Exhibition: “Progress as a promise” in Berlin
who one Exhibition above industrial photography has in front of him, then also one about industrial photography in the system comparison of GDR and FRG, is inwardly perhaps prepared for the sex appeal of company newspapers and company brochures. But not necessarily on naked muscle men and posing mannequins. Exactly with that they surprise you now in the German Historical Museum Berlin rather casually.
It’s really spectacular: Not only in the photo, even in the film you can see coal miners stripped down to their work boots, who stage themselves in the shaft with their tools, as if there were practically queer fetish cellars under the Ruhr area. The heat underground explains a lot, but not everything. The GDR miner Adolf Hennecke is still wearing trousers in the picture that has become famous, which shows him shirtless while “Hennecken”, i.e. during his propaganda special shift to overfulfill the plan, which many in the country expressly found to be unattractive because it increasing the norm numbers.
“Photomodel in the Dederon production area”, a picture by Hellmut Opitz from the GDR, is more bizarre than effective in advertising – as is “Photomodel in the Dralon factory” of Bayer AG, FRG, by Max Jacoby. On the one hand, the idea of presenting fashion where it is made is obvious. On the other hand, food is rarely photographed in the slaughterhouse. And in the aestheticization of technology, cleanliness and steel glowing red in the sunset, an advertising impetus makes itself felt. Sometimes customers and the public are courted, sometimes potential personnel: “Steel is a man’s business” promised a poster to future apprentices at VEB Rohrkombinat Freital.
It is not only with such details that an exhibition of industrial photography in both Germanys really has something eminently historical today. Many of the industrial sites shown here no longer exist, especially those in the east. However, since deindustrialization is now also an issue in the West, this euphoric, factual photography of progress, of all things, now takes on a romantic melancholy – second surprise – today (until 29.5.). Peter Richter
Pop: The Artist Dilla
“I was lost, but with you I’m somehow found”: the musician Dilla.
(Photo: Tramp Booking)
The insanely low proportion of women in the banknote processing industry is often and rightly complained about – that it really isn’t because of the offspring, can be checked on the current tour of the artist Dilla. Dilla writes, sings and produces her own songs and plays a number of instruments. The result is pop, who isn’t that interested in genre boundaries and whose lyrics also have a lush green border, it often goes back and forth between German and English. So Dilla rhymes in “Girls”, the just released skate punk and love song hit: “I was lost, but with you I’m kind of found / trust issues, but I can kind of trust you.” And in the chorus: “You’re not just a toy boy to me / You’re the reason why I’ll stay faithful someday.” really awesome! Cornelius Pollmer
Literature: Memoirs by Andreas Dorau
A returnable bottle goes wrong – in “The Woman with the Arm”, published by Galiani Berlin.
(Photo: Galiani)
Among the German pop heroes, Andreas “Fred vom Jupiter” Dorau is the tirelessly unsuspecting eccentric with a tie under his tank top and a fear of the stage. Like no one else, he masters the art of still allowing every failure a friendly entrance, the inadvertent sublimity of futility. With the best-selling author and Element of Crime-Singer Sven Regener, the veteran of Gaga electropop has now written the second part of his memoirs: “The woman with the arm” (Galiani Berlin). Last week they were on a reading tour in Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich. Like the predecessor “Trouble with Immortality”, the book is full of strange ideas, absurd experiences and bizarre stories like that of Music video “bottle deposit”. It is about a returnable bottle “that flees from its narrow bourgeois everyday life, gets off the rails and almost breaks”. Jens Christian Rabe
Classic: Mozart and Paisiello
“Mozart: Requiem – Paisiello: Messe pour le sacre de Napoléon” is published by Alpha Classics.
(Photo: Alpha Classics)
The first surprise is an introit by Niccolò Jommelli, prefaced by original sound expert Julien Chauvin with Mozart’s Requiem. If the old-fashioned soloists didn’t spoil the outstanding overall impression of the orchestra and choir, this recording – like the one by Teodor Currentzis from 2010 – would be a real rediscovery of the much-performed work. The second surprise is revealed in the magnificent Coronation Mass for Napoleon by the Neapolitan Giovanni Paisiello. He was 16 years older than Mozart and often very close to him not only in the orchestral sound, but also in the voice leading of the soloists and the shaping of the choral interjections. His biography also shows parallels in his dependence on the game of changing powers. In the end, the former big earner was financially ruined. Helmut Mauro
Podcast: Next Year in Moscow
The podcast “Next Year in Moscow” traces the new generation of Russian exiles.
(Photo: The Economist)
From next year Marina Davydova will act as head of drama at the Salzburg Festival – certainly an attractive task, the theater maker, playwright and journalist would certainly have considered such a commitment in Austria even in normal times. But it goes without saying that these are not normal times, especially not for artists who have engaged in cultural exchange between Russia and the West in recent years. Davydova describes the exact circumstances of her hasty flight from Russia in February 2022 in the English-language version, which is well worth listening to podcast “Next Year in Moscow” of the news magazine economist.
On February 24, she published a petition that failed to please Vladimir Putin. The letter, which was soon supported by many artists, theater people and intellectuals, stated that the President should stop this terrible war immediately. In the hustle and bustle of the following days, she almost forgot about the petition, says Davydova, while she was waiting at home for an interview with an Austrian film team shortly afterwards. “What does that mean, what does that mean on your door?” the journalists would have asked when she opened it – and only then did Davydova see a sign that was new at the time and now notorious: A “Z” had been painted on the door, and the theater maker was clear: “I have to leave my country. For a long time. Maybe forever.”
It’s over for his podcast Russia was born in Great Britain and was the Moscow correspondent for many years economist, Arkady Ostrovsky, traveled through Europe and Asia. He tracked down the new generation of Russian exiles who are currently busy building new livelihoods for their future abroad: as the founder of a Russian-Ukrainian bookstore in Istanbul, for example, as the operator of independent media platforms in the Baltic States, as the head of drama in Salzburg, etc Marina Davydova. At the same time, Ostrovsky’s interlocutors are trying to retrospectively reassure themselves of their position in Putin’s system: Have we done enough? Did we withdraw into private life too soon? The self-doubt is great, the self-analysis hard. Moritz Baumsteiger
