For 19 years Hamburg-based festival klubkatarakt has been presenting experimental music outside of a
rigid academic context, thematically and socially in an open atmosphere, with an experimental layout and structure.

The festival klubkatarakt adresses not only an audience of new music specialists, but also all generally interested listeners who don’t necessarily have a specific expertise. The audience is mixed, from all ages
and with varied backgrounds.

Many important figures of the international experimental scene have been brought to Hamburg. Artists
like Klaus Lang, Ellen Arkbro, Lois V Vierk, Éliane Radigue, Charles Curtis / La Monte Young,
Marko Ciciliani, Marc Sabat, Gerard Pape, Christian Wolff, Alvin Lucier, Rhys Chatham,
the European ensemble zeitkratzer, the US-American pianist Ju-Ping Song and – in 2023 – the Canadian Quatuor Bozzini were featured as artist or ensemble in residence.
Composers from Hamburg are also a continuous part of the festival: after Matthias Kaul, Sascha Lino Lemke and Michael Maierhof, Alexander Schubert was the featured composer in 2018.

One key aspect of klubkatarakt is spatial oriented music. The festival, based since 2009 at Kampnagel,
has three adjacent and connected halls at its disposal. In the opening concerts they are often used for concert settings in which the audience is free to walk around through all three halls, becoming an active
part of the installation.

Moreover klubkatarakt is especially devoted to music of long sustained sounds, featuring artists like
Phill Niblock, Éliane Radigue, Ellen Arkbro and last but not least La Monte Young.

The festival originated in an association founded in 1992 by composition students at the Hamburg Music Academy to perform the works of its members outside the academy, mostly in venues of the club or rock scene, uncommon places for classical music.

klubkatarakt started in November 2005 and distinguished itself since then as an important part of the
experimental music scene. Moreover it became also a stage for audiovisual arts and presented new works by artists like Katrin Bethge, Josephin Böttger, incite/, Makino Takashi, Telcosystems, Rainer Kohlberger, Anton Kaun and Frank Bretschneider.

Spex:
„The usual rigid handling of contemporary music is multimedially broken here, providing it with an
expanding frame.“

Hamburger Abendblatt:
„It‘s essential to arrive with open ears and engage into a quite new multimedia experience.“

TAZ:
„…it feels like the synapses in your head are being retuned one by one… and you go home stuffed to the brim with new sounds that will resonate for a long time to come.“

Hamburg Musik:
„klub katarakt crosses the border to new sonic worlds“