Second interview version: festival organizer perspective
What kind of work are you doing?
Léo Margue: I am one of the five artistic directors of the ensembles taking part in Festival Ensemble, so I have one voice in the representation of the ensembles. It's a collaborative system, and we try to develop ideas together, including the technical and administrative teams. On the first day we have a “Tutti” concert planned in which musicians from each of the five ensembles will perform together as a new ensemble. The idea is also to offer composers the possibility to write pieces for a large ensemble.
Clemens Hund-Göschel: The Berlin Ensemblefest is inspired by the French. But it's still finding its way as far as how it's organised. There are 16 ensembles involved and the sizes of the ensembles are quite varied, ranging from three to more than twenty members. I think at the French festival the ensembles are more alike, also in terms of repertoire. In Berlin we organise each facet of the festival through different Arbeitsgruppen (AGs, Working Groups). I'm part of the finance-AG and Sofia is in the PR-AG. There is also an external production team to handle the organising process.
Sofia Surgutschowa: I can already see, being in touch with the French festival, that the structure is different because there are so many different ensembles involved in Berlin that have never worked with each other before. Getting to know each other and trust each other will take time, but that's a normal and necessary process.
What do you have in common and what not?
Léo Margue: We chose the bridge between Berlin and Paris as a theme for the festival. Very early we asked ourselves: Do we have to play German and French composers? In the end, we decided to play composers living in Germany or France and show that Paris and Berlin are hosting a lot of different nationalities. We are bridging more than only two cities. At the Tutti concert, there will be compositions by the Paris-based composer Nicola Mondon and two composers living in Berlin, Michaela Catranis and Irini Amargianaki.
Sofia Surgutschowa: One of the main differences is that in Berlin there will be many more ensembles. Not all of them are, if I can put it like this, purely new music. There are different approaches to contemporary music represented, which is very interesting and gives an impression of the immense Berlin music scene. There will be collaborations between ensembles, but there can't be a Tutti concert as in France. The main idea stays the same, however: showing each other that we all exist and also want to exist together. Probably there is also a political message, at least in Berlin, that the contemporary music scene is very much alive and relevant to the city. It's maybe one way of showing that it's not worthwhile to make more funding cuts.
Clemens Hund-Göschel: In Paris, there are also bigger institutions involved like Ensemble intercontemporain, while in Berlin that is not the case. In Berlin, the idea is also that the contemporary music scene comes together to function like a big amplifier for itself, one that can have the same reach as the big orchestras from the classical music scene, rather than each ensemble doing their own little thing.
What questions did you have in mind from the start? Have they changed since then?
Clemens Hund-Göschel: In Berlin, the question was who will organise the festival. It was initiated by Lisa Benjes from initiative neue musik (inm) who knows the French scene very well. But inm does not have the right structure to organise it, because they not only represent the ensembles but the whole scene. So there were many open questions and we are still finding out who is in charge of what and how we can best work together. This process is very important for the scene, also in terms of how we want to organise ourselves in the scene.
Sofia Surgutschowa: It's a very challenging process. It will also show what works well in the Berlin scene and what maybe needs some adjustments. Also it will depend on what everyone involved will make out of it. Do the ensembles want to stay in this project? Do they feel it represents them? I think there's going to be a lot of post festival talk because there's a lot more ensembles than in Paris and their views are very different, which is interesting but also very challenging.
Léo Margue: At our festival each year one ensemble has the lead. But each year we ask the question again: how should we do this? We’ve had one, two or three artistic directors for the leadership. It's an interesting process that raises questions as far as how we can work collectively and democratically.
What are you depending on?
Léo Margue: Each of the five ensembles is contributing their own money to the production. It’s a fragile situation: we apply for additional grants but we don't have the security of an annual grant. Some years it works, some years it doesn’t. We would like to make things more secure in the future, and maybe if there’s more European collaboration, we can also apply for European funding.
Clemens Hund-Göschel: With FREO e.V., the organisation for Freie Ensembles and orchestras, we try to find solutions for social security matters. Through exchange you can learn about the advantages and disadvantages of different European systems. In France, if you are registered as an artist, you receive some compensation for the days where you have rehearsals or no work. In Ireland they now have a kind of Grundeinkommen (basic income) for artists. France, for example, has the Bureau Export, which supports international visibility and touring. Germany does not have anything like this in such a centralised form. We are pushing for these things to develop for the better and for politicians to see that there is a demand for this.
