Underground and Improvisation. Alternative music and art after 1968

Two major exhibitions are the first to reflect on the alternative music and art movements in Berlin and Eastern Europe from the Prague Spring to the post-Reunification period. Including countless concert recordings, photographs, posters, flyers, original documents, interviews and many previously unpublished videos, the exhibition Free Music Production / FMP: The Living Music documents this unique music and cultural history of Berlin between West and East, now returned to its original venue at the Akademie.

The exhibition Notes from the Underground – Art and Alternative Music in Eastern Europe 1968–1994 shows in films, videos and artistic documents the close relationships between alternative music scenes and the visual arts in Eastern Europe. Contrary to state regulations and often in improvised forms of distribution, rock music, punk and new wave, performance, fashion, music videos and Super 8 films became artistic expressions of a counter-culture.

35 concerts and discussions flank the two exhibitions, in part inspired by the earlier FMP workshops and concerts held in the exhibition space at the Akademie. These include the legendary Lithuanian drummer Vladimir Tarasov, the saxophonist and FMP co-founder Peter Brötzmann, Katalin Ladik from Hungary and the Ornament und Verbrechen duo. Younger ensembles, such as the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, the multinational group HEARTH and Barcelona Series from Berlin, make reference to historical predecessors. In addition, musicians from the young Moscow improvisation scene perform with members of Berlin's Splitter Orchester or the interdisciplinary duo Blook Project from Kiev. A dis-cursive programme with experts from the music and art scenes deals with interrelationships between music, the visual arts and film, as well as with alternative artistic strategies in Eastern and Western Europe. In cooperation with the Federal Agency for Civic Education/bpb.