a dense topology: CTM Festival 2026

23.1.-1.2.2026

CTM Festival’s 27th edition unfolds a field of artistic forces. Under the theme “dissonate < > resonate”, CTM 2026 frames sound as tension sustained—means: the significant frequencies of the as every year totally overwhelming lineup rubbing against one another creating something like a vibrating black hole.

Across ten days in Berlin, the festival maps a dense topology of concerts, spatial sound experiments, discourse formats, exhibitions, and artist-led transmissions. From the tectonic weight of Earth opening the festival (which we sadly miss as we have to host our own opening at Kapute Szene on 24th of January with “What Is Sex?” by Philipp Joy Reinhardt), CTM insists on listening as a social, political, and embodied act.

The programme moves in 2026 as always fluidly between night and day, club and concert hall, theory and practice (which means for those digging all of these things: no sleep till Post-Berghain, to give the Beastie Boys classic a little Berlin twist). Spatial sound performances and d&b Soundscape workshops expand perception; commissioned works and artistic labs rewire inherited musical lineages; conferences and discussions probe how music circulates, survives, and resists. With collaborations reaching from Kyiv to Seoul and a broadcast presence via Refuge Worldwide, CTM situates Berlin as a relay rather than a centre.

CTM 2026 is taking place from 23 January – 1 February 2026 at Radialsystem, Berghain, RSO.Berlin, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Morphine Raum, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Silent Green and Haus der Visionäre.

6 constellations of kaput magic

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Hilary Woods / Stygian Bough (Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin)

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 – Haus der Visionäre

Hilary Woods works in the afterimage of sound. Her music moves slowly, deliberately, like breath fogging a cold window—intimate, but never confessional. Drawing from folk lineage, drone, and electroacoustic minimalism, Woods constructs songs that feel hollowed out, carrying weight through restraint.
Stygian Bough, the collaboration between Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin, operates at the opposite extreme of scale while arriving at a similar depth. Doom metal is stripped of spectacle and rebuilt as a ritual of sustained tones, harmonium drones, and funereal pacing. The music unfolds with geological patience, collapsing the distinction between metal, sacred music, and drone.

Lukas de Clerck / Dror Feiler’s NO Orchestra

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 – Radialsystem

Lukas de Clerck approaches sound as a site of negotiation—between bodies, systems, and historical residue. His work often interrogates acoustic instruments through extended techniques, amplification, and spatial disruption, turning familiar sources into unstable agents. De Clerck is less interested in virtuosity than in friction: what happens when breath, object, and architecture resist one another.
Dror Feiler’s NO Orchestra amplifies this antagonistic energy to collective scale. “No IS” is a sustained act of refusal—against fixed identity, against musical consensus, against political quietism. The orchestra functions as a dense, unruly mass of winds, electronics, and percussion, producing sound that veers between noise, protest, and ecstatic overload.

feeo & Kara-Lis Coverdale

Tue, 26 Jan 2026 – Radialsystem

feeo’s music exists in a state of continuous modulation. Working with voice, electronics, and processing, feeo shapes sound that feels both bodily and synthetic, intimate and strangely alien. Melodic fragments surface only to dissolve again, as if memory itself were unstable.
Kara-Lis Coverdale’s compositions stretch toward the cosmic. Known for her expansive organ works and digitally mediated harmonies, Coverdale builds vast emotional architectures from precise formal decisions. Her music is lush without being indulgent, spiritual without doctrine, always balancing complexity with emotional clarity.

Emiddio Vasquez (feat. Stelios Antoniou) / Sara Persico & Tohal Kyna

Wed, 27 Jan 2026 – Radialsystem

Emiddio Vasquez’s “21s,” featuring Stelios Antoniou, is rooted in rhythm as both temporal unit and social signal. Drawing from club structures, experimental electronics, and performative gesture, Vasquez treats time as something to be bent, stressed, and looped. Antoniou’s presence adds a kinetic, almost architectural counterpoint, pushing the work into a space where choreography, sound, and physical exertion collapse into one another.
Sara Persico and Tohal Kyna approach collaboration as a porous exchange. Persico’s background in vocal performance and electronic composition intersects with Kyna’s interest in spatial sound and algorithmic systems. Together, they construct environments where voice fractures into data and data regains breath.

gamut inc / Marcin Pietruszewski & Lukas de Clerck

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 – Haus der Visionäre

gamut inc’s “Dialogue de l’orgue double” reimagines the pipe organ not as monument, but as interface. By splitting, duplicating, and spatialising the instrument, gamut inc exposes its mechanical lungs and historical weight simultaneously. The work breathes with the room, transforming sacred sonority into something exploratory and unsettled. Tradition here is not preserved but activated, allowed to mutate through technology and space.
Marcin Pietruszewski and Lukas de Clerck’s “Oto Aulos” continues this re-synthesis through wind and gesture. Drawing on ancient aerophones and contemporary performance practice, the piece situates breath as a primary material—fragile, insistent, human. Amplification and spatial placement fracture the sound source, creating a multiperspectival listening experience. Together, these works propose tradition not as inheritance, but as raw material—something to be taken apart, listened through, and rebuilt.

Noemi Büchi / Daniel Brandt

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 – Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz

Noemi Büchi’s “Exuvie” takes its name from discarded skins, and the metaphor holds. Her work sheds layers of instrumental expectation, focusing instead on resonance, texture, and the slow revelation of form. Using acoustic instruments, electronics, and space as equal partners, Büchi creates sound that feels suspended between presence and absence. The music unfolds with quiet insistence, asking listeners to stay with subtle transformation rather than dramatic event.
Daniel Brandt’s “Without Us” expands this attentiveness into audiovisual terrain. Known for his cinematic sensibility and rhythmic acuity, Brandt constructs live environments where image and sound co-evolve. The work reflects on collectivity, ecology, and what remains when human agency recedes.