Enormous shadows are looming over the various New Music scenes of the post-Soviet territories, which have once again become the site of violent, geopolitical conflict. The fluidity of a perfectly natural dialogue between leading composers and performers between Tbilisi and Minsk, Yerevan and Moscow, Tashkent and Kyiv has come to a standstill, the dialogue has ceased. Once more, music runs the risk of being reduced to national self-assertion and to a propaganda shield of supposed superiority. Resistance against such instrumentalization is called for. With its multi-part project “The Tower of Babel”, Klangforum Wien wants to contribute to these efforts. It draws up a map of the New in music in today’s post-Soviet space, which naturally presents artistically uncompromising positions from Estonia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Latvia, Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. Like a “Tower of Babel”, the project is intended to rise above the cultural landscape, currently suffering such terrible deprivation: radiant with polyphony, utopian as ever, providing both a sanctuary and a vantage point