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Outernational: EXT INC / REMEMBER ME

Transtraditional Concerts – We are living in one of the greatest species extinctions in history. But not only species, also sounds, languages and music are disappearing. The project «EXT INC / REMEMBER ME» is part of the transtraditional concert series «Outernational».

December 22, 2022

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

Outernational 2022 © Alexander Binder

Project description

Outernational

Outernational is an artistic research project about transtraditional musics. How can a diverse, contemporary music sound like? How do we listen to music as a story of change and migration?

Outernational presents outstanding soloists connected to different and hybrid music traditions in concerts, that celebrate their premiere in Berlin from where they will make guest appearances in Europe – and in a magazine connected to VAN Magazine: VAN Outernational. Political, social and postcolonial issues are addressed in the accompanying »Outernational listening« sessions. More about the project.

Allianz Foundation supports the project.

“Outernational is one of the few organizations that give artists ultimate freedom to express themselves in their own way. Instead of offering musicians opportunities that would limited them to the conventional and predefined forms of music making, Outernational allows them to think about their practice and roles freely and playfully take risks and redefine the meanings of music making and artistic creation.”
Aida Shirazi, Composer

An Outernational concert: EXT INC / REMEMBER ME

December 22, 2022 in Berlin, Radialsystem

Let's figure out
Ways to hope
Ways to love

We are living in one of the greatest species extinctions in history. But not only species, also sounds, languages and music are disappearing. The project «EXT INC / REMEMBER ME» of the transtraditional concert series «Outernational» traces these processes together with the composers Aida Shirazi and Emre Dündar and two world premieres. Emre Dündar has written a «Fakelore» that approaches various folklore traditions of the Turkish-Greek region. The young Iranian composer Aida Shirazi opens the evening with a solo performance for crickets and electronics and refers in her composition to Walt Whitman's «This Compost» - a text that evokes the living in the acceptance of death. With Vivaldi's «La Folia» - a motif composed many times in music history - the evening hovers over the abyss of history before ending in hope with the second part of Aida Shirazi's new composition.

«When we think about the future, we should start from the feelings. Feelings are from the future. (...) If I listen to music today that moves me at my core, tomorrow I may have empathy for a seabird or a hedgehog in the garden. Empathy is the first step in feeling connected to other, non-human things.» Publicist, philosopher and literary scholar Timothy Morton in VAN Outernational magazine.

The evening will be introduced by an «Outernational Listening Session», for which the philosopher and biologist Andreas Weber has written an essay on the topic, which will be heard for the first time in a sound space by Kirsten Reese. Weber himself writes: «Insects have elevated the principle of composting to the guideline of the biosphere: Make fruitful in your body for others that which you yourself have enjoyed; do not remain you, but constantly alienate yourself, transform yourself from caterpillar to imago, channel the nectar you drink through your flesh into the body of the mealswallow circling in the evening sky. Insect mortality means the end of metamorphosis, and with it the farewell to the gift of life. The only way to stop it is to see again that devotion, not exclusion, is the prerequisite for life.»
 

Read more: A conversation with Aida Shirazi about the relationship to poetry, about drawers – and about death.

»Sorry, it’s getting kind of dark«

Aida Shirazi

Cast

Aida Shirazi, Composer, Electronics 
Emre Dündar, Composer, Midi Piano
Andreas Arend, Theorbo
James Banner, Bass 
Szilard Benes, Clarinet
Rebecca Beyer, Violin
David-Maria Gramse, Violin
Emil Kuyumcuyan, Percussion
Vladimir Waltham, Cello
Miguel Pérez Iñesta, Conductor
Elisa Erkelenz, Curation & Dramaturgy

Radialsystem, Berlin

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