Course Catalogue

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35 Jahre Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln

Course Catalogue WS 2024/25

The only ______ sound system is a Soundsystem: Word-Sound-Power as fundamental to transdisciplinary anteaesthetics and meaning-making

Contemporary Art/ Global South

Type:
Specialist seminar
Semester:
WS 25/26
Target group
Main course / Diploma 2
Max participants:
15 (first come first serve)
Requirement

Over two semesters, starting in the winter semester.

Seminar language: English


Registration: By 22 September 2025 at rangoato.hlasane@khm.de

Dates - place & time

TypStartEndDayTurnusfrom-toLocation
29.10.2528.01.26MittwochWöchentlich14:00 - 17:00Filzengraben 2a, Atelier 2 / room 2
Typ
Start29.10.25
End28.01.26
DayMittwoch
TurnusWöchentlich
from-to14:00 - 17:00
LocationFilzengraben 2a, Atelier 2 / room 2

Seminar description

What is a sound in the language of your dreams? Mine is modumo (with its sibling mošito that means ‘beat’, ‘footstep’, ‘rhythm’…). The root term ‘duma’, in Sesotho exists simultaneously as ‘wish’ and ‘desire’ in English, while homonymously meaning ‘rumble’, ‘thunder’ and ‘drone’. On its route, it riffs to dumediša and dumedišana: ‘greet’ and ‘greet each other’ respectively, an invitation to a call and response. Dumela will then interject: ‘Hallo!’, ‘Hola!’ ‘Thobela!’ and so on and so forth, while its homonym suggests an ‘agreement’ or a ‘belief’. Dumelela, on the other hand, evokes the foreboding notions of power and authority as it means to ‘allow’ or grant a ‘permission’ … 


The seminar considers the everyday, quotidian presence of sound/music as fundamental sensibility to collective study, with a boundless capacity to “keep it moving” or “make things happen”. Sound as a path-breaker. Over two semesters, students will build a shared/communal soundsystem from scratch, accompanied by individual and/or experimental publications (think user guide/manual) that grounds the shared/communal soundsystem, engaging the question: what problem/s does this soundsystem have with the System? 


Always with due respect to the Caribbean roots of soundsystem (in part a vital response to exclusion of Jamaicans in broadcasts), the seminar invites students to collectively analyse and respond to systemic-oppressive systems by imagining the potentialities of radical, joyful and rebellious inclusion promised by a soundsystem today, now, here and elsewhere. 


While the home for the seminar is Room 2 the making of the soundsystem and all facilities and infrastructure that KHM has to offer. Most importantly, the seminar will engage, and make use of the world outside KHM through multiple modalities excursions including but not limited to crate diggin’, festivals, recording studios, archive homes/centres, cinema, the streets… 


Collective outcome: A shared, functional, mobile and sustainable soundsystem 


Individual and or sub-collective outcomes: RISO+ publications

Student office

Student Office

Karin Cordes

Juliane Schwibbert

Claudia Warnecke

Heumarkt 14, 50667 Köln

+49 221 20189 - 194 /119 / 187 / 249
studoffice@khm.de


Opening hours:   Mondays + Tuesdays from 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. + Thursdays from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.

For enquiries or appointments, please call us, Mon - Thu 9.30 to 1 p.m., or send us an e-mail.


Summer semester 2025

Lecture period:
​​​​​​​Apr. 14, 2025 until Jul. 25, 2025


Winter semester 2025/26

Lecture period:
​​​​​​​Oct. 20, 2025 until Feb. 13, 2026

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