This February, the stately Berlin Philharmonic building is about to get a lot wilder! During the two-day Strom Electronic Music Festival, a total of 12 DJs, composers and visual artists will bring the best that modern house and techno have to offer to the Philharmonic’s main auditorium, its extensive foyer, and the Hermann Wolff Hall.
The best of international electronic music in Berlin
Although Strom is not a classical music event, its organisers seek to hold its artists to the same high standards as Berlin’s world class Philharmonic Orchestra. To that effect, curator Stefan Goldmann has invited artists from as far afield as Chile, Siberia, Japan and Tunisia, to join local names from Berlin and the rest of Europe.
Strom will feature four “listening” performances in the main auditorium, whose walls have been battered by decades of Mahler and Beethoven. Now for the first time that room will experience the pulsating down tempo rhythms of Austria’s Kruder & Dorfmeister, and the modern compositional style of British / Chilean artist Christian Vogel.
The Philharmonic’s very acoustics and architecture will become integrated into Stefan Goldmann’s multidisciplinary site-specific collaboration with Argentinian video artist Javier Benjamin, and finally the room will be plunged into total darkness for Ryoji Ikeda’s dynamic audio-visual performance.
Don’t forget to dance!
For those who can’t bear to listen to club music sitting down, the Philharmonic’s sprawling and beautifully asymmetric foyer will be transformed into a dance floor. The headliners will be the Siberian techno sensation Nina Kraviz and Bulgarian artist KiNK, with stunning visual art by Italian Marco C displayed throughout the foyer.
For those who want to take a break from all the noise Robert Henke’s audio-free installation will have its own dedicated space for the festival. A crucial innovator of the digital tools behind electronic music, Henke’s installation Phosphorus will use rays of ultraviolet light to paint moving landscapes on a canvas of phosphorus dust - the perfect palette cleanser before plunging back into the action!