13.February – Exhibition Opening + Staaltape Release Evening + Great Guests

Another Saturday Evening with new pictures on the walls in the front room of the shop, and new sounds in the basement is due on Saturday the thirteenth at Staalplaat store.

On the double occasion of the opening of an exhibition and the release of Berlin Tape Run by Staaltape, James Edmonds and Preslav Literary School team up to celebrate. Special guests this evening are BloodyThings/Mornings and Drone master Ben Owen from New York. More information will be added soon. For the moment here is a short sleeved memory of warmer days.

4 February Radio Staalplaat presents kleine field recordings festival

Every thursday Radio Staalplaat will transmit live from the Staalplaat store. The first emissions focus on the venues in Berlin. In tonight’s episode Rinus van Alebeek, organiser of das kleine field recordings festival will be the guest. The programme will be conducted by Valeria Merlini and Kim Laugs and co-hosted by Paulo Raposo. The radio emission is open to public. Since the upcoming mid winter episode of dkfrf is due two days later on 6. February more guests can be expected.

You can tune in to Radio Staalplaat via DFM

Thursday 4. February 23.00 – 01.00 (CET+1)

Radio Staalplaat focus on Das kleine field recordings festival

Flughafenstrasse 38

U8 Boddinstrasse/U7 Rathaus Neukölln

with the sound of Berlin underground,

our vision of what makes Berlin interesting

the music, attitude, people and the places…

9 – 16 January – Sonic Helmet by Satoshi Morita

Though snow stormas and polar bears and international rescue are on their way to Berlin to help the citizins with food and blankets, life continues at the dkfrf. As a continuation of the sold out edition of 8.January the sonic helmet by Satoshi Morita, which was conceived and constructed during remote sunny days in a tiny village in Portugal, will be at the staalplaat store for seven more days.

The sonic helmet is a gateway to daydreams and images of a warm world. Come and sit down, relax and listen. Those visitors who want to hear something else, can ask for a cd at the desk.

9 – 16 January 14.00-19.00 hours (sunday/monday closed)

Staalplaat

Flughafenstrasse 38

U8 Boddinstrasse/U7 Rathaus Neukölln

Friday 8 January: Das Kleine Field Recordings Festival

Those who are still unfamiliar with Field Recordings won’t be helped a lot by its definition. It says that field recordings are those recordings made outside a studio with the intention to use them as/in a composition. Then a lot of things can happen: recordings of a flute player in a haystack, a cow complaining loudly on its way to Yu Huan, waterbubbles drumming against a floating rubber boat, but also less epic sounds as from church bells, a water kettle, or a crowd in a train station are considered “field recordings.”

Now everyone with a recording device can go out and catch the sounds of his immediate environment. The result will be something of a document like old black and white pictures are, because they tell something about our life on earth. Just imagine how exciting it would be to listen to a recording of an every day situation made a few hundred years ago. It is this fascination that counts.

The field recording artist has this extra quality of finding the extraordinary in sounds that seem obvious at first hearing. He finds connections to other audible worlds and thus helps us to hear our environment in a different way.

The first episode of Das Kleine Field Recordings Festival in 2010 presents various approaches. The visitor will be able to discuss with Satoshi Morita on his experiences in Nodar ( Portugal ). The name of this tiny village to the east of Porto has become familiar to field recordists worldwide. The good people of binauralmedia have hosted a wide variety of recording guests over the years in their residencies. The result is not only a unique audio document of a rural community, but the works conceived and completed there could serve as an anthology of art works based on and inspired by field recordings.

Satoshi Morita stayed in Nodar. He will present his Klanghelm/Sonic Helmet and talk a bit about his experiences. Of course the dkfrf visitor can place the helmet on his/her own honourable head and set of for a trip to another universe.

But be back in time to catch DJ Dog. His approach is, to say the least, a bit against the usual practices of the artist out there in the field. Witness plunderphonics at work and listen to poor dogs wandering around without a chance to find a warm home. Not recommended for the weak at heart.

Will Gresson is a young artist from New Zealand. He has roamed his country with a cassette walkman to record its audiotopes on tape. He will not find easy recognition with those apostles of sound to who ‘quality’ is defined by their $5000 recording gear rather then by talent.

Will’s use of magnetic tape was an important reason to invite him. Normally his recordings and its specific ‘organic’ sound are a part of a performance that might include guitar, laptop and a dashboard of effect pedals, say your average evening out in the noise dungeons of Berlin. Now Will will be stripped bare to the original recordings and work his way through aural memories of his homeland, of Venice and Scotland.

The last time Kate Donovan performed at the dkfrf she spend all of the time in the kitchen to cook a huge pumpkin curry. The visitors to her performance were told to take a walk and were offered her walkman, a tape and a headset. Some of them indeed stepped out into the charmed midsummer night.

Since then it was rather hard to catch a performace by her. She was either dj-ing or on the move. It was only last autumn that I saw her in Maastricht where she was … Words to Harold Schellincx: ” one of the highlights: Kate Donovan and Ryan Hardman’s wondrous and meticulous ’shadow’ plays (Twilight Claps and Thunders) projected from the depths within onto the window of a cabin short and highly intriguing scenes that to me somehow felt like Japanese …” Harold suggests there were other highlights, biassed by his three day’s experiences as a part of the festival circus, of which I visited only one evening. My comment is just as biassed because I like Ryan and Kate: the work they presented stood out against the rest. Not because the others were so poor and unimaginative, but because Kate and Ryan had achieved something that brought my attention way beyond the actual place and time. They had succeeded in creating a world of its own, almost as painstakingly beautiful as a memory or a desire you will never be able to reach.

One can only wonder why a work as “Twilight Claps and Thunders” is not shown in big museums and festivals around the globe. Or maybe you don’t need wonder, but just a little biassed opinionating to find out. I am not interested in the works produced by the international art world. What I get from it is the bad smell of a stew made out of bored comments, a repetition of uninteresting ideas on post or alter modernism, hypes, ugly people posing like glamourous people and a lot of publicity to underline the here today gone tomorrow futility of it all. Media coverage is ruled by populism.

People like Kate and Ryan belong to a growing community of ultra marginalized self made artists. The biggest number anti-academic and anti-establishment, compose their works according to taste and not to rules and regulations set by the art and funding molochs. One simply can not escape from being prejudiced. In our margins you find taste, commitment and sincerity. Sympathy is just a logic result. To visit the dkfrf ( or an other event ) is an expression of your commitment. If you want to remain an anonymous consumer then I suggest you step into one of the club nights of the upcoming ctm fair. ( And don’t forget to tip the bouncer on your way out ).

Back to the programme: Anton Mobin! I had never heard of him untill he played staalplaat last year with Duo Tham. He is definitely one of the revelations of 2009. I saw him play again in Paris later that year. And here he convinced me completely. His is a celebration of taste. One can imagine the landscapes of early Jacques Tati movies, the idealized french country side that becomes visible through the chansons of Charles Trenet, even the wrought iron constructions of Gustave Eiffel, Charlie Chaplin losing himself in the machineries of Modern Times or the sheer beauty of a Nagra reel to reel recorder… Yes it is an awkward list of images, but somehow they illustrate how taste can be decisive when it comes to composing: it is also about transforming impressions into sound, isn’t it?

Anton will use elements of his composition ‘ Micro Climate ‘ to seduce and transform the imagination of the dedicated listener. Luc Ferrari will listen from above, that’s for sure.

FRIDAY 8 JANUARY start 20.30 ends with the last applause

DAS KLEINE FIELD RECORDINGS FESTIVAL
With
Satoshi Morita
DJ Dog
Will Gresson
Kate Donovan&Ryan Hardman
Anton Mobin

Flughafenstrasse 38
U8 Boddinstrasse
Or
U7 Rathaus Neukölln

8. January

opening of an exhibition

and after, das kleine field recordings festival

End of Part one

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part two starts on 8. January 2010

26. November … AKTION!!! & Destroy your Acoustic Guitar

Vienna is known for its Wiener Wurst, Wiener Blut, Wiener Melange, Wiener Schnitzel, Wiener Schule, Wiener Aktionusmus and of course a direct result of Wiener Aktionism: The Wiener Sängerknaben, a group of boy singers with extreme highpitched voices, that came into existence after a performance with Wiener Würstchen at a Wiener Schule that involved a lot of Wiener Blut. The visitors to tonights evening don’t have to fear dismembering processes or other rituals in which beheaded Beethovens get mixed up with beheaded chicken. I can give a No Blood Guarantee to everyone. But I cannot guarantee lack of anti-intelectual intelectualism. Vienna has its kaffeehauses, not because of its uncountable ways to prepare coffee, but because of the eclecticist quality of their visitors. Okay, start mumbling. The libretto of Michael Pinter (cousin to nobelprice winner Harold) is down below the picture.

“Agro-Drugs, Agro-Drugs-reMIxes und/oder die inverse Induktion 2009

von MI (aka Michael Pinter-Koschell)

‘Tenöre gibt`s nur auf Schallplatten, und die sind alle tot.’

aus: Das letzte Lokal, Helmut Qualtinger, Georg Müller Verlag, 1978

Eine ethnografische Fiktion berichtet von den seltsamen Todesritualen eines unbekannten Volkes, das mit der Beerdigung eines Stammesangehörigen zugleich auch ein Wort ihrer Sprache mitbeerdigt.

Bei einer der nächsten Gelegenheiten dieser Art wünsche ich mir die Beerdigung des Ausdrucks ‘Digitalisierung’ respektive ‘Musikalisierung’. Denn was meinen diese Begriffe? Gewöhnlich wird damit alles und nichts umschrieben, zumeist umgeben vom Nimbus des ‘technoiden 21. Jahrhunderts, der absoluten technischen Machbarkeit in der Zukunft’ et al – ‘Digitalisierung’ gleichsam verinnerlicht als die digitale Kraft schlechthin – einen Rang, den dieser Begriff, wenn er ihn jemals besaß, in den letzten Jahrzehnten nahezu restlos verspielte. Zu einem Nimbus gehört stets auch Mystifikation – eine rätselhafte Verklärung, die in diesem Zusammenhang diverse Spielarten digitaler Kunst begleitet, wenn sie ihre Aktualität aus ihrer Präsenz an jedem Ort und zu jeder Zeit herleitet – und es gehört zu den Selbstinszenierungen dieser Apparatur, in litaneihafter Selbstreferenz auf diese Präsenz überall und jederzeit eigens hinzuweisen. Digitale Kunst in diesem Sinne ein Phantom, ein digitales Trugbild?

Bezeichnend auch, dass oft das Ganze ‘digital’ genannt und im einzelnen von komplexen digitalen Strukturen gesprochen wird, doch ist Totalität weder ein fassbarer Begriff noch eine bestimmbare Form und verweigert sich ihrer Analysierbarkeit.

Indem ‘digitale Kunst’ etwas zeigt, vorführt oder repräsentiert, verbirgt und verdeckt sie zugleich das gesamte Feld ihrer Herkunft und Produktionsbedingungen, sei es der Konzern hinter einem Computersystem, die Hardware eines Computers, die Kanäle, die Mechanismen der Verbreitung und Übertragung und dergleichen. Relevant ist hier einzig die Konfrontation mit digitaler Kunst/elektronischer Musik.

‘Ist es das hohle Klingen von mir selbst, was ich höre?’

aus: Der Scheiszhaufen, Michael Pinter-Koschell

Mein Zugang zu elektronischer Musik hat etwas von einer digitalen Meta-Ironie. Aus technologisch-informationstheoretischer Sicht könnte man meine elektronische Musik als technische Optimierung aller Störquellen bezeichnen. Die eigentliche Aufgabe besteht darin, Hard- und Softwarefehler in Prozessen nicht nur audiovisuell umzusetzen, sondern sie vor allem reproduzierbar zu machen. Störungen – egal ob zufälliger oder gewollter Natur – werden zunächst als Systembestandteile affirmiert und auf ihre Regellosigkeit, ihre Unvorhersehbarkeit, ihren Desinformationsgehalt und/oder ihre Möglichkeiten zur Abstraktion untersucht. Erzeugt werden gewissermaßen dekonstruierte Fehlercodes,

die niemals zu knacken sind. Es sind verstörende Befunde von digitalen Systemen, die auch auf die Unmöglichkeit verweisen, die wahre Struktur des Digitalen zu erfassen. Sie unterliegen in dieser Formulierung selbst der Dialektik dessen, was sie hör- und sichtbar zu machen suchen. Was dargestellt wird, stellt sich selbst außer Frage; ihre Notwendigkeit versteht sich sozusagen von selbst, weil die Selbstreferenz der Fehlercodes ihren eigenen Grund kreiert – sie schaffen in einem Zug mit ihrer Realität auch ihre Legitimität. In meinen aktuellen Arbeiten beschäftige ich mich damit, was ich als inverse Induktion bezeichne.

Dass auch dieser Begriff sich jeglicher Analysierbarkeit entzieht,

versteht sich von selbst.”

Are you still here?

Andre Castro/Martin Aaserud you might have met at NK, where they give a hand at the workshops. But one of them is also very active on street level. Probably he gave you a flyer to their show in person. Why don’t you come then? They will use an acoustic guitar, and especcially this acoustic guitar has a nice story to it:

“Annemarie grew up in a very religious home with piano and as 10-yearold she
was sent to piano classes. Quickly she got tired of the strict piano teacher
and two years later she grabbed her sisters old guitar to make melodies for
the songs she had started to write.”

 

Thursday 26 November start 20.45 ends before the world does

MI (aka Michael Pinter-Koschell)

Andre Castro/Martin Aaserud

Flughafenstrasse 38

U8 Boddinstrasse

U7 Rathaus Neukölln

 

 

25. November…..CELEBRATE!!!

Now, here I was talking to Steve, while the party was riding high on luminescent realities worth of SHAFT filmset details. TomTomClub, Poodles and International Rescue completed the picture. It was all so nice. Sorry, no, I am really sorry you missed it. But, there will be another chance, because this wednesday’s evening comes from the same jar of pickled onions currently holding snippets of paper, screws,rare bavarian beer taps and watercolors. The question was, what they sound like, and his first answer reminded me to put up a signAnd when I asked again, while every one around us was discussing favourite colors like ‘wild pink’ or “see through red”, I got an answer holding a lot of different beats, served with a grin, which made me think of our neighbors, tapdance and mole scaring devices…but honestly boombox beams better beatsThen I gave up and asked him to be my ghost writer. Word to Steven Warwick:

 

“Hi Rinus,

Here’s how i advertised it:
M AX NOI MACH
Bafflingly unique project of Rob Francisco from Philadelphia (of RUBBED RAW (w/DJ Dogdick/ ANGELDUST (w/Nate Davis)). Imagine last man at the bar lo brow performance art over crude baltimore beats and vocal babble and stand up comedy?
yeah exactly!

SYNT.TOFS
NY crude. boombox psychedelic via in the red club beats and Paper Rad worthy keyboards.

YITB
weird EBM project from France.”

Steve himself will come to shuffle through his collection of songs.

 

And please remind, This evening is not dedicated to art, experiments or other insults to good taste.

We are here to celebrate

 

Wednesday 25 November starts 20.00 ends as well

M AX NOI MACH
SYNT.TOFS
YITB

DJ HEATSICK

Flughafenstrasse 38

U8 Boddinstrasse

U7 Rathaus Neukölln

23. November, No Emeralds, But other Jewels shining like Kraut

The name Emeralds did ring some bells here in the shop. ” Really..then you will have two hundred people to come and see it..”So I announced Emeralds in the programme. But then I got a mail. Emeralds are three persons. The third one is in Cleveland. Yeah, then it will be different to them. Or not. Maybe Emerald fans are like their mums and dads to whom it doesn’t matter to see Barry Gibb, when they meant to see the BeeGees. Then..those two hundred Americans will come, unless they prefer to spend a checkmaileveningatStarbucks. You will see and hear Steve Hauschildt in one corner with his synthesizers. Mark McGuire will play his guitar in the front room, and one half of birds of delay, Heatsick will also find a space to play his songs of desire and dustroads. If you normally go out in groups, then here is your chance to make a split appearance. Monday 23. November, start 20.30 ends before the week is over: Steve Hauschildt, Mark McGuire, Heatsick Flughafenstrasse 38 U8 Boddinstrasse U7 Rathaus Neukölln

The next days of your life will soon be gone: 19-21 November

On Thursday 19th November a duo from Brazil will spread out the contents of their suitcases on the floor. Bizarre, common, colourful and joyous objects will be animated and start playing songs that make your bratwurst taste better. I wondered how this strange kind of music had come to their part of the world, to Brazil, a country where dancing and playing football seem to be the same kind of thing… mmm, let’s see, I used to be good at this: I mean, how would their sound relate to Brazilian football? In short, I would say, the audience move to the rhythms all masses move to, and that is easily digestible beats. The Brazilian football, full of tricks and unexpected moments, with its short cuts and long runs, its dribbling and through passes can’t be written down and translated to music in one long score that you could hand over to Gilberto Gil:” sing this, please.” It is way more complex and diverse. It is more close to the carnival of sounds that you can expect from Koll Witz’s performance.  

Along side Koll Witz, a young Italian duo will play. You have to listen to the samples for yourself. One part of them has chosen the name: “Mornings,” a moment of the day filled with splendour and mystery, a great name in fact, simple and yet so full of expectation. Just come, wait for the silence, and then hear what will happen. Together they are Bloodythings/Mornings.

Friday 20th November’s concert, one part of it, is a direct result of the day that thirteen Berlin based improvisers scared our neighbours, and proved that they could not play individually alone together. They looked for each others company in order to conduct some pagan ritual. Or maybe they answered to an unwritten improv law which says, we are here together with our instruments, so now we must make some noise together just for the sake of it. Claudia Risch was there because she thought she would hear something unheard before, because there were such good musicians. ‘Such good musicians’ don’t guarantee you get ‘such good music’ when they come together. Those were my words. From experience I also know that if you put Berlin Improv musicians together you get music for a very few who are able to distinguish the subtleties. Those listeners and players are like scholars who studied the same text over and over again, only to find out variations to interpretations that don’t differ too much from the interpretations of the variations heard before. Yes, I am not a fan. And that is why I am glad that Ignaz Schick, who follows different ways to decode our beloved cataclysms, and his guest, Japanese percussionist Seijiro Murayama share the evening with Claudia Risch’s improv/new music trio. I don’t expect a battle of tastes. I do expect diversities firmly rooted in sincerity. Experiencing the performances will be like travelling from one city to another. On a rather cheap ticket…

The arrival of Alexei Borisov and Olga Nosova on Saturday 21st November brings images and desires of days long gone. These days the computer screen has replaced the face of a bad tempered boss. It is impossible to leave the room without permission. Boredom no longer lures in the soon to be forgotten hours of the day. Laziness is a feeling, not a state of mind; it can materialize itself in a horizontal position on a couch as soft as a lover. The book title says ‘ The Gift.’ The novel is as heavy as a brick, describes the life of Russian immigrants in Berlin Charlottenburg in the nineteen twenties. Now hear a Russian voice. Now hear sounds. Time flies. “Yes, we come and we will do something poetic,” Alexei wrote to me. I have heard some of his works. I should have heard it coming out of an open window, when I walked Rue Morgue in Paris on the day I’d heard Tarkovsky had died.

In a possible world the Russian film maker would have left the remains of a set in the faraway corner of Bavarian territory: a little cabin close to the Czechoslovakian border. Albert Plank found this shelter. The air was still full of cold war signals back then; He built transmitters and receivers. It took him years. In the end the hut looked like the setting of a new film by Tarkovsky, but by then the Soviet Union didn’t exist anymore, the air was filled with different noises, and the film maker had died. Nowadays Albert’s studio is transportable. He will set it up at our space. And then he will receive and transmit.

19. November start 20.45, Koll Witz, + Bloodythings&Mornings

20. November start 20.30, Alexander Frangenheim db, Thorsten Bloedhorn g, Claudia Risch sax, fl + Ignaz Schick/Seijiro Murayama

21. November start 20.39, Albert Plank Road Show, Alexei Borisov+Olga Nosova