Martin Büsser

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Martin Büsser (2009)

Martin Büsser (* February 12, 1968 - September 23, 2010 ) was a German author and publisher with a focus on pop culture .

Life

Büsser studied comparative literature , art history and theater studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz . In the 1980s and 1990s, he was the punk - and hardcore - Fanzine Zap worked for which he led several interviews, including with Henry Rollins , Courtney Love , the Butthole Surfers , Half Japanese , Sonic Youth , the The Flaming Lips and Nirvana . He caused numerous debates within the hardcore punk movement because he did not accept what he believed to be the narrow-minded musical taste of the scene, but also wrote about artists such as Heiner Goebbels and John Zorn .

From the mid-1990s he worked as a freelance journalist with a focus on pop culture , music , film , gender studies and contemporary art, including for concrete , the Süddeutsche Zeitung , Die Wochenzeitung , Intro , Jazzthetik and Emma . He was the co-founder and editor of the book series testcard  - Contributions to Pop History, which has been published by Valve Verlag in Mainz since 1995 . With his work as an editor, author and journalist, Büsser was one of the last representatives of the so-called pop left in Germany. a. von Diedrich Diederichsen , Jutta Koether and Dietmar Dath subject pop culture to an emancipatory left-wing criticism. The focus of his analyzes, however, was not “popular” (in the sense of: mass-culturally received) phenomena, but avant-garde fringes of music and film, which are only still labeled with the term pop because they are not part of the traditional (high) cultural scene come from. Although close to the critical theory, Büsser campaigned in numerous publications to do away with the traditional separation of "E" and "U" culture, as numerous art / music classified as "U" (e.g. bands such as Black Dice , Japanther, Fuck Buttons) are completely in the tradition of modernist-avant-garde concepts and z. B. are closer to John Cage than anything that has been understood and received under pop since the 1990s.

Büsser also worked as an editor and co-publisher for Ventil Verlag. He worked on several anthologies, including Kursbuch Jugendkultur (ed. Von SpoKK, 1997), Pop und Mythos (ed. Von Heinz Geuen and Michael Rappe, 2001) and the text + criticism special volume: Pop-Literatur (ed. Von Heinz Ludwig Arnold and Jörgen Schäfer, 2003). He also worked on the New Funkkolleg Popkultur of the Hessischer Rundfunk in 1998. In 2005 he took part in the book CD project I Can't Relax in Germany against pop nationalism in Germany. Büsser published the Trikont CD Sidewalk Songs & City Stories in 2007 with a selection of contemporary songwriters from LoFi- Underground to Anti-Folk . Büsser was instrumental in making the anti-folk scene known in Germany. Before Kimya Dawson became known for her soundtrack for the film Juno , he drew attention to the importance of this music in the sense of a new, pop-cultural sentiment Post-9/11 through his book and numerous newspaper articles, whereupon the New York Times noted that Antifolk was already was honored with its own book in Germany, but is still completely unknown in its own city.

In recent years, Büsser's work has focused on topics from the field of gender and queer studies , including as editor of the “Sex” edition of testcard (2008). In 2009 his graphic novel The Boy Next Door was published by Verbrecher Verlag . It is about a boy who grew up in the 1970s as the son of two top terrorists in Germany and discovered his gay identity while his parents were busy hiding. Posthumously the reader Forever Pop was published by Ventil Verlag in 2018 . Texts, articles and reviews from two decades with important texts by Büsser, edited by Jonas Engelmann .

Büsser was the singer (spoken word) and lyricist of the band Pechsaftha , who released their last album Dick in Frisko in July 2007 . He was also responsible for the artwork. Other members of the band were Junge von EA80 and musicians from “Klotzs” and “grafzahl”.

On September 23, 2010, he died of cancer.

Works

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ testcard , No. 17, 2008
  2. ↑ Julian Weber: Fine cream self-irony. In: daily newspaper . February 12, 2018, p. 16.
personal data
SURNAME Büsser, Martin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German author and publisher
DATE OF BIRTH February 12, 1968
PLACE OF BIRTH Mainz
DATE OF DEATH September 23, 2010