“Don’t Expect the Wrong Things from Institutions.”—Berno Odo Polzer Interviewed by Christian Grüny

AbstractIn an interview with Christian Grüny, Polzer discusses the politics of time and listening. His approach as artistic director of the MaerzMusik festival at the Berliner Festspiele focussed on situating contemporary music and sound practices within an interdisciplinary and sociopolitical landscape, investing a unique level of care into the relation between musical programming and its contextualisation. To this end, Polzer emphasises fostering forms of collectivity and communality as the site of production of musical meaning, while also checking the often-hyperbolic claims that arts institutions make regarding their value to society.