Carsten Nicolai, bausatz noto ∞, 1998/2015, exhibition perspective “Damaged Songs Vol. 2”, Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, 17.12.2022-14.5.2023 © Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Thomas Bruns
Vinyl is right here to remain this we now know. Income are soaring and document shops believe nothing of inquiring (gulp) £30 a pop for an album. But it wasn’t often this way. West Berliner Ursula Block was prescient in recognizing the risk to vinyl from other technologies. From 1981 to 2014 she ran a record shop and gallery termed gelbe MUSIK, (‘Yellow Music’) in sleepy, bourgeois Wilmersdorf, much from the techno hipsters in Mitte and the punky anarchists of Kreuzberg.
In the enamel of the enlargement in CD gross sales, 1989, Block established up a hugely productive travelling exhibition known as ‘Broken Songs. Artists’ Recordworks’. This highlighted file covers produced by artists as original functions seem making objects books and publications that contained a record, and data produced by visual artists on their own. Above thirty decades afterwards she now provides us an expanded Quantity 2, a study of around 700 art-linked records arranged in 10 sections. If which is not ample of a thrill there’s also seem operates from the National Gallery’s have superb assortment.
The operates here fill a lengthy extension of the gallery area it feels like a complete mile of rooms. We start off with a get the job done that was particularly designed for the gallery back again in 1998: gelbe MUSIK by Hans Peter Kuhn. Block’s shop’s title comes from a Wassily Kandinsky estimate. The artist, like Messiaen and Scriabin, was fascinated by synaesthesia: a state where by just one sensory pathway (e.g. colour eyesight) leads to involuntary experiences in a further, these as seem. There is a huge photograph of the shop/gallery place at night time, an inviting sight with its home windows lit up an evocative brilliant yellow. We listen to intriguing sounds like those designed by the clunking sling puck games you get in amusement arcades.
On the partitions of this to start with room we also see album handles from Eno’s Discreet sequence: Bryars, Nyman, Toop/Eastley, and the rest. Fittingly the collection is mounted with obsessive precision, like a minimalist set up by Donald Judd. In offended contrast to this kind of relaxed there’s a deal with on the adjoining wall showing a imply William Burroughs he’s donning a Stetson and he’s armed with a rifle. He stands with John Giorno. And here’s Giorno yet again on a different go over, this time with Glenn Branca, evident out at us on a disc entitled Who Are You Staring At?
Jean Dubuffet, Musical Ordeals, 1973© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / id3d-berlin
The second space characteristics albums and covers by canonical artists these types of as Miró and Picasso: look at the latter’s affordable line portrait of Satie on a piano recording by Aldo Ciccolini. Here much too we obtain Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonate as performed by Jaap Blonk. Somewhere else Piotr Nathan has slice up vinyl information into little snippets to variety Snowflakes (1988–89), a 10 by 10 piece grid of plastic slivers that appears to be from a length like Japanese calligraphy framed by the pristine white partitions.
At this level on the tour you’re specified a set of headphones and an Apple iphone. Simple recommendations assistance you to position the camera at codes beside the beneficial wall texts and then hear in to a assortment of numerous of the albums. I tune in to Emeka Ogboh and, unseen, jig away like a prat. There is an set up perform in this article, as well: Nam June Paik’s Tv-DG (1993) which has a sculpture of Nipper, the HMV canine, staring at his individual impression on a small Television set display as he’s filmed by a little camera sitting down along with.
The soundtrack now switches to Yoko Ono screeching away as she performs ‘Don’t Fret Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Searching for a Hand in the Snow)’ from 1971 only to settle, click, with the future function alongside: a tranquil sequence from Hanne Darboven’s album Der Mond ist Aufgegangen identified as ‘Vierjahreszeiten 1981/82. Opus 7’. In a nearby wall cabinet there is some unadorned vinyl to look at. Here’s Christian Marclay’s Untitled (Record Without the need of a Groove) (1987) that is exactly what it suggests it is. Up coming door to this is a black frisbee created to look like a vinyl file, a generally amusing operate by David Shrigley identified as merely: I gather information, I am obsessed with them (2012).
Schallplattensammlung des Hamburger Bahnhof — Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, 2019 Ankauf der Sammlung Damaged Audio von Ursula Block, erworben mit Hilfe der Ernst von Siemens#) Musikstiftung und der Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung sowie 2022 erworben durch die Freunde|der Nationalgalerie, © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Thomas Bruns
The future place features discipline recordings, sound collages from rural and urban resources, and so we get Emeka Ogboh all over again. Berlin loves Ogboh he’s even got a sculptural perform on the roof of the recently restored palace in the centre of the city. There are also illustrations in this space of maximal and minimum music’s going from the aforementioned Glenn Branca and his ‘Lesson No. 1’ then settling down to the a lot more serene Steve Reich. Here way too are audio sculptures, collages as with Ferdinand Kriwet’s Hörtexte – Radiotexts (2007) that put up-dates Holger Czukay’s improvements but pre-dates Jan Jelinek’s experiments with radio and Television transmissions. Nearby are examples of OpArt on covers: Bridget Riley, of training course, and Victor Vasarely’s operate for Xenakis’ LP sleeves. The headphones now blare Kriwet’s voices in a cacophony of chatter.
Peace returns yet again with a beautiful wall-mounted set up by Christina Kubisch referred to as The True and the Phony (1992) that appears, from the stop of the space, like an art deco flower arrangement. Near to that we see that the ‘flowers’ are in fact twelve grinding discs, their surfaces lined with fluorescent blue pigment the cables to these are the stems. Each disc can make a quietly soothing metallic sound. Bliss.
Improved-recognised imagery comes future up with a sequence of well known handles by Raymond Pettibon for bands like Black Flag and Sonic Youth. The latter also have 4 of their classics mounted with designs taken from operate by Gerhard Richter (Daydream Nation), Mike Kelley (Filthy), William Burroughs again (NYC Ghosts and Bouquets) and Richard Prince (Sonic Nurse).
No doubt you are going to obtain some of your very own particular favorite handles somewhere here. For me these integrated Cosima von Bonin’s designs for the Moritz von Oswald Trio, a sequence that consists of a rainbow-colored rolling pin, a femur patterned with the Irish tricolour, and an orange and white toy V2 rocket. Then there is Warhol’s amazing Kodachrome sequence for John Cale’s The Academy in Peril album from 1972 and Hipgnosis’ fantastically droll deal with textual content that parodies history corporation manipulation and capitalist mores for XTC’s Go 2.
Unsurprisingly German pop music features in nonetheless one more place with Chicks on Velocity, To Rococo Rot, Roman Flügel, and Alva Noto all existing and correct. Albums produced by the Vinyl Factory are inventoried, such as artworks by the likes of Thomas Need. A part of addresses from the more immediate previous also feature in the subsequent to final space as ‘Broken Audio Now’: this contains Martin Creed’s gurning mug alongside with other performs by Jeremy Deller, Mark Leckey, Anne Imhof, and the superb Michaela Melián from Monika Enterprises. Seeing Rodney Graham posing as a singer-songwriter reminds us of the disappointment of his current demise. Close by there is one more variety of shocker altogether as Joseph Beuys performs Sonne statt Reagan (1982) on a Tv pop show with what appears to be the German Bananarama.
Two Scottish artists dependent listed here in Berlin have installations: Susan Philipsz and Douglas Gordon. The latter’s Douglas Gordon Sings the Greatest of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground (For Bas Jan Ader) (1993) sees the artist visualised on a Tv set established. He’s lying on the flooring listening to music from Transformer by way of his headphones. You can pay attention in to him with a further pair of headphones as he gamely handles ‘Perfect Day’. The show finishes powerfully with Philipsz’s poignant War Ruined Musical Devices (Shellac) (2015) which characteristics the Previous Publish as played by the real bugle that sounded the Charge of the Light Brigade along with a tuba, a flute, a clarinet, a trumpet, and a saxophone that all survived war.
Damaged Tunes Vol. 2 is both of those hugely entertaining and hugely instructive, an introduction to many other worlds of differing music’s, distinct visions. Take a trip over!
Damaged New music Vol. 2. 70 Yrs of Records and Audio Works by Artists is on at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin until eventually 14 May perhaps 2023