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FormalPara Christian Grüny:

You have been the director of several music festivals and until recently you were the artistic director of Berliner Festspiele’s MaerzMusik, where last year you finished your eighth festival edition since 2015. You started out by introducing a lot of changes, the most visible of which was changing the name to Festival for Time Issues (Festival für Zeitfragen). Could you tell us about your initial ideas for the festival back then?

FormalPara Berno Odo Polzer:

In 2014, when Thomas Oberender invited me to direct MaerzMusik, my goal was to develop a diverse platform dedicated to music and listening that reflects the societal and political realities of the world we live in—something I often miss within the contemporary music world. Given the long tradition of this festival, the question was how to deal with change and continuity. Keeping the name MaerzMusik while adding the subtitle Festival for Time Issues was a way to acknowledge the merits of this important festival—not cutting off a tradition for the sake of making one’s own mark as a director—while making explicit that its nature and focus would change. My goal was to bring together my different practices as a curator and researcher, combining artistic, theory-related, dramaturgical, and curatorial approaches to investigate the ‘politics of time’. Zeitfragen carries a double meaning: questions about time and questions of our time.

These questions came from the doctoral research for my PhD in Politics at the University of Lapland I was working on at that time. It led me to early Christian philosophy and political theology, to a period—between the first and the fifth centuries CE—when Christianity’s distinct conception of linear time was formed, alongside its notions of salvation and history: that is the basis of the chronopolitical regime that came to dominate the world until today. The specific way in which this regime was forged amidst Christianity’s struggle for state power made me understand time as a political category. Time is a social and political construction; its conceptualisations and practices determine the way we are present in the world, the way we work and produce, the way we relate to past, present and future, tell our histories, etc. Christianity construed a notion of time marked by linearity, singularity, finitude, measurability and control. It enabled Western chronopolitics and chronotechnology, which colonised the world and facilitated the global chronologistics without which capitalism as we know it could not succeed, to give just one example. This perspective was one main pillar of the festival. The other one was the experience of, and experimentation with, time in music and other time-based art forms. Thus this Festival for Time Issues aimed at situating contemporary music practices within an interdisciplinary and sociopolitical landscape.

FormalPara CG:

Time is an interesting topic in several regards: music has of course been called the art of time, a configuration of temporality, but, as you implied, it has often been accused of being out of touch or out of step with the contemporary world. So time and temporality are a nexus that brings many things together: the temporality of music, the temporality of the institutions that you talked about, the temporality of our Western understanding of time and how it’s related to capitalism and to colonialism, and then also the issue of decolonisation. So time as a nexus allows you to manoeuvre within this field and to stress certain of its aspects and axes.

FormalPara BOP:

Yes, exactly. I think that questions of time, timing and temporality are fundamental to almost everything, if often overlooked and neglected.

FormalPara CG:

I would like to talk about the specific form that you gave to the festival. There is a standard format for festivals of New Music, which consists of concerts with two, three, four pieces, mainly original compositions, lots of premieres, very little discourse. Attending such a festival always has an element of being completely overwhelmed and having very little chance to think and talk about it. The way you programmed the festival was different. There are two things that stick out: first, the idea of curating or even composing concerts with a certain dramaturgical arc running through them, and second, giving discourse and thinking much more space than at any other festival that I know of.

Can you talk about your role when you compose concerts and how that relates to the sovereignty of the composers and their pieces, as well as about Thinking Together, the discourse format you introduced?

FormalPara BOP:

The term “programming” does not capture what I want do. For me, making festivals is an artistic practice of sorts: a practice of creating an experiential realm in space and time. That doesn’t mean I consider myself an artist. My materials, my tools and my position in the social fabric are different. Still, to me a festival is a multi-sensorial composition in time and space, and being a festival maker is to co-create a temporary world that invites all participants to enter. The ‘co-’ is key here, as it is all about collaboration. Festival-worlds are created by many and co-evolve with the artworks they host. They’re not supposed to impinge upon the autonomy of the artists, rather they are environments for art practices to temporarily breathe in.

The main, recurring formats I introduced at MaerzMusik were The Long Now and Thinking Together. Next to the “composed concerts” you mentioned, these were my main contributions to the festival as a curator. But for a festival like MaerzMusik, a diversity of perspectives is most important, that’s why we presented a wide range of projects and formats, often in close collaboration with artists, curators and other institutions. Our long-term collaboration with SAVVY Contemporary, for example, was very important. Hence my role in the festival varied widely, from that of an artistic director as a mere host or organiser, to a role closer to that of a choreographer or stage director, like in the case of TELE-VISIONS. A Critical Media History of New Music on TV in 2019; or TIMEPIECE in 2021, which was my attempt to respond to the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic: a 27-hour-long, live performed and live-streamed speaking clock based on Peter Ablinger’s piece TIM Song.

But the “composed concerts” you mentioned, of which I curated no more than one or two per year, are something else: attempts to work with the dispositif of the classical concert format by putting more attention and imagination into the relation between the artwork and its context of presentation.

FormalPara CG:

Normally, classical and contemporary music concerts have a very clear ascription of authorship: there’s a composer who presents a piece, there are listeners who are force-fed what the composer devised, and the curator is sort of an intermediary figure who doesn’t really interfere with the sovereign space of the composer. The way you described your composed concerts redistributes authorship, authority, and freedom, which potentially creates a lot of tension. The collective discursive dimension maybe modulates this tension but doesn’t resolve it.

FormalPara BOP:

The way I often experienced contemporary music concerts and festivals was that they do not put much thought into the relation between the pieces and their context, as if they would just follow pre-programmed routines of compilation. My impression as a listener often was that of trade fairs where highly different items are presented—or maybe rather marketed—in a seemingly random way. There is a sense of disinterest in this approach, disinterest towards the pieces themselves and the concert format as much as towards the spectator/listener. One can still trace nineteenth-century culture in this practice: the idea of ‘absolute music’, the worship of the art work and its creator, the normativity of context, the marginalisation of the audience. This matrix—which is not least a political one—is of the past. I simply think that there is much more to explore in the way concert music can be shared.

I should also mention that my practice as a curator is strongly influenced by my artistic collaborations, as a dramaturg and collaborator with choreographers and stage directors starting around 2000, notably with Jerôme Bel and Xavier Le Roy. I was lucky enough to collaborate on stage pieces that had music at their centre and that reflected the apparatus of the concert. There I learned that any action on stage is inevitably a stage(d) action, and every movement, e.g. of a musician, can be read as a choreographic movement. What’s more, seemingly small details of timing, performative intention, light, etc. make a huge difference in the perception of the spectator/listener. I try to elaborate these experiences in my own work and bring them into discussion, e.g. with performers and ensembles.

To my mind, this kind of work brings a richness without taking anything away from the autonomy of the composer or the experience of listening, on the contrary. If you consider the entire experiential spectrum of a concert, from the choice of space and the moment you enter, all the way to the very pieces you encounter, their musical and energetic constellations, their order and staging, etc., you discover a great wealth of relationality—between the listener, the performers, the sounds, space and time—a richness that calls for exploration and experimentation.

You address tensions in the wake of experimenting with authorship, authority, and freedom. I did not encounter much tension on this level. And besides, tensions are a sign of being alive. There is much need for scrutinising our practices, especially in a context that claims contemporaneity. When it comes to the artwork and the composer, notions like ‘sovereignty’ are tricky. Which political imaginaries are they rooted in? For sure there is autonomy in artistic creation, e.g. in creating a score. But the rest is collaboration and interdependency. Look at the countless—and mostly invisible—people and skills involved in producing a festival and bringing a composition onto the stage. Sheet music would be mere paper without every single part of this complex apparatus. Festivals are spheres of co-creation and interdependency, much like the rest of the world. The notion of the Sovereign is problematic in our present.

Curating in this sense is simply another voice in the ongoing conversation about the direction of contemporary music. And it is important to make its agency visible and explicit, its power as well as its limitations. Traditionally, programmers of contemporary music tended to be hidden. In this idea of programming as a quasi-objective process of developing a canon of pieces of a seemingly given quality, nobody takes responsibility for their choices. But the practice of curating itself should be visible and scrutinised, available for critique and exchange. I always try to keep a balance of perspectives between the traditions that I love and experimentation. But the parts that are closest to my heart are those that try to make new proposals.

Thus this Festival for Time Issues wanted to cultivate an open-mindedness, sensitive to the transformations of our time. I am dedicated to listening, the politics of listening, listening as a way of relating to the world. Some reactions to this approach, in conservative music circles, were telling, and some surprising. For instance, the introduction of an ongoing practice of discourse into a music festival was interpreted by some as a gesture of taking away the importance of the music, ignoring the fact that Thinking Together was added to, not replacing the artistic programme.

FormalPara CG:

Just to be sure: by conservative music circles you mean conservative contemporary music, not the classical music, right?

FormalPara BOP:

Yes. Thinking Together, the discourse format that accompanied MaerzMusik, originated in 2014 in Darmstadt in the context of the Osthang Project, an “International Summer Academy and Festival for Future Forms of Living Together” that I collaborated on with Jan Liesegang of raumlabor Berlin. I called it Thinking Together because I wanted to create a space for sharing thoughts beyond the usual, asymmetrical and unidirectional constellation of speaker and listener—typically an ‘enlightened’ speaker talking to a ‘non-emancipated’ listener, to hint at Jacques Rancière. Of course, this reflects how knowledge transfer is understood in academia and in contemporary music, too. Instead of what I call ‘knowledge performances’, I wanted to provide another type of sharing space that appreciates the fact that every person holds valuable knowledge and experience, especially when it comes to music and the politics of time. Thinking Together brought thinkers and practitioners from different disciplines together with artists and audiences.

Maybe I should say something about my background here, as it is important to take into consideration where people come from. I studied classical archaeology and musicology at the University of Vienna in the 1990s, where I worked on two master’s theses, both of which I aborted in response to a felt crisis with the university and a struggle with the way—as I would put it in hindsight—in which power-knowledge was exercised within institutions of academia. This struggle and sensitivity has stayed with me in my work inside and outside of institutions. For me, it was always important to have times outside of institutions, in order to stay awake and aware of the specific modes of operation in institutional environments.

FormalPara CG:

As far as introducing discursive formats, you were in a unique position because the festival lasts 10 days and you could programme for 24 hours a day if you liked. For a festival that lasts two and a half days, it really is the case that everything is crammed with concerts, so if you want to have a discursive format, you have to have one less concert. This has to be a conscious decision, based on the conviction that having a discursive format that involves all the things you talked about has to be an integral part of a music festival.

FormalPara BOP:

Indeed, having enough time for reading groups, listening sessions, but also longer lectures and discussions, presentations and seminars, was an essential aspect of this format, that is why it mostly took place during the daytime. Contemporary music creates incredible, often new listening experiences and raises a lot of questions. What we need is time and space for a community to make sense of these experiences.

FormalPara CG:

I find that oftentimes the judgemental part of discourse is stressed too much. After each concert you are expected to be able to judge the pieces and say something meaningful about them critically, but the question really could rather be how we collectively make sense of what we just heard, and how we fit it into the way we experience the world, how it might change this experience, what kind of meaningful things it might say about matters other than itself. This kind of discourse is missing.

FormalPara BOP:

I agree with you. It is important to point that out because critique as an attitude and a form of subjectification of the speaking individual can take on its own dynamics. Often those who perform most critically and eloquently dominate the discursive field, often at the expense of real debate and exchange. Talking about musical experiences should not require any foreknowledge. Whatever the intention of the author, the meaning is co-created by the listeners.

FormalPara CG:

Documenta, which had its fifteenth edition last year, has always been a space where different concepts of curation have been tried out, heavily criticised and then rehabilitated, sometimes turned into beacons of new ways of curating. Documenta fifteen, for all its shortcomings and controversy, was the first time a collective (ruangrupa) curated it, emphasising communal exchange and working together, not just between themselves but also among the temporary collective of artists and visitors. One could say that a community coming together has always been present in many types of music, while it was only recently introduced into the visual arts. How would you say this idea of community and the communal comes into play in the festival outside of Thinking Together?

FormalPara BOP:

Documenta fifteen’s focus on collectivity and the communal is highly relevant. Listening together to live music is communal in nature, and this aspect is very important to me when it comes to festivals. It is about relationality, sharing time and experiences with people you don’t know, and thereby maybe experiencing other ways of being together. The Long Now, which I co-curated with Laurens von Oswald and Harry Glass and which ended each MaerzMusik edition until the pandemic made it impossible to realise, was explicitly about creating a situation where a temporary community of people comes together for a long time—night, day, night—of listening and being together in their own, idiorhythmic ways.

But we should not forget that temporary frameworks of representation—which festivals necessarily are—have their limitations when it comes to collectivity and communality. Neither Berliner Festspiele nor Documenta are likely places for future communities to arise. They are showcases for artistic and communal practices to be rendered visible. I learned a lot, not least about this difference, at PAF—Performing Arts Forum, an independent, collectively run residency space in St Erme, France, founded by Jan Ritsema and Bojana Cvejić. And especially in some of the formats that take place there, like Elsewhere & Otherwise, initiated by Daniela Bershan and Valentina Desideri. Still, institutions can and should play a role, open up, create awareness, lend support, inspire. At least that was the goal of this Festival for Time Issues.

FormalPara CG:

I see why there’s a problem with the sort of fetishisation of community, the idealisation of the kind of community that an artwork can bring about we also find in Bourriaud’s idea of relational aesthetics. I think it makes sense to have a realistic view of what this can do, like you said: the new society will probably not originate at the Berliner Festspielhaus—which does not mean that what happens there is irrelevant for what happens in society in general.

FormalPara BOP:

I think we should be honest when it comes to expectations towards institutions and their claims. Often institutions, being part of a competitive marketplace, are drawn into self-deception and hyperbolic language and claims. We shouldn’t expect the wrong things from them. Discourse and practice often don’t match, especially when it comes to current political questions related to equality, diversity, and decolonisation. This makes me think of Rolando Vázquez’ decolonial work and his notion of humbling. He was a regular guest at MaerzMusik.

FormalPara CG:

It is an interesting observation that claiming to be able to institute communities and commonality could just be a continuation of the hubris of the autonomous creator and author of works and events and festivals, so that now we are not only creating artworks but also communities, as if it was within our power to do that, as if it was within anybody’s power.

FormalPara BOP:

Absolutely, and I think this reaches very deep in fact. We all have a lot of work to do—on a personal and systemic level—together. To listen and connect in new ways, to develop new relations and practices. I could not think of a better context for this work than music.