Gerechtigkeits Liga Interview with Alexander Nym (I.C.R.N).

As a follow-up to Alexei Monroe's GL article we publish this German interview.

GERECHTIGKEITS LIGA

Till Brüggemann im Gespräch mit Alexander Nym

„GERECHTIGKEITS LIGA ersetzen mytho-poetischen und romantischen Nihilismus durch einen introvertierteren und neurotischeren Ausblick. Es ist dies die paranoid-kritische Art zu urteilen und zu handeln.“

Dieses Zitat enthält keine absichtliche Referenz an Salvador Dalí, aber sie kann auch nicht schaden, schließlich erforscht die GERECHTIGKEITS LIGA seit inzwischen mehr als einem Vierteljahrhundert Träume, Ideen und Halluzinationen, die dem Surrealismus ebenso artverwandt sind wie dem Schamanismus und der Magie – der Magie der Klänge und Rhythmen.

1981 von Till Brüggemann und Frank Ströpken in Bremen gegründet, war das düster-experimentelle Projekt der beiden eines der ersten in Deutschland, die die Energie des Punk mit elektronisch disziplinierter Maschinenkraft kombinierten und damit ihre Hörerschaft in unbekannte, dunkel-bedrohliche Klanggefilde lockte. Vor GERECHTIGKEITS LIGA war Till Brüggemann als genialer Dilettant in der Punkband E-605 als Gitarrist und Sänger zugange gewesen, zusammen mit einem gewissen Hank am Bass, der später für eineinhalb Jahre ebenfalls bei G.L. mitwirken sollte.

Ströpken verließ das Projekt um 1982/83, und Brüggemann setzte in den folgenden Jahren die Arbeit mit anderen Musikern fort. Zusammen mit den EINSTÜRZENDEN NEUBAUTEN zählen GERECHTIGKEITS LIGA zu den bekanntesten Industrial-Pionieren aus deutschen Landen. Das blieb allerdings nicht lange so, denn nach einem Umweg über Bremen und Berlin (Besetzungsänderungen inbegriffen) zogen die LIGA-Mitglieder 1985/86 dauerhaft nach London. Dort verliefen sich die Spuren in den 90er Jahren, und es blieb lange ruhig um das ominöse Projekt, bis es im neuen Millennium mit der Wiederveröffentlichung der klassischen Vinylscheiben The Games Must Go On und Hypnotischer Existenzialismus sowie mehreren Samplerbeiträgen wieder auferstand.

Wie bist Du zur Musik/zum Klang gekommen?

Bevor ich mit dem GERECHTIGKEITS LIGA-Projekt anfing, hatte ich in zwei Punkbands als Gitarrist gespielt. Ich war ein totaler Dilletant und hackte auf dem Instrument eigentlich nur herum. Meine Mitmusiker hatten auch andere Projekte am laufen, und somit war es nur eine Frage der Zeit, bis wir uns trennten um in „künstlerischer“ Hinsicht unsere eigenen Wege zu gehen. Ich war sowieso schon seit einer Weile vom Punk-Sound desillusioniert und suchte nach anderen musikalischen Alternativen. GERECHTIGKEITS LIGA sollte eine Plattform für die neurotischen Obsessionen ihrer Mitglieder sein, was auch gelungen zu sein scheint, wenn ich mir die Aufnahmen aus den frühen 80ern so anhöre...

Wann und unter welchen Umständen erschien Deine erste Veröffentlichung?

Meine bzw. unsere erste Veröffentlichung mit dem Titel Scenes we’d like to see erschien 1982 als Tape: 50 Stück Auflage mit 4-seitigem Begleitbuch, auf dem schwarz-weiss Kopien von Archivfotos deutscher SS-Ärzte abgedruckt waren, aufgenommen nach Versuchen an lebenden Menschen. Der Titel war natürlich höchst ironisch, was aber z.T. völlig missverstanden wurde und uns in der Bremer Punkszene den Ruf eintrug, Neonazi-mäßig drauf zu sein – was völlig daneben war!

Ein ständig auftretendes Problem. Was hat Dich damals veranlasst, die KZ-Bilder für das Tape zu verwenden, und was bekam man darauf zu hören?

Es frustrierte mich zur damaligen Zeit sehr, dass die deutsche Vergangenheit doch offensichtlich immer noch von vielen Bundesbürgern bewusst verdrängt wurde. Diese Tatsache war ein wesentlicher Ausgangspunkt, der uns letztendlich dazu bewegte, dem Tape-release diesen eigentlich unmissverständlichen Titel zu geben.

Dazu inspiriert hatte mich der Schriftsteller Primo Levi mit seinem Buch Ist das ein Mensch – Erinnerungen an Auschwitz. Er wurde im Jahre 1943 als 24-jähriger in Italien von faschistischen Truppen festgenommen und nach Auschwitz deportiert, wo er 1945 von den Russen befreit wurde. Auf dem Tape, das wir im Eigenverlag produzierten, veröffentlichten wir Soundcollagen, die sich aus Tape-loops, Synthesizersounds wie etwa basslastigem Rauschen, sowie Metallsounds, die von field recordings stammten, zusammensetzten. Zum Teil wurden auch konventionelle Instrumente mit Verzerrern eingesetzt.

Wie ging’s weiter mit GERECHTIGKEITS LIGA?

Als ich 1983 volljährig wurde, begann ich mit einem neuen Kollegen am GERECHTIGKEITS LIGA-Projekt vollzeitmäßig weiterzuarbeiten. Der „Neue“ war der Bremer Thomas Furch, Herausgeber eines Punk-Zines. Wir waren aus praktischen Erwägungen zusammen gezogen und waren in einer Musikkooperative mit anderen Musikern und Bands zusammen, so dass alle das jeweils vorhandene Equipment nutzen konnten. Damals probten wir täglich in einem modernisierten Weltkriegsbunker, der im Fall eines Atomkrieges zwar keinerlei Schutz geboten hätte, aber trotzdem vom Bremer Senat zum Atomschutzbunker deklariert worden war. Diesen Bunker teilten wir uns mit ein paar anderen Bands. Wir fingen mittags an zu proben, um den anderen Gruppen zuvorzukommen, wobei Thomas sich im Lauf der Zeit zunehmend auf Klangcollagen konzentrierte, während ich mich um die Rhythmen und Strukturen kümmerte. An anderen Tagen verlagerte sich die Arbeitsaufteilung genau andersherum. Je nach Stimmung und Intuitionen. Ich hatte mich nun endgültig entschlossen, unsere Sound- sowie Film- und Videoarbeit auf eine professionelle Basis zu stellen. Wir gründeten unser eigenes unabhängiges Label, welches sich Zyklus Records nannte. Nach der ersten Tapeveröffentlichung von Scenes we’d like to see von 1982 waren 2 oder 3 Live-Mitschnitte über unser Label auf Tape veröffentlicht und per mailorder verkauft worden. Im Laufe der Zeit wurden immer mehr G.L Tapes und auch Videos über unser Label verkauft.

Uli Rehberg, der heute unter seinem Pseudonym Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg bekannt ist, organisierte mit WHITEHOUSE und uns ein Konzert in Hamburg. Ein wirklich gutes set-up, zu dem allerdings leider nur sehr wenige Gäste kamen... Trotzdem gingen wir mit der Einstellung einer Punkband an den Gig heran; es war sehr aggressiv, druckvoll, und um einiges härter als das, was es von uns auf Platten bzw. Tapes gab. Das lag u.a auch daran, das ich wie ein metaphorischer Spiegel agierte, indem ich die Stimmung des Publikums in mir verarbeitete und diese mit mehrfacher Kraft verbal zurückschleuderte. Uli war von unserem Live-Sound so beeindruckt, dass er in Erwägung zog, eine Platte mit G.L.-Studioaufnahmen auf seinem Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien-Label zu veröffentlichen, falls diese dem live-Standard entsprechen würden. Zwar hatten wir bisher in keinem Studio gearbeitet, fanden aber nach kurzer Zeit ein 4-Spur-Studio in der Nähe von Bremen und machten uns an die Arbeit. Da es unsere erste Studiosession war, hörte sich das Ergebnis auch dementsprechend mies an. Uli verlor beim Anhören auch seine anfängliche Begeisterung, und wir entschieden uns schließlich, ein billiges 8-Spur-Studio in London zu finden, um das gesamte Material aufzuarbeiten.

Warum ausgerechnet London?

Einige Monate zuvor waren wir das erste mal nach London gereist und hatten dort Graeme Revell von SPK, sowie Dominik Guerin und Colleen Ford (beide von TWIN VISION) kennen gelernt. Dominik war auch an anfänglichen SPK-Aufnahmen beteiligt, und er und Colleen arbeiteten damals an all den SPK-Videos und –Backroundfilmen. Außerdem machten wir die Bekanntschaft von Brian Williams (LUSTMORD), sowie etlichen anderen Musikern. Durch diesen ersten London-Besuch hatten wir auch einen Studiobesitzer und Musiker namens James Braddel kennen gelernt. Als wir wieder in London ankamen, machte uns James ein einigermaßen gutes Studioangebot, und wir fingen an das 4-Spur-Master in seinem 8-Spur-Studio zu überarbeiten und neu zu mastern. Nachdem wir nach Deutschland zurück kamen, konnten wir Uli trotz der Überarbeitung nicht mehr für eine Veröffentlichung auf seinem Label begeistern, also entschlossen wir uns, Geld zu leihen und die vier aufgenommenen Tracks auf einer 12"-Maxi auf unserem Zyklus-Label herauszubringen. „Das Büro“, damals ein guter deutscher Vertrieb in Düsseldorf, zeigte sofort Interesse am Vertrieb. Die GERECHTIGKEITS LIGA-12" wurde dann als einmalige 500er-Auflage veröffentlicht.

Wer ist GL heute, und wie hat sich Deine Herangehensweise ans Sound produzieren verändert?

GL besteht heute aus zwei Personen: Mir und Ragnar aus Berlin. Wegen der räumlichen Distanz zwischen Berlin und London ist das nicht die praktischste Lösung, aber dank der heutigen Studiotechnik sind solche Probleme bei Zusammenarbeiten eher zweitrangig. Was hat sich noch geändert? Anfang der 80er Jahre arbeitete ich für die Tape-Veröffentlichungen mit sehr minimalistischen Mitteln wie vorbereiteten Soundcollagen von Tapes, die durch Gitarrenverzerrer oder sonstige Pedaleffekte manipuliert wurden. Unser Ausgangsmaterial waren primitive Samples, die wir mit einem Diktiergerät z.B. von Sperrmüllabholungen oder auch aus dem Fernsehen oder Radio aufgenommen hatten. Das Diktiergerät war zwar nur mono, war aber geschwindigkeitsverstellbar, wodurch wir das Material pitchen konnten. Die Sounds, die wir verwenden wollten, überspielten wir dann auf Cassetten und Tonbänder, wobei wir Loops mühselig durch vielfaches Kopieren der selben Sounds manuell herstellen mußten. Analog total! Außerdem verwendeten wir analoge Drummachines, E-Gitarren, Bass und Violine. Aufgenommen wurde das dann auf einem Fostex-8-Spur-Gerät, das nur eine Bandbreite von einem Viertel-Zoll hatte. Dadurch war das Gerät zwar gut zu transportieren, aber die Aufnahmen verloren an Dynamik, verglichen mit einer professionelleren Maschine. Abgemischt und gemastert wurden die Sachen schon digital; das begann damals gerade, Einzug in die Studios zu halten, was den Klang erheblich verbesserte, aber auch sehr teuer war. Auf Hypnotischer Existenzialismus hört man bereits einen digitalen Drumcomputer, den Drumulator, ein riesengroßes Teil, und einen polyphonen Roland-Synthesizer. Im Lauf der 80er mischten wir zunehmend elektronische Rhythmen (Sequenzer) sowie natürliche und synthetische, also digitale Geräuschkörper, in unseren Sound, verwendeten aber auch nach wie vor unsere eigenen Samples. Heutzutage kann sich jeder Musiker mit verhältnismäßig kostengünstigen Mitteln ein eigenes Homestudio einrichten. Für uns bedeutet das wesentliche Zeiteinsparungen beim Bearbeiten vom Samples, die ich mit einer digitalen Workstation hier in London abmische, mit der ich auch Analogaufnahmen digital verarbeiten kann, und die bekommt Ragnar dann als Einzelspuren gebrannt. Er ist Toningenieur und arbeitet in seinem Berliner Studio an den Tracks, die er mir auf CD-R zuschickt oder in virtuellen Lagerräumen im Cyberspace parkt. Ich sichte das Material, wähle aus, und per Telefon und E-mail betreiben wir Ideenaustausch, um die Stücke voran zu bringen. Das ist natürlich umständlich, und mein Laptop ist völlig veraltet, sodass das alles moderner klingt, als es ist – gegenwärtig ist noch alles offen, weil wir ja auch noch andere Verpflichtungen haben und uns nur selten treffen können.

Wie sieht dein Verhältnis zu deinen Industrial-Mitpionieren aus?

Leider habe ich den Kontakt zu meinen alten Mitstreitern fast vollständig verloren. Die Tatsache, dass viele der damaligen Musiker und Künstler, mit denen ich in den 80ern Kontakt hatte, schon vor Jahren London bzw. Großbritannien verlassen haben, hilft natürlich wenig. Dazu kommt, dass ich es bevorzuge, eher zurückgezogen zu leben, und es auch aus diesem Grund schwieriger ist, neue Leute kennen zu lernen. Andererseits versuche ich zumindest, Kontakte zu alten und neuen Freunden und Bekannten per e-mail aufrecht zu halten. Wenn meine Finanzen nicht so negativ aussehen würden, wäre ich schon des öfteren mal wieder in die Staaten oder auch nach Australien geflogen... Andererseits habe ich zwischenzeitlich neue, zum Teil sehr interessante Bekanntschaften mit Musikern und anderen kreativen Leuten gemacht, und bin darüber sehr froh.

Wie denkst Du über den ungebrochenen Trend, monotone Einfallslosigkeit und strukturloses Rumgelärme als Industrial Music zu bezeichnen?

Die meisten von Dir angesprochenen aktuellen Sachen finde ich ziemlich uninteressant. Leider! Es stoßen auch immer mehr Kopisten dazu, die aussageloses Krachgewirr betreiben.

Welche Musik hörst Du daheim am liebsten?

Vieles; von Klassik – Wagner, Mahler Händl, Mozart, Philip Glass ect, ect. – bis hin zu experimentellem Techno. Insgesamt kann ich aber sagen, dass ich Musik aus vielen Orientierungsrichtungen höre, entsprechend meiner Laune.

Zusätzlich zur Musik hast auch mit Video experimentiert...?

Ja, ich hatte um 1982 auch angefangen, mit Super-8-Filmen, Video- und Dia-Projektionen zu experimentieren und diese mit Soundtracks in Form von krachigen Soundscapes zu unterlegen. In England besuchte ich – mit Unterbrechungen – zwischen 1987 und 89 die St. Martin School of Arts, um Experimentalfilm zu studieren, konnte aber die Finanzierung für meinen Abschlussfilm nicht zusammen kriegen. Ärgerlich, denn es war schon ein Privileg, dort überhaupt genommen zu werden. Eigentlich nutzte ich das College hauptsächlich, um an Equipment ranzukommen. (lacht) Amüsanterweise kam ich aber nicht durch St. Martin in Kontakt mit anderen Filmleuten, sondern ausschließlich durch Freunde und Bekannte. Derek Jarman zum Beispiel lernte ich über einen gemeinsamen Londoner Freund kennen, und konnte später auch einen kleinen Nebendarstellerjob in dessen War Requiem bekommen. Am College war ich aber ein extremer Einzelgänger, nicht zuletzt weil auch mein Englisch noch nicht so gut und ich sehr schüchtern war und meine Interessengebiete auf einer anderen Ebene lagen.

Du bist auch in Full Metal Jacket zu sehen... Erzähl mal davon.

Leute von TEST DEPT. vermittelten uns kurz nach dem Umzug nach London Statistenjobs bei der Produktion von Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. Kubrick’s Produktionsfirma hatte eine riesige Lagerhalle in den Docklands angemietet, die damals sowieso aussahen, als hätte dort ein Bürgerkrieg stattgefunden. Und dort trafen wir dann auch noch drei Leute von LAIBACH, die ebenfalls mitmachen wollten. Da wir damals in einem besetzten Haus ohne Strom und Telefon wohnten, musste einer von uns morgens um fünf zur nächsten Telefonzelle laufen, um bei der Firma anzurufen und nachzufragen, ob aus Wettergründen überhaupt gedreht werden würde. Wenn das Wetter okay war, nahmen wir die erste U-Bahn zur Baker Street, von wo aus man uns mit Bussen raus aufs Land transportierte, wo die Aufnahmen gemacht wurden. Man wurde voll rasiert, obwohl wir nur im Hintergrund durch die Gegend joggten, bzw. Militärdrill exerzieren mussten von. Und dabei war ich seinerzeit von Bremen nach West Berlin gegangen, um mich der Bundeswehr zu entziehen. Das ging über mehrere Wochen so; Kubrick drehte wahnsinnig viel Material, von dem am Ende nur Bruchteile im fertigen Film zu sehen waren. Als Regisseur hätte ich manche der Szenen mit Sicherheit verwendet. Es waren einige Musiker bei FMJ mit dabei: Big John, der mit Angus von TEST DEPT. zusammen wohnte, und ex-SPK-Mitglied Carrel Van Bergen, waren damals bei der BAND OF HOLY JOY – für die hab ich mal einen Gig in Brighton gemischt, und wir teilten uns eine zeitlang den selben Übungsraum. Auf dem FMJ-Set habe ich auch Jason Gilliam kennen gelernt, einen Australier, der gerade von Berlin nach London gezogen war. Mit Jason arbeitete ich dann bis etwa 1989 an GERECHTIGKEITS LIGA weiter, bis er begann in elektronischere, tanzbarere Richtungen aufbrach. Wenn man sich Full Metal Jacket ansieht, kann man im Ausbildungscamp im Hintergrund zahlreiche Experimentalmusiker schwitzen sehen...

Welche Musik hat Dich früher geprägt, bzw. inspiriert?

Es waren ethnische Klänge aber auch ziemlich gegensätzliche gregorianische Chöre, die mich inspirierten... Als mir damals die erste SPK-Single Mekano von Freunden vorgespielt wurde, war ich von deren Sound sehr begeistert. Kurz darauf hörte ich die SPK-Alben Information Overload Unit und Leichenschrei, die ich für totale Klassiker hielt. Außerdem fand ich SPK's Konzept wirklich genial. Dazu kamen die ersten THROBBING GRISTLE-Alben wie z.B. The Second AnnualReport, DOA und auch Discipline, welche mit SPK’s statements nicht wirklich vergleichbar sind. Ein anderer Klassiker waren natürlich FAKTRIX aus den USA, aber auch Gruppen wie die SWELL MAPS und EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN hinterließen positive Spuren bei mir. Klassische Musik hörte ich auch, allerdings beschränkte sich das größtenteils auf Penderecki, Strawinsky und Prokofiev und einige andere. Ansonsten fällt mir augenblicklich nicht sehr viel mehr ein. Es sind seitdem schon gute zwei Jahrzehnte vergangen... Je kreativer ich mit meiner eigenen Musik wurde, desto weniger hatte ich das Verlangen, Musik von anderen Gruppen, bzw. Musik generell zu hören. Heute ist es nicht anders als es früher war: Wenn ich an Aufnahmen arbeite, habe ich weniger Verlangen, Musik zu hören. Ansonsten sind es teilweise die alten Klassiker, natürlich aber auch neues interessantes Material von „jüngeren“ Gruppen, die ich höre. Namen zu nennen wäre zu aufwendig. Der Markt ist mittlerweile ja auch relativ gesättigt mit ziemlich guten aber leider auch miesen Bands/Musikern, sodass ich zu einem großen Teil den Überblick verloren habe! Andererseits habe ich angefangen, mich doch mehr für klassische Musik zu interessieren, wie ich bereits erwähnt habe.

In Deiner Musik erzeugst Du dunkle Atmosphären mit schamanischen Rhythmen, Samples von Naturvölkern, enochischen Gesängen, etc. – Was inspiriert Dich zu solchen Kompositionen und woher stammt Dein Interesse an Magie & Mystik?

Gegen 1983 begann ich mich für ethnische Songstrukturen aus aller Welt und „tribal“-Rhythmen zu interessieren. Die Herkunft, bzw. der Ursprung sogenannter „primitiver“ Musik ist ja die Stammeskultur. Zur selben Zeit las ich Mircea Eliade’s Buch über Schamanismus und archaische Ekstasetechnik, welches mich in meiner Absicht bestärkte, vermehrt mit diesen Elementen zu arbeiten und sie in meine Musik zu integrieren. Ich empfand damals ein starkes kreatives Bedürfnis, eine Komposition zu erschaffen, die einen Teil der menschlichen Evolution symbolisierte, und verwendete dazu neben den ethnischen Samples und archaischen Rhythmen auch atmosphärische Sounds und düstere Industrialklänge. Sozusagen z.b. die akustische Version dessen, was H.R. Giger auf optische Weise mit seinem Necronomicon angestellt hatte. Zum Thema Magie: Zu der Zeit hatte ich mir das original(?) Necronomicon geliehen, an dem ich aber bald das Interesse verlor. Eine Mitbewohnerin, die das Buch entdeckte – und überzeugte Christin war – bekam einen Riesenschreck und verlangte, ich solle es innerhalb von 24 Stunden aus dem Haus schaffen- was mich extrem amüsierte... Zumindest bin ich durch dieses Buch später auf H.R. Giger aufmerksam geworden, mit dessen Arbeit ich wesentlich mehr anfangen konnte. Durch die weitreichende, internationale Korrespondenz, in die ich zunehmend verwickelt wurde, nachdem in einigen Zines Artikel und Rezensionen über GERECHTIGKEITS LIGA erschienen waren, flatterte mir allerdings manch interessantes ins Haus, z.B. Post vom „World Satanic Network“...

Hast Du religiöse/spirituelle Ansichten, und wenn ja, welche?

Ich habe mich im Lauf der Jahre mit verschiedenen spirituellen Themen beschäftigt, diverse Bücher darüber gelesen, und hatte u.a. im damaligen West-Berlin okkulte Erlebnisse, denn gerade dort manifestierten sich einige der negativsten Energien, die zum Teil durch die geografische Isolation entstanden. Übrigens möchte ich hier bitte nicht missverstanden werden: Ich assoziiere mit dem Begriff okkult in keinster weise etwas negatives. Jedenfalls blieb es nicht aus, dass sich einige okkulte Strömungen in meiner Musik manifestierten. Ein Beispiel dafür war ein Compilation-Projekt,das von CLUB MORAL zusammengestellt wurde. Der Titel dieses Tapes, welche 1986 als limitierte Auflage von 500 nummerierten Exemplaren veröffentlicht wurde, war 19Keys/19Bands. Thematisch behandelte die Compilation die 19 enochischen Schlüssel oder Anrufungen, und jeder teilnehmende Musiker bzw. Projekt erhielt einen der Schlüssel, welcher dann als chant oder gesprochen in das jeweilige Musikstück integriert werden sollte. Das war die Vorraussetzung zur Teilnahme an der Compilation! Die enochische Sprache wurde das erste mal von John Dee und Edward Kelley im 16. Jahrhundert niedergeschrieben, hat ein eigenes Alphabet und eine eigene Syntax. Es hat den Ruf, Wahnsinn und möglicherweise Tod für diejenigen zu bringen, die sich nicht für das Ritual vorbereitet haben – Die GERECHTIGKEITS LIGA erhielt den 14. Schlüssel, den ich in enochisch rezitierte. Der Einfachheit halber hier die englische Übersetzung:

O you sons of fury, the daughters of the just, which sit upon 24 seats, vexing all creatures of the earth with age, which have under you 1663: behold the voice of god, the promise of him which is called amongst you Fury or Extreme Justice. Move therefore and show yourselves: open the mysteries of your own creation: be friendly unto me: for Iam the servant of the same your god, the true worshipper of the highest.

Rückblickend ein wirklich sehr interessantes Projekt!

Zufall ist ein Konzept, dem ich nicht vertraue. Man sollte die Welt als ein Netz aus vielfach verknüpften Geschehnissen (und Geschichten) betrachten.

Es war lange ruhig um GERECHTIGKEITS LIGA. wie kam es, dass nach jahrelanger Pause wieder Stücke erscheinen, bzw. das 80er-Jahre-Material wiederveröffentlicht

wurde?

Im Jahr 2001 wurde ich von Stefan Schwanke, der die Ironflame- Infowebseite betreibt, gefragt, ob ich Interesse hätte, einen exklusiven GERECHTIGKEITS LIGA-Track für seine geplante Boxset-compilation Statement 1961 aufzunehmen. Da ich schon seit längerer Zeit mit dem Gedanken gespielt hatte, neues G.L.-Material zu veröffentlichen, kam mir dieses Angebot sehr gelegen. Außerdem gefiel mir die Thematik des Projekts, da es um den Aufbau und den Fall der Berliner Mauer ging, und ich in meinen jüngeren Jahren ja

für kurze Zeit in West-Berlin gelebt hatte. Anlässlich der Veröffentlichung der Compilation im Juni 2004 gab es einen Konzertabend in Berlin, auf dem ich neben anderen Künstlern wie SCHLOSS TEGAL, CLUB MORAL, C O CASPAR, ect..., auch auftrat. Statement 1961 ist eines der besten Kompilationsprojekte, an denen ich in meiner musikalischen Karriere unter dem Namen GERECHTIGKEITS LIGA einen Track veröffentlicht habe. Diese Veröffentlichung ebnete mir wieder den Weg in die Industrial-„Scene“, welche sich jedoch leider in mancher Hinsicht nicht unbedingt zum Besseren entwickelt hat...Andererseits sind durch die Entstehung des Industrial viele andere Musiksubkategorien entstanden, von denen manche wirklich in vieler Hinsicht faszinierend sind. Aber noch mal kurz zum eigentlichen Thema:

Am Konzertabend in Berlin wurde ich von einigen alten Bekannten wie Graf Haufen, aber auch von anderen netten Besuchern angesprochen. Einer von diesen war Lerry Dimitrow, der kurze Zeit später sein eigenes Label Isegrimm Records gründete und darauf meine erste 12" The Games Must Go On, sowie das Album Hypnotischer Existenzialismus, welches 1985 auf SPK's label Side Effects, (in den USA auf Themidor) erschienen war, plus sieben Live-Tracks aus NYC, in Form einer Digibox-CD veröffentlichte.

Welche außermusikalischen Themen und Einflüsse bestimmen die Arbeitsweise und Inhalte von GERECHTIGKEITS LIGA?

In den Anfangsjahren von G.L. bewirkte die Tatsache, dass wir uns im kalten Krieg befanden und Westdeutschland geographisch gesehen an der „Front“ lag, eine unbeschreiblich beklemmende, nervöse und fast schöne apokalyptische Stimmung bzw. Atmosphäre, die wohl auch stark das rege Treiben der damaligen atonalen Künstler beeinflusste und auf subtile Weise bestimmte. Auch dass wir in dem erwähnten Bunker probten, erscheint mir rückblickend als passende Ironie; dieses Ambiente verstärkte die allgegenwärtige Paranoia und Untergangsangst noch – oder vielleicht lag’s auch am Speed... Jedenfalls war ich manchmal nach den Fernsehnachrichten überzeugt, dass die Welt am nächsten Tag untergehen würde, und war deswegen hin und wieder völlig fertig; am Rande des Nervenzusammenbruchs.

Ebenso hatte ich mich schon in jungen Jahren über die KZs des „Dritten Reichs“ informiert – was sich ja auch deutlich an unserem ersten Tape zeigte. Meine Lieblingsregisseure waren damals (und sind zum Teil auch heute noch) David Lynch – Eraserhead hinterließ bei mir extrem starke Eindrücke; Krysztof Kieslowski, Lars von Trier, David Cronenberg, die Coen Brothers, Tarkovsky und viele andere, die damals schon zu unbekannt waren, als dass ich mich heute noch erinnern würde. Im visuellen Bereich natürlich der bereits erwähnte H.R. Giger – und natürlich Dalí. Artauds Theater der Grausamkeiten hat mich immer fasziniert, aber ich bin bisher noch nicht tiefer darin eingestiegen.

Kommen wir zu Büchern...

Meine literarischen Einflüsse sind sehr breitgefächert und vielschichtig. In jungen Jahren war ich großer Burroughs-Fan (und hatte ja auch das große Glück, ihn kennen zu lernen); darüber hinaus las ich u.a. Georges Bataille, Marquis deSade, Aleister Crowley, Joseph Conrad, E.M. Cioran, und J.G. Ballard natürlich, nicht zu vergessen. Es gibt da noch soviel mehr Autoren... In den 90ern las ich u.a. Bukowski, aber das wohl eher, da ich ein Alkohol Problem hatte...

Wie kam es zu der Begegnung mit William S. Burroughs?

Während meiner ersten USA-Tour 1984 hatte ich die große Ehre, während eines zweitägigen Aufenthalts in Lawrence/Kansas Bill Burroughs zu treffen. Ich war mit einem anderen Bill verabredet, der die (nicht mehr existente) Video-Firma Fresh Sounds betrieb. Ich war von ihm eingeladen worden, die zwei Tage bei ihm zu verbringen und mit ihm einen Exklusivvertrag für Nordamerika für das G.L.-Videomaterial zu machen – und um ein bisschen Erholung vom Tourneeplan zu haben. Es stellte sich heraus, dass er ein guter Freund von Burroughs war, und am nächsten Tag wurden wir zum Schiessen auf Burroughs’ Grundstück draußen auf dem Land eingeladen! Also fuhren wir am nächsten Morgen zu dem Haus, in dem Burroughs zu der Zeit lebte. Ich sprang aus dem Auto und klopfte, und einige Zeit später wurde sie von einem ziemlich dünnen älteren Mann geöffnet. Ich erkannte fast sofort die Gesichtszüge und konnte gar nicht glauben, dass ich ihm gegenüberstand, seine Hand schüttelte und wir uns vorgestellt wurden – hier muss ich erwähnen, dass mein Englisch zu der Zeit fürchterlich war, und die Konversation von hier an sehr einfach gehalten war. Bill B. stellte mir seinen Boyfriend vor, sammelte seine Waffenkoffer zusammen, und Minuten später fand ich mich auf dem Rücksitz eines Wagens wieder, auf dem Weg zum Grundstück, mit einem kurzen Halt zum einkaufen von Munition für Bill’s Pistolen; er benutzte nur Handfeuerwaffen. Als wir schließlich bei der Hütte, die sich mitten im Nirgendwo befand, ankamen, verbrachten wir einen großartigen Nachmittag mit dem Durchprobieren von Bill’s besten Schießeisen. Runde um Runde ohne Ende haben wir geschossen; Zielübungen unter blauem Himmel, und natürlich die Freude der Tatsache, in Gesellschaft eines der einflussreichsten Schriftsteller des vergangenen Jahrhunderts zu sein – das war einmalig!

Etwa ein Jahr später traf ich Graeme Revell von SPK und erzählte ihm von meinem Treffen mit Burroughs. Graeme erzählte mir, dass sie ein paar Jahre zuvor auf einer ihrer US-Tourneen exakt dasselbe Treffen erlebt hatten: Sie hatten auch in Lawrence halt gemacht, einen Video-Deal mit Fresh Sounds unterschrieben, Burroughs getroffen und sind mit ihm Schießen gegangen...

War Burroughs noch auf Drogen?

Nein, keine harten Sachen mehr. Ich fragte ihn, ob er noch Drogen nehmen würde, aber außer ab und zu Gras hat er wohl nichts zu sich genommen.

Welche Rolle spielten Drogen bei G.L.?

Um 1983/84 experimentierten wir auch mit psychedelischen Drogen: hauptsächlich mit Pilzen, die man im Herbst auf den norddeutschen Wiesen sammeln konnte, aber auch mit Acid. Die Einblicke, die diese Substanzen ermöglichen können (und ich betone: können!), waren schon sehr aufschlussreich, interessant und in kreativer Hinsicht auch nützlich. Die meisten und besten Ideen bekomme ich durch anregende Gespräche mit Freunden und Kollegen. Der Großteil meiner Inspiration kommt allerdings aus meiner „inneren Dunkelheit“. Ich lebe sehr zurückgezogen, was sich vielleicht seltsam anhört, wenn man bedenkt, dass London eine Metropole ist. Aber gerade in Gegenden, in denen menschliches Massentreiben herrscht, kann man sich am einsamsten fühlen – und wohl auch eher Misanthrop werden.

Würdest Du Dich als Misanthrop bezeichnen?

Teilweise schon, ja. Mit Sicherheit. Mir kommen zwar auch Ideen, wenn ich raus muss; unterwegs bin. Sie kommen ganz plötzlich aus dem Nichts, und ich versuche mir anzugewöhnen, sie mit einem Diktiergerät fest zu halten. Oft beziehe ich auch Ideen aus meinen Psycho-Träumen, kurz nach dem Aufwachen. Oder auch zu verschrobenen Tageszeiten, frühmorgens oder spät nachts.

Was siehst Du für Dich, bzw. Gerechtigkeitsliga in der Zukunft?

Zwischenzeitlich sind neue Tracks auf Compilation CDs erschienen; eine DVD mit den Videos aus den 80igern, auf der auch ein paar der lange verschollenen Bunkertapes veröffentlicht werden sollen, ist in Planung und soll in naher Zukunft bei Vinyl On Demand erscheinen. Außerdem ist ein neues Album in Arbeit...und möglicherweise eine portable Soundskulptur. Über das neue Album will ich noch nicht allzu viel verraten. Wir haben einige Sounds und neue Strukturen entwickelt, aber ich bin mir noch nicht sicher, ob es ein „Konzeptalbum“ werden wird – wie es sich bei Hypnotischer Existenzialismus schließlich ergab, weil wir einzeln ins Studio gegangen sind und das Material individuell entwickelten, bevor wir daraus das Album zusammenstellten. Und wie erwähnt, ist es ein sehr langwieriger Prozess, die Stücke ping-pong-mäßig zwischen London und Berlin hin- und her zu schicken. Es kann also gut sein, dass es bis 2008 dauern könnte, bis ein neues Vollzeitalbum erscheinen kann. Möglicherweise wird vorher eine Single veröffentlicht werden.

(zuerst erschienen in/first published by BLACK magazin No. 45, p. 62 ff, 2006)

I.C.R.N. Paper 4: Alexei Monroe: Gerechtigkeits Liga: Many Unhappy Returns?

Gerechtigkeits Liga: Many Unhappy Returns?

The name Gerechtigkeits Liga is one which re-surfaced only recently, but which has recurred at key points since the early eighties. The group appeared alongside SPK, Laibach and others on the seminal compilation Vhutemas Archetypi on Graeme Revell’s Side Effects label. It also performed at the Berlin Atonal festival in 1985, an event which still casts a long shadow, and which, due to its reputation, is possibly even more significant for those who weren’t there than for those who were. Given GL’s association with these key moments in the development of second-wave industrial, the group has had a surprisingly low profile. Partly this was due to the vagaries and adversities of the music business: tracking the trajectory of such a group you discover that industrial groups also suffered from bad deals and neglect, even on independent and supposedly progressive labels. Yet although force of circumstance conspired to keep GL silent for long periods, particularly in the 1990s, this silence and the rarity of its works may have actually have helped maintain an aura of fascination and elusiveness that motivated collectors and others to track down rarities and which has now inspired both a re-issue programme and a return to recording.

In 2005, the long unavailable first album Hypnotischer Existenzialismus and single were re-released on CD, together with a live recording from New York in 1985. In recent years the group has released new material on the German compilations Statement 1961 (Ironflame) and Paranoise One (Paranoise) and the group is working on new collaborative projects. Further re-releases are planned, as well as new material, and this is a good opportunity to analyse the work of this obscure but still fascinating group. This article is based on conversations with founder member Till Bruggemann, initiated in March 2005.

GL emerged in Bremen in 1981 and its members were from the generation slightly too young to have been involved in, but creatively captured by, the first wave of Punk and industrial. Beginning as a punk/noise group it soon switched to using industrial-electronic textures and equipment. The group assumed the sinisterly fascinating name Gerechtigkeits Liga – certainly one factor in the aura surrounding the group. This was a ready-made name, taken from the American comic Justice League and translated into German. Like many key industrial groups, the choice of name instantly generated a sinister and ambivalent aura.

GL grew up in what was Bruggemann says was already a post-industrial society, but industry was an important presence. Like so many (post)-industrial producers, Bruggemann was interested in industrial buildings, but could never imagine doing factory work. He was fascinated by the impact such monotonous work must have had on people’s lives and the fact of being born into it and having no other options. GL were fascinated by post-industrial landscapes, and would always visit the ‘outer areas’ of towns they visited. Bruggemann was particularly inspired by London’s docklands in the 1980s. He recalls it being possible to imagine the most fantastic post-apocalyptic scenarios. It was possible to drive for 20-30 minutes across Docklands: an area that looked “as if a revolution or hell knows what” had taken place. In 1986, Bruggemann together with members of Laibach and Test Dept. were extras in Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, partly filmed in the ready-made war-zones of Docklands.

GL also assimilated some of what could be called the “canonical” cultural sources particularly associated with first and second wave industrial. These included Dada and the work of John Heartfield (later also used by Laibach and Front Line Assembly amongst others). The montage Der Henker und Die Gerechtigkeit (The Hangman and Justice) was a source of particular inspiration and GL used it on the cover of a promo VHS in the early 1980s. Concerns over copyright issues and meant GL never used it more publicly but it remains clandestinely associated with their work. The combination of GL’s name and the disturbing Heartfield image of mutilated justice produce rich associations and contradict any right-wing interpretations of GL’s ironic and ambivalent name. In a way similar to other industrial groups, GL were using this type of image to hint at the group’s agenda without being explicit, even at the risk of misinterpretation. Since Heartfield’s imagery in itself now seems liable to misinterpretation by those unaware of its context, the chances of (ironic) misinterpretation remain high, even before the imagery is appropriated for counter-cultural use.

From an early stage, GL’s actions and images have been misperceived as rightist, but its art doesn’t seem marked by an unmediated will to power so much as an urgent, existential will to communicate some of the most disturbing aspects of present day life.

Heartfield and Dada style collage and montage techniques were an inherent part of the GL aesthetic, particularly in the designs of some of their now sought-after cassette releases but also in their early home-recorded sound collage work, which was closer to a sonic application of artistic techniques than to the sample culture that shaped industrial later in the decade. At this stage GL worked mainly with tapes and transferred sounds between numerous recorders, a method Bruggemann describes as having been quite an effective. They also had a primitive emulator and other devices built for them by a friend.

Unlike some of the other industrial groups, the young GL were then unaware of electro-acoustic or musique concrete, despite the similarity in techniques, if not resources. One definite influence was Einstürzende Neubauten’s junk aesthetic, and GL went on sound-hunting sorties in Bremen and elsewhere; recording pure noises and raw material from whatever industrial debris they encountered. However, GL did not share Neubauten’s fascination with the objects themselves, but were interested in their sonic potentials. They would treat, accelerate and slow down the gathered sounds into more abstract yet still oppressive and confrontational sounds. The new group soon relegated the guitar to its proper role as an extra source of distortion with layers of tape loops. GL acquired a drum machine and the archetypal industrial synthesisers – first a korg ms10 then an ms20.

Equipped with this new sound arsenal GL moved into one of several former air raid bunkers that the city of Bremen made available to musicians and groups as rehearsal spaces. GL were one of the first groups to receive a double room in one of these bunkers. They removed the wall down between the rooms and created what Bruggemann describes as an ideal location for GL’s kind of music with a great acoustic. GL already had an interest in Germany’s suppressed past and so to operate in such a historically and literally resonant space certainly had an effect on its work. Here their first cassette releases were recorded straight to tape with amplification from standard bass and guitar amps. GL cassette releases had distinctive self-produced booklets and graphics, remembered by those on the scene at the time and still collected. They were issued between 1981-1986 under two different label names. The first label was GL’s Lausch label; almost all of these releases were limited editions of 20-50 copies which sold fairly fast. The second was GL’s Zyklus Records, which distributed tapes and also videos in larger numbers.
Although the primitive quality of cassette releases by GL and other groups was primarily the result of limited resources, this very roughness was almost integral to the industrial tape aesthetic. However, despite the similarities and some influences, the group were still working in isolation and only joined the emerging industrial scene when GL became a more professional project around mid 1983.

Around this time original member Frank Stroepken left and was replaced by Thomas Furch. The group continued working in the bunker but did see the need to go into a studio and make their first professional recordings. Through a personal contact they gained access to a four track studio at a cheap rate. However, GL had no studio experience and the engineer (who later worked with Neubauten in Berlin) was unfamiliar with the industrial aesthetic, being used to working with Punk and indie groups. Despite this he liked the GL sound and became their live mixer for a while. As in so many other cases, technical limitations and accidents have helped cement industrial’s aesthetic of D.I.Y. monumentalism. Flaws obvious to their creators were taken by new industrial listeners to be stylistic templates and inspirations, and the genre as a whole has been shaped by successor groups taking the inherent “wrongness” of early industrial recordings as a staring point to be developed and perfected rather than overcome.

Around the same time, GL began to tour Northern Germany and came into contact with one of the industrial scene’s key facilitators, Uli Rehberg of Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien. Rehberg organised a slot for GL to play with Whitehouse at the YMCA in Hamburg, Germany. Rehberg liked GL’s live sound and had previously expressed interest in releasing some material but disliked the first studio recordings.

GL then took the material for mastering in London and had it transferred to eight track. The first single The Games must Go On then finally appeared in an edition of five hundred copies on their own label Zyklus records, distributed by Das Büro, mainly in Germany & Benelux. Looking back, Bruggemann feels that the recordings from early period were too minimal and although for many listeners this gives the material a certain charm and fascination, he still would have liked to have used just a little more percussion or other elements. This seems to be a motivation for GL’s current work – to produce a sound that is not technically hampered and that fully matches the scale of the vision.

One particular source of inspiration for GL in 1982-3 was SPK, particularly the Information Overload album and the Mekkano single. On their first visit to London, the group visited SPK video maker Dominic Guerin in his squat and then met Graeme Revell and Brian Williams (Lustmord). GL were now developing a stronger network of international contacts and began to visit London more regularly. The group managed themselves, retaining complete control over their work. They organised a successful U.S. mini-tour in 1984, and returned again in 1985. On these visits they played memorable shows in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Boulder- Colorado and New York as well as recording a session in the TV Studios of Columbia University.

The group were now recording on an eight track home studio and brought their latest recordings to London. Revell heard these and was impressed by the development of GL’s sound since the original material he had heard. By now, Revell had enough income from SPK’s more commercial work to finance releases on Side Effects and to release work by GL and similar groups who had problems finding labels to release their work. The early Side Effects releases left an impressive legacy but the first incarnation of the label folded at the end of the eighties. All this material except Hypnotischer Existenzialismus was later re-released on CD. The long unavailability of the album gave it a retrospective “classic” status.

In common with many industrial and other musicians, Bruggemann has an instinctive distrust of musical categories. He found Graeme Revell’s term “post-industrial” interesting, but this never really caught on and isn’t widely known or used among younger listeners. Of course, GL’s work is close to industrial in many ways, and it operates primarily within the industrial scene, but Bruggemann dislikes categorisation and is uncomfortable with it. As he says, once named, something can be put into a drawer and forgotten. In fact, some reviews of GL’s first release described it “dancefloor.”

GL’s music in this period was a reflection not just of the still-developing (post)-industrial Zeitgeist, but of the political, cultural and personal terrors and excesses of the time. Bruggemann says that while he was not consciously aware of putting his anxieties into the music at the time, their influence is undeniable when listening now. The political atmosphere of the new cold war period in Germany certainly seeped into the music, being present as a sort of “background radiation”, even if it was never present as an explicit theme. During the particularly tense period between 1983 and 1985, Bruggemann had panic attacks induced by what seemed like the threat of imminent war (it’s easy to forget now how close war seemed in that period). He also found the paranoiac front-line atmosphere in Berlin particularly oppressive, even while enjoying the city’s alternative cultural life. Living on the front-line near the wall, Bruggemann was aware of the phone in his Berlin residence having its phone line monitored by both the Stasi and the West German Verfassungsschutz.

Like many others, Bruggemann came to Berlin in order to avoid national service but would spend two works there and two weeks in Bremen to recover from the pressures (and pleasures) of Berlin. This was interspersed with increasingly frequent samplings of the tense but dynamic London scene of the period. Eventually, he was permanently seduced by what seemed like the fascinating fertile chaos and greater breathing space offered by eighties London in comparison to the cleanliness and order of Germany and relocated permanently. He found that the German atmosphere induced both paranoiac and justified feelings of being spied on. Ironically, Bremen later experienced some of the traumas of de-industrialisation that were so fascinatingly apparent in London.

A key conceptual reference for GL in this period was the work of the controversial Romanian writer E.M. Cioran. Bruggemann’s partner was a great admirer of Cioran’s work and Bruggemann read it during the recording of the album and it was decided to integrate some Cioran material onto the album cover, alongside what they called the Manifesto of the Anti, which was a first attempted distillation of the vortex of influences operating on the group. GL were fascinated by Cioran’s work and Weltanschauung, and tried to express its spirit in their music.

Of course, like so many other industrial sources and references, Cioran was an ambiguous, even contaminated one, due to his early connections with the Romanian Iron Guard movement, from which he later distanced himself. Industrial in this period could be seen as a sort of mass-alchemical appropriation of a whole range of forbidden, compromised and unhealthy sources. Such material held a particular fascination for sensitive artistic types out of step with the mainstream zeitgeist of the pack, and desperate to communicate their horror at the state of things. In the experiences and concerns of these groups it’s possible to apprehend heroic attempts to process the vast range of half-understood contradictory cultural debris they were surrounded by or sought out.

This refusal or even existential inability to remain apart from horrific and forbidden material has been a key marker of industrial groups. In some cases, manifestoes arguing for a confrontation with painful reality have simply been a cover for un-thinking shock tactics and outrage for the sake of outrage. While GL always had some conceptual rationale for their shock tactics, their provocations certainly became more subtle and focussed as they gained in experience.

Certainly, use of some sort of ambivalent material became almost de rigeur for industrial groups. In the polarised, hyper-ideological context of the eighties, there was infinite scope for the misunderstanding of such work, and GL encountered their share of denunciation and obstruction, even though they were not always consciously seeking to provoke. Much of GL’s later provocation took more subliminal forms, appearing in their background films and slide projections, as well as in the music itself.

Despite its contacts with squat and alternative culture, to be even loosely identified with the industrial movement often meant being under suspicion – from certain types of leftist activists as much as from the authorities. Of course, for many groups and their listeners, their “outlaw” status was and remains a badge of honour. Certainly, to provoke some of those provoked by the very idea of industrial is almost always worthwhile.[1]

GL first attracted hostile attention in 1982 when they released a limited cassette based on the history of the Nazi era. They produced an A4 poster showing a wagon load of holocaust victims with what they believed was the self-evidently cynical title Scenes We’d like to See. As Bruggemann recalls, “all hell broke loose in Bremen” and an unsuccessful hunt for those responsible was launched. Perhaps naively, GL believed that the meaning would become clear when people took time to listen to the music. At the time, GL believed that through listening to the music, people would understand the group’s original intentions, or at least that they would taken a bit more time before jumping to wrong conclusions.


However, snap judgements were and remain a sign of ideological rectitude on both left and right, and the idea of exploring anything in greater depth is inherently suspect to many ideologues. In this the current context of institutionally-reduced attention spans, patient analysis is even more unlikely. Like many of their generation, GL were very dissatisfied with the way the past was handled in Germany, the lack of open discussion, and the refusal of the older generation to discuss it. GL were struggling in their own, perhaps unsubtle, way to express this, but were never interested in simple shock for shock’s sake. When GL later became aware of Laibach they found much to admire, and would certainly have welcomed the almost unique chance Laibach and the NSK had to reach intellectuals, journalists, and the country generally.

Certainly, many people at the time misunderstood or chose to misunderstand industrial, and lost no chances to demonstrate their rectitude by attempting to suppress it. Later in the 80s GL were due to play at a Berlin festival organised by students at the technical university. The event was paid for and British groups had flown in when a rumour began among the university feminists that GL would show Frauen- feindliche Filme (films hostile to women). Their agitation led to the entire event, (not just GL’s performance) being cancelled. Bruggemann still has no idea where the rumour originated from: beyond a very small VHS release in America, no GL video material was available. One possible explanation is GL’s use of “video nasty” material in the film collages they used on stage, yet even this seems like a slightly insufficient explanation for the suspicious cancellation of the event. In these and other situations GL were certainly accused of rightist tendencies but while such accusations may have been more credible when attached to certain groups, in GL’s case it certainly was not. While they refused to restrict themselves to the “approved” range of material and subjects, they actually represented just the type of sensitive, alienated, individualistic, unsettling voices of the type that Fascists are the first to try and suppress.

GL’s use of film on stage was another point of similarity with their industrial colleagues, although GL’s case was slightly different. They never had a lead singer or front-man as such, and had always used background films to make a stronger statement, combining their own films with found footage. Bruggemann states that the films were used to “enforce” the ideas the music was trying to express. At I.C.R.N.’s Return of the Repressive event in Birmingham last September, GL film material was screened publicly for the first time in two decades. It was very evident that even among a well-disposed industrial audience, GL’s films still retain a power to shock as well as fascinate. In particular, the clip Jesus Crucified left a very strong impression on the audience. The final part of the GL re-issue programme will be the re-mastering and issue of some of this material on DVD, and it will certainly add to our understanding of this crucial period.

GL was more or less dormant in the 1990s, experimenting, observing, and adjusting to the post cold-war, fully post-industrial cyber-cultural context. GL has joined numerous other industrial groups in their colonisation of myspace and become part of the new and revived trans-national connections currently possible. Of course, given that my space is owned by Rupert Murdoch, the vivid and (largely) un-censored presence of an industrial sub-culture there is an intriguing paradox. However, as in other ways, GL and similar groups refuse to maintain imaginary ideological purity if it gets in the way of pragmatic objectives. Yet this does not mean not being vigilant: GL believes there is no room for complacency in the constantly escalating war of information being fought out in these online spaces.

Yet while Bruggemann is involved in the contemporary scene, he is also aware of the negative side of the proliferation of industrial (sub)genres and the impossibility of monitoring them all. He explains that GL originally wanted to inspire people to create their own sounds (a leftover Punk attitude), and not to be just consumers, to start to criticise governments and systems more. This has happened to a certain degree but Bruggemann is unsure at what price this has taken place.

The creative process now has a very different ausgangs-position (starting point) to the much more “black and white” 1980s, yet GL still responds to current events. Living very close to the scene of one of the July 2005 London bombs, Bruggemann responded with the anguished and aggressive track Slash 7705 (one of few if any commentaries on this already near forgotten event). With luck, GL will continue to issue more urgent warnings and dispatches in what seems likely to be a seductive(ly) neo-apocalyptic period.


[1] One of the central tenets of contemporary sonic correctness is that industrial was at best a regrettable necessity that shouldn’t be mentioned too much in polite society, and when it is, only certain groups are allowed into the charmed circle. Even some of industrial’s original advocates now seem embarrassed or afraid to attach themselves too closely to it, and now sometimes even teeter on the edge of self-denunciation. This is partly due to the degeneration of some types of industrial into one-dimensional provocation and unreflective rightist agitation, but also motivated by a fear of being associated with “unhealthy elements”. Distrust or wholesale dismissal of industrial is almost demanded by some of the same people who argue that all styles are equally valid. Yet, try to turn the tables and express a similar disdain for jazz or other favoured genres and the mask of liberal tolerance soon slips and it’s possible to watch a supposedly “liberal” person degenerate into hysterics or inarticulate abuse. In this sense, (selective) openness to industrial remains a harsh but necessary test of tolerance.


http://myspace.com/gerechtigkeitsliga

I.C.R.N. Paper 3: Heinrich Deisl "Off-Key Continuities: Audiovisual Interventions by the Video Groups Metamkine and Granular Synthesis"

I.C.R.N.'s Vienna correspondent Heinrich Deisl presents a text dealing with the status of sound/video within (post)-industrialised media culture:


Off-Key Continuities: Audiovisual Interventions by the Video Groups Metamkine and Granular Synthesis


"If you close your eyes, you lose your sense of abstraction.
Michel Serres"


Even after years of terminological presence it remains difficult to pin down what a VJ does, what makes one a VJ, what legitimises a VJ, what a VJ is all about. Depending on the context, the terms «VJ» and «VJing» are used in such heterogeneous frameworks and are associated with such an array of different fields of activities that it would take several chapters merely to explain the term «VJing» and its nature. This text, however, attempts to create an audiovisual dispositive which departs from common designations for VJs, and instead takes a detour around so-called video groups to display the many possibilities for novel audiovisual live art. This will be exemplified by Metamkine from France and Granular Synthesis from Austria.

Strictly speaking, VJing has been an empty phrase from the very beginning, an auxiliary neology.i In clubs and discotheques, crowds had realised that «shaking it up» could be experienced more intensely with additional visual feeds. Moreover, since the mid-1990s, software applications for sound and video have gradually come to resemble each other, and can now be controlled by using the same user interface. Because club culture is DJ-driven, it was obvious to call video artists «VJs». Yet how can this optical stimulus at a techno party develop into a style of its own when the moving images mostly act as mere supplements? Maybe the «true» VJs are the ones presenting video clips on music television. This is precisely what the first British radio DJs did in the 1930s. DJs began emerging as professionals, aided by the gradual social legitimisation of popular culture, and in the process, not only did the turntable become an instrument, but also the DJ was (deservedly) raised to the status of musician. Turntable groups, such as Invisibl Skratch Pickles or particularly The X-Ecutioners, elevated the collagist usage of prefabricated music to an art form. Clearly, such experiments go back as far as the time of John Cage in the early 1960s (and even earlier). Wide-scale integration of the visual medium, however, only came about in techno clubs, and was pressed forward by groups such as Hexstatic and Coldcut in the mid-1990s, using their self-developed software «VJamm». This application was so pioneering that it was accorded a permanent place at the «Interactive Games Room» of the American Museum of Moving Images.

The increasingly similar interfaces presented to us for the control of computers make the previously very different tasks of organising and transforming text, static and moving visual images and sound into experientially ever more similar processes. The new electronic technologies therefore form a seductive potential meeting point for many previously separate art practices. Such interfaces make use of identical concepts – frame, freeze, copy, paste, loop – as controlling strategies.ii


The Audiovisual Dispositive

This text, however, is not about tracking down synaesthetic strategies in club culture. Rather, it tries to provide, with the aid of several audiovisual manifestations, a historical and an aesthetic frame of reference for live-generated sound and image art which reaches beyond the ongoing discussions caught up in questions of technical details. This is why, owing to the prevailing difficulty in assigning the term «VJ» to a specific field of work, the term is being extended to the realm of live video art. It can be explained by one of the prerequisites of the considerations made herein, namely that VJing is considered a two-channel transfer of information, in which the channels not only complement each other synaesthetically, but also exist side by side in parity, conditioning each other. In his book «The Time-Image», Gilles Deleuze supported the hypothesis that the audiovisual image was a result of the 'collapse of the sensory-motor schema' without referring to a 'whole'.iii Yet he spoke of film. As narrative, dramaturgical and space-time constellations of film organise themselves in a way that differs from live interacting media or forms of presentation, the following aims at patching up the collapse of the sensory-motor schema by way of video groups. Even though Deleuze (p. 268) admonishes that the audiovisual image «is not a whole, it is a 'fusion of the tear'», one must keep in mind the different production and processing logics of the output of video groups. On the one hand, this acts as a mirror for the transformation of film-historical connotations, while on the other – given the rather un-dogmatic approach towards this canon – a pop-cultural evaluation takes place. Inherently avant-garde, Granular Synthesis and Metamkine play with avant-garde material, thereby identifying the respective ruptures – clearly in the sense of Jacques Attali's concept of «Noise» as a musical anticipation of socio-political structures[i] – in the popular realm. The translation of the audiovisual material into rhythm, as well as the haptic physicality of their live shows, evoke a sensory-motor confrontation which is cinematographically grounded only to a certain extent, but above all, performatively rooted. Although both formations refer to historical connections pointing towards experimental cinema and 'expanded cinema', we can observe the overcoming of cinematographic code systems that contribute to a relocation of audiovisual perception by the fixed implementation of musical practices. This type of cinema may take place in film theatres, but it is usually shown in galleries, clubs or concert halls. While the music is made to sound 'cinephile' in order to evoke a 'cinema pour l'oreille', on the image track a 'kinaesthetic' approximation of the performance venue takes place, which at the same time is being stridden across acoustically. Sound and image, however, plainly serve as surface plateaus in rhizomatic destabilisation practices, leading to a setting which makes rehearsed parameters of space and time perception crash. Stroboscopic flashes of light from the rear regions of memory flare up for split seconds as figures that change from organic to abstract, connect with others, rotate and dislocate themselves, fuse with the layers of sound, and form a cerebral data stream, the impulses of which, as if leaking from electric cables, directly penetrate those regions which turn abstract images of reality into concrete dream images; the data processing brain is put into REM phase, the body converts to a big vibrating resonance box.iv

The mode that was thus to become exemplary during the seventies was performance – and not only that narrowly defined activity called performance art, but all those works that were constituted in a situation and for a duration by the artist or the spectator or both together. It can be said quite literally that 'you had to be there'. [video and sound installations] not only required the presence of the spectator to become activated, but were fundamentally concerned with the registration of presence as a means toward establishing meaning.v

My approach in this text with regard to VJing is an audiovisual dispositive which, because of the interdependence of visual and acoustic information and the resulting synaesthetic interaction, may only be applied to the model of band or group. This dispositive is not determined by a specific technology. In this context, VJing does not equate to related algorithmic programming, but acts as a counterbalance for the expansion of performative practices which are genealogically most likely derived from performance and media art. This way, an only seemingly paradoxical acousmatic representation may be defined in which the actual sources of reference of both channels are reciprocally present in each other, virtually off-screen (acousmatic). The respective complementation in the spectrum of reception is, however, placed in an exterior space, i.e. represented. As a consequence, the performance space becomes an integral part of the intervention where the architectonic space, by way of enormous sound systems, is being disclosed acoustically and visually by performative means (Metamkine) or through large projection screens (Granular Synthesis). It is almost like in a 360-degree cinema where one may, and even ought to, walk about. This strategy, however, goes back to concert and film logics that demand rather undivided attention. As the viewer is being taken possession of, this surely represents one of the most virulent oppositions to club VJing.vi Roughly put, the dispositive might be localised at a point where one no longer knows whether s/he should listen to the images or look at the music. This relates to the different perception speeds and distraction mechanisms of music and image. In this context, the German film music theoretician Norbert Schneider (p. 65) writes, «Watching informs us about the constitution and 'condition' of the environment. Listening informs us primarily about the interior life of fellow human beings, about their thoughts and moods.… Thus, listening corresponds to feeling (as an unconscious understanding of the world) whereas watching corresponds to thinking (the conscious understanding of the world).»vii This leads to certain 'off-key continuities' in perception, prevalent in film editing or musical cut-ups. Virtually all video groups produce momentous interactive art, since they, much like music groups, generate an art event in real time. As a result, we obtain four interdependent variables which map out the dispositive:


Image D Interaction D Sound
E
Time

Be it in a performance, an installation, or a club context, the groups work in all three segments – some times more and some times less – with prefabricated settings from their own audiovisual data archive and either interact in an improvising manner (Metamkine) or according to a formulated compositional plan (Granular Synthesis). From this, two statements may be deduced:


1) The auditory and optical information is presented in parity as multi-channel manifestations.
2) These manifestations take place in a live context. They exist like a concert or a temporary installation for the moment.

The exponential increase in the number of performance artists in almost every continent, the numerous new books and academic courses on the subject, and the many contemporary art museum opening their doors to live media, are clear indications that in the opening of the twenty-first century, performance art is as much as a driving force as it was when the Italian Futurists used it to capture the speed and energy of the new twentieth century. Performance art today reflects the fast-paced sensibility of the communications industry, but it is also an essential antidote to the distancing effects of technology. For it is the very presence of the performance artist in real time, of live performers 'stopping time', that gives the medium its central position.viii

Like Granular Synthesis, Metamkine deal with a rudimentary, even archaeological understanding of cinema and music in order to arrive at the essence of the respective medium, and from there deduct an associative-physical stream of information which leaves behind the technically well-armed VJ scene via an intermedial approach (Metamkine) or an oversized hearing and viewing box (Granular Synthesis). The musical rhythm loops, which are at times perceived as pulsating, and at other times below the perception threshold, do not fall into the trance-like, repetitive machine beat of techno music. Metamkine and Granular Synthesis view rhythm as layers of sound, sound colouration, drones or sequencing which, apart from intensely territorialising the body, at the same time also capture the largest human hearing organ, the skin, by making use of the entire frequency range. Due to these complex parameters, they have in mind rather the concept of sitting in a cinema instead of dancing in a club. One can be quite occupied with not being occupied with these groups. After all, both aim to amplify the habits of hearing and seeing by using a radical and fervent audiovisual attack. Both video groups work in a performance context that is commonly frowned upon as being 'high culture' or 'elitist', which takes place in art galleries, museums or theatres. Such a designation rather indicates that the perception of images and sounds seems to be of a divergent nature, since the images could easily work in more 'low-culture' spaces, such as clubs or other locations atypical for staging art performances, even though the music would most likely be rejected in these spaces. In the last few years, however, much like in the areas of film, music, etc., the formerly rigid societal segments have become permeable and fluctuating, gradually coming closer to each other. This fusion of social and aesthetic positions pervades traditional designations against the backdrop of an ever increasing image and information overload. In this respect, Metamkine and Granular Synthesis may be seen as audiovisual pioneers, since their artistic 'high culture' works, via club space, have helped to blur these boundaries and have made live video art compatible for the pop context.



Formed Light, Concrete Sounds – Metamkine

Since 1987 the French artists Jérôme Noetinger, Christophe Auger und Xavier Quérel have been working together as Celulle d'Intervention Metamkine. Their performances have a rather haptic air about them, since they exclusively use various Super8- and 16mm-films and vintage synthesisers. What makes them different from other formations is simply that Auger and Quérel, by manually controlling projectors, convert them practically into visual instruments which enter into spontaneous interaction with the analogue music and by doing so, significantly determine the overall composition. These audiovisual interventions are committed to the cinephile qualities of French Musique Concrète. It could be argued that such practices appear regressive in the fully digitalised era. In this regard Noetinger, who also runs the Metamkine label, pointed out in an interview in 2004, «Not long ago, everybody dreamt of having a Revox! It was the Rolls Royce! Today there's this spurious idea of 'progress', this imposition of new technology by the market. There's something totalitarian about it. It's like asking a violinist why he doesn't play a computer.»ix Operational sounds such as the clattering of projectors blend in with partially crude analogue layers of sound or sound fragments of the prefabricated magnetic tapes; at times the smell of (un)intentionally burnt filmstrips fills the air. The filmstrips, which are edited as loops, are self-produced or found footage, and through the choreographies which are evaluated in extensive rehearsals, they generate a performative image space in which the depicted transforms into a sculptural replica. Adding to this, Metamkine work with a set of mirrors, so that through extra deflections and refractions the projections are ad infinitum expanded, fragmented, bent – beyond recognition. With the visual aspect of Musique Concrète in mind, the sense of space thus formed may be traced back to choreographies of Oskar Schlemmer in the late 1920s which he had developed for the Bauhaus school.x Here, artists perform relatively simple geometric figures that live off their expressive gestures. These are conceptualised into the audience and made to appear as ornamental bodies in the best manner of the silent film tradition. This directness in expanding the stage into the audience was especially pushed forward in the performance art of the 1960sxi and has lost much of its attraction (or 'aura') with the successive separation between performer and performance.xii Therefore, the latest developments are inclined towards the concept of musicians and video artists virtually backing out from the visual spectrum of the audience, and in a 'retrograde' step see themselves as newly constructivist machinists, who expose the inner processing logics of the machine and transfer them into public space.xiii Metamkine's performers are most of the time clearly discernible, whereas the performers in Granular Synthesis are not visible at all. While Metamkine operate in a relatively classic performative stage setting, Granular Synthesis present a kind of audio film where only the oversized, approximately 4 x 3 m high projection screens are visible.


Performative Disclosure of the Audiovisual Space

By insisting on a historicity of one's own, Metamkine join in an already quite canonised video art exemplified by the early works of Nam June Paik. Instead of discussing Paik's TV experiments, I want here to point to his Music Studies and his early audiotape experiments. «Paik brought his knowledge of a more highfalutin' art form, namely the electronic music of Stockhausen and Cage, to bear on a brand-new media. Structurally, Paik's videotapes derive from the audio-taped musique concret sound collages he was making in Europe before Cage deflected him towards performance.»xiv Following the audio tape sound experiments conducted prior to World War II, this medium turned out to be one of the first and most promising post-war developments in exploring new worlds of sound. Such as with the case of French Musique Concrète by Pierre Schaeffer, later Pierre Henry or Vladimir Ussachevsky in the U.S., however, Musique Concrète itself alluded to such groundbreaking pieces as the acousmatic collage 'Wochenende' (1930)xv by Walter Ruttmann or Viking Eggeling's spatial figures set in motion in 'Diagonal Symphonie' (1921/25). Unlike many digital music video filmmakers who have geometric figures spurring across the images to the sound of abstract electronic music, Metamkine's arsenal of images, quite directly quoting early medial development phases of interwar abstract film, had virtually always been fed by the concrete, processed and/or alienated via simple means such as pitching, splicing, colouring, fading or more or less traditional editing. In this connection we not only deal with the replacement of central perspective in painting and cinema by physically marking out the performative space; Metamkine's visual element may rather be seen in a framework that refers to the inner materiality of the medium. Concrete image content is purged until nothing but formed light remains which, as a projection screen, entirely occupies the performance venue.


Sonic Layers of Time, Optical Shattering – Granular Synthesis

All sound is an integration of grains, of elementary sonic particles, of sonic quanta.
Iannis Xenakis (1971)

Increasingly specific software applications have turned computers into interactive and intermedial interfaces par excellence. For the 'black box' it no longer makes much of a difference whether the algorithm fed in generates an optical or acoustic output. Improved processor performance has made it possible to produce highly complex compositional methods such as granular synthesis. Founded in Vienna in 1991 by Kurt Hentschläger and Ulf Langheinrich, Granular Synthesis derive their name from this method. To date, the duo has executed around 15 fully set-up installations. Compared with Metamkine's approach, Granular Synthesis are basically located on the opposite side of the audiovisual dispositive. Granular Synthesis allow the semantic codes of the digital machine free play and generate a human-machine interface which toils on the fringes of cutting-edge computer technology. Each micro structure, each millisecond grain is aimed at making the tactile quality of the sound and the image be experienced. While Metamkine still leave open perceptive slots by way of their theatrical gestures and allow organic physicality, Granular Synthesis confront us with the full impact of machine-controlled logics. Consequently, by extreme fragmentation of the images, the performers' heads, filmed in glass cubes in the early works of the band, become grimaces, the contours of which remain organic, even in the moments of highest affect. By its intensely accelerated serial split-up, the physical image's content is distilled into some kind of pure object, completely bereft of voyeuristic sexual connotations, and lets the potentially desiring gaze go blank. Instead, these images herald the industrial degeneration of present social forms of communication, for example, when in 'Model5' (1994/96) the head of performer Akemi Takeya, under the impression of speed, «gives birth to an electronic Medusa image oscillating between the poles of sensual ecstasy and agony.»xvi The recipient is caught up in the dichotomy between voyeurism and the auto-destructive projection on the protagonist, who is trapped in this glass construction as if under a cake dome; the glass resembles a transparent data helmet imposed on the performer, but also a morbid incubator.xvii


Compressed Emptiness of the Audiovisual Bodies

Granular Synthesis dealt with precisely this loss of control and correlation primarily in the phase between 1991 and 1999. In the second phase an almost complete emptying of the image space takes place in which solely monochrome surfaces and 'psychedelic' flicker effectsxviii are employed. In the works of Granular Synthesis the eye is successively deprived of information while ever-increasing sub-basses and cascades of rhythm, synchronised to up to 200 bpm, roll over the sound plane. An experiential space opens up, the experience of which becomes more intense the more it is cleared of signs.

The grain is a unit of sonic energy possessing any waveform, and with a typical duration of a few milliseconds, near the threshold of human hearing. It is the continuous control of these small sonic events (which are discerned as one large sonic mass) that gives granular synthesis its power and flexibility. The typical duration of a grain is somewhere between 5 and 100 milliseconds. The most musically important aspect of an individual grain is its waveform. A vast amount of processing power is required to perform granular synthesis. A simple granular 'cloud' may consist of only a handful of particles, but a sophisticated 'cloud' may be comprised of a thousand or more.xix

The hyper-physicalised affirmation of the machine presented in the works of Granular Synthesis breaks down the boundaries between the humanoid and technoid body with its repetitive sequences of image and sound which, in some way, brings us closer to constructivist practices. The conscious display of the technological apparatus exhibits a human internalisation of the machine as it had already been presented for example in Detroit-Techno. Hence, the media theoretician Florian Rötzer writes, «The moving image, the image changeable in every pixel, the image that has become truly musical, is the condensation of speed.»xx In order to distil an intense sensual experience, it is necessary to build up an antipole of some sorts which consists of an upgraded environment and refers to the development of a software of one's own.xxi This software, which was produced between 1997 and 1999, is called VARP9. Just like a music sampler, it enables one to subject images and above all the direct connection of audiovisual data to granular synthesis: «It is a sample based MIDI software instrument that streams from RAM. It works in real-time in full PAL video resolution and frame rate. It allows accessing and allocating single frames at 25f/ sec. At this video grain rate it is capable of audiovisual granular synthesis».xxii

The flashes of consciousness produced by Granular Synthesis extract micro-range time snippets, which no longer represent caesurae but a permanently permuting flickering, become expansions, shiftings, rumples and fractalisations. The acts of acceleration and deceleration move parallel; the microtonal interferences in between generate trance effects, amplified by their (sub)sonic intensity. Misconnections in space and time collide with elliptic retardation and acceleration strategies which join – from the perspective of Austria’s film avant-garde – the works of Martin Arnold, Peter Tscherkassky and Peter Kubelka's 'Arnulf Rainer'. The award-winning duo (amongst others the Grandprix Artrec '95 in Nagoya, Japan) creates an industry-induced 'information overload unit' which makes no use of found footage, but instead samples itself so to speak as an 'alter ego image' and flickers across the screens in countless variations with a massive sound environment on top. While the processing inherent to the working method is quite laborious, the starting material is mostly easy to prepare: heads in glass boxes on huge multi-screens ('POL', 'NoiseGate', 'Model3'/ 'Model5'), video sequences of British dance artist Michael Ashcroft ('We Want God Now', 'Form', 'Sinken'), completely monochrome surfaces ('Reset'), predominantly black surfaces ('Minus') or the computer-generated transformation of a public building into a sculpture of light which evokes the illusion of a twinkling space ship ('Lichtwerk'). Stripping it down to the basics yields the focussing on an image which has come to appear so vacant that only basic geometric patterns remain. The emptiness is stored in the highest audiovisual data decompression. While in the 'Model'-series humans, in their gestural articulations, were important as concrete representations or images, the camera focus has gradually centred on the body itself until finally the lens reads the skin as the focal point of abstract geometric patterns and as the boundary to ways of representing humans.



Audio Visions Reloaded

By way of the two video bands Metamkine and Granular Synthesis, I have attempted to make the VJ-ing 'genre' discussable in a film and music historical context. Both bands, in their own ways, herald audiovisual prehistoric times, the sonic and filmic codes of which, via club culture, have, within the last ten years, grown to a mass-compatible phenomenon. The concept of an audiovisual dispositive outlined here is intended to contribute to getting a glimpse of the discussed bands' synaesthetic methods of working. While Metamkine consciously hold on to a musical and cinematographic tradition in order to provide new discourses on perception and the gaze, Granular Synthesis work with cutting-edge technology to expose the primal and submerged layers of human perception. As both bands use image and sound track as equal transmission matrices, this allows a concise, real-time experience which transfers live media art to a performance context where live interaction between the two media and the artists becomes the performative compositional premise.

Originally published on www.vjtheory.net

Selected Material:

Granular Synthesis (http://www.granularsynthesis.info/):

Index Edition, 2005. Remixes for Single Screen. [DVD]. Vienna: Index. http://www.index-dvd.at/
ZKM/ Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, digital arts edition, 2004. Immersive Works. [DVD]. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz. http://www.hatjecantz.de/

Metamkine – Cellule d'Intervention (http://metamkine.free.fr/)



i The international festival 'Netmage', founded in Bologna in 2000, may be regarded as one of the leading events in live media art in Central Europe. Already in 2005 its artistic director Andrea Lissoni considered the 'genre' VJing to be outdated. In: Deisl, H., 2005. Netmage 2005. Ray – Kinomagazin, April 2005, pp. 44-46.
ii Waters, S. Beyond the Acousmatic: Hybrid Tendencies in Electronic Music. In: S. Emmerson, ed. Music, Electronic Media and Culture. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2000, pp. 59-86.
iii Deleuze, G., 2001. The Time-Image. Cinema 2. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 256-257. Later on in the book (p. 266) Deleuze recurs to Robert Bresson's automatic 'model' which «has no need of computing or cybernetic machines», however «the cinematographic image was already achieving effects which were not like those of electronics, but which had autonomous anticipatory functions in the time-image as will to art.»
[i] Compare: Attali, J., 1985. Noise. The Political Economy of Music. Vol. 16: Theory and History of Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
iv That is why Kittler writes: «That which is no longer imaginable happens because there where nothing may be imagined data processing takes place». Kittler, F., 1989: Die Nacht der Substanz. In: Pias C. et al., eds. Kursbuch Medienkultur. Die maßgeblichen Theorien von Brecht bis Baudrillard. Stuttgart: DVA, 1999, p. 507.
v Crimp, D. Pictures. In: Wallis, B.. ed. Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation. New York/ Boston: Museum of Contemporary Arts/ Godine Inc., 1995, pp. 177-180.
vi Actually it is quite dull to watch a DJ or laptop artist work while dancing, in a situation in which immediate auratic elements seem to be blinded out. Here, the dynamic VJ images are much more entertaining. These may not only be 'danced to' but one may also quite happily expose oneself to the continuous visual flow.
vii Schneider, N. J., 1990. Handbuch Filmmusik. Bd. 1, Musikdramaturgie. Konstanz: UVK.
viii Goldberg, R.L., 2001. Performance Art. From Futurism to the Present. London: Thames& Hudson, p. 225-230.
ix Warburton, D., 2004. Cinema for the Ears. The Wire. Adventures in Modern Music, 239, p. 24.
x Goldberg (2001, p. 106) mentions what was probably one of the earliest project descriptions of an audiovisual performance dating back to 1923 when the two Bauhaus- and O. Schlemmer-students Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack and Kurt Schwerdfeger staged their 'Reflected Light Compositions' «to multiply the sources of light, adding layers of coloured glass which were projected on the back of a transparent screen, producing kinetic, abstract designs. Sometimes the players followed intricate scores which indicated the light source and sequence of colours, rheostat settings, speed and direction of 'dissolves' and 'fade-outs'. These were 'played' on a specially constructed apparatus and accompanied by Hirschfeld-Mack’s piano playing».
xi Such ambitions are by no means new. Here, acting as representatives, I would like to recall the theatre space designs by Erwin Piscator or early theatre works such as 'The Mexican' (1920) or 'Gasmasks' (1923) by Sergei Eisenstein, in which the traditional situation encountered in the proscenium stage, as known from theatre and film, is being interrupted and extended by a so to speak third dimension.
xii The DJ desk equipped with DJ or laptop consoles has gradually moved toward the 'interior' of the stage. Compared to rock or pop bands, Club DJs or VJs are all but 'tangible', their production logics are separated from the performance location, which is mirrored in a techno-reactivated constructivist human-machine interface.
xiii Since the mid-90s it has become a common practice of work and aesthetics to make use of the 'error of the system', the 'glitch'. This is carried out by wilfully bringing about computer crashes or other machine-inherent errors or manipulations (interpolations, distortions, foreign data material). Comp. e.g.: Young, R., 2002. Worship the glitch. Digital music, electronic disturbance. In: The Wire/ Young, R., eds., ²2003. Undercurrents. The hidden wiring of modern music. London/ NY: Continuum, p. 45-58. As regards Austria, mention should be made of video bands such as Skot, reMI or epy.
xiv Hoberman, J. Paik’s Peak. In: Hoberman, J., 1991. Vulgar Modernism. Writings on Movies and Other Media. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, p. 138. Originally published in: The Village Voice, May 25, 1982.
xv Guy Mark Hinant writes in the liner notes of the CD-compilation a-chronology: An Anthology of Noise & Electronic Music. [DCD]. Brussels: SubRosa: «'Wochenende' is unique of its kind. Twenty years later this editing technique will be improved, to form the basis of concrete music – even Pierre Schaeffer quickly abandoned what he called anecdotal sound for more concrete research. This work can be regarded as the first image-less film». (Italics by H.D.). The piece was republished by the label Metamkine in 1994, based on the original tapes which Ruttmann's daughter had handed over to Metamkine.
xvi Richard, B., Bath in the Resonance Chamber, and Blinding. In: ZKM/ Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, ed., 2004. Granular Synthesis: Immersive Works. [DVD-booklet]. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, digital arts edition, p. 19.
xvii Concerning the affect-image and the head (or face of a person) that symbolizes it, Deleuze writes: «The close-up does not tear away its object from a set of which it would form part, … but on the contrary it abstracts it from all spatio-temporal co-ordinates, that is to say it raises it to the state of Entity. … If it is true that the cinematic image is always deterritorialised, there is therefore a very special deterritorialisation which is specific to the affection-image». Deleuze, G., 1997. The Movement-Image. Cinema 1. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 96 et seq.
xviii The flicker effect and its 'consciousness-expanding' influence comes in numerous forms. It is quite popular in clubs where the flickering light/ dark situations recall Early Cinema. In the early 1960s, French artist Brion Gysin, together with Ian Summerville, went about constructing the 'Dreamachine': «… we started in a whole series of Dreamachines: from a very simply cylinder with a just regularly spaced slots producing therefore just one fixed rate of flicker, to these years later, the present machines with along the height of the column as you move your eye, your closed eyes up and down, you experience all the light interruptions between 8 and 13… External resonators, such as flicker, tune in with our internal rhythms and lead to their extension. … Elaborate geometric constructions of incredible intricacy build up from bright mosaic into living fireballs like the mandalas … in their act of growth». Summerville, I., 1962. Flicker. Olympia Magazine 2. Reprinted in: Wilson T./ Gysin B., ²2000. Here to go. Los Angeles: Creation, pp. 210 et seq. The works 'Reset' (2001) by Granular Synthesis and 'RGB' (2005) by Bas van Koolwijk/ Christian Toonk expand these configurations by using primary colour schemes.
xix Eric Kuehnel's Writing Pages. 2003. Available from: http://music.calarts.edu/~eric/gs.html, [cited 23 March 2006].
xx Rötzer, F., 1989. Technoimaginäres – Endes des Imaginären. In: Kunstforum International, 98, Ruppichteroth: Kunstforum Verlag, 1989, p. 55.
xxi Writing one's own software is virtually part of the etiquette of every well-versed video group. Here I again wish to refer to Hexstatic/ Coldcut. Their software programme VJamm enables them to sample concrete images possessing certain inherent sounds, and they deduce these into a set of repetitive beats with loops, which leads to the development of a techno track in the widest sense. In 1997 their video 'Timber' set new standards for club VJing. In 1998 the video won French Television's 'MCM Best Video Editing Award'. All in all it was remixed four times, entering the Guinness Book of Records as the single with the most video remixes.
xxii Description of VARP9 on the band's homepage.