Deportation to the Future · Friedrich Merzbow

The work

Friedrich Merzbow is a situational collective performing what it calls emigrant noise — a genre named in analogy with emigrant chanson, but replacing song with noise made by people with migrant backgrounds.

The collective has no permanent line-up. It assembles from place to place and performance to performance, treating instability itself as part of the form. Its name combines a reference to the Japanese noise project Merzbow — and, through it, Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau — with the name of German chancellor Friedrich Merz.

Emigrant noise is described as sentimental noise: the non-music of people who have lost a so-called homeland without necessarily acquiring a new home, remaining foreign and potentially deportable wherever they live.

Deportation to the Future turns that condition into sound and addresses the state with an impossible request: deport us somewhere you no longer exist.

The festival

Emigration to the Future was an interdisciplinary festival that took place in Berlin-Wedding, 7–9 August 2026, bringing together artists, performers and researchers from seven countries working across performance, installation, video, sound and public intervention. Curated by Vsevolod Lisovsky and Anton Polski (MAKE / Citizen Make), across venues including exBrache, Chto Delat and public space around Wedding.

emigrationtothefuture.org · Telegram: @emigrationtothefuture

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