MED - Maribor Electronic Destination

MED - Maribor electronic destination: international festival of electronic music

The focus of the festival that has been established in 2008 is on contemporary electroacoustic music that has emerged from the European Avant-gardes of the 20th century, particularly twelve-tone music that was devised by Arnold Schoenberg based on the principles set by Karlheinz Stockhausen, the German explorer of sonority and further developed by performers and theoreticians of Musique concrète, such as the French composer Pierre Schaeffer after World War II.

MED is particularly established as a research project, open to various ways of creating and focusing on intensified interaction between various media of production, which brings the festival programme even closer to Kibla's mission.

MED has been working towards establishing Maribor as one of the destinations on the map of music connoisseurs, who are particularly attracted by neuralgic points of music production.

MED seeks to find a balance between two aspects of creating electronic music, which at first sight might be quite contradictory – the experimental and the playful. The experimental pole is often seen by the playful as an activity serving its own good, whereas the playful pole is mostly seen by the experimental as an overly profane activity. Therefore MED has been conceived as a journey in the continuum between the two poles, thus oriented towards a reconciliation and mutual complementation of different positions within the production of electronic music. It is therefore important to use such events for the purpose of making them less elite, yet not at the expense of greater banality of programme. Quite the contrary – the project also aims at encouraging the audience to express higher demands. It has to be said that there were certain periods in the history of music industry when popular music achieved various levels of quality. Furthermore, the expanse of a certain genre largely depends on the accessibility of contents, therefore it is festivals that often create the space for increasing the interest in new cultural programmes.

"Groovy, man! This is how "elektronica" sounds today, no "doontz-doontz".
Actually, "elektronica" means unlimited possibiities. See, for example, computer animation in films where there are no countless repetitions  of 'Vereinfachter polka'."
Cameron Bobro


Festival archive with photos:
MED 2008
MED 2009
MED 2010

Sections

Festivals

Coproductions and international cooperation