Not by Note

In search of new ways to explore power, religion and identity through art, Sebastian Meissner and Serhat Karakayali have invited eight musicians from the Middle East and former Yugoslavia to an one-week ArtLab in Banja Luka (BiH), jointly elaborating and developing a psycho-geographical score that critically describes the mesh of relationships between the two regions and Western Europe expressed through symbolism, music and sound.


Participants:  Amir Husak, Boikutt, Cynthia Zaven, Dror Feiler, Manja Ristic, Asmir Sabic, Premil Petrovic, Sharif Sehnaoui, Jan Rohlf.


The idea for this workshop originates in the "Lost Spaces" project which focused on the history, the destruction and reconstruction of the Ferhadija mosque in Banja Luka. At that time the project was the reaction to a widespread curatorial practice, namely to invite musicians from the Near East to participate as peace ambassadors at European art & music festivals – a practice that ignores the role Europe plays in this conflict. "Not by Note" is a continuation of that project insofar as musicians from this region were invited to reverse the perspective and look at a part of Europe that as "Balkan" is at times itself expatriated from Western civilization.

The results was presented at Kunstmuseum Graz during ORF musikprotokoll at Steirischer Herbst 2010 as a sound-video-graphic installation and an on-site-on-air-on-line ORF Kunstradio broadcast when all those involved in the project once again came together in virtual space.