Underground and Improvisation. Alternative Music and Art after 1968

The symposium focuses on central questions of alternative artistic strategies that arise from the juxtaposition of and the relationship between underground and improvisation, East and West: What is the term "underground" understood to mean in the West? How is it understood in the East? And who defines themselves how? In what way is improvisation political, and which political aspects of improvisation are relevant today? How were the dividing lines and the blurring of boundaries between the arts discussed in the East and in the West? What remained and what made history? How is the current drift of some representatives of the alternative art scene to the right to be interpreted?

IV: Exceedance and Transition in the Arts?

10 am
Black Box: Ost
Via Lewandowsky, Durs Grünbein
Moderation: Uta Grundmann
Via Lewandowsky, a member of the Auto-Perforations-Artisten group that existed from 1982 to 1992 and the band Die Strafe, and Durs Grünbein, poet, essayist and translator, who wrote about Auto-Perforations-Artisten in 1990 in the samizdat magazine Ariadnefabrik, will talk about "Black Box: Ost" – about shared experiences and current collaborations between the media. Art historian and psychologist Uta Grundmann will use her moderation to address rediscovered archive material from the East German Academy of Arts.
In German

NOON
Marina Gržinić, David Crowley
Moderation: Angela Lammert
Philosopher and artist Marina Gržinić will be in conversation with curator David Crowley about the video art works which she has made in collaboration with Aina Šmid since 1982. Emerging from the lively and provocative theatre and new wave music scene in Ljubljana, the duo's early works often explored the visual imaginary of socialism in relation to sexuality and power. Yugoslavia was a distinct vantage point from which to explore the effects of ideology in both the East and West.
In English

2:30 pm
Historiografien des musikalischen Underground
Susanne Binas-Preisendörfer
Moderation: Angela Lammert
Exhibitions, books, films and samplers bear witness to societal ability to consent and interests in underground positions from the period before 1989. In the process, a canon of accepted representations became established, based on which resistance, ingenuity, irony, experiment or the dynamics of the scene are illustrated. Last but not least, as many of the writers and curators are contemporary witnesses to their own history, the question arises as to what will be shown and heard, why, and how?

4 pm
Geniale Dilettanten
Mathilde Weh, Frank Baumann, Christoph Tannert
Moderation: Angela Lammert
The "Geniale Dilletanten – Subculture in Germany in the 1980s" exhibition, which the Goethe-Institut has been showing at locations around the world since 2015, addresses the specific subcultural developments of the 1980s in East and West Germany. The title "Geniale Dilletanten" [Ingenious Dilletants] is consciously misspelt and is a synonym for the vehement artistic departure of this time. The core exhibition was supplemented at the tour venues with local activities – as was also the case at the first exhibition location in Minsk, Belarus. The discussion with Mathilde Weh, Christoph Tannert and Frank Baumann will focus on the arguments in favour of the respective changes to the exhibition.

6 pm
Underground and Right-Wing Politics
Hannelore Fobo, Claudia Hamm, Daniel Muzyczuk
Moderation: Angela Lammert
Joanna Stingray, American singer, actress and music producer, was a key figure in the dissemination of Soviet and Russian rock music and its culture to the West in the 1980s. In the mid-1990s, some representatives of the Leningrad underground were drawn near right-wing politics. So did the Pop Mechanics' Sergey Kuryohkin, as well as Eduard Limonov, the author who was designated from the Soviet Union in 1974, and who founded the National Bolshevik Party of Russia in 1994. A tendency that is highly explosive throughout Europe. These differently charged decades will be discussed in the panel with the curator Hannelore Fobo, the theatre director and translator Claudia Hamm and the curator Daniel Muzyczuk.

8 pm
The Invention of Language
Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart:
Sebastian Berweck (cembalo)
Erik Drescher (flute)
Biliana Voutchkova (violin)
Compositions by Ondřej Adámek, Piotr Rypson, Davor Branimir Vincze, Oleg Krokhalev, Rytis Mažulis, Agata Zubel, Anna Romashkova
€ 13/7

Programme on 19 Apr and 20 Apr 2018.