Heroines of Sound Festival

Since 2014, the Heroines of Sounds festival has been presenting early and current heroines of electronic sound to Berlin audiences, who make important contributions to current aesthetic discourses. With a multifaceted program connecting music, film, and sound art, Heroines of Sound opens new perspectives on past and present musical practices and inspires innovative directions in music beyond gender discourse.

A program focus is dedicated to composer Iris ter Schiphorst on her 70th birthday. As a self-taught artist, she began her artistic career in a band context and developed into one of the most innovative composers of our time. Her new collaboration with deaf Japanese conceptual and sound artist Christine Sun Kim builds on her early compositions for sign language and sign language performers and, through the physical experience of sound and access to deaf culture, also opens up the possibility of critical reflection on spoken language.A special highlight is set on the Asian diaspora, especially the Japanese diaspora based in Europen. Internationally acclaimed musicians such as Misato Mochizuki, Noriko Baba, Eiko Ishibashi, and Mayako Kubo are rarely seen particulary at German festivals. Same is due for influential female electronic musicians such as Tomoko Sauvage, Mikki Yui, and Saeko Killy, who have made an important impact with their radical soundscapes, are still widlely underrepresented. In dialogue with emerging composers such as Katarina Gryvul, Eloain Lovis Hübner, Noemi Büchi, Marie Delprat and Luciana Pres a broad spectrum of innovative music opens up, combining instrumental, electronic, and performative approaches. With concerts, immersive and kinetic works, the festival opens up a cross-border terrain that particularly incorporates the perspectives of the Asian diaspora and broadens the horizons of contemporary art practice.The program comprises 16 events including concerts, performances, films, workshops, discussions, and sound art. The upcoming edition strives to opens new perspectives on musical practices and to foster sustainability, dialogue, and innovation through the fusion of artistic practice, research and theoretical reflection.

Japanese composer Midori Hirano is the guest curator of the current edition.