CRIPPLED SYMMETRIES Festival

Drawing inspiration from Morton Feldman’s late work Crippled Symmetry, the artists explore repetition, variation, contextual shifts, and re-examination—not so much as abstract concepts, but rather as tools of individual artistic biographies.

Program:

Fri, April 17, 2026

7:00 PM, Villa Elisabeth / Cube Band recital

To Choose or Be Chosen – Set 1

The opening of the Crippled Symmetries Festival will be performed by the young Taiwanese trio Cube Band. With their unique lineup, the three musicians combine the traditional Chinese string instruments pipa and guzheng with Western percussion. Between control and boundary-breaking, virtuoso soundscapes full of tension emerge.

8:30 p.m., St. Elisabeth Church / AnA Maria Rodriguez/Juan Felipe Waller, Ensemble KNM Berlin

From Material to Time – Set 2

The artistic work of Ana María Rodríguez and Juan Felipe Waller conceives of recycling as an aesthetic process and explores the sonic and symbolic potentials of reused materials. Zesses Seglias, in collaboration with the Ensemble KNM, creates sonic circular forms in which memory, transience, and resonance converge.

Sat, April 18, 2026

7:00 PM, Villa Elisabeth / Ensemble KNM Berlin, Sol-I So, Bo-Sung Kim

Gut - Set 3

The South Korean port city of Busan is home to the shamanic dance culture “Gut,” which manifests itself in songs and dances accompanied by instrumental music. In collaboration with the Busan International Contemporary Music Festival, the third set presents works by Korean composers who reinterpret this local tradition from a contemporary perspective.

8:30 p.m., St. Elisabeth Church / Ensemble 0

Open Symmetry - Set 4

The French Ensemble 0 presents music by Tristan Perich in Berlin for the first time with Open Symmetry. The New York-based artist, internationally renowned for his music and sound objects based on minute musical information, combines the aesthetic clarity of mathematics, physics, and code with a pulsating, living space. Repetition, rupture, and timbres are in constant motion here, bearing witness to Tristan Perich’s unique sonic language.

Sun, April 19, 2026

7:00 PM, St. Elisabeth Church / Ensemble KNM Berlin

Sound as a New Beginning - Set 5

Drawing on her own experience with long COVID, Petra Strahovnik has developed a composition that centers on breath, healing, and a new beginning. Inspired by modern trauma research as well as practices such as Yoga Nidra, Vipassana, and mantras, the work combines individual experience with collective wisdom. Through fragmented, shifting material, breathing phrasing, and ritual gestures, a meditative soundscape emerges in which body and mind, past and present, converge.

8:30 PM, Villa Elisabeth / Ensemble KNM Berlin

Safe Spaces - Set 6

Retama is the first collective network of Peruvian female composers of contemporary music, founded in 2020 to increase the visibility of music by women and create safe spaces for interdisciplinary projects. Their program brings together four works that focus on cycles, rituals, and the connection between humans, nature, and the cosmos. In doing so, the young composers draw upon the mythology and history of their homeland.