What’s the sound of art music that interacts with its multiple, hybrid influences in exile and the diaspora? How do we dissolve ideas of what is our own and what is foreign through listening? How do concert programs reflect an open society in its polyphony? “Outernational” is a European concert series exploring trans-national music: whether a session situated between Baroque, Persian classical, and electronic composition, or a concert with the Trickster Orchestra, which combines musicians from different traditions to create a new sonic language.

The concerts are preceded by in-depth artistic research that not only reveals scenes and current musical developments. It also examines the issue of “musicking” – i.e. performance practice and contextualization. The goal is opening up new spaces for outstanding artists beyond the mainstream. Though close dialog with the artists, these spaces are developed by curator Elisa Erkelenz.

In the context of each concert, there is an individual digital focus in VAN Magazin Outernational including background information on music, instruments, and the artists in question. More on Outernational.

“For me, what ties together the very different concerts is that something unheard of happens.”
Curator Elisa Erkelenz about the project Outernational

Three questions for - Three pictures from: Elisa Erkelenz, Curator of Outernational

We have asked Elisa Erkelenz, Curator of Outernational, three questions. She answered with words and pictures.

Elisa, what does Outernational mean to you and what makes an Outernational event special to you?

Outernational is a kind of artistic reseach, an intermediary space for post-migrant art… in concets, listening sessions and a magazine. The idea is opening up spaces for trans-traditional music, for outstanding musicians and thinkers who frequently do not find space within the classical music system because the categories created by the market – for example, “world music” – do not work for them. I enjoy combining music from different centuries, making concerts float over the “abyss of history”, but in some way or another they are always contemporary, connected to the experimental. For me, what ties together the very different concerts is that something unheard of happens. In the broadest sense, this also has to do with coming together.

A picture of a concert. Many people with classic music instruments are sittingon chairs in a dark hall and are focussing on maaking music.

A music performance is happening. In every corner of a dark room a person is playing or dying. The room is dark and there are four projections on the walls. People are sitting in the middle in the dark.

Musicking © Outernational & Arnaud Ele

Together you work on the question of “Musicking” – as you call it. What would you like to do differently?

“Musicking“ means the social setting surrounding a concert. Music is also traditionally tied to various social practices. Together with the artists involved, I also think a great deal about questions of space, but we also always work with differing associations and communities to reach a mixed audience. This is part of the art and not merely a secondary receiver: the concerts and thoughts are created in a space.

Your upcoming concerts in Dresden are entitled “EXT INC / REMEMBER ME” and “Parasite Village”. What is motivating you?

The Parasite Village is a part of the Dresden Days of Contemporary Music (Dresdener Tage für zeitgenössische Musik), with two projects in focus there: “EXT INC / REMEMBER ME” is a concert with a connected listening session devoted to the extinction of species, as well as hope. The »Future Tradition Orchestra« is a new collective coming together for the first time in Dresden’s Hellerau district: Musicians from the Trickster Orchestra Berlin, the Hezarfen Ensemble Istanbul and the Omnibus Ensemble Tashkent will meet with international composers. As in a village, we will work, live and discuss together in a residence, “the Village”. Our discussions will also include the question of how to compose for a trans-traditional ensemble, which techniques and methods there are for coming together. The parasite in the title refers to Michel Serres: “(...) this is the meaning of the prefix ‘para’ in the word parasite: He is beside, he is with, he is set apart from, he is not on the thing but on the relation. He has relationships, as they say, and makes a system out of them.”

On April 28 and 29, you can experience both concert productions, in addition to the listening sessions, installations, and late night sets.

Musicking © Outernational & Arnaud Ele

Elisa Erkelenz is sitting leaned at a wall.

Elisa Erkelenz © Jann Willken

More about Elisa Erkelenz

Elisa Erkelenz is a freelance curator, dramaturge and author. She launched the project "Outernational" in 2018 and has been accompanying the series as artistic director ever since. With violinist David-Maria Gramse, she makes the music podcast "Des Pudels Kern," which is broadcast on WDR 3. As a freelance dramaturge, she works for the Donaueschingen Musiktage, the Elbphilharmonie, and Ensemble Recherche, among others.

Tickets for the events are available here.

28. April EXT INC / REMEMBER ME

7 p.m. Listening Session / 8 p.m. concert

Let's figure out
Ways to hope
Ways to love

We are living through one of the greatest periods of species extinction. Yet it is not just species – sounds, languages and music are disappearing. The “EXT INC / REMEMBER ME” project from the “Outernational” trans-traditional concert series traces these processes together with the composers Aida Shirazi and Emre Dündar and two world premieres. Emre Dündar has written a Fakelore" that approaches the various folkloristic traditions of the Turkish-Greek region. In the composition by the young Iranian composer Aida Shirazi, she refers to Walt Whitman’s “This Compost” – a text emphasizing life while accepting death. The evening soars over the abysses of history with Vivaldi’s “La Folia” – one of the most widely appropriated motifs in the history of music.

The evening will be introduced by an “Outernational Listening Session”. Based on this topic, the philosopher and biologist Andreas Weber has written an essay that can be heard in a sound space by Kirsten Reese. Weber writes:

“If butterflies are the crystallized form of the inner feeling filling the world, then they disappear when we deny that this feeling exists. The denial of the soul is Western civilization’s most tragic error.” Andreas Weber

CAST

Aida Shirazi, Composer, Electronics
Emre Dündar, Composer, Midi Piano
Miguel Pérez Iñesta, Conductor

Andreas Arend, Theorbo
James Banner, Bass
Szilárd Benes, Clarinet
Rebecca Beyer, Violin
David-Maria Gramse, Violin
Emil Kuyumcuyan, Percussion
Vladimir Waltham, Cello
Elisa Erkelenz, Curation & Dramaturgy

Musicians are sitting in a light room and are working together in a session. They are talking to each other and seem to be in a good mood.

29. April PARASITE VILLAGE / FUTURE TRADITION ORCHESTRA

7 p.m. Essay Performance »Parasite« Fiston Mwanza Mujila
8 p.m. Concert by the Future Tradition Orchestra

“(...) this is the meaning of the prefix ‘para’ in the word parasite: He is beside, he is with, he is set apart from, he is not on the thing but on the relation. He has relationships, as they say, and makes a system out of them.” (Michel Serres: Der Parasit)

A summit of trans-traditional music: musicians from the Trickster Orchestra Berlin, the Hezarfen Ensemble Istanbul and the Omnibus Ensemble from Tashkent are coming together for the first time in a residency in the Hellerau neighborhood of Dresden. Modules by international composers, all of whom are also present as performers, become improvisational foundations for the collective, a breeding ground for new connections. As an organism of radical diversity, the “Future Tradition Orchestra” utilizes indigenous and polytraditional instrumental techniques and various forms of notation: from graphic score to “mimesis”.

The evening will be introduced by an essay performance by Fiston Mwanza Mujila.

CAST

Bassem Alkhouri, Kanun
Matthew Bookert, Trombone
Keyvan Chemirani, Percussion / Tonbak, Saz Muhammed Muaz Ceyhan, Yaylı tambur Susanne Fröhlich, Flutes, Recorder
Naoko Kikuchi, Koto
Emil Kuyumcuyan, Percussion
Yannis Kyriakides, Electronics
Sofiya Levchenko, Violin
Neva Özgen Kösoğlu, Kemençe
Ulrich Mertin, Viola
Cham Saloum, Oud
Cymin Samawatie, Piano, Voice, Direction
Ralf Schwarz, Double Bass
Ken Ueno, Voice
Ravshan Tukhtamishev, Chang
Milian Vogel, Sax
Arnont Nongyao, Video
Iñigo Giner Miranda, concert staging / movements
Fiston Mwanza Nasser, Words
With compositions by the collective and by: Ken Ueno, Piyawat Louilarpprasert, Ketan Bhatti, Cymin Samawatie, Yannis Kyriakides and Artyom Kim

Elisa Erkelenz, Curation & Dramaturgy

A psychedelic x-ray picture of a moth or butterfly sitting on a plant

Outernational: Artistic Research and Intermediary Space

Outernational