EASTERNDAZE × BERLIN 2019: DIY MUSIC TOPOGRAPHIES

PRESS & MEDIA PARTNERSHIPS

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​From the press-release:

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THIRD EDITION OF FESTIVAL CONTINUES TO PAIR ELECTRONIC MUSIC COLLECTIVES OF EASTERN EUROPE + BERLIN TO CELEBRATE DIY ARTS & COMMUNAL ETHOS

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, 28-30 November 2019
Various Venues in Berlin
 

The Easterndaze x Berlin festival once again invites artists, actors and activists from the electronic music scene of Eastern Europe to Berlin, pairing them with locally-based labels/collectives for live performances, DJ sets and talks.

Established in 2010, the blog Easterndaze (easterndaze.net) has explored and mapped local DIY scenes operating in Eastern and Central Europe. Founders Lucia Udvardyova and Peter Gonda traveled across the region to record interviews and collect perspectives on how contemporary artists and independent music-related initiatives operate in the region and its sociopolitical context.

The initial result was a series of audio documentaries which then expanded to a label (Baba Vanga); a networking initiative; radio shows (Resonance FM, Czech Radio, Berlin’s Cashmere Radio); and finally, events around the region, as well as the festival’s first two editions in Berlin (2016, 2018). As the fascination with and discourse around contemporary Eastern European culture gradually enters the mainstream, Easterndaze remains one of the pillars of these investigations nearly a decade strong.

This year’s edition of the festival features collectives visiting from Estonia (Serious Serious), Romania (PARADAIZ) and Belarus (Mechta) pairing them with Berlin-based collectives Conditional, Voodoohop and Forbidden Planet, respectively.

An accompanying event features a talk on the decolonization of Eastern European narratives hosted by the Bucharest-based Kajet Journal, a publication which aims to “dismantle...the region’s counterfeit sense of inferiority against the powerful, the prosperous, & the advanced.” At the same event, a selection of related video art will be on view, curated by D’EST— a Berlin-based online audiovisual platform that reflects the post-socialist transformation along post-geographic, horizontal, and feminist focus topics.

30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall which marked the beginning of Eastern Europe’s gradual re-absorption into Europe, relationships of exchange, support and understanding that transcend distinctions or misconceptions between “East” and “West” remain as important as ever.