How to make a record out of a yellow tub / water music

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How to make a record out of a yellow tub / Wassermusik or, for short, Wassermusik was the name of a performance by the groups Einstürzende Neubauten and Die Tödliche Doris , which took place on May 29, 1982 in the Berlin club RISIKO .

Concept and preparation

The aim of the performance was to create “a contemporary, performative equivalent” to the water music by Georg Friedrich Händel . In a preliminary meeting, the participants shared their roles with one another, with the exception of Blixa Bargeld , who reserved a spontaneous reaction to the situation. All roles revolved around the motif "water". In addition to Blixa Bargeld, Alexander von Borsig and Andrew Unruh from Einstürzende Neubauten and Wolfgang Müller , Dagmar Dimitroff and Nikolaus Utermöhlen , Bettina Scheeder and Brigitta Bauer (the owners of the Scheederbauer fashion store) and Netty (?) Took part in the performance at the invitation of the Deadly Doris . The location was RISIKO, a legendary Berlin bar in the early 1980s where Blixa Bargeld worked. On the walls of the bar there were two A4-size notes with instructions on “How to make a record out of a yellow tub”.

course

All nine participants entered the back room of the RISIKO at the same time. The performance was opened by Alexander von Borsig, who used the tip of a fire hose as a wind instrument to give the starting signal. Andrew Unruh had wrapped himself in a costume made of scraps of cloth and cords, got into a white enameled bathtub and wallowed in it, while Wolfgang Müller, only wearing a T-shirt, got into a small yellow plastic tub and scrubbed his back. Nikolaus Utermöhlen filled the large tub with water from the front room and then poured it into Müller's small plastic tub.

Scheeder, Bauer and Netty had disguised themselves as mermaids , wearing bikini tops made from clods or flounder and bottoms made from wire mesh and paper mache, which represented a fish tail. On their heads they wore a partly artificial, partly natural flower arrangement. After walking across the room, the mermaids gathered on a wall and posed on a folding ladder. From there they began to throw scraps of fish at the audience, which in turn threw them back. Meanwhile, Blixa Bargeld whispered mysterious formulas to viewers.

At the end, Bauer lifted the bathing miller out of the small tub and carried him forward. Unruh took off his costume and dried himself off while Handel's water music was played.

Documents

In 2002 a 1 minute and 21 seconds long sound document of the performance was published on the CD “Kinderringellreihen Für Wahren Toren Des Graal” by the deadly Doris. In 2007 a video by Gustav-Adolf Schroeder was found in a cellar in southern Germany, which documented the beginning and end of the performance in a film of almost 9 minutes. After a restoration in the laboratory for antiquated video systems of the Center for Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe, the digitized version was published in 2014 as part of a documentation edited by Wolfgang Müller in an edition of 75 copies.

literature

  • Wolfgang Müller : Subculture West Berlin 1979–1989 . Freizeit (=  Fundus books . Volume 203 ). Philo Fine Arts, Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-86572-671-1 (quoted from: Tageszeitung taz , Berlin local , December 29, 2012, pp. 44–45).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ tip editor: A Berlin legend: The "risk". In: tip Berlin. May 2, 2011, accessed March 7, 2015 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Wolfgang Müller (Ed.): Wassermusik (=  electronic gel ). Hybriden-Verlag, Berlin 2014, DNB 1059423898 (document of a performance by members of the groups Die Tödliche Doris and Einstürzende Neubauten, recorded on video by Gustav-Adolf Schroeder on May 29, 1982 in the local risk, West Berlin. Edition with DVD).