what is showroom
In april of 2013. Music Showroom of the Culture of Change has started a new project – a four day music event, Showroom of Contemporary Sound, that takes place at various venues of Student Centre.
Showroom of Contemporary Sound is a festival focused on contemporary music, viz. contemporary sound, with a wider understanding of the term contemporary, thereby following the conception of Music Showroom, as designed by a poet and literary theorist Ante Stamać (the founder of the Music Showroom) and academician Nikša Gligo (longtime artistic leader). Showroom of Contemporary Sound is not limited in genre, not defined in style, nor is it directed to promoting a certain poetics. However, that does not mean it has no clear program guidelines and set goals. The new music festival of Music Showroom promotes and presents musical exploration, development of technology and creating new DIY instruments and software, it is open to young people and it gives space for experimenting, while not dividing musicians and composers to academically educated and those educated outside the institutions, but promotes a dialogue between them, mutual collaboration and exchange of knowledge and ideas. It is precisely the openness of the concept that enables the festival programme to change and redesign itself, following the contemporary music production and shifting its focus in the direction of new tendencies.
The programme of Showroom of Contemporary Sound includes performances of the so called unconventional ensembles or bands, intermedia and multimedia projects, but also a theoretical part, as an important segment of the programme: panel discussions, presentations and artist talks. This festival intends to pay equal attention to exploring the so called classical music, experimental music, sound art, new instruments, technological innovations developen with a purpose of finding new sonorities, noise, electronic music, group improvisation, contemporary jazz music, as well as encouraging active dialogues. It was precisely the experimental, alternative or underground world music production that have been initiators of new tendencies, explorers of new possibilities, pioneers of new poetics and a cause to significant changes in the so called mainstream contemporary musical production and poetics, a number of times throughout the history of music.
The new project of the Music Showroom most definitely carries an exploratory character, but apart from presenting current international projects and our own music explorations and experiments, some of the important goals are connecting and networking with manifestations, institutions and initiatives of similar profile from abroad, in order to create channels that will help Croatian musicians gain international audience.