don’t be afraid, your little light, lulla, bubbles, all the night… / live performance and exhibition in virtual space

Music seems to be a language that does not need to be learned, but that is understood intuitively and provides a way of communicating across linguistic and cultural boundaries. However, the dissemination of music and sound is in many cases subject to the rules of the music industry and Western music theory. Music from non-Western contexts is often called “world music”, classified as „exotic“, misunderstood, and marginalized. It becomes subaltern culture in the sense of Antonio Gramsci: music gets excluded from the cultural hegemony of the „West“; its independence is denied in the (neo-)colonial context.

Through the Internet, music can be distributed more widely than ever before. But streaming services and music platforms controlled by algorithms carry the danger that our musical horizons will only expand as much as determined by the artificial intelligence behind them.

While emotional experience makes up a large part of musical understanding, emotions are not measurable for artificial intelligences and are thus difficult to process. Humans can react to unknown sounds with openness and curiosity, but for AI this is not possible: it sorts, classifies, groups by hook or crook: sometimes with bizarre, sheer absurd results. Neue Nachbarschaft Moabit e.V. takes a close look at the aberrations of technology and makes them spatially tangible. We open up a digital universe in which there is room for sounds and images, for speechless communication, for visual and emotional experience, and for exchange across visible and invisible borders. In particular, we are been focusing on lullabies and children’s game songs, a kind of music that is so close to heart and most connected to childhood.

We take the migration of music as an occasion to reflect on emotional experiences of border crossings or flight, to explore our communication possibilities and to question the secret rules of the internet. Can we not use the shortcomings of this „artificial stupidity“ to our advantage?

We warmly invite you to join us in listening, experiencing, shifting horizons and subverting the standardization of sounds.

A production of Neue Nachbarschaft/Moabit  und Moabit Mountain College.

Concept: Cam-Anh Luong, Edoardo Micheli, Marina Naprushkina, Cristina Viegas, Nicola Schüschke. VR artist: Cam-Anh Luong. Sound design and live electronics: Edoardo Micheli. Texts: Nicola Schüschke. Visual works by Zainab, Ajschat, Diana, Khadischat, Abdul-Malik, Dưa Nguyễn, Fina, Liv.

With Fatih Ermete: oud, Mimi Mitina: voice