CTM-SPECIAL
Gender and the Human Body in Electronic Music
The laptop hype is over. Laptop performers, who resemble a withdrawn scientist publishing results of laboratory research, are now just one role-model amongst many. Electronic music takes a turn towards more performativity, towards ironic playfulness with signifiers and identity, and to a more direct communication between the public and the artists. Familiar rock and pop forms are reactivated by means of digital art practices, as exemplified by the "post-laptop performer" Donnasummer. Electronic music takes issue once again with realities beyond a self-reflective media discourse. Performing Sound focuses on tangible content as well as on the more subtle levels of meaning which characterize constructs of identity, materiality of sound and politically constituted structures of techno-economies.
The human body is the most contested utopian locus, through and with which visions of another, better or worse world are explored. Attempts to confront this challenge can be found in the radical questioning of notions of identity in the performances of Chicks on Speed or by Terre Thaemlitz. In cooperation with the HTMlles Festival from Montréal and Berlin based Bootlab this same topic is taken up with the exploration of the situation of female producers in electronic music. The related exhibitions I Wanna Be A Popstar and Sexy Bloody Cat allow a comparative look at (gender)-bender identities in other pop music genres.
Funded by Haupstadtkulturfonds.
