~ / works / ya festival
the ya festival is a platform for contemporary music initiated by roberto beseler maxwell & me & realized by a wide group of collaborators.
by contemporary music we mean any living musical tradition currently being practiced. the guiding principle of the initiative is the questioning of a “denial of contemporaneity” (johannes fabian): non-european arts were denied the seal of the contemporary. they were understood as a museum practice of the past. only the european avant-garde was considered to be an adequate expression of the present. with the ya festival, we want to break with this notion. for us, doing justice to the responsibility of our colonialist heritage means questioning the hierarchy of this denial & taking the topicality of other music seriously.
