November 2002 - Kraftwerk - mailman.xmission.com

query
by Der Automat 13 Nov '02

13 Nov '02

I just want to know if compilation "Musique Non Stop: A Tribute to Kraftwerk" (TOSHIBA/EMI JAPAN TOCT 10455) is the same as "The Radioactive Tribute To Kraftwerk" (CD, Wagram Music, New Mantra, 3075002, WAG 329, NM020302). Thanks a lot in advance. DER AUTOMAT

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Just for fun (It's so quiet here...)
by johan.andersson＠allers.aller.se 12 Nov '02

12 Nov '02

Hello list, just want to show you an old thread I started on a mac-forum in Sweden, just want to show you my alias-picture, what do you like it (you'll have to guess my aliasname on the forum first :-) (For you who don't read Swedish, they are a bit upset about KW running PC:s...) http://99mac.com/forum/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=000809

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RE: Re: [Kraftwerk] R&F watching the singing sculpture??
by Jan Svenungsson 11 Nov '02

11 Nov '02

Thanks for a precise reply! I don't have these books here with me now, but from what you quote it seems to me that the Bussy and Barr don't have any documentary "evidence" for this theory, beyond speculating on the apparent similarities between the poses of G&G and R&F. What would be really interesting is to dig up some first hand account - or maybe there is somewhere an interview from the 70's where the question has been raised? Jan -------------------- Begin Original Message -------------------- Message text written by INTERNET:kraftwerk@mailman.xmission.com "While I don't have any specific info regarding whether or not Ralf & Florian were in attendance at the G&G show in 1970, I'll point out that your friend's theory is certainly nothing new, and their correlation to Gilbert & George has certainly been postulated on in the past. In Pascal Bussy's book "Kraftwerk: Man, Machine and Music", the author writes of the 1973 'Ralf & Florian' album: "Adopting their respective first names may well have been influenced by the performance art duo Gilbert and George, who from the late sixties onward worked exclusively as a single artistic unit under their first names... Schneider's adoption of a formal, almost old-fashioned suit, could again have been inspired by Gilbert and George who chose to juxtapose the newness of their art against an old fashioned image by dressing exclusively in rather stuffy tweed double-breasted suits." Similarly, Tim Barr's book "Kraftwerk: From Düsseldorf to the Future (with Love)" quotes the following: "In 1970, the British performance art duo Gilbert & George had appeared in Düsseldorf. Though their work included paintings and installations which referenced many of the developments in pop art, Situationism and post-modernism, Gilbert & George's most famous artwork was themselves. On the surface, their appearance was that of two very straight, square, quintessentially English, civil servants. This image was in direct contrast to the radicalism of their artistic strategies. They would play up their normality while, at the same time, creating art that was extremely unconventional and contentious. Their appearance in Düsseldorf had been introduced as The Singing Sculpture and consisted of two eight-hour performances of the song 'Underneath The Arches' made famous by the British music-hall duo Bud Flanagan and Chesney Allen. Both Hütter and Schneider must have been intrigued by Gilbert & George's semi-ironic but unmistakably English art and, perhaps in view of their own cultural concerns, were inspired to use the essence of it to create something that was equally identifiably German. The front cover of 'Ralf & Florian' album featured a photograph that bore obvious traces of Gilbert & George's influence. It's interesting to speculate whether or not Kraftwerk and their friends on the Düsseldorf art scene appreciated the full resonance of Gilbert & George's performance in their hometown, however." Retropolis " -------------------- End Original Message --------------------

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Re: [Kraftwerk] balanescu
by Roman Aksenenko 11 Nov '02

11 Nov '02

> Does anyone know where I can obtain a copy of this wonderful record from the > Balanescu Quartet (kraftwerk-covers) ? +++http://www.mute.co.uk/store.htm

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KRAFTWERK Live in Broni
by Alex Brega 09 Nov '02

09 Nov '02

I have received a video recording of the last Paris concert on DVD and been able to catch some interesting details. During Pocket Calculator,Florian has weared eyeglasses for a couple of seconds behind his laptop display. I am quite sure,re-seing again and again it,that Airwaves video is synchronized with music for most of its duration. It's hardly evident that Ralf Hutter was the most involved,smiling to Schmitt more than a time and even dancing during Airwaves and Expo 2000. I've noticed that Hilpert made deep changes in rhytmic sections of Man Machine song, triggering an instrument like dj-schratcing. Apart from Paris,I think Lichthof (3rd unreleased track) is very similar to Ananas Symphonie : could it be another remix ? Brega Alex _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus

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About dear old Uncle Oskar ...
by Jan R. 09 Nov '02

09 Nov '02

Hey there, lucky ones in Cologne: A documentary about OSKAR SALA is to be shown at filmhaus köln. Date: November 24. The directors Oliver Rauch and Ingo Rudloff will be present. Info see http://www.keyboards.de/news/02/11/05/846.html -jan -- feel free to visit http://www.jan-reetze.de __________________________________________________________________ Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - http://mail.yahoo.de Yahoo! prÃ¤sentiert als offizieller Sponsor das FuÃball-Highlight des Jahres: - http://www.FIFAworldcup.com

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R&F watching the singing sculpture??
by Jan Svenungsson 07 Nov '02

07 Nov '02

Hello list, a friend of mine is working on a thesis about the interaction between popular music and contemporary art. He has this theory that R&F may have gotten their original inspiration for the suits and the robotic behaviour - the visual concept - when they saw British art duo Gilbert & George do their legendary "singing sculpture" piece at the Duesseldorf Kunsthalle in 1970. I did a search on my saved digests of the list and found some talk (hello Andreas!) about G & G two years ago, but the references were of a general if affirmative kind. What I want to know is whether there is any precise info on whether R&F actually were there, watching the "singing sculpture" at the Kunsthalle Duesseldorf in 1970??? Anybody knows something which goes beyond speculation? (Dirk?) Read the following article (please excuse the length) and you will get an idea of what G & G were up to at the time - and the importance of Duesseldorf in their development. In the "singing sculpture" they stand on a table, dressed in conservative three-piece suits, with silver painted faces - and sing - for eight hours. THEY become the artwork. They have since developed this idea to such an extent that they've become an instantly recognisable living artwork 24/7. They remain a powerful and enigmatic force in the artworld: always dressed alike in impeccable tweed suits like perfect gentlemen; living in an ultra-pedantic victorian house without a kitchen they have breakfast everyday in the same café; in interviews they often make provocatively conservative statements, while in their art (today mainly large photo murals) they can still be extremely provocative in the opposite direction. Regards, Jan "Marco Livingstone recounts the events early in the career of the British duo that led to art dealer Konrad Fischer's invitation to show at his Dusseldorf gallery in 1970. GILBERT & GEORGE hadn't been working together more than a few months before they started to make their own luck in late 1968. They had met only a year earlier when Gilbert, fresh from the Munchen Akademie and speaking no English, arrived in the Advanced Sculpture Course at St. Martin's School of Art in London, where George was entering his third and final year. When Gilbert returned to London the following fall, the two neophytes decided to join forces as a way of becoming artists "more effectively." They did not yet have a clear plan to produce art together. The duo began making the rounds of London galleries, including the most obscure, offering to exhibit Shit and Cunt, 1969, a provocative "magazine sculpture" (the now canonical self-portrait as "George the Cunt and Gilbert the Shit"), but declining to show slides of other works. Unsurprisingly, the two unknowns were sent packing time and again. They were particularly persistent with the dealer and Mod man-about-town Robert ("Groovy Bob") Fraser, who let them display their Christmas Slide Show (which incorporated Fraser's own handwritten seasonal greetings) in his gallery window over the holidays in 1968. He also displayed Shit and Cunt on May 10, 1969, for one afternoon, in a case inside his Duke Street gallery. By now, the pair were quickly gaining in notoriety, wandering the streets of London with multicolored metallized faces. The realization that they had themselves become the artwork was, they say, their single most important discovery and the basis of everything they have done since. Among those who had heard of G&G's strange and compelling work was the Dutch artist Ger van Elk, who had met them (accompanied by Jan Dibbets) in their student days. Van Elk wrote the first serious academic article about their collaborations (in Museum Journal, Oct. 1969) and was instrumental in securing them an unofficial invitation to stage a five-hour "living sculpture" on the steps of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in November 1969; further, he persuaded the Amsterdam gallery Art & Project to give them a show. And it was he who indirectly proffered their biggest opportunity, when he invited them to accompany him to the September 1969 London opening of the now legendary touring exhibition of Conceptual art, "Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form." To their dismay, Gilbert & George had been excluded, but they decided to make the most of the occasion by color-metallizing their faces and standing motionless among the crowd at the CA. Their seditious intervention proved wholly, and effectively, dist racting. "Having heard that English artists were being added and that Charles Harrison (the critic and theorist associated with Art & Language] was doing the selection," George recalls, "it didn't occur to us for one second that we wouldn't be selected. But, fortunately, bad luck always turns to good luck. We stole the show that evening, for certain. Konrad Fischer came up to us and said, 'You'll come show in Dusseldorf, huh?"' Gilbert & George couldn't believe their sudden change of fortune. Here was the most glamorous German dealer, pursued by every ambitious young artist, opening his doors to them. First Fischer arranged a two-day slot at the Kunsthalle Dusseldorf in 1970, where they elected to present Underneath the Arches, 1969--73, the artists' by now celebrated "singing sculpture." On the spur of the moment they chose to do it as a marathon event, as a way of really getting noticed. "We decided only that day to do it for eight hours," notes Gilbert. "Before that we had shown it in art schools and other venues all over England, but always just for three minutes." As George explains, they also acted on their canny understanding of the art audience's hunger for souvenirs of such events: "We had little leaflets, which we had letterpress printed, with deckle edges that we did ourselves. Written with red ink on every one--we took piles--was 'ART LOVE TO GERMANY.' Very embarrassing!" This now highly prized piece of signed ephemera also included the lyrics of the song and a small drawing of the singing sculpture. Later that year, at their first solo show at Fischer's gallery in the same city, they made their first sale--of Walking, Viewing, Relaxing, 1970, a three-part "charcoal on paper sculpture" measuring about thirty-five feet in width--for what seemed to them a preposterously large sum: [pound]1,000. Suddenly the idea of being able to earn a living from their work had become a reality. With that money they began a drinking binge that lasted two years, introducing into their art and lives a new area of subject matter that was to define some of the first and most influential of their photo pieces, by which they soon made their reputation internationally. Today, Gilbert & George walk the line between art and life as assuredly as in that Dusseldorf debut, channeling their all-too-human fears, hopes, and vulnerabilities into powerful visual statements-much as they have done for the past thirty years."

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Ralf and Florian
by Der Automat 07 Nov '02

07 Nov '02

http://www.flipflopflyin.com/ralf/ralfepisode07.html What sort of capers will Ralf get up to on the way? DER AUTOMAT

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(no subject)
by TrickyNick616＠aol.com 07 Nov '02

07 Nov '02

The future is not showing itself to those who do not belong. The chosen shall rise and take what is thiers.

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'Werk on TOTP
by John Shilcock 06 Nov '02

06 Nov '02

Toby Asked: >>Can any UK list members confirm whether Kraftwerk ever appeared in the studio of the show Top of the Pops? I'm thinking that they could have done when "the Model" was at no.1 in 1981. The short answer is no. The slightly longer answer is... the "video" for "The Model" was played on TOTP in 1981. Also the robots appeared live in the TOTP studio when broadcast in the sister program "TOTP2" to accompany the 1991 track "The Robots" Hope this helps. Keep Werking John www.keepwerking.co.uk

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