Our Export Strategy

Your what?!

It was the first time I'd ever been asked the question: what is your export strategy? It was part of the application for performing at the Vienna Waves festival, and I thought 'huh - good question!'

So I started to write, and this is what came out. It might not be what was expected, but it made me think about the deeper issues of being a performer abroad in the world, and about the impacts we have. In some ways it's a question of balance, between the inevitable physical impact of a group of people travelling through the world using a whole range of resources, and the less measurable 'good' that comes from connecting with people in their local places, engaging them with ideas as well as moving them with music.

Anyway, I thought the following was a good start. I hope you agree.

"In order to maintain as small a carbon footprint as possible while having maximum reach, we are working outwards from our base in Potsdam/Berlin. If we get gigs in far away places, we assess the true costs and work on the least impactful, most regenerative strategy. That might actually mean, for example, not flying to distant lands, or only travelling by train. We know this affects our export strategy, but we believe that it is the approach most respectful to future generations. Likewise, our social media strategy also tries to tread a respectful path. If we find that there might be a real audience for our live performances as indicated by social media feedback, we will consider playing for those people. We seek to navigate between the corporate-controlled channels and connect authentically to audiences without contributing to the structures and pathways of destructive technocracy. ('No music on a dead planet', as they say.)

 As our song texts are in English we know we are limited to audiences that can tolerate this language, although we have seen that our music often overrides the words and gets people dancing together. This makes us happy!

We are currently independent of management or touring agencies and attempting to pioneer new pathways for engaging with people on the ground directly without exploitative middlemen.

We see ourselves as experienced and caring, on the verge of becoming elders in our society, but still open to learning and growing through interaction and engagement with our fellow humans and the world of which we are a part. In this sense,our export strategy is not fixed but responsive and interactive!"