Protest

Time to Listen – Together with music, art and culture for an ecologically, socially and economically sustainable future.

Pariser Platz
8 October 2022, 4-7 p.m.

With a joint rally on 8 October 2022 from 4-7 p.m. at Pariser Platz, we as music, art and culture creators want to take action, go out, pause and listen for an ecologically, socially and economically sustainable future: Time to Listen!

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By now, we not only know that we are facing civilisational collapse but at the same time, we know many ways to stem the tide of the negative consequences of our actions. However, while the impending breaking point permeates ever more clearly into our consciousness with mounting facts and figures, the gap between knowledge and action is widening.

We believe that art and culture can play a part in closing this gap and can play a key role in communicating knowledge and values to initiate change towards a socially, environmentally and economically sustainable global community.

Listening to the world

The world is communicating to us, – we just need to listen carefully: While meadows and forests fall silent, motorised traffic roars in the streets and protests grow louder. Dwindling biodiversity, growing energy consumption and social inequalities are making themselves heard. Every activity causes sound, and its absence, silence.

Those who understand hearing as a cognitive faculty learn to hear the state of the earth. We want to think more with our ears in order to better understand our existence in the world. When we stop and listen, places and spaces begin to speak and provide us with information about our ways of life and the health of our earth.

Climate catastrophe is already a daily reality in many parts of the world. Especially where the exploitation of natural resources takes place in the name of economic progress, those voices whose habitat is acutely threatened are systematically silenced by force. Often these are communities whose self-image includes the protection of the earth as a basic prerequisite for human existence in balance with nature, and whose admonitions have been ignored and persecuted as backward for decades.

At the rally, we want to make these phenomena audible and amplify voices that might otherwise not be heard.

Listening to facts

In recent years, the alarm bell has been sounded – and ignored – by a multitude of scientific bodies and activist initiatives.

The Paris Agreement of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference commits countries under international law to keep global warming well below 2° C. In addition, all countries have declared their ambition to limit warming to 1.5° C. The Club of Rome warned 50 years ago already about the limits to growth and recently named “five extraordinary turns” on which our future depends: ending poverty, eliminating glaring inequality, empowering women, building a food system that is healthy both for people and ecosystems, and transitioning to the use of clean energy.

Protest movements such as Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion hold regular demonstrations for climate protection and the preservation of our natural livelihoods. These activist movements are rightly demanding that our society move towards sustainability without further hesitation.

As art and cultural actors, we want to use our visibility and audibility to make such voices and their justified, well-founded demands heard.

No to AfD!

At the same time, we are united in opposing the AfD, which is organising a demonstration starting from the Platz der Republik on the same afternoon. The party leader has registered a demonstration under the title »Energy security and protection against inflation – our country first!« for 4,000 participants in the government quarter. The list of AfD demands includes the opening of Nord Stream 2, the promotion of electricity from nuclear energy and coal, reductions in energy taxes and the elimination of taxes and levies on fuel. We cannot accept that right-wing populists who ignore or even deny scientific findings exploit people's fears to destabilise and polarise society.

We demand

What are we waiting for? Already today, the effects of our actions are measurable, tangible and unmistakable: environmental disasters, inflation, energy shortages and a global food crisis due to extreme weather conditions and a war in Europe that violates international law.

Coping with the current crises must not lead to short-sighted decisions but rather requires a radical change in human behaviour and, above all, ambitious and consistent political measures before we reach further irreversible tipping points.

The timely creation of necessary framework conditions for climate-friendly and sustainable action does not contradict social measures to provide humanitarian relief. On the contrary, they are the condition for preventing hardship and social inequalities in the future.

That is why we want to get behind those in government who are committed to climate protection and put pressure on advancing the expansion of renewable energies as well as a fundamental change in transport and agriculture.

Join in!

We call on artists, musicians, composers, researchers, cultural politicians, funding organisations, music journalists and editors as well as event organisers to form alliances and make a sonic statement on Saturday, 8 October 2022 at Pariser Platz from 4 to 7 p.m.

For the duration of this afternoon, we will present joint public interventions. These can be speeches or artistic actions that draw on different media. If you would like to contribute, please contact us at redaktion@field-notes.berlin.

Open Space

On 7 and 8 October, i.e. until shortly before the rally, the Akademie der Künste, Impuls neue Musik and the inm / field notes welcome you to a joint conference in an open format on the topic of sustainability in contemporary music entitled »Time to Listen« (Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz). The Open Space aims to bring about a transdisciplinary dialogue with the expertise of scholars, artists, activists and institutions that are testing new forms of thinking, organising and acting for more sustainable ways of living and working worldwide.

At the Open Space, participants will develop a joint sound action with sounds that give voice to non-human creatures and soundscapes or stand for the threatening nature of the climate crisis. In doing so, they will send an audible signal for the urgency of political action. Likewise, a participatory movement-sound piece is being prepared to be performed together at Pariser Platz. Parallel to this, there will be an opportunity to design posters and banners in an Open Space workshop.
Overview | Program | Registration

DIE VIELEN

DIE VIELEN e.V. is a cultural alliance for cultural and artistic freedom and against the right. On 8 October, the alliance is already calling for a counter-demonstration to the AfD from 12 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Pariser Platz, which will then be continued by Time to Listen in the afternoon.

Alliance partners:

  • Akademie der Künste

  • inm - initiative neue musik berlin e.V. / field notes

  • Impuls neue Musik

  • Goethe-Institut

  • Musikfonds e.V.

  • exploratorium

  • Kontraklang

  • positionen - Texte zur aktuellen Musik

  • errant sound

  • Musicpool Berlin

  • IMPULS-Festival für Neue Musik

  • Institut français Mainz

  • Netzwerk Nachhaltigkeit in Kunst und Kultur (2N2K)

  • SONIC MATTER Zürich

  • IG-Jazz

  • Digital in Berlin

  • radialsystem

  • bgnm - Berliner Gesellschaft für Neue Musik e. V.

  • Freunde Guter Musik e.V.

  • Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele

  • ZMB - Zeitgenössisches Musiktheater Berlin

  • DIE VIELEN e.V.

  • Morphine Records

  • Unerhörte Musik

  • Berit Kramer | Kulturmanagement

  • VAM - Vereinigung Alte Musik

  • Festival Klanglandschaften

  • MaerzMusik

  • Outernational

  • Neue Zeitschrift für Musik

Write us if you would like to join the alliance.