ICAS Festival

CONFIRMED SHAPE ARTISTS PRESENTED (AS OF 22ND APRIL 2015):

From 27 April to 3 May 2015, Dresden will become a hotspot for advanced music and related arts as the ICAS – International Cities of Advanced Sound network reunites over 20 music and media art festivals into a Festival of Festivals. Assembling a mix of club concerts, outdoor interventions, a multi-day conference programme, a film series, lab formats, as well as an exhibition, the festival adopts the theme of “Tools for an Unknown Future” in an attempt to examine how to cope with increasing uncertainty in the field of culture using the tools that have been developed in our society thus far. In times with no illusions of utopia, the urge to find methods of self-empowerment – a safety net in the face of the unknown – is more urgently needed than ever before.

As the ECAS project comes to a close, a brand-new multi-year initiative within the ICAS network will in turn suggest a different realm of possibilities for multilateral collaboration. SHAPE (Sound, Heterogeneous Art, and Performance in Europe) unites 16 organisations over 3 years in support of 144 artists through performance and educational opportunities as well as a large number of discussions and workshops within the daytime conference programme.

Taking these two major ICAS network projects as starting points, the ICAS Festival will thus explore ways in which artists and cultural workers can cope with an increasingly uncertain future. Advanced sound and its strongly linked new cultural forms and technologies, and these are very perceptible examples for our society of how the human condition is changing. In showcasing these fields, the ICAS Festival aims to deliver low-threshold access such that the public may become better acquainted with the questions and challenges in the field of culture today, as well as to examine possible societal changes that may influence us beyond the impact of the harsh economic changes.