Forschungsforum Sommersemester 2025

Contradict – Ideas for a New World

Thomas Burkhalter
Norient, Bern

When two friends collect money for the so-called “suffering in America” in the streets of Accra, is it for fun, political provocation, or a prophecy? Two Swiss filmmakers will answer these questions with the help of seven musicians from Ghana – M3NSA, Wanlov The Kubolor, Adomaa, Worlasi, Akan, Mutombo Da Poet, and Poetra Asantewa – who have written new songs and produced video clips especially for the documentary film Contradict.

Tomorrow’s ideas and trends are emerging more decentralized than ever in a globalized world. What do global developments and shifts in values look like from the ground up in Ghana and the African continent? How do we want to confront and contradict those changes? Can new visions for the future become global realities?

A film by Peter Guyer and Thomas Burkhalter

Bio: Thomas Burkhalter, PhD, is an anthropologist, multidisciplinary artist, and writer from Bern, Switzerland. He is the founder and director of Norient and the Norient Festival. He has co-directed documentary films, including Contradict (Berner Filmpreis 2020 + Al-Jazeera Witness), and AV/theatre performances. Burkhalter is also the author and co-editor of several books, such as Local Music Scenes and Globalization: Transnational Platforms in Beirut (Routledge), The Arab Avant Garde: Musical Innovation in the Middle East (Wesleyan University Press), and Seismographic Sounds – Visions of a New World (Norient Books). His experimental radio feature, Gqom Edits – A Durban Visit, was nominated for the Prix Europa in 2017. Burkhalter teaches regularly at universities, leads workshops for arts institutions, and, since 2022, has produced the Norient Mixtape for Swiss National Radio SRF3.

https://norient.com/tbu