Georg Klein (composer)

Georg Klein (born March 1, 1964 in Öhringen ) is a German composer , sound and media artist . The artist has lived mainly in Berlin since 1987, at times in Rome, Los Angeles and Istanbul.

Interactive sound-video-installation TRASA , simultaneously in Warsaw and Berlin

life and work

Georg Klein began composing as a child. He studied electrical engineering / sound engineering and communication science at the Technical Universities of Munich and Berlin , and later philosophy of religion and comparative musicology at the Free University of Berlin . He worked for three years in a research project on the visualization of spoken language for the deaf, before turning entirely to composition and art in 1996 and making his first musical publication with the film music amor fati (Berlin International Film Festival, 1997). He then worked on electronic composition at the Electronic Studio of the TU Berlin and received the second prize at the International Gustav Mahler Composition Prize Austria in 1999 for his ensemble piece Li .. und die Erde I + II , which is designed with a singing voice and phrase sampler. With the interactive sound installation transition (2001) he turned to the public space as a venue and developed his concept of a "local sound". This was followed in 2002 by the local sound Marl Mitte , which was awarded the German Sound Art Prize. In 2003 he integrated the medium of video for the first time in his work Imperial News in the Red City Hall of Berlin, which deals with the audio-visual processing of (war) news on television.

As chairman of the Berlin Society for New Music (BGNM) from 2001 to 2005, he curated and organized series of discussions and concerts ( music | politics, reflex zones, migration, video concerts ). In 2003, together with Julia Gerlach, he founded the KlangQuadrat agency - office for sound and media art berlin for the production and organization of art projects at home and abroad. He became internationally known with the installation TRASA warsawa-berlin , which linked two locations in Berlin and Warsaw via a live stream . From 2005 he developed dialogue-oriented installations in public spaces together with the Swiss artist Steffi Weismann ( pick up Bern 2005, takeaway sonambiente Berlin 2006). In 2006 he was one of the scholarship recipients of the German Academy in Rome and received the Media Space Prize of the city of Marl. The provocative work turmlaute.2: Wachturm / Watch Tower as part of the MaerzMusik festival of the Berliner Festspiele 2007 in the former GDR border watchtower Schlesischer Busch triggered strong audience reactions and received wide media coverage. In the same year he realized a mobile installation in a tram in Dresden meta.stasen ( European Center for the Arts Hellerau ), which addresses the ideology of unrestrained growth and connects it with natural growth processes and their pathological outgrowths.

Interactive sound-video installation turmlaute.2 in a watchtower on the former Berlin Wall

In 2008 he realized the performance Venture Doll in supermarkets with Steffi Weismann in Los Angeles . On the media facade of O ₂ World Berlin , he presented his work Sonic Parole , which was also critical of consumption and which worked with pseudo-revolutionary advertising spells. With his two-part project Ramallah Tours in Israel, he continued his work with fakes in public space - with a Palestinian taxi in Israel that refers to a fictional travel agency and offers trips from Israel to Ramallah. In 2010 he received the Berlin Senate Scholarship in Istanbul, where he presented his work Cuts and Creeds , a juxtaposition of Muslim suicide bombers and western gunmen. Also in Turkey he realized the mirror and sound installation mirrorsongs on the facade of a prison building in Sinop. His project tracing Godwin has been running since 2011 , which, with the participation of volunteers, creates a virtual trail of an illegal immigrant from Nigeria in Europe.

With his work GNADE , in which Klein used the word as an interactive sculpture in front of banks and a job center, the artist turned thematically more towards the economic conditions of globalized society, here with reference to the euro financial crisis. UNzuRECHT from 2013 addressed the exploitation of raw materials using the example of palm oil and the global speculation that goes with it. The 90-minute audio installation toposonie in the government district in Berlin-Mitte has been the subject of lobbyism since 2013. In the exhibition PCFS - Post Colonial Flagship Store in the MuseumsQuartier Wien curated in 2014 by Georg Klein and Sven Kalden , the neo-colonial strategies of the large business corporations reversed in a subversive-affirmative way and transferred their marketing methods to the exhibition.

In addition to the politically advanced art, Klein also produces more abstract, musical works, such as in his concert pieces DADAyama , sixis and loudspeakers and quiet speakers , in which technical and media feedback plays an important role (“Zeitlicher Spiegel”). In the concert installation Das Interactive Klavier from 2014, he also involves the audience in a participatory manner, in which a playful relationship is staged between them and the instrument. In 2015, Klein was awarded the Foreign Office's Dialogue Prize for his European Border Watch Organization project , a new edition of the turmlaute.2 project, which has been running since 2007 : Wachturm at the European Media Art Festival EMAF in Osnabrück. “Border and Migration” is the central theme in the following works such as Deep Difference Unit (Daegu, South Korea, 2016), Grünlisten (Gardens of the World, Berlin, 2017) and The Sound before Silence - Souvenirs from North Korea (Berlin, 2018 ).

Georg Klein has presented his way of working in numerous lectures and publications and discussed artistic strategies for how art and music can be effective in a political context. With the Errant Bodies group , founded in 2013 , he runs a project space for sound art in Berlin and organizes series of exhibitions and discussions. Continued as Errant Sound - Sound Art Project Space , the space received the Project Space Prize of the Berlin Senate in 2016 and curated the international Sound Art Festival Dystopie in Berlin in 2018 with Golo Föllmer. Since 2010 Georg Klein has also been a lecturer at various universities, and since 2013 he has been a regular lecturer at the University of the Arts Berlin (UdK Sound Studies / Studium Generale).

Work characteristics

Coming from the composition, Georg Klein has developed a diverse artistic practice in which he works with sound, video, text and photography. Since 2001, the artist has been represented mainly with site-specific installations in public space and is developing an individual sound art concept and media concepts for interactivity and participation of his audience. His artistic approach consists in developing a condensed situation . The starting point is the research on a place or a situation, whose conflict situation he works out and artistically implements in the interplay of found material and the social situation. The theme of the border and its crossing play a special role, both in terms of content and form, and relates to both the psychological inner space and the political outer space. With his site-specific installations, but also in his concert works and radio play-like sound walks, he challenges the perception of his audience in an irritating way, on the border between art and reality.

In recent years, the artistic discussion of social power relations in politics and economics has been the focus of his artistic and curatorial work. His works sometimes triggered violent reactions from the public and the press, as they often cannot initially be clearly assigned to art.

Awards (selection)

Residence Scholarship Villa Aurora , Los Angeles , USA (2019)
Working grant from the Senate of Berlin, (2018)
Project space award for Errant Sound - Sound Art Project Space, Berlin (2016)
1st Prize Sound Art Competition IGA 2017, Berlin (2015)
Dialogue Prize of the Federal Foreign Office, European Media Art Festival EMAF Osnabrück (2015)
Curator in Residence, MuseumsQuartier Wien (2014)
Artist in Residence, Taranto, Italy (2013)
Artist in Residence, Schlossmediale Werdenberg, Switzerland (2013)
Artist in Residence, quartier21 / sound track, MuseumsQuartier Wien (2012)
Residency grant from the Berlin Senate in Istanbul at the BM Contemporary Art Center (2010)
Media Space Prize 2006, Sculpture Museum Marl / NRW (2006)
Residence grant Casa Baldi / Villa Massimo, Rome (2006)
German Sound Art Prize, Sculpture Museum Marl / NRW (2002)
Scholarship Schloss Wiepersdorf (2002)
Gustav Mahler Composition Prize Austria (1999)

Works (selection)

The Sound before Silence , sound video installation with objects (Meinblau, Berlin 2018)

Fog Zone, sound-video-installation in a fog room, DYSTOPIE - sound art festival, (water reservoir, Berlin 2018)

GRÜN HÖREN, permanent sound installation for the IGA (Gardens of the World, Berlin 2017)

Deep Difference Unit, loudspeaker sculpture Art Biennale Daegu (South Korea, 2016)

ungrounded, interactive audiovisual text installation (Hannover 2015)

no sound is illegal , interactive sound-text installation (Errant Bodies, Berlin 2015)

European Border Watch Organization, Installation, Performance, Fake Organization ( EMAF -Dialogpreis Osnabrück 2015)

Le Due Forze di Taranto / Two Powers of Taranto , photo-sound installation (Taranto, Italy 2014)

The Interactive Piano Concert Installation, Festival Klangwerkstatt, Sophiensaele (Berlin, 2014)

PCFS - Post Colonial Flagship Store , Exhibition MuseumsQuartier (Vienna, 2014)

toposonie :: spree Sound Walk with smartphone app (Berlin 2013)

UNzuRECHT A + B installation and performance, Schlossmediale Werdenberg (Switzerland, 2013)

GNADE intervention in the public space and media altar of grace (Nationaltheater Mannheim, 2012)

tracing Godwin Participative poster campaign, Europe, since 2011

Cuts and Creeds - Young, male assassins in an oriental-occidental perspective (Berlin / Istanbul, 2010)

RamallahTours (Umm El Fahem / Tel Aviv, exhibition "29km" 2009)

Talk to me (Konsumverein, Braunschweig 2009)

venture doll (Los Angeles 2008)

sonic parole (Berlin 2008)

meta.stasen (European Center for the Arts Hellerau, Dresden 2007)

turmlaute.1: Hunger Tower (Scholarship German Academy Rome Villa Massimo / Casa Baldi, 2006)

takeaway in cooperation with Steffi Weismann, sonambiente Intern. Sound Art Festival (Berlin 2006)

sixis for sextet with mirror sextet (Berlin 2006)

pickup - An intervention in a kiosk in cooperation with Steffi Weismann (Bern 2005)

TRASA warszawa-berlin, A bimedial contact space (Warsaw-Berlin 2004)

PeerGynt - incidental music / musical director, (Berliner Ensemble, director: Peter Zadek , 2004–2008)

wel-come (Wiepersdorf Castle)

Ortsklang Marl Mitte - blues blach - VielKunst.LittleWrbeit (German Sound Art Prize 2002)

transition - berlin junction (Philharmonie Berlin, 2001/2002)

Li .. and the earth I + II (Intern. Gustav Mahler Composition Prize 1999)

amor fati (film music, International Film Festival Berlin 1997)

Interactive sound installation transition in the sculpture berlin junction by Richard Serra

Literature (selection)

borderlines - On the border , thematic catalog of works Georg Klein, ed. S. Sanio, Kehrer-Verlag 2014, ISBN 978-3-86828-520-8 .
Rotation in the head , Georg Klein. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Issue 5-2014, Ed. Rolf W. Stoll, Schott Music 2014, ISSN 0945-6945 .
A tightrope walk between art and politics , Stefan Fricke / Georg Klein, In: MusikTexte, Heft 135, 2012, ISSN 0178-8884 .
City art as image, text, sound , Georg Klein Sprich mit mir , In: KUNSTFORUM International, Vol. 212: res publica 2.0, Ed. Paolo Bianchi, 2011.
Don't call it art! - On strategies of media art in public space , ISEA 2010 Ruhr Conference Proceedings, ed. J. Funke, A.Broeckmann et.al., Revolver Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86895-103-5 .
29km catalog art gallery Umm El Fahem, ed. Shlomit Baumann, German-Arabic-Hebrew, Jerusalem 2009
Klangstaetten | stadtklaenge catalog + DVD, Ed .: Allg. Konsumverein eV, German-English, Braunschweig 2009
Site-Sounds - On strategies of sound art in public space , In: Organized Sound 14/1, 2009 (Cambridge University Press), ISSN 1355-7718
German video art / media space competition 2006-2008 , catalog, ISBN 978-3-924790-80-6 .
sonambiente sound art festival catalog, 2006, ISBN 978-3-936636-93-2 .
The Making of Alex Catalog Urban Art Stories, 2005, ISBN 3-86588-127-0 .
transition - berlin junction, a sound situation catalog, 2001, ISBN 3-89727-178-8 .
German Sound Art Award Catalog, 2002, ISBN 3-924790-62-0 .
TRASA warszawa-berlin catalog, 2004, ISBN 3-936636-43-5 .
Electronic in New Music 2006, ISBN 978-3-936000-15-3 .
Barbara Barthelmes: Georg Klein or the artist as a local seer. In: Catalog TRASA warszawa-berlin. Kehrer-Verlag, Heidelberg, 2004, ISBN 3-936636-43-5 .
Sabine Sanio: in passing? art and memory In: text book transition, Pfau-Verlag (Saarbrücken, 2001), ISBN 3-89727-178-8 .