
In their session, the artists will perform an excerpt, share the conceptual basis of their work and invite participants into a discussion. 

16:30 What Could Open Networks of the Future Look Like? | Collaborative Forum | Studiofoyer
This collaborative forum brings participants together to reflect on the past two days and, building on that, to develop shared visions for future networks that are fair, inclusive, and ethically grounded. Together, we will explore how to ensure equitable access to transnational exchange for less established actors, which strategies can address structural imbalances between Europe’s so-called “centers” and “peripheries”, and how can we tackle broader questions of global justice within international collaboration. 

17:30 Closing Round | Plenary | Studiofoyer
During the Closing Round at the Time to Listen conference, participants come together to reflect on the key insights and shared experiences from the conference. We also gather ideas and impulses that we want to carry forward and explore further in the next edition of Time to Listen in 2026. 

General Information

Language
The conference will be held in English.

Costs
Admission is free.

Registration
Due to the high number of registrations, registration is now closed. It is still possible to join the waiting list.

Getting There – Akademie der Künste (Hanseatenweg 10)
S-Bahn: S3, S5, S7, S9 to Bellevue station (~ 3 min walk)
U-Bahn: U9 to Hansaplatz (~ 5 min walk) 
Bus: Lines 106 or N26 stop at Hansaplatz (~ 5 min walk)

Accessibility 
The Academy of Arts at Hanseatenweg is accessible for people with disabilities. The venue offers step-free access, elevators, and accessible restrooms. For further questions regarding accessibility or individual support, please contact info@field-notes.berlin in advance.