Unearthing the Music - User contributions [en]

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2018-09-05T15:39:29Z

Diogo:

'''IMPORTANT NOTICE: The UMCSEET project has been succeeded by ''UNEARTHING THE MUSIC: Sound and Creative Experimentation in Non-democratic Europe'', a new project which builds upon the materials and information gathered in order to bring further attention to the topic of experimentation and creative music in Non-democratic Europe. SOME OF THE LINKS CONTAINED IN THIS VERSION OF THE DATABASE MAY NO LONGER BE FUNCTIONAL. You can find all of the information contained in this wiki and more at [http://www.unearthingthemusic.eu www.unearthingthemusic.eu]'''

Unearthing The Music is a project that addresses the issue of freedom of expression - particularly in music - in the countries under the 'iron curtain', namely following the developments in those societies after 'de-stalinization' and the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956 Hungarian] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozna%C5%84_1956_protests Polish] revolts of 1956, leading up to the ´Prague Spring' and the following 'stagnation years' up until the fall of totalitarian regimes in the eastern bloc.

In the European countries that were subjected to the decade-long socialist regimes, jazz, electronics and avant-garde music acquired the aureole of martyrdom, the symbolism of underground resistance and of a quest towards democracy. The establishment of a 'second culture', one of unofficial music and art had an important role in the everyday life of these societies, but it still did not fully escape control. As a result, a great deal of this unofficial music remains undocumented, unspread, and deprived of context and signification in the larger history of European vanguard music, its influence in present-day creative scenes unknown.

By gathering music, videos, articles, testimonies, opinions and investigative studies on an online resource center, as well as promoting awareness and discussion over this issue, we aim to contribute to understanding to what extent and how it was possible, over the diverse regime grips on the arts in the different countries of the eastern bloc, to live in a creative mindset, to develop self expression through innovative music-making, and to contribute to such an European Identity staple as is its creative, adventurous and genre-bending music happening right now.

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Main Page

2018-09-05T12:12:27Z

Diogo:

'''IMPORTANT NOTICE: The UMCSEET project has been succeeded by ''UNEARTHING THE MUSIC: Sound and Creative Experimentation in Non-democratic Europe'', a new project which builds upon the materials and information gathered in order to bring further attention to the topic of experimentation and creative music in Non-democratic Europe. You can find all of the information contained in this wiki and more at [http://www.unearthingthemusic.eu www.unearthingthemusic.eu]'''

Unearthing The Music is a project that addresses the issue of freedom of expression - particularly in music - in the countries under the 'iron curtain', namely following the developments in those societies after 'de-stalinization' and the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956 Hungarian] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozna%C5%84_1956_protests Polish] revolts of 1956, leading up to the ´Prague Spring' and the following 'stagnation years' up until the fall of totalitarian regimes in the eastern bloc.

In the European countries that were subjected to the decade-long socialist regimes, jazz, electronics and avant-garde music acquired the aureole of martyrdom, the symbolism of underground resistance and of a quest towards democracy. The establishment of a 'second culture', one of unofficial music and art had an important role in the everyday life of these societies, but it still did not fully escape control. As a result, a great deal of this unofficial music remains undocumented, unspread, and deprived of context and signification in the larger history of European vanguard music, its influence in present-day creative scenes unknown.

By gathering music, videos, articles, testimonies, opinions and investigative studies on an online resource center, as well as promoting awareness and discussion over this issue, we aim to contribute to understanding to what extent and how it was possible, over the diverse regime grips on the arts in the different countries of the eastern bloc, to live in a creative mindset, to develop self expression through innovative music-making, and to contribute to such an European Identity staple as is its creative, adventurous and genre-bending music happening right now.

== Browse==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! By Country !! By Format !! By Entity
|-
| <categorytree mode=categories hideroot=on>Countries</categorytree> || <categorytree mode=categories hideroot=on>Formats</categorytree> || <categorytree mode=categories hideroot=on>Entities</categorytree>
|}

Main Page

2018-09-05T12:09:15Z

Diogo:

IMPORTANT NOTICE: The UMCSEET project has been succeeded by ''UNEARTHING THE MUSIC: Sound and Creative Experimentation in Non-democratic Europe'', a new project which builds upon the materials and information gathered in order to bring further attention to the topic of experimentation and creative music in Non-democratic Europe. You can find all of the information contained in this wiki and more at [http://www.unearthingthemusic.eu www.unearthingthemusic.eu]

Unearthing The Music is a project that addresses the issue of freedom of expression - particularly in music - in the countries under the 'iron curtain', namely following the developments in those societies after 'de-stalinization' and the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956 Hungarian] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozna%C5%84_1956_protests Polish] revolts of 1956, leading up to the ´Prague Spring' and the following 'stagnation years' up until the fall of totalitarian regimes in the eastern bloc.

In the European countries that were subjected to the decade-long socialist regimes, jazz, electronics and avant-garde music acquired the aureole of martyrdom, the symbolism of underground resistance and of a quest towards democracy. The establishment of a 'second culture', one of unofficial music and art had an important role in the everyday life of these societies, but it still did not fully escape control. As a result, a great deal of this unofficial music remains undocumented, unspread, and deprived of context and signification in the larger history of European vanguard music, its influence in present-day creative scenes unknown.

By gathering music, videos, articles, testimonies, opinions and investigative studies on an online resource center, as well as promoting awareness and discussion over this issue, we aim to contribute to understanding to what extent and how it was possible, over the diverse regime grips on the arts in the different countries of the eastern bloc, to live in a creative mindset, to develop self expression through innovative music-making, and to contribute to such an European Identity staple as is its creative, adventurous and genre-bending music happening right now.

== Browse==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! By Country !! By Format !! By Entity
|-
| <categorytree mode=categories hideroot=on>Countries</categorytree> || <categorytree mode=categories hideroot=on>Formats</categorytree> || <categorytree mode=categories hideroot=on>Entities</categorytree>
|}

György Galántai

2018-07-11T09:34:59Z

Diogo:

Still active today, György Galántai was a key figure in [[:Category:Hungary|Hungarian]] non-conformist art in the 1970s and 1980s. As the organiser of thirty-five exhibitions in a disused chapel in Balatonboglár from 1970-73, Galántai created a gallery for the display of neo-avant-garde and conceptual art at a time when such practices were marginalised and even under prohibition in Hungary. Despite being compelled to shut down the gallery and becoming the subject of Secret Police attention, Galántai continued to create networks for intellectual exchange, not least in the form of mail art.
As an artist, Galántai has explored various practices from painting and sculpture to performance. His works from the 1970s explore the production of meaning in sign systems. Later in the decade, he practiced as a sculptor, working with iron after training as a welder at the Csepel steelworks. Both interests combine in the acoustic sculptures which he made in 1984-85. Galántai viewed them as an invitation for spontaneous and improvised performance.

In 1985, the Hungarian ‘shaman punk’ outfit, [[Vágtázó Halottkémek]] (Galloping Coroners) played Galántai’s sounding sculptures at the Petőfi concert hall, Budapest. In 1987 members of the Group 180 and New Music Studio performed with the sculptures at the concert held on Marcel Duchamp's 100th anniversary at the Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest.

<embedvideo service="vimeo">https://vimeo.com/279087926</embedvideo>

In the 1980s, Galántai’s activities combined the fluxus tradition of the multiple with the ‘local’ practice of samizdat (self-publishing) and the punk DIY ethos. [[Artpool Radio]], for instance, was a series of eight cassette tapes that Galántai initiated in 1983 and distributed abroad through his mail art networks. A mix of interviews and conversations as well as music and documentation of concerts, and sound art, Artpool Radio demonstrates the close connections between visual artists and musicians in Budapest at the time. The third Artpool Radio tape documents the telefonkoncert which Artpool co-organised with the Vienna-based BLIX group. Over four hours in April 1983, musicians in Budapest (including Europa Kiádo,Trabant and Bizottság), Vienna and Berlin performed across a network formed by telephones. The fifth cassette is a compilation of excerpts of sound documents from the Hungarian counter culture and was made by Galántai in 1984 for the vernissage of "Hungary can be Yours", the last banned exhibition in Hungary before the transition in 1989.

== Related Links ==
[[Freedom is Mere Illusion – Experimental Music and Media Arts in Hungary]]

[[Hues of Independence]]

[[Glimpses from the history of the Eastern Bloc’s neo-avant-gardes: Katalin Ladik’s collage-portrait]]

[[Vágtázó Halottkémek]]

[http://archive.umcseet.eu/blog/material/artpool-radio/ Artpool Radio (@UMCSEET MUSIC)]

[[Category: Hungarian Figures]]

György Galántai

2018-07-11T09:34:29Z

Diogo:

Still active today, György Galántai was a key figure in [[:Category:Hungary|Hungary]] Hungarian non-conformist art in the 1970s and 1980s. As the organiser of thirty-five exhibitions in a disused chapel in Balatonboglár from 1970-73, Galántai created a gallery for the display of neo-avant-garde and conceptual art at a time when such practices were marginalised and even under prohibition in Hungary. Despite being compelled to shut down the gallery and becoming the subject of Secret Police attention, Galántai continued to create networks for intellectual exchange, not least in the form of mail art.
As an artist, Galántai has explored various practices from painting and sculpture to performance. His works from the 1970s explore the production of meaning in sign systems. Later in the decade, he practiced as a sculptor, working with iron after training as a welder at the Csepel steelworks. Both interests combine in the acoustic sculptures which he made in 1984-85. Galántai viewed them as an invitation for spontaneous and improvised performance.

In 1985, the Hungarian ‘shaman punk’ outfit, [[Vágtázó Halottkémek]] (Galloping Coroners) played Galántai’s sounding sculptures at the Petőfi concert hall, Budapest. In 1987 members of the Group 180 and New Music Studio performed with the sculptures at the concert held on Marcel Duchamp's 100th anniversary at the Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest.

<embedvideo service="vimeo">https://vimeo.com/279087926</embedvideo>

In the 1980s, Galántai’s activities combined the fluxus tradition of the multiple with the ‘local’ practice of samizdat (self-publishing) and the punk DIY ethos. [[Artpool Radio]], for instance, was a series of eight cassette tapes that Galántai initiated in 1983 and distributed abroad through his mail art networks. A mix of interviews and conversations as well as music and documentation of concerts, and sound art, Artpool Radio demonstrates the close connections between visual artists and musicians in Budapest at the time. The third Artpool Radio tape documents the telefonkoncert which Artpool co-organised with the Vienna-based BLIX group. Over four hours in April 1983, musicians in Budapest (including Europa Kiádo,Trabant and Bizottság), Vienna and Berlin performed across a network formed by telephones. The fifth cassette is a compilation of excerpts of sound documents from the Hungarian counter culture and was made by Galántai in 1984 for the vernissage of "Hungary can be Yours", the last banned exhibition in Hungary before the transition in 1989.

== References ==
[[Freedom is Mere Illusion – Experimental Music and Media Arts in Hungary]]

[[Hues of Independence]]

[[Glimpses from the history of the Eastern Bloc’s neo-avant-gardes: Katalin Ladik’s collage-portrait]]

[[Vágtázó Halottkémek]]

[http://archive.umcseet.eu/blog/material/artpool-radio/ Artpool Radio (@UMCSEET MUSIC)]

[[Category: Hungarian Figures]]

György Galántai

2018-07-11T09:33:56Z

Diogo:

Still active today, György Galántai was a key figure in [[:Category:Hungary]]cHungarian non-conformist art in the 1970s and 1980s. As the organiser of thirty-five exhibitions in a disused chapel in Balatonboglár from 1970-73, Galántai created a gallery for the display of neo-avant-garde and conceptual art at a time when such practices were marginalised and even under prohibition in Hungary. Despite being compelled to shut down the gallery and becoming the subject of Secret Police attention, Galántai continued to create networks for intellectual exchange, not least in the form of mail art.
As an artist, Galántai has explored various practices from painting and sculpture to performance. His works from the 1970s explore the production of meaning in sign systems. Later in the decade, he practiced as a sculptor, working with iron after training as a welder at the Csepel steelworks. Both interests combine in the acoustic sculptures which he made in 1984-85. Galántai viewed them as an invitation for spontaneous and improvised performance.

In 1985, the Hungarian ‘shaman punk’ outfit, [[Vágtázó Halottkémek]] (Galloping Coroners) played Galántai’s sounding sculptures at the Petőfi concert hall, Budapest. In 1987 members of the Group 180 and New Music Studio performed with the sculptures at the concert held on Marcel Duchamp's 100th anniversary at the Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest.

<embedvideo service="vimeo">https://vimeo.com/279087926</embedvideo>

In the 1980s, Galántai’s activities combined the fluxus tradition of the multiple with the ‘local’ practice of samizdat (self-publishing) and the punk DIY ethos. [[Artpool Radio]], for instance, was a series of eight cassette tapes that Galántai initiated in 1983 and distributed abroad through his mail art networks. A mix of interviews and conversations as well as music and documentation of concerts, and sound art, Artpool Radio demonstrates the close connections between visual artists and musicians in Budapest at the time. The third Artpool Radio tape documents the telefonkoncert which Artpool co-organised with the Vienna-based BLIX group. Over four hours in April 1983, musicians in Budapest (including Europa Kiádo,Trabant and Bizottság), Vienna and Berlin performed across a network formed by telephones. The fifth cassette is a compilation of excerpts of sound documents from the Hungarian counter culture and was made by Galántai in 1984 for the vernissage of "Hungary can be Yours", the last banned exhibition in Hungary before the transition in 1989.

== References ==
[[Freedom is Mere Illusion – Experimental Music and Media Arts in Hungary]]

[[Hues of Independence]]

[[Glimpses from the history of the Eastern Bloc’s neo-avant-gardes: Katalin Ladik’s collage-portrait]]

[[Vágtázó Halottkémek]]

[http://archive.umcseet.eu/blog/material/artpool-radio/ Artpool Radio (@UMCSEET MUSIC)]

[[Category: Hungarian Figures]]

György Galántai

2018-07-10T12:10:14Z

Diogo:

Still active today, György Galántai was a key figure in Hungarian non-conformist art in the 1970s and 1980s. As the organiser of thirty-five exhibitions in a disused chapel in Balatonboglár from 1970-73, Galántai created a gallery for the display of neo-avant-garde and conceptual art at a time when such practices were marginalised and even under prohibition in Hungary. Despite being compelled to shut down the gallery and becoming the subject of Secret Police attention, Galántai continued to create networks for intellectual exchange, not least in the form of mail art.
As an artist, Galántai has explored various practices from painting and sculpture to performance. His works from the 1970s explore the production of meaning in sign systems. Later in the decade, he practiced as a sculptor, working with iron after training as a welder at the Csepel steelworks. Both interests combine in the acoustic sculptures which he made in 1984-85. Galántai viewed them as an invitation for spontaneous and improvised performance.

In 1985, the Hungarian ‘shaman punk’ outfit, [[Vágtázó Halottkémek]] (Galloping Coroners) played Galántai’s sounding sculptures at the Petőfi concert hall, Budapest. In 1987 members of the Group 180 and New Music Studio performed with the sculptures at the concert held on Marcel Duchamp's 100th anniversary at the Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest.

<embedvideo service="vimeo">https://vimeo.com/279087926</embedvideo>

In the 1980s, Galántai’s activities combined the fluxus tradition of the multiple with the ‘local’ practice of samizdat (self-publishing) and the punk DIY ethos. [[Artpool Radio]], for instance, was a series of eight cassette tapes that Galántai initiated in 1983 and distributed abroad through his mail art networks. A mix of interviews and conversations as well as music and documentation of concerts, and sound art, Artpool Radio demonstrates the close connections between visual artists and musicians in Budapest at the time. The third Artpool Radio tape documents the telefonkoncert which Artpool co-organised with the Vienna-based BLIX group. Over four hours in April 1983, musicians in Budapest (including Europa Kiádo,Trabant and Bizottság), Vienna and Berlin performed across a network formed by telephones. The fifth cassette is a compilation of excerpts of sound documents from the Hungarian counter culture and was made by Galántai in 1984 for the vernissage of "Hungary can be Yours", the last banned exhibition in Hungary before the transition in 1989.

== References ==
[[Freedom is Mere Illusion – Experimental Music and Media Arts in Hungary]]

[[Hues of Independence]]

[[Glimpses from the history of the Eastern Bloc’s neo-avant-gardes: Katalin Ladik’s collage-portrait]]

[[Vágtázó Halottkémek]]

[http://archive.umcseet.eu/blog/material/artpool-radio/ Artpool Radio (@UMCSEET MUSIC)]

[[Category: Hungarian Figures]]

Vágtázó Halottkémek

2018-07-09T16:24:58Z

Diogo:

[[File:Galloping Coroners.png|thumb|Galloping Coroners (Picture by Janos Vetö)]]
Vágtázó Halottkémek (Galloping Coroners, VHK) were not only a musical or artistic phenomenon but also a social one. Founded in 1975, the band had to wait quite a long time for wide recognition. This only came with punk, when it turned out that the ecstatic and noisy music of the Hungarian ensemble resonated perfectly with the mood of the youth subculture. The band’s music was and is not just a kind of secular ritual acted out during live performances; it is an expression of a philosophy informed by mysticism, occultism and folk culture. Their music is loud, repetitive and ritualistic. Combining rock instruments with punk aesthetics, The Galloping Coroners seek to revive the trance traditions of folk music. A return to the sources and to folk music should be construed here as an act of resistance against the official policy of forcibly integrating folk culture with the culture of the socialist state in Hungary. Attila Grandpierre is the group’s main ideologist as well as pursuing a professional career as an astronomer. He also played a major role in Gábor Bódy’s film Kutya éji dala [Dog’s Night Song, 1983]. In 1985 the members of VHK were invited by [[György Galántai]] to explore together the potential of his metal sound sculptures. Parts of this show as well as other live material by VHK was released by Galantai on his tape label [[Artpool Radio]].

== Related Content ==
[[Hues of Independence]]

[[Hungarian Rhapsody and Other Magyar Melodies]]

[[György Galántai]]

[http://archive.umcseet.eu/blog/material/artpool-radio/ Artpool Radio (@UMCSEET MUSIC)]

[[Category: Hungarian Figures]]

György Galántai

2018-07-09T16:24:11Z

Diogo:

Still active today, György Galántai was a key figure in Hungarian non-conformist art in the 1970s and 1980s. As the organiser of thirty-five exhibitions in a disused chapel in Balatonboglár from 1970-73, Galántai created a gallery for the display of neo-avant-garde and conceptual art at a time when such practices were marginalised and even under prohibition in Hungary. Despite being compelled to shut down the gallery and becoming the subject of Secret Police attention, Galántai continued to create networks for intellectual exchange, not least in the form of mail art.
As an artist, Galántai has explored various practices from painting and sculpture to performance. His works from the 1970s explore the production of meaning in sign systems. Later in the decade, he practiced as a sculptor, working with iron after training as a welder at the Csepel steelworks. Both interests combine in the acoustic sculptures which he made in 1984-85. Galántai viewed them as an invitation for spontaneous and improvised performance.

In 1985, the Hungarian ‘shaman punk’ outfit, [[Vágtázó Halottkémek]] (Galloping Coroners) played Galántai’s sounding sculptures at the Petőfi concert hall, Budapest. In 1987 members of the Group 180 and New Music Studio performed with the sculptures at the concert held on Marcel Duchamp's 100th anniversary at the Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest.
In the 1980s, Galántai’s activities combined the fluxus tradition of the multiple with the ‘local’ practice of samizdat (self-publishing) and the punk DIY ethos. [[Artpool Radio]], for instance, was a series of eight cassette tapes that Galántai initiated in 1983 and distributed abroad through his mail art networks. A mix of interviews and conversations as well as music and documentation of concerts, and sound art, Artpool Radio demonstrates the close connections between visual artists and musicians in Budapest at the time. The third Artpool Radio tape documents the telefonkoncert which Artpool co-organised with the Vienna-based BLIX group. Over four hours in April 1983, musicians in Budapest (including Europa Kiádo,Trabant and Bizottság), Vienna and Berlin performed across a network formed by telephones. The fifth cassette is a compilation of excerpts of sound documents from the Hungarian counter culture and was made by Galántai in 1984 for the vernissage of "Hungary can be Yours", the last banned exhibition in Hungary before the transition in 1989.

== References ==
[[Freedom is Mere Illusion – Experimental Music and Media Arts in Hungary]]

[[Hues of Independence]]

[[Glimpses from the history of the Eastern Bloc’s neo-avant-gardes: Katalin Ladik’s collage-portrait]]

[[Vágtázó Halottkémek]]

[http://archive.umcseet.eu/blog/material/artpool-radio/ Artpool Radio (@UMCSEET MUSIC)]

György Galántai

2018-07-09T16:01:02Z

Diogo: Created page with "Still active today, György Galántai was a key figure in Hungarian non-conformist art in the 1970s and 1980s. As the organiser of thirty-five exhibitions in a disused chapel..."

Still active today, György Galántai was a key figure in Hungarian non-conformist art in the 1970s and 1980s. As the organiser of thirty-five exhibitions in a disused chapel in Balatonboglár from 1970-73, Galántai created a gallery for the display of neo-avant-garde and conceptual art at a time when such practices were marginalised and even under prohibition in Hungary. Despite being compelled to shut down the gallery and becoming the subject of Secret Police attention, Galántai continued to create networks for intellectual exchange, not least in the form of mail art.
As an artist, Galántai has explored various practices from painting and sculpture to performance. His works from the 1970s explore the production of meaning in sign systems. Later in the decade, he practiced as a sculptor, working with iron after training as a welder at the Csepel steelworks. Both interests combine in the acoustic sculptures which he made in 1984-85. Galántai viewed them as an invitation for spontaneous and improvised performance.

In 1985, the Hungarian ‘shaman punk’ outfit, [[Vágtázó Halottkémek]] (Galloping Coroners) played Galántai’s sounding sculptures at the Petőfi concert hall, Budapest. In 1987 members of the Group 180 and New Music Studio performed with the sculptures at the concert held on Marcel Duchamp's 100th anniversary at the Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest.
In the 1980s, Galántai’s activities combined the fluxus tradition of the multiple with the ‘local’ practice of samizdat (self-publishing) and the punk DIY ethos. [[Artpool Radio]], for instance, was a series of eight cassette tapes that Galántai initiated in 1983 and distributed abroad through his mail art networks. A mix of interviews and conversations as well as music and documentation of concerts, and sound art, Artpool Radio demonstrates the close connections between visual artists and musicians in Budapest at the time. The third Artpool Radio tape documents the telefonkoncert which Artpool co-organised with the Vienna-based BLIX group. Over four hours in April 1983, musicians in Budapest (including Europa Kiádo,Trabant and Bizottság), Vienna and Berlin performed across a network formed by telephones. The fifth cassette is a compilation of excerpts of sound documents from the Hungarian counter culture and was made by Galántai in 1984 for the vernissage of "Hungary can be Yours", the last banned exhibition in Hungary before the transition in 1989.

== References ==
[[Freedom is Mere Illusion – Experimental Music and Media Arts in Hungary]]

[[Hues of Independence]]

[[Glimpses from the history of the Eastern Bloc’s neo-avant-gardes: Katalin Ladik’s collage-portrait]]

[[Vágtázó Halottkémek]]

Glimpses from the history of the Eastern Bloc’s neo-avant-gardes: Katalin Ladik’s collage-portrait

2018-07-09T15:59:13Z

Diogo:

[[File:Still-from-Berberian-Sound-Studio.jpg|thumb|Still from Berberian Sound Studio]]
Text by Antoni Michnik, originally published in Glissando Magazine. This is a revised translation made by the autor. All of the translations within text (quotes etc.) were made by the author, unless stated differently.

== Introduction ==
(In the picture is) The opening of Peter Strickland’s movie Berberian Sound Studio [1]. The main character, British sound engineer Gilderoy (Toby Jones), is working in Italy on the soundtrack to a giallo movie. In a studio that simultaneously brings to mind all the legends about the magic of experimental music studios and also those stories about bad working conditions on C-grade flicks, the magic of film sounding occurs: from voice acting dialogues, through the use of electronic effects, to performative imitations of the film–world (Foley). One day, an unexpected guest appears on the set – a person voicing the character of a “demon”, greeted by the director with unusual courtesy. As it turns out, this is Signora Ladik, whom we later observe working in a studio, creating demonical sounds by means of a broad spectrum of extended vocal techniques.

The character is played by none other than [[Katalin Ladik]], one of the leading Eastern European artists of the 20th century, and a key figure of the Yugoslavian neo-avant-garde from the second half of the 60s until the demise of the country. An outstanding sound and visual poet, as well as a performer, sound artist and composer of conceptual music; she still belongs to the group of too–little–known figures of Eastern-European neo-avant-gardes [2]. The short episode in Berberian Sound Studio – an homage paid to her by Strickland – makes for an adequate preface to her oeuvre as it brings together a group of themes that are important to her artistic practice: the uncanniness of sound and its eroticism, the complex relationships between the visual and the aural, and finally the transcendence of the borders of language and the abolition of the division between high and low culture. In the rest of this essay we’ll examine Ladik as a sound poet, radical performer, player of new music and creator of experimental scores. Following in the footsteps of her art, we’ll journey through the different circles and tendencies of the Eastern Bloc’s neo-avant-gardes.

== 29.07.1973 – BALATONBOGLÁR ==
''“Vowel prolongation, repetition of consonants, words that seem to come from her gut, her throat, her mouth; such techniques became an early repertoire that was often performed as a shamanistic ritual, enacting the poems through the artist’s body, as an extension of her voice and her language. Sentences became embodiments, words produced their meaning through ritualized gestures, letters were spat out or swallowed—a corporeal manifestation of language.” -'' '''Hendrik Folkerts''' [3]

If we want to focus on the topic of film sounding in Ladik’s own art, we should begin with the experimental movie O-pus (1972), created in collaboration with Atilla Csernik and Imre Póth. A fine example of the translation of the principles of visual poetry into the language of film, O-pus was conceived as an intermedia entity, a piece of audiovisual poetry. The original soundtrack was lost, which turned the images themselves into a score that Ladik interpreted anew, vocally, in Balatonboglár in 1973. As David Crowley and Daniel Muzyczuk write: “The film is a poem, a piece of music, and the documentation of a highly erotic performance, all at the same time” [4]. The situation we’re facing here is similar to that of Signora Ladik in Strickland’s movie: the image demands sounding, and its framework is decided by the author, leaving a wide margin of freedom for the performer. The concrete, onomatopoeic texture of O-pus – on the textual level the soundtrack of the film consists only of repetitions of the phone “O” – leaves Ladik the space for various voice modulations, and gives her the chance to use a wide palette of extended vocal techniques. O-pus is a kind of tour de force of her voice’s abilities, transformed by the sound engineer – first and foremost through layering different vocal parts, which come to resemble the visual imposition of different letter “O”s.

<youtube>https://youtu.be/XgS4iXMGC20</youtube>

Thus, if we approach the visual material of the movie as a score for performance, it is definitely one for a vocal piece with tape. It’s a score we can witness unfold and, as it occurs, decode the schemes of its interpretation. In the second part of the film, the main theme becomes the relationship between the body and language – a topic that interested both Ladik and Csernik. Letters on human bodies were a frequent motif in Csernik’s works from that period; there is even a photo (1971) in which we can see him placing letters on Ladik’s body. Hendrik Folkerts wrote that the compositions performed by Ladik were a kind of bodily manifestation of language, a specific extension of voice [5]. It is precisely this corporeal aspect of her vocal art that makes her role in Berberian Sound Studio such a great metaphor for her oeuvre – the voice seems to live its own life, uncovering the uncanniness of extended vocal practices. Because of that aspect, her art fits well into feminist investigations of the relations between the body and language, such as can be found, for example, in works made in the 60s and 70s by Ketty La Rocca – another artist who began as an experimental poet.

The Balatonboglár chapel, where the O-pus performance took place, was one of the most important sites for the Hungarian neo-avant-garde during the first half of the 70s. Rented by [[György Galántai]], it functioned between 1970 and 1973 as an exhibition space, gathering the most interesting Hungarian visual artists, performers and critics. In 1972 László Beke initiated international activities in the chapel; in the following two years a large number of exhibitions, situations and other meetings of members of the Eastern Bloc neo-avant-gardes were organised there [6]. The crucial part in that networking was the activity of the Bosch+Bosch group (1969-1976), which gathered artists from the Yugoslavian autonomous province of Vojvodina. Ladik became a member of the group in 1973. Born and raised on the border of two cultures among the Hungarian minority in Vojvodina, she speaks, from her childhood, both Hungarian and Serbo-Croatian. Bosch+Bosch, which included other members of complicated descent (for example Atilla Csernik), tried from the beginning to combine Yugoslavian and Hungarian avant-garde traditions. Its members engaged in various collective projects, searching for ways to overcome established categories and subvert dominant identities.

== 01.05.1968 – SZENTENDRE ==
''“On 25 June 1966 Erdély and Szentjóby organised with Gábor Altorjay the first happening in Hungary, called The Lunch [Az ebéd] (in memoriam Batu kán), during which Penderecki’s music, emitted by the artist, was accompanied by the sounds of eating a chicken and nailing it to the table, washing it down with salt water, the binding and flagellation of one of the participants with horsehair, setting the cart on fire, etc.”'' - Magdalena Radomska [7]

''“On her arrival in Budapest on the evening of 30 April 1968, Ladik was given a letter from Szentjóby by the hotel receptionist. It informed her that when she left the hotel the next morning she should follow a man waiting there with a dog and, without speaking, get into his car. This she did, and the man drove her through the town to the banks of the Danube in Szentendre. On leaving the car, Ladik saw some men taking photos of her. She followed the dog and found a human-shaped form wrapped in aluminium foil lying on the grass in the sunshine. She also saw a man – Erdély – sitting on a stool a few metres away, flagellating his naked torso with one arm and having the nails of his other hand trimmed by a woman over a basin of water with some goldfish in it. Without any instructions, Ladik did what she supposed to do: she slowly unwrapped the foil. Szentjóby sat up, opened an aluminium sardine tin, and put some fish on two slices of bread. They ate, then opened an aluminium-foil packet of chewing gum and shared the gum with Ladik – still without uttering a word. He then stood up, and they started to walk slowly away from the river.”'' - ''Klara Kemp-Welch'' [8]

Since the beginning of the 60s Ladik had been writing poems in Hungarian [9]. Her debut, Ballada az ezüstbicikliről [Ballad of the Silver Bicycle], published in 1969 in Novi Sad, gathers her poems from 1962 to 1968. Ladik at that time used to hang out with the community of a Hungarian magazine published in Novi Sad called Új Symposion, and, at the same time, in Yugoslavian neo-avant-garde circles, collaborating with Bosch+Bosch and various figures of Yugoslavian contemporary and new music. From the beginning, her poems defied the traditional boundaries of poetry: the meanings of some of the pieces in the book are connected to the typesetting and graphic design of the texts, inscribing her into the developing scene of Yugoslavian visual poetry [10]. The book also includes a vinyl record containing vocal interpretations of the poems. This indicates that even back then Ladik treated her poetry as a trans-, multi- or inter-media entity – both as text that contains a sonic dimension, and also as a kind of a score that can be the basis for performing a sound composition.

Bernard Heidseck called the poetry intended primarily for readings poésie action, and it can be argued that all of Ladik’s poems are, first and foremost, precisely that: poems to be read / performed [11]. From the first half of the 60s she was connected to the theatre, both the stage (she studied at the Dramski studio in Novi Sad) and radio theatre. In 1963 she began working for Radio Novi Sad as an actress in the so-called Mađarske drame, a Hungarian-language radio theatre special series, which turned out later to be the launch pad for Hungarian theatre in Novi Sad. Radio became the first platform for her vocal experiments and explorations in sounding texts and images. The experience of studio work on audio material influenced her writing in a major way: by the end of the 60s we can find a distinctive strain in her poetry where the sonic quality and rhythm of the spoken word is more important than its literary qualities. Meanwhile, she had already begun participating in happenings and made her own sound performances, sometimes entitled “gests”.

In Ballada az ezüstbicikliről we can find, among others, a piece called UFO Party, which contains a part embracing Dadaist-Futurist traditions, where the rhythm of the words is disrupted by typesetting (suggesting the layering of two different voices) and the inclusion of LOOOOOOOONG strings of vowels screaming at the reader. What’s crucial here is the use of a type of stage direction introducing that particular section of the poem – a voice from a tape. As has been pointed out by Jacques Donguy, the development of sound poetry in the 50s and 60s was directly connected with the introduction of various tape recorders to the market, which opened up new possibilities for performing poetry [12]. The text of UFO Party can also be interpreted as the record of a potential sound poetry performance. Its origins date back to the happening that took place on 1 May 1968 in Szentendre (near Budapest): a huge undertaking arranged by Hungarian neo-avant-gardists Miklós Erdély and Tamás Szentjóby, the organisers of the first happenings in Hungary, who also made contact with artists conducting similar activities in different Eastern Bloc countries – for example, Szentjóby took part in the performance of Tadeusz Kantor’s Panoramic Sea Happening in Osieki in 1967.

Organised by Erdély and Szentjóby, the UFO happening consisted of many simultaneous actions in the open air. It was also the first happening in which Ladik was a participant. UFO Party could be interpreted as the score of a future performance, especially as from 1970 she began using the phrase as the title of some of her performances. The text of UFO Party exists in a few different versions. Apart from the one included in Ballada az ezüstbicikliről, the artist also published it as a Dadaist collage juxtaposing different fonts and images in Új Symposion where, the previous year, Gábor Altorjay had published his memories from participation in Az ebéd (in memoriam Batu kán) [13]. That version foreshadowed the graphic scores Ladik would create in subsequent years. There’s also a manuscript of UFO Party, shown in recent years at several retrospective exhibitions, which is more of a sketch for particular performative actions, and differs a lot from the versions published in the poetry collection and the magazine. In the manuscript’s case we deal only with handwriting, but the meaning is inscribed into various positionings of the letters, as well as differences in their size, shape and thickness. This kind of score directly foreshadows the types of experiments undertaken in O-pus.

== 1-3.04.1970 – ZAGREB ==
''“It comes about in a continuous ritual game of decomposition and recurrence, whose decomposing eroticism, bearing infinite and misty fruit – the more artificial, the more real – discloses the ultimate, primordial bareness and desolation. […] This game, as cynical and self-distanced as indeed immersed in itself, dances to the rhythms of pathetic prophecies and brass music, rhymed folk songs, sometimes asymmetrically comprising wailing and mourning, or to the rhythms of super-urban perpetuum mobile radiophonic electronics, to the rhythms of absurd dialogues bantering Oriental sententiousness (perhaps an attempt at poetic transplantation of the immediacy of zen), folk riddles, and our Ionescian communication. In the heat of this game the speech is divided, the cracked and mutilated thoughts incorporate and mould into definite pieces of nonsense, the words are relieved of their initial meaning, becoming a medium of a semi-articulated ritual (‘kibla kibla kibla’ in the poem UFO Party), to be reduced for a moment to a single voice beyond this equation – a result and value equivalent to the heterogeneous mishmash of sound and thought.”'' - Judita Šalgo [14]

Ladik’s early performances were, in the first instance, transpositions of her poems. The idea of performative declamation became a starting point for explorations into the realm of sounds devoid of conventional semantics. Performances of Ladik’s poetry for a Serbian audience already contained an inherent element of the language barrier, undermining the literary level of the meaning and shifting the attention of the audience towards the musical aspects of the performances. In the photographs of a 1970 Zagreb performance entitled Šamanska pjesma [Shamanistic Gest] we can see her using her voice throughout the piece, performing among the parts of the textual score scattered on the floor, surrounded by spectators in a performance space with a burning candle in the middle. Midway through the photographic sequence we see her outfit change: dressed in a black turtleneck, black trousers and a necklace-amulet (?) at the beginning of the performance, in subsequent photos we see her girded just with leather. However, other requisites appear, including bagpipes, which she plays during last part of the performance. We see her submitting her whole body to different theatrical acting techniques, but also turning it into an instrument as she treats her hair like strings, “playing” it with an object resembling a bow.

The extensive documentation of Šamanska pjesma comes from Ladik’s appearance at the GEFF festival in Zagreb in 1970 [15]. GEFF was a fascinating biennale of experimental cinema, organised in Zagreb from 1963, and with an edition planned for 1969 that eventually took place after a year’s delay. The festival was a crucial endeavour for Yugoslavian (especially Croatian) experimental cinema of the time, as well as a place where an audience could see cinematic experiments from the whole world – where, for example, P. Adams Sitney could present a 10-hour marathon of American avant-garde film. In 1970 the theme of the festival was “Sexuality as a potential road to new humanism”, and the programme included, among others, Carolee Schneemann’s Fuses (1965). Ladik was invited to perform within the broader context of a festival analysing the (counter-)cultural tendencies of the age of sexual revolution. Right from her debut, the eroticism of Ladik’s poetry was polarising, yet it was when she began using sexuality and nudity in her performances that she was labelled a scandalist [16].

However, some saw deeper traditions behind her performances, analysing their ritualistic aspect as derived from Hungarian folk culture, and describing her art as “ethno-surrealism” [17]. Yet despite the transgressive potential of her activities, Ladik’s works are far from the oppressive Actionist performances of the 70s: her actions demonstrate power and strength, but are not violent – their transgressive energy is one of emancipation, not revenge. Her works are indeed more connected to the tradition of Surrealism, especially its emphasis on the archetypical dimension of artistic practice. With her performances, Ladik falls within the tendency of the neo-avant-garde to turn towards the past in search of primordial energy. A similar focus on the ritualistic, archetypical aspects of performance and the functions of the voice suggest comparisons with the works of Joseph Beuys, but we can find such themes in the art of many other creators of happenings, events and performances in the 60s – from Milan Knížák to Bengt af Klintberg.

In the collection of Ladik’s recordings published in 2004 on the occasion of the internet appearance of the majority of her writings, we can find a piece from 1968 called Sámánének [Shamanistic Song]. I think we can assume that at least large sections of Šamanska pjesma sounded similar to this [18]. The recording contains only a short solo vocal piece (with a percussion instrument – Ladik would often perform with a drum at the time). The voice first appears in it as a hum, then shifts to noisy sounds which stop at the border of speech, barely forming phones. Yet the voice carries meaning: it evokes breathing, fear, pain and relief. Ladik’s voice is performative, trained so well in leading the narration that it can disperse with words. It’s a voice of extra-linguistic narration, using a broad palette of acting techniques developed during her work for Radio Novi Sad. When she left the station in 1979, Ladik tried to implement a similar attitude towards the voice in repertory theatre and cinema. The turn of the 70s and 80s is marked in her artistic practice by a group of works which use the scream to directly criticise the position of women in a society of socialistic rhetoric but patriarchal reality – one should mention here her performance entitled Rupa koja vrišti [Screaming Hole, 1979] and the monodrama Bayer Aspirin (1981), written for her by Ottó Tolnai. Her voice became a social weapon, a tool of critique and emancipation [19].

== 1976 – BELGRADE ==
The best-known of Ladik’s recordings, Phonopoetica, was released in 1976 by the SKC Gallery in Belgrade and lasts for just 15 minutes. The material is, as announced on the sleeve, a “phonic interpretation of visual poetry”. On the record, Ladik interpreted a group of works by different visual poets from various circles – from Bálint Szombathy (her husband at the time and also a member of Bosch+Bosch), through Gábor Tóth (a conceptual artist, self-publishing cassettes of his own experimental music) and Franci Zagoričnik (a member of the Slovenian neo-avant-garde group OHO), to Italian visual poet Giovanna Sandri and Dutch sound poet Gerrit Jan de Rook. The crucial aspect of the material is the work of Borislav Stajić and Ivan Fece, the record’s sound engineers. The record is deeply rooted in the practices of experimental studios of the time. Phonopoetica is a coherent composition, much more futuristic than Ladik’s ritualistic performances of the early 70s. The vocal delivery is clearly an element of a longer studio process: Ladik’s voice is transformed in different ways, layered and looped. It is accompanied by the sonic equivalents of found objects – which resembles the working method of many musicians labouring at the time in experimental / electronic music studios – unused scraps of tape from the parallel recording sessions of a jazz band [20].

<youtube>https://youtu.be/zCOlpf4qkXU</youtube>

Phonopoetica shows how important the development of experimental music studios after the Second World War was for the sound poetry of the 60s and 70s. When Henri Chopin stated that Ladik’s recordings sound as if she was “conducting a verbophonic orchestra”, he was referring not only to the variety of her vocal techniques, but also to the efforts of the sound engineers she worked alongside. Chopin was among those who particularly emphasised the new possibilities of sound poetry – in an age of the ongoing development of the techniques of sound manipulation – in comparison with the phonetic poetry of the interwar avant-garde. In 1967 Chopin wrote that words were no longer the primary material of the new sound poetry, replaced in that regard by “vocal microparticles” [21]. The textual-visual premises of concrete poetry meet here with the properties of musique concrète, and the studio recordings of Ladik’s sound poetry are the product of such a meeting.

== 27.10.1975 – NOVI SAD ==
The phrase “phonic interpretation of visual poetry” is one of the keys to Ladik’s art – especially to a series of works from the 70s which are simultaneously experimental scores and visual poems. During that decade Ladik created a large group of collages exploiting various aspects and elements of musical notation. In some of them, the staff is used as the background on which chosen objects are placed, as in A “Sába Királanöje” (c. operából zenekari szólamrészet) / “Die Königin Von Saba” (a. d. Orchesterstimme) / “The Queen Of Sheba” (selection from the orchestral part) (1973). In others, the artist uses parts of cut-up notation, as in Жути болеро[Yellow Bolero, 1978], or positions given work within the field of music only through the title, as in the case of Eine kleine Nachtmusik (1972). Ladik often used press clippings in those works (especially from women’s magazines), as well as stamps and other illustrations: in particular she utilised sewing patterns and pictures showing women sewing. On the one hand, such a treatment of the score clearly evokes the feminist art of the decade, as well as the broader cultural practices of second-wave feminism with its celebration of stereotypical “female” activities as artistic practices. On the other, it refers to the old Surrealist slogan of the “chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella”. Besides, the sewing machine has, over time, become an important element of her poetry: her collection of poems published in 1978 was entitled Mesék a hétfejű varrógépről [Stories of the Seven-Headed Sewing Machine].

During the second half of the 70s, aside from collages, Ladik also began making text scores stemming directly from concrete poetry. She created a series of works which – similar to collages – she brought within the field of music, giving them particular titles such as Zsoltár [Psalm, 1977] or Ének egy beolajozott kályhacsöre és nöi hangra [Song for an Oil-coated Furnace and a Female Vocal, 1977]. She had already used concrete texts as performance scores – a good example is R.O.M.E.T. (1972), created in collaboration with the poet Janez Kocijančić, a member of the group KÔD – but during the late 70s her experiments with text scores became more frequent and more radical. Let us use as an example Tavaszi zsongás [Spring Buzzing, 1977], which can be interpreted as a table or chart score with given time brackets gathered in a grid. The visual aspect of the work is still present, but through the structure itself rather than the collaged layering and juxtaposition of different elements. The visual recedes even further into background in a series of text scores published by Ladik in 1975 in a special issue of the magazine novine Galerija SC (a bulletin of the Student Centre Gallery in Zagreb), created by members of Bosch+Bosch. The issue, entitled WOW was a catalogue of their exhibition, containing among other things Ladik’s text scores – very much in the aesthetic of event scores. These were propositions of actions “for Novi Sad” – ideas of site-specific actions mostly connected to the Danube. For example, Ladik proposed colouring the ice flowing on the river through Novi Sad or sending postcards of the city (Spuštanje novog sada kroz dunav) [22] via the river.

The last of these pieces points at crucial thread within Ladik’s artistic practice – the constant eagerness for cross-cultural exchange, apparent both in her collaborations with members of different artistic circles and the highly conscious use of different languages in her own works. The same could be said of mixing high and low culture – Ladik shared the interests of both the majority of Yugoslavian new music composers and of folk musicians. Among her visual scores we can find two cycles entitled Ausgewählte Volkslieder [Selected Folk Songs, 1973–1975] and Balkan Folk Songs (1973). These are among the best of her collage-scores, and yet what’s most striking about them is the use of foreign languages in their titles. This suggests high self-consciousness about (and critical distance towards) the (ab)uses of traditional culture(s). The search for rituals and archetypes in performances pushed Ladik towards folk music, not as a direct source for composition or as the source of texts, but rather as part of a broader, multilinguistic substance for concrete procedures that could be used to create new, radical art forms.

== 22.09.1974 – WARSAW ==
''“1: Darkness. In the center of the stage Katalin lies buried, hidden from the eyes of the audience. No one can notice her presence. In a faint glimmer, the ensemble slowly approaches the piano from all sides. They begin to play with the instrument and around it. The play becomes more and more frenzied, faster, but not a single [musical] sound is produced. At a climax of playing, at the signal of a hand everything begins to slow down. Finally everything calms down. Everybody goes to their instruments and resumes the echo of one’s decelerated play. Easier and easier… At the end, a long silence. Listening to one’s own thoughts. Listening to one’s own nervous system by means of electronics.

2: Monos III in an extremely slow tempo. Extremely long pauses. Unusual sounds, very much like electronically filtered sounds. Almost nothing is played. A gesture or voice can be used instead of a musical phrase. Like music under water.

3: At the signal of a hammer, Katalin awakes. She gets up slowly, in an impressive way. Her appearance and movements should produce a small shock. A pantomime starts, considerably more varied and contrasting, slightly more dynamic, faster but longer. It directly turns into a monologue of gestures (a story). The intensity is growing. Katalin becomes more and more nervous, her hysterical gestures become mechanical – very fast, brief, but rapid. She ascends higher and higher on an invisible crane (?) At the climax (physical and psychological), noises from the tape appear, stunning her for a while. At the same time, it is a sign for the ensemble, and they start responding to each noise. Graphics IV has thus already started.”'' - '''Dubravko Detoni''' [23]

In 1974 the Warsaw Autumn festival included for the first time a concert of the ACEZANTEZ ensemble, one of the key proponents of new music in 70s Yugoslavia, founded by Dubravko Detoni. The concert opened with La Voix du Silence, a highly theatrical composition containing a number of Detoni’s earlier pieces. The performance instructions for such a “multimedia stage fantasy” [24], published many years later, are directly connected with Ladik, who is the main protagonist of the performative story, binding together its parts. The project had premiered during the previous year at the Zagreb Biennale, as part of the happening-concert Carousel II. The choreography for La Voix du Silence was created by Milana Broš, one of the most important figures for dance in Yugoslavia at the turn of the 60s & 70s and the creator of the KASP ensemble (Komorni ansambl slobodnog plesa, Camera Ensemble of Free Dance). Detoni eagerly experimented with instrumental theatre, moving towards musical happenings. The strong performative quality of his pieces can even be heard on recordings, as he frequently used extended vocal techniques and the studio’s possibilities to create spatial effects and build futuristic, autonomous sonic worlds.

Between 1971 and 1973 Ladik was de facto a permanent vocalist for ACEZANTEZ, performing with them at numerous new music festivals, even during a concert given as an official presentation of Yugoslavian culture accompanying the Olympic Games in Munich (1972), where they performed Yebell akcija za soliste, an interpretation of Milko Keleman’s (also a member of the ensemble) piece Yebell (1972). Yebell is composed around the sonic imitation of speech, foreshadowing the later vocal-instrumental experiments of Peter Ablinger. However, the composition stands out because its sonic texture is created out of vulgarities. On the occasion of the Munich concert Ladik prepared a libretto with Csernik, and the piece was performed by ACEZANTEZ and ensemble Peters with groups of dancers and mimes.

Yet, by the time of Warsaw Autumn 74, the vocal part of La Voix du Silence was being performed by Veronika Kovačić. On a photograph from one of Ladik’s performances from her period within ACEZANTEZ (1972) we can see her performing naked, playing solo saxophone, enacting a choreography, and finally sitting between dressed and somewhat bored ensemble members with her back towards them and the camera. Later, Ladik would add the title Apparent Presence to this work, and one can think it could serve as a metaphor of her place in the historiography of experimental music in Yugoslavia. Ladik’s first performance in Warsaw would eventually happen in 1976 during the exhibition Nowoczesna Sztuka Jugosławii, therefore within the context of the performing arts, not the new music scene.

== 1969 – OPATIJA ==
There aren’t many joint recordings of Katalin Ladik and ACEZANTEZ, and the majority of existing ones are connected to Ernő Király – an ethnomusicologist, self-taught composer, inventor of instruments, and also Ladik’s husband in the 60s. Király was important to the development of Ladik’s interests – during the 60s he worked for Radio Novi Sad, gathering and cataloguing the songs of various ethnic groups living in Vojvodina. At the same time he learned via the station about musique concrète and electroacoustic music, and began composing his own pieces. As a self-taught composer he created successive systems of graphic notation, from geometric figures to photographs of plants. Detoni and ACEZANTEZ were among the first to begin playing his pieces. Király’s experience as an inventor, along with Ladik’s acting background, brought to the ensemble a new attitude towards improvisation and expanding their musical material. This can be heard on two recordings of Király’s compositions where Ladik performs with ACEZANTEZ: Abszurd Mese [Absurd Story] and Sirató [Lament] (Ernő Király, Spectrum, autobus, trAce Label, 2001). In the first we hear Ladik using methods of sound poetry to make the titular story more surreal; in the second, the expanded vocal techniques are used to audially expand a short poem from Ballada az ezüstbicikliről.

Ladik collaborated with Király for many years, starting with works made at Radio Novi Sad. She frequently performed pieces from his cycle Refleksija [Reflections], beginning with her new music festival debut during the Yugoslavian Music Tribune in Opatija (1969). On an album released in 1991 (Ernő Király, Király, Udruženje Kompozitora Vojvodine, 1991) one can find recordings of the second (Elegia) and third (Scherzo) pieces from the cycle. Ladik’s voice serves there as a counterpoint to the strings, which experiment with extended instrumental techniques. Király also composed music for her radio play Aki Darazsakról Álmodik[Who’s Dreaming About Bees?], which premiered in 1982 on National Hungarian Radio and was released on vinyl in 1989 by PGP RTB (Produkcija Gramofonskih Ploča Radio Televizije Beograd) in a different version prepared for Radio Novi Sad. It’s a surreal, Lynchian story, where the narration is given by a group of transformed, processed voices – Ladik herself plays the main character using four different voices, and she’s accompanied by the actors Júlia Biszák and Károly Fischer. The sonic background is comprised of music played by Király on instruments of his own invention – the zitherphone and tablophone [25].

== 06.10.1979 – BELGRADE ==
In the 50s Dušan Radić was one of the composers that caused the hottest disputes within new music circles in Yugoslavia. His Spisak [Name List, 1954] became a voice in debates about the character of new Yugoslavian music, torn between the neo–romanticism “nationalised” by the new state during the interwar period, the Socialist Realism still dominating in the Eastern Bloc countries, and the modernist tendencies coming from centres of new music. In the following decades Radić turned away from Darmstadt, Warsaw Autumn and post-Cagean tendencies, towards the Medieval music of the Balkan Penisula [26]. In 1974 he composed the huge Oratorium Profanum, comprising several parts and conceived as an ironic essay about the evolutionary direction of contemporary music. The piece was written for three narrators, three choirs, three camera ensembles, four orchestras, four kettledrums, organs and tape, and it incorporated fragments of the aesthetic writings of well-known neo-avant-garde proponent Bora Ćosić [27]. It premiered at the opening concert of the BEMUS festival in Belgrade in 1979. For that project, Ladik was cast as a soloist.

The piece consists of four parts. In the first (Geometrical Man) Radić presents his own search for a synthesis of early music and Hindemithian neo–classicism. In the second (Surrounding) he focuses on the connections between new music and the aesthetics and forms of mass culture – some parts paraphrase the music of the golden era of Hollywood musicals, some phrases directly refer to classic jazz, and the narrators read quotes from Claes Oldenburg. In the third part (Happening) Radić evokes the post-Cagean tradition: he creates a musical happening, applies aleatoric structures and procedures, refers to Fluxus (through the words of the narrators), and quotes Cough Piece (1961) by George Maciunas. Finally, in the fourth part (Sonic Models) he looks at the possibilities of electroacoustic music, using a recording prepared for the occasion in the Electronic Studio of Radio Belgrade by Vladan Radovanović. Ladik appeared mainly in the last two parts of the piece. In a way, Radić placed her (and her art) into the Fluxus context and Dadaist traditions, as she performed fragments of Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonate, her voice juxtaposed with traditional choral music, in a section that begins with direct reference to Fluxus. In the last part, her vocal techniques served as a counterpoint to Radovanović’s timbral experiments. Here, key meaning is attributed to the colour of her voice, in dialogue with layers of electronic sound. From today’s perspective, Ladik and Radovanović are the bright spots in an otherwise massively verbose piece. The composition as a whole sounds terribly pretentious and could serve as a symbol of the creative exhaustion of the representatives of the first generation of post-war avant-garde music in Yugoslavia.

== 02/03.1988 – NOVI SAD ==
The end of the 80s was a period when Ladik spent more time back in recording studios, following a few years of intense work in theatre and cinema, and also on frequent exhibitions. Among the projects recorded during that period, two stand out as the most interesting. The first is a collaboration with Mitar Subotić, also known as Rex Ilusivi. A leading representative of a young generation of electronic music composers, Subotić also worked in the 80s as the producer of many of the important Yugoslavian new wave bands. Drawing equal measures from Radovanović’s achievements and various post-punk genres, at the beginning of 1988 he recorded a great work in Radio Novi Sad that wasn’t released until 2015. As the Yugoslav Wars broke out, Subotić moved to Brazil, where he lived, composed and produced music until his tragic death in 1999. He found himself in Brazil as the result of a UNESCO composing contest, where was awarded the International Fund for the Promotion of Culture for his The Dreambird, In The Mooncage, in which he combined electronic sounds with field recordings of birds from Madagascar and Serbian folk songs. The material had two distinctive parts – one was closer to ambient music (released in Brazil as The Dreambird [COMEP, 1994]), and the other – darker – was further developed during sessions which included Ladik. Finally published in 2015, In The Mooncage is a document of the transformation of the post-punk/new wave underground into the alternative rock of the 90s. Keyboards and synthesizers dominate the sound, but guitar, bass and percussion also play significant roles. The voices (of Ladik and Milan Mladinović, leader of the new wave band Ekatarina Velika) are also treated as instruments, complementing the folk singing.

During that period Ladik also recorded a series of poetic sound actions that were used in two projects, and of which recordings exist. The first is Víziangyal [Water Angel], where she recites fragments of her own lyrics mixed with parts from James Joyce and Lewis Carroll. It’s a kind of sonic-textual collage, stemming from the same sessions as Aki Darazsakról Álmodik – one can also hear Biszák and Fischer, as well as Király playing his zitherphone. The first part of Víziangyal was used as a starting point for Három Árva [Three Orphans] – another composition juxtaposing electronically modified voice with recordings of folk songs – this time Hungarian. It’s a kind of “adaptation of a Hungarian folk ballad”, utilising recordings gathered by Radio Novi Sad. The sound engineer for the project was Boris Kovač, an artist from the same generation as Subotić, also fascinated with traditional music; Ladik performed on his two first records: Ritual Nova (symposion records, 1986) and Ritual Nova 2 (Points East, 1988). Kovač himself, clearly interested in the combination of traditional music and “contemporary classical” as mass music for our times [28], is of less interest to us, but his work on the “adaptation of a Hungarian folk ballad” is exceptional.

== 14.10.2016 – BUDAPEST ==
An evening at the Kassák Museum. The band Spiritus Noister is playing on the occasion of the centenary of Dada. The line-up consists of Katalin Ladik, László Lenkes, Zsolt Sőrés and Endre Szkárosi. Ladik and Szkárosi simultaneously read texts and progress into rhythmic onomatopoeias or vocal experiments; Lenkes plays guitar, sometimes accompanying the vocalists, and sometimes building walls of noise; Sőrés plays violin and operates the electronics. All wear paper hats. Despite the fairly advanced age of the performers, the concert sounds unexpectedly fresh – and Ladik’s voice is no exception. Perhaps today real radicalism means Dadaist performances by performers with older bodies.

Ladik joined the band formed by Sőrés, Szkárosi and Zsolt Kovács in 1996 when they released the cassette Nemzeti zajzárványok / National Noise-Inclusions (Bahia Music, 1996). They don’t perform very often, but in 2003 they released their interpretation of Ursonate (Kurt Schwitters, Spiritus Noister – Ursonate for 2 Voices and Musical Environment, Hungaroton Classic, 2003). The “Musical Environment” created by Sőrés and Kovács for the voices of Ladik and Szkárosi contains a wide array of guitar sounds and timbres – from post-punk rumbles and blares, through noise squeals and screeches of audio feedback, up to differing cracks and crackles – as well as electronic hums, the sounds of violin and various percussion instruments, radio static and plunderphonically used fragments of recordings from different vinyl records. All of the sound sources are used sparingly, to leave the space for the vocalists and give a distinctive character to each track.

After the Balkan Wars broke out Ladik moved to Budapest, and is nowadays primarily connected to the circles of veterans of the Hungarian neo-avant-garde. Each year she spends a few months on the Croatian island of Hvar; sometimes she performs in the former Yugoslavian countries. In 2010 she had a retrospective in Novi Sad; in recent years she has also participated in some collective exhibitions. She’s still an alien body, “apparently present” within the art history of Hungary, and only now being inserted back into the post-Yugoslavian states’ fragmented cultural histories – so far, predominantly in the history of the performing arts.

I think about two of her collage-scores from 1971, both entitled Yugoslavian Hymn. They consist of stamps glued on staves – almost all of the stamps are the same, although some of them have different colours. Four stamps on the first work correspond with the four official languages of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian and Macedonian [29]. Six stamps on the second correspond with the six republics of the country. In 1975, during a collective exhibition in Vienna, Ladik performed an action called Identifikacija [Identification]. She made two photographs with a large Yugoslavian flag hanging from the balcony above the entrance to the Academy of Fine Arts. The first shows her in front of the flag, playing with the idea of representing the country. In the second she stands behind it – it covers her face, taking away her individual identity.

It’s hard not to think about her art – full of border-crossings and expanding boundaries, connecting communities and languages – as the art of a past era, overwhelmed and burdened by the catastrophe of the 90s. She lived in Novi Sad for almost half a century. And then to the long list of her identities she added another – that of an emigrant.

== References ==

[1] Further reading: Jean Martin, Peter Strickland’s Film Soundtracks, Glissando no. 26/2015, pp. 161-167

[2] The character voicing the “goblin” in the movie is played by Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg – another great practitioner of expanded vocal techniques. He and Ladik even perform together sometimes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92ScS7IQJ0U.

[3 ] Hendrik Folkerts, Keeping Score: Notation, Embodiment, and Liveness, http://www.documenta14.de/en/south/464_keeping_score_notation_embodiment_and_liveness

[4] David Crowley, Daniel Muzyczuk, Dźwięki Elektrycznego Ciała. Eksperymenty w sztuce i muzyce w Europie Wschodniej 1957-1984 / Sounding the Body Electric: Experiments in Art and Music in Eastern Europe 1957-1984, Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź 2012, p. 123.

[5] Ibid.

[6] See Magdalena Radomska, Polityka kierunków neoawangardy węgierskiej (1966-1980), Universitas, Kraków 2013, pp. 207-236

[7] Polityka kierunków neoawangardy węgierskiej (1966-1980), Universitas, Kraków 2013, p. 38.

[8] Antipolitics in Central European Art: Reticence as Dissidence under Post-Totalitarian Rule 1956-1989, Tauris, London – New York 2014, pp. 114-115.

[9] They were translated into Serbo-Croatian from the 70s. See Miško Šuvaković [ed.], Moć žene: Katalin Ladik. Retrospektiva 1962 – 2010 / The Power of a Woman: Katalin Ladik. Retrospective 1962 – 2010, Muzej Savremene Umetnosti Vojwodine, Novi Sad 2010, pp. 11-13.

[10] See Jacques Donguy, transl. Magdalena Madej, Poezja Eksperymentalna. Epoka cyfrowa (1953-2007), słowo/obraz terytoria, Gdańsk 2014, pp. 218-219.

[11] Ibid., p. 281.

[12] Jacques Donguy, op. cit., p. 133.

[13] See Zsuzsa László, Tamás St.Turba [eds.], Happening Budapest 1966. The Lunch (In Memoriam Batu Khan), tranzit.hu, Budapest 2011.

[14] Opasne igre razgrađivanja (beleške uz poeziju Ladik Katalin), Polja no. 128 / May 1969, p. 2, transl. Miško Šuvaković, op. cit., p. 109.

[15] For more on the festival see, for example, Željko Luketić, Genre film festival (GEFF) 1963.-1969.: Propuštena obljetnica / Genre Film Festival (GEFF) 1963-1969: Missed Anniversary, http://www.oris.hr/files/pdf/svijet_osiguranja/83/genre_film_festival.pdf.

[16] Years later, Ladik remarked that her performances caused much greater outrage and controversy in Hungary. See Beata Hock, Women Artists’ Trajectories and Networks within the Hungarian Underground Art Scene and Beyond, in: Jérôme Bazin, Pascal Dubourg Glatigny, Piotr Piotrowski [eds.], Art Beyond Borders. Artistic Exchange in Communist Europe [1945-1989], Central European University Press, Budapest – New York 2016, pp. 121-122. However, that only applies to artistic circles. The introduction of nudity to the Yugoslavian mass media caused a much bigger scandal. Documentation of Ladik’s performances was published in various magazines in Yugoslavia, including – and causing a particular scandal – a magazine named Start, sometimes referred to as the “Yugoslavian Playboy”. In 1975 Ladik was excluded from the party organisation for misconduct that would “degrade the reputation of the League of Communists, undermine its unity or debase its capacity for action”, Miško Šuvaković, Moć žene… p. 85.

[17] Endre Szkárosi, The Spatial Expansion of Language in Sound Poetry of Western and Eastern Europe, in: Yael Kaduri [ed.], The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Western Art, Oxford University Press, Oxford – New York 2016, p. 440. ↩

[18] Katalin Ladik, A Négidymenziós Ablak. Válogatott versek (1962-1996), Mikes International, Hága 2004, http://mek.oszk.hu/01600/01610/01610.pdf; http://mek.oszk.hu/01600/01611/mp3/. ↩

[19] Ladik never declared herself a representative of feminist art but – especially during that period – she often underlined her position as a woman within the system of new music, as well as within the visual and performing arts in Yugoslavia.

[20] Endre Szkárosi, op. cit., p. 442.

[21] Jacques Donguy, op. cit., p. 133.

[22] WOW, special issue of noviny Galerija SC, Novi Sad 27.10.1975, http://digitizing-ideas.org/pl/wpis/19670.

[23] Detonijeve upute za izvedbe / Detoni’s Instructions for the Performances, in: Raul Knežević [ed.], Ansambl ACEZANTEZ od 1970 / Ensemble ACEZANTEZ since 1970, Muzički informacioni centar Koncertne direkcije, Zagreb 1999, pp.144-145. Translated by the author on the basis of Miško Šuvaković, Moć žene… p. 151 and Mirjana Veselinović-Hofman, Problems and Paradoxes of Yugoslav Avant-garde Music (Outlines for a Reinterpretation), in: Dubravka Durić, Miško Šuvaković [eds.], Impossible Histories: Historical Avant-gardes, Neo-avant-gardes and Post-avant-gardes in Yugoslavia 1918-1989, MIT Press, Cambridge – London 2003, p. 435.

[24] Mirjana Veselinović-Hofman, ibid.

[25] More about the instruments: Anna Szwajgier, Muzyka Centrum – działalność i repertuar jako odzwierciedlenie głównych nurtów muzyki 2. połowy XX wieku oraz przemian dokonujących się w formach jej prezentacji, http://www.muzykacentrum.krakow.pl/AnnaSzwajgierMuzykaCentrum.pdf, pp. 91-92.

[26] Melita Milin, Serbian Music of the Second Half of the 20th Century: From Socialist Realism to Postmodernism, in: Katy Romanou [ed.], Serbian and Greek Art Music. A Patch to Western Music History, Intellect, Bristol – Chicago 2009, pp. 86-87. ↩

[27] Bora Ćosić, Mixed Media, self-published, Beograd 1970. ↩

[28] In the late 90s he formed LaDaABa Orchest (La Danza Apocalyptica Balcanica), a band that would play “ballroom dance music” combining various traditions of Balkan music with “contemporary classical” to exorcise the madness of the Balkan Wars. ↩

[29] There were de facto two types of Serbo-Croatian; however, they could also be counted as one, with the Albanian language – the de facto second official language in the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo – counted as the fourth language. ↩

[[Category: Hungarian Contributions]] [[Category: Yugoslavian Contributions]]

Hues of Independence

2018-07-09T15:58:21Z

Diogo:

[[File:HOI - 1.png|thumb|right|1. Still from ‘Plastic People of the Universe’, directed by C.sar de Ferrari, 1970. Courtesy of Česka Televize]]
''This article, written by Daniel Muzyczuk, explores the meaning of the underground and its role in Democratic opposition in the Eastern Bloc, focusing particularly on [[:Category:Czechoslovakia|Czech]], [[:Category:Poland|Polish]], [[:Category:Hungary|Hungarian]] and [[:Category:East Germany|East-German]] examples.''

In his insightful study about the intersecting paths of political dissidents and underground musicians in 1970s and 1980s Czechoslovakia, Jonathan Bolton notes that researchers of such relationships necessarily rely on two kinds of sources of a completely different nature:

As with samizdat, where we can never really track down the exact circulation of particular typed texts, we must read the underground legends without, ultimately, having a clear sense of their spread or reception; nevertheless, we must also remember that imaginary circulations were just as important as real ones. The legends about Bondy, Jirous, and the [[The Plastic People of the Universe|Plastic People]] were both descriptive of an underground environment and constitutive of a cultural identity. '''[1]'''

So on the one hand we have the hard facts relayed by historical sources of established credibility, while on the other hand we keep encountering mythologised stories about heroic deeds, their reach unknown. The notion of universality gains a wholly new meaning here. These differing narratives were often aimed at specific audiences: sometimes with the purpose of peer communication within alternative culture; occasionally, they were directed at the larger set of dissidents or counter-culture activists or even at the society at large or the state apparatus, particularly the security services of the respective countries. The transition to democracy has facilitated wide access to sources produced in different circulations and different contexts, as a result of which identifying the addressees of the different messages is becoming difficult, and mapping their striking distance – virtually impossible.

In this essay I will discuss the discourses and practices of special communities that combined musical and visual work, or actually saw them as one. This intermedia production was often informed by the perception of independence as the need to create a parallel culture, one that would be a world in itself and unto itself, and therefore one that has its own full cultural life. Contrary to what it might seem, this is a story about the clever exploitation of possibilities offered by states rather than a narrative of struggle, persecution and oppression. In his essay about the late-Soviet rave generation, Alexei Yurchak makes an interesting diagnosis according to which independence – at least in perestroika-era Soviet Union – meant evading the state apparatus. He wrote:

I argue … that the logic of nonofficial discourses and practices in late socialism was based most of all on attempts to have a meaningful life in spite of the state's oppression. Hence, the nonofficial (or ‘countercultural’) practices involved not so much countering, resisting, or opposing state power as simply avoiding it and carving out symbolically meaningful spaces and identities away from it. '''[2]'''

Of course, each of the countries in the Soviet Bloc had its own institutions of compulsion and control. It is also worth noting that we are talking about a very long period, from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, when liberalisation processes occurred with various degrees of intensity. By looking at a broad range of relationships between the state and the ‘independents’, we will be able to grasp the whole complexity of the issue as well as better understand what happens to countercultural terms when they are transplanted from their natural habitat of Western democracy to real socialism.

== Assaulting Culture ==
[[File:HOI - 2.png|thumb|right|2. Still from ‘Plastic People of the Universe’, directed by C.sar de Ferrari, 1970. Courtesy of Česka Televize ]]
The history of The Plastic People of the Universe, their idea of the underground and their subsequent involvement in the democratic opposition movement is well known. And yet it continues to shine uniquely as the most radical moment of Eastern European counterculture. Analyses of the writings of the group’s chief ideologist and manager, Ivan Martin ‘Magor’ Jirous, have revealed new insights reflecting how culturally complex a phenomenon The Plastic People were. Asked about the meaning of the term ‘underground’ in an interview included in Césare de Ferrari’s 1970 film entitled Plastic People of the Universe, Jirous cites The Fugs and Ed Sanders and speaks of a ‘total assault on culture’ (figure 1). '''[3]''' Already in 1965 the same phrase appears, as ‘atentát na kulturu’, in a song by the band Aktual, run by Milan Knížák, and this may have been in that context that Jirous had first heard it. '''[4]'''

So the underground was for Jirous a cultural formation, its defining characteristic being confrontation with the establishment. It is worth noting that it doesn’t matter here whether ‘the establishment’ refers to Western society or to the communist party and the cultural elites. Another source that Jirous cited in his early texts was Marcel Duchamp and his famous dictum that the ‘great artist of tomorrow will go underground’. This pays witness to a need to escape from the commercialisation of art and withdraw to an area of anonymity that would protect one from the invisible hand of the market. But the two quotations (from Sanders and Duchamp) evidence also Jirous’s ambitions to follow the example set by Andy Warhol in the Velvet Underground and create a cultural structure as rich as The Factory (figure 2).

In the interview cited above, Jirous - the artistic director of [[The Plastic People of the Universe]] - says that the band is not just the music but also the work of artists, meaning Jan Ságl and Zorka Ságlová – authors of the costumes, stage designs and, in the case of the latter, land-art projects that the members of The Plastic People helped create. A few years later, in reaction to growing pressure on the band and its milieu, Jirous was to formulate in his famous manifesto, A Report on the Third Czech Musical Revival, the theory of a second culture which was doubtless a development and concretisation of the notion of the underground as a cultural formation based on subculture.

The attack on The Plastic People of the Universe and other bands began in 1974 with the cancelling of concerts. But the group was still neither official nor unofficial. On 30 March 1974, the so called ‘České Budějovice massacre’ took place, where Czechoslovak riot police broke up a Plastic People show and clubbed the fans before herding them into a train and sending them back to Prague. In the following years tension grew, culminating in the arrest and subsequent prosecution of four leading members of the scene on 17 March 1976, a month after the Second Festival of the Second Culture in Bojanovice. The detainees included Ivan Jirous – manager and ideologist of The Plastic People of the Universe, Vratislav Brabenec – saxophone player and lyricist, Pavel Zajíček of the band [[DG 307|DG307]], and the folk singer Svatopluk Karásek. In the same year, Czechoslovak TV broadcasts a documentary titled, aptly, Atentát na kulturu (referring thus to both The Fugs and Aktual), which presents the arrested men as deviants and drug addicts who participate in orgies and use dead rats for drumsticks (sic!) (figure 3). The Report on the Third Czech Musical Revival is written during this time, becoming, in the light of the subsequent events, a crucial manifesto. In it, Jirous again refers to Sanders, but lends a new meaning to the words ascribed to him: ‘[The underground] is a movement that operates primarily with artistic means, even though its representatives are conscious of the fact that is not and should not be the end-all of an artist’s effort’. '''[5]''' Then he explains what kind of culture the underground is supposed to serve:

''"The aim of the underground here in Bohemia is the creation of a second culture: a culture that will not be dependent on official channels of communication, social recognition, and the hierarchy of values laid down by the establishment; a culture which cannot have the destruction of the establishment as its aim because in doing so, it would drive itself into the establishment’s embrace; a culture which helps those who wish to join it to rid themselves of the scepticism which says that nothing can be done and shows them that much can be done when those who make the culture desire little for themselves and much for others."'' '''[6]'''

It is worth comparing Jirous’s declarations with another source – a brief text, ‘A Silent Hungarian Underground’, published in 1973 by Béla Hap, founder of the Hungarian samizdat periodical, Szétfolyóirat. Hap described the underground as an artistic movement which neither supports nor attacks the establishment, but remains outside it. Any attack on the establishment would acknowledge its existence . . . It wants to be a form of unidentifiable, unanalysable, ungraspable, and incorruptible outsider art. PRIVATE ART. '''[7]'''

[[File:HOI - (3).png|thumb|right|3. Still from ‘Atent.t na kulturu’ (Assault on Culture), directed by Ladislav Chocholoušek, 1977. Courtesy of Česka televize]]
This definition was formulated in a milieu centred on a rather specific periodical which made evading official restrictions on production and distribution both its working method and a content management principle. Thus a term originating in the West became here not a distant and utopian idea, as in Jirous’s text, but rather a daily praxis of cultural production. This is confirmed in Hap‘s text: ‘What are the information channels of the underground? Pencil, pen, brush, nail, typewriter, photo camera, tape recorder, private home, forest, clearing, tree hollow, air, whatever, mouth, ears, telepathy etc. . . . It creates film out of film waste, out of what the superficial world discards’. '''[8]'''

But this pragmatic definition didn’t protect its author from constant surveillance and reprisals. Let us return however to Jirous and The Plastic People of the Universe. It is clear that the oppression encountered by alternative culture in Czechoslovakia made it possible to reformulate the organisation’s goals and the ways of achieving them. But the very form of government still seems unimportant for the notion of the underground. The establishments are different, but the forms of relationships with them are similar. At this point we arrive at the crucial – and heavily mythologised – moment of the publication of Charter 77 - an emanation of the underground’s alliance with the dissident movement.

[[Martin Machovec]] notes that Jirous, Hlavsa or Brabenec had no political agenda, and confrontational slogans were formulated to create space for ‘doing your own thing’ rather than to achieve any kind of political change. He also believes that state oppression played a role in the crystallisation of the underground’s positions and operating methods, writing that ‘they were compelled to become politically radicalised because of the totalitarian regime's intolerance and brutal oppression. However, their radicalism did not lead to a kind of a “world revolution” but rather to the activities of the defenders of human rights in Charter 77’. '''[9]'''

In its clash with the regime, the underground found allies in political dissidents and thus the war for culture and democratic structures in Czechoslovakia became a binary conflict: the state against Charter 77. In a 1995 interview, Egon Bondy spoke about the meaning of the term ‘underground’:
''
"It was rather the shared lot of those who’d found themselves representing positions even more radical than the ordinary dissident. We definitely wanted to distinguish ourselves from the so called ‘grey zone”’, from people, often with good jobs, who would consider themselves dissidents because they cursed the regime at home. The Czech ‘underground’ brought together people from all kinds of backgrounds and there was never any friction between them. Among my closest friends were Protestants and Catholics, deeply religious people, who still didn’t reject me, an avowed Marxist."'' '''[10]'''

Also Bondy speaks in a way which suggests that ‘the underground’ ultimately became a descriptive term, losing, as a result of the conflict, its projective, future-oriented character. In fact, at first, members of the underground had perceived dissidents as part of the establishment. This perspective can be sensed in Charter 77 itself, when it is pointed out that the signatories enjoyed better protection from oppression than figures from the underground. Jirous’s criticism of intellectuals from Havel’s milieu had been internalised, and the struggle for human rights became the groundwork of the alliance. The history of The [[Plastic People of the Universe|Plastic People]] and Charter 77 represents actually the only example of a lasting alliance between the two groups, compelled by the state. Let us notice that the very term ‘velvet revolution’ probably originated from the Velvet Underground, a key inspiration for The Plastic People. '''[11]'''

At this point it is doubtless worth noting a completely different reaction to the notion of the underground, presented by Mikoláš Chadima, member of bands such as [[Kilhets]], Extempore and MCH Band, in the introduction to his book, Alternativa. Od rekvalifikací k «Nové» vlně se starým obsahem. Chadima reconstructs the scene, noting a possible tripartition: for him, the establishment and the underground are two circles, beyond which there is also the alternative. Miroslav Vaněk saw the matter in similar terms, writing that, ‘this branch of rock music constitutes an alternative to official pop and big beat (rock and roll), but is also an alternative to the other end, the so called Underground’. '''[12]'''

[[File:HOI - (4).png|thumb|right|4. Extempore Band, IX Pražske jazzove dny (Prague Jazz Days), 1979, photograph Jiři Kučera. Courtesy of Mikolaš Chadima]]
In Vaněk’s statement, the political aspect of the distinction is lost. For the alternative, as Chadima described it – unlike the underground after 1976 – was still willing to take avail of all the opportunities offered by the state. This transition is also bound up with a generational change which means that the battles fought by the older heroes did not matter to younger musicians. An idealistic set of connotations was replaced by pragmatism. This is a similar action to the abovementioned vision of alternative culture as a practice characterised most of all by ingenuity in evading the regime. One example of a subject operating in this fashion was the Jazzová Sekce (Jazz Section) of the Union of Czechoslovak Musicians, founded on 31 November 1971, which organised concerts, festivals and exhibitions. Over 15 years, it published 28 bulletins and a series of monographic publications under the Jazz Petit imprint. They were self-published but of high quality (with subjects such as punk, land art, dada or graphic scores). It also organised the Pražské jazzové dny (Prague Jazz Days), an event that took place eleven times between 1974 and 1982. Despite its name, the festival was not only open to avant-garde rock and punk, but also to non-musical projects such as experimental film screenings or theatre shows (figure 4). '''[13]'''

The Jazz Section’s key venue was the amateur club U Zábranských, where alternative rock bands such as Kilhets or Extempore performed. '''[14]''' Due to the expansive nature of its activities, the Jazz Section found itself at odds with its patron organisation; this led to radicalisation and further expansion. In 1979, the Section joined the International Jazz Federation (member of the UNESCO International Music Council), and later joined the European Association for Musical Research and the European Nuclear Disarmament (END) movement. We can say that – like with The Plastic People of the Universe – the organisation’s radicalisation and eventual dissolution occurred despite the fact that it originally lacked any outright political goals. At the same time, the Section was increasingly involved in helping dissidents publish materials and organise concerts. At first, the regime responded by piling up bureaucratic requirements. Despite these difficulties, the Section continued operating and its membership grew. In 1984, the Section was officially dissolved, whereupon it moved underground where it continued to function for two more years in an increasingly oppressive atmosphere until, in September 1986, its five leaders were arrested and put on trial for ‘operating an unauthorised enterprise’, ‘engaging in illegal lucrative activities’, and ‘distributing illegal publications’. '''[15]''' Two of the members went to prison for over a year.

== Third Circulation ==
Exploring the Czechoslovak scene, we can clearly see key concepts and lines of division present in many countries of the bloc, but nowhere else did they achieve such density nor lead to such heated debates and a resulting crystallisation of positions. In Poland in the 1980s a brief moment of alliance between anti-communist activists and the underground can be noted, as mentioned by Piotr Rypson: ‘I have a photo where we are walking with Tomek [Lipiński] and two other friends in a Solidarity demonstration – happy, delighted, smiling. Tomek had just changed his image – he’d stopped spiking up his hair, stopped wearing metal jewellery, put on a V-neck sweater. I remember us concluding that it doesn’t make sense to antagonise the public visually at a time when society is changing – and changing the reality at hand.’ '''[16]'''

In 1981, during the short-lived ‘Solidarity carnival’, a period of liberalisation that was ended abruptly by the introduction of martial law, Brygada Kryzys, a band run at the time by Lipiński and Robert Brylewski, was invited to perform at the Solidarity-organised ‘Przegląd Piosenki Prawdziwej’ (Festival of True Song) at the Olivia venue in Gdańsk. This moment was very brief however, and Lipiński’s words explain why: ‘In 1980, the situation changed. We, as anarchists, naturally saw the regime in a similar way as Solidarity did. From the beginning of 1981, however, we began viewing Solidarity as a new establishment, one which spelled no positive prospects. On the other hand, Solidarity in itself, as an anarchistic movement, was acceptable for us . . . As long as Solidarity was anarchistic, we were on the same side’. '''[17]'''

Punks become temporary fellow travellers on a trip that lasted only until Solidarity had crystallised as a formation with specific views about its intended position in society. Also the political police perceived members of the two groups differently. Solidarity and political dissidents enjoyed a kind of esteem while youth counterculture movements were disparaged as the expression of demoralisation. Paweł ‘Konjo’ Konnak notes that the security police, the SB, clearly saw a difference between the second and third circulations. He remembers the moment when the archives of confiscated samizdat were opened: ‘It’s interesting what happened to the confiscated Totart stage props and publications. A year later, following the elections of June 1989 and pursuant to a deal negotiated by Solidarity with the communists, opposition activists whose underground production had been confiscated were able to collect it back from the SB storerooms. When we too came to claim our meagre junk, the Solidarity gentlemen kindly told us that we had never been any kind of underground and showed us the door. And the Publishing and Advertising Section of the Pill of Progression Metaphysical-Entertainment Conglomerate has the right to nothing’. [18] Paradoxically, this policy meant that materials of lesser subversive potential were irrevocably destroyed while the political samizdat survived.

Another strategy of scene division was followed in East Germany. The authorities in the German Democratic Republic were always wary of the musical scene. Erich Honecker, for example, stated in the 1960s: ‘it was overlooked that the enemy exploits this type of music to drive young people to excesses through the use of exaggerated beat rhythms. The pernicious influences of such music upon the thoughts and actions of young people is being grossly underestimated’. '''[19]'''

In 1976, Wolf Biermann went to perform in Cologne in West Germany; upon his return, he was refused re-entry to the DDR and stripped of his citizenship. The avowed Marxist and socialist bard was a persona non grata in East Germany, because his poetry was too realistic and reflected the absurdities of everyday life all too well. Thus ended a long process of growing separation between the nonconformist songwriter and the state. It was a significant moment also because the future landmarks of East German punk were already looming on the horizon. Bert Papenfuß-Gorek, a poet associated with the Prenzlauer Berg scene and the bands Rosa Extra and [[Ornament & Verbrechen]], reminisced: ‘Biermann's era was completely finished. He was still hanging around, and some friends even had his albums and were still listening to that rubbish, but I would have nothing to do with that anymore. I was on the side of the MC5 and Ton Steine Scherben’. '''[20]'''

Papenfuß-Gorek not only suggests the alleged worthlessness of Biermann’s music but also a lack of interest in its themes. There was no place here for a dissident position – the expression of an open contestation of political authority. Rather, this was an attitude that defies everything that the establishment embodies, and it didn’t matter whether it was a Western or Eastern establishment. Punk in East Berlin declared war on the system in the broadest sense. In a documentary film about Sascha Anderson, Papenfuß-Gorek says: ‘We were against the GDR party dictatorship, not explicitly against the idea of socialism or communism … there were many who described themselves as real Marxists. There was everyone from anarchists to people who saw the Western welfare state as an ideal. That was basically the spectrum’. '''[21]'''

[[File:HOI - (5).png|thumb|right|5. Licence given to AG Geige in ‘Recognition of Artistic Quality’, 1987. Archive of Frank Bretschneider]]
But the regime saw no difference and cracked down on youth subcultures as vehemently as it fought the political opposition. Following a period of direct reprisals against the punk movement, which were supposed to eradicate it by 1983, in the second half of the 1980s the East German authorities changed strategy. Instead of compulsory military service, police harassment, detention or, in some cases, imprisonment, the state sought to extend control over counterculture groups. The policy of granting licences for public performances was relaxed (figure 5). This development is described by Susanne Binas, member of the band Expander des Fortschritts:

''"It was incomparably easier to obtain a license after the mid-1980s than in earlier years. In order to perform in front of an audience, each band had to present its repertoire to a cultural commission of the district government in a special audition. In earlier years, these posts were largely occupied by political bureaucrats with little or no musical background. In contrast to that, however, our band, auditioned in front of a commission composed of jazz musicians, who were amenable to, and familiar with the broad spectrum of our musical innovations like threechord textures, slap bass, cut ups and samples, tapes, or even quotations by Heiner Müller that were peculiar to our style of music. They deflected demands for high levels of musical proficiency and expertise typical of earlier periods by upholding the principles of artistic freedom and pointing out the existence of an interested audience."'' '''[22]'''

[[File:HOI - (6).png|thumb|right|6. Jan Kummer and Frank Bretschneider during a recording session of [[AG Geige]] for radio, Karl-Marx-Stadt, 1987. Photography Lutz Schramm. Archive of Frank Bretschneider]]
But that isn’t all. As in Poland earlier, where the term ‘ Muzyka Młodej Generacji’ (music of the new generation) was floated in 1978, the phrase ‘Anderen bands’ (other bands) then entered official discourse in East Germany. The idea was to avoid Western vocabulary (the name ‘punk’ remains taboo for official media). Some bands changed their names to sound less controversial. Repackaged in this way, new wave music could be presented to a mass-media audience. In 1986, the East German youth radio station DT64 started broadcasting ‘Parocktikum’, a weekly show that played bands such as Hard Pop, Cadavre Exquis or AG. Geige (figure 6). The scene was divided into two camps: the punk underground, interested in no compromises with the state, or simply with the East German social order, and the alternative. '''[23]''' The choice of the term ‘other bands’ seems very fitting in this case. One can easily find analogies with the Czechoslovak discussions and the division between the underground and the alternative.

== Places and Structures ==
[[File:HOI - (7).png|thumb|right|7. Zuzu-Vető, ‘New Flags, New Tendencies, Communism now’, Fiatal Műveszek Klubja, Budapest, 1983. Courtesy of Janos Vető]]
The Czechoslovak case of cooperation between the Jazz Section and the U Zábranských club is worth comparing with other institutions with similar profiles (i.e., state-funded spaces that weren’t hostile to semi-official activities). Such spaces included the Fiatal Művészek Klubja (Young Artists Club) in Budapest, the Riviera-Remont club and Post in Warsaw, and the Leningrad Rock Club. Each exploited the resources offered by the state in a different way that, combined with the socio-political context, produced specific subcultures. In Hungary, the situation was seemingly clear: according to a policy implemented by prominent politician György Aczél in the 1960s, each manifestation of cultural life was labelled as belonging to one of three categories known as the ‘three Ts’ (Tiltott = banned; Tűrt = tolerated; Támogatott = supported).

However, a look at the 1980s new-wave scene confirms that the division applied to the whole culture where, as in Yurchak’s characterisation, contacts with the state were avoided but the resources and infrastructure provided by it were exploited to the full. In her book about the Hungarian music scene in the 1980s, Anna Szemere writes about a subculture that she describes as the ‘marginal intelligentsia’, the focal point of which was Budapest’s Young Artists Club. It was a meeting place for political dissidents, musicians as well as visual artists. Established in the 1960s, the Club gained full momentum only in the last decade of socialism in Hungary thanks to its open formula which accommodated punk concerts as well as political discussions with members of the democratic opposition. Such activities triggered official reprisals, including frequent event cancellations, but that only added to the place’s popularity. New wave bands such as Balaton, Trabant, [[A. E. Bizottság]] or [[Vágtázó Halottkémek]] found perfect conditions here for developing their innovative ideas. Young Artists Club was also the best environment for them due to its exhibition programme. Artist János Vető, for example, whose works created in a duo with Lóránt Méhes (as Zuzu-Vető) were presented in several exhibitions at the Club, was also a member of Trabant (figure 7). The Young Artists Club was a place where much of his artistic activity was focused. Soon new venues with a similar profile started springing up. Szemere arrives at interesting conclusions, describing this movement towards new spaces of autonomy:

''"Subconsciously, musicians must have known that only by establishing physical spaces and places (primarily venues, but also radio and television stations, etc.) could they re-create affective spaces and places, which are the stuff and goal of music-based social events and rituals. The reconfiguration of the political-social space surrounding the community compelled it to seek stability in the building of physical places. This territorial approach to renewal seemed indispensable for many members of the underground if they were to retain a minimal sense of continuity with the past and regenerate a sense of collective identity."'' '''[24]'''

[[File:HOI - (8).png|thumb|right|8. Commonpress 51, catalogue of the exhibition ‘Hungary Can Be Yours’, 1984/89. Courtesy of Artpool]]
Szemere describes the sociocultural location of this movement as ‘marginal’, a term whose semantic scope overlaps with the alternative, with the difference that marginal positions no longer seek to situate themselves ‘towards’ anything, but simply occupy those areas where the power of the establishment was weak. It is worth mentioning here one of the many examples of the practices of the Young Artists Club that reveals a successful combination of youth culture with the visual arts as well as reflecting the official attitude towards the venue’s activities. In 1984 [[Artpool]] organised at the Club an exhibition called Magyarország a tiéd lehet! (Hungary Can Be Yours!). A multimedia project, it was divided into two rooms: in a black one, together withworks by foreign artists, one could watch also a broadcast from a white one, that included artworks by Hungarians (figure 8, 9). '''[25]'''

[[File:HOI - (9).png|thumb|right|9. Floorplan of the exhibition ‘Hungary Can Be Yours’, 1984/89. Courtesy of Artpool]]
A cassette tape was also released, number six in the Artpool Radio series of compilation tapes (a kind, effectively, of an audio magazine), presenting recordings by non-conformist artists such as Tibor Hajas or Tamás Szentjóby and bands such as [[A. E. Bizottság]], [[Vágtázó Halottkémek]] or Európa Kiadó (figure 10). The authorities deemed the exhibition to be politically subversive and ordered that it be closed down. '''[26]''' The significance of the event itself and of the violence of censorship is highlighted by the fact that after the transformation, in December 1989, the project was reconstructed precisely in exactly the same place.

In Leningrad, in turn, the year 1981 saw the founding of three organisations that offered a glimpse of cultural freedom and anticipated perestroika: ‘The Leningrad KGB [state security police] decides to stage a pioneering social experiment and the following are established at the same time: The Experimental Fine Arts Society, the Literary Club and the Rock Club. They are fostered by the trade unions, whose mission includes supporting factory-affiliated cultural centres to confirm the “culturalisation” of the working masses’. '''[27]'''

[[File:HOI - (10).png|thumb|right|10. Artpool r.di. 6, audio casette, 1984. Courtesy of Artpool]]
Each of the three – the Association of Experimental Visual Art (TEII), Club 81 (a literary organisation) and the Ленинградский рок-клуб (Leningrad Rock Club) – had a different structure. Club 81 was a recognised association of some 70 unofficial writers who organised lectures, conferences and concerts at the Dostoyevsky Museum (the famous writer’s former apartment). The Leningrad Rock Club was supposed to function much like the Association of Soviet Composers, that is, to issue concert permits and to act as a censor in the field of youth popular music. What proved far more important however was the space where the institution was housed: it became an influential venue for rehearsals, live shows or simply meetings (figure 11). It was the place where bands such as Kino, Alisa, Akvarium or Zoopark successfully launched their careers. In this context it is worth noting that liberalisation did’t produce the same effects in all areas. Timur Novikov, the leader of the New Artists group, felt ill at ease in the elitist structures of TEII and for this reason sought his own, alternative, methods of collective visual-arts practice. He remembered the Club as a place of unique atmosphere:

''"The New Artists collaborated with the Leningrad Rock Club. I myself was a member of the rock club, as the official designer of Kino. The New Artists designed the Kino sets and records and held exhibitions at the club. The Leningrad Rock Club was an exciting place to be at that time. Hoards of strangely dressed young people flocked to the concerts, with the police hot on their tracks. In the 1980s, long hair was out; crew cuts dyed all the colours of the rainbow were in. All the gigs were accompanied by arrests and document checks, which only added fuel to the flames."'' '''[28]'''

[[File:HOI - (11).png|thumb|right|11. Timur Novikov, Sergey Kuryokhin, Joanna Stingray and members of Kino, Aquarium and Alisa in Leningrad Rock Club, 1985. Courtesy of Joanna Stingray]]
While most of the musicians collaborating with Novikov, such as Victor Tsoy or Sergey Kuryokhin, worked with success at the Leningrad Rock Club, Novikov himself and the painters with whom he worked decided to start their own place (figure 12). Its activities and the one-of-a-kind community that formed around it are described by Konstanty Usenko:
''
"Timur organises the legendary Assa Gallery in an abandoned komunalka. Installations exhibited there will later appear in an eponymous film. Assa’s most famous show is one presenting the works of Andy Warhol himself, little known in the USSR at the time. Novikov, who corresponded by mail with the Pop Art master, had received from him several copies of the famous Marilyn Monroe poster and exhibited them in 1986 in a vacant communal flat in Leningrad. . . . Spaces in Papa Om’s new musical squat are also populated by painters and performers. Besides the neo-expressionists, there were also necro-realist filmmakers there, led by Evgeny “Yufa” Yufit, from the first punk crew from Kupchino. “Yufa” tries his hand there in video art making. In 1988, the Friends of Mayakovsky Club, led by Novikov and the Kino drummer, Gustav, organises at H4/B4 an exhibition commemorating the ninety-fifth anniversary of the artist’s death. News about it spread rapidly around the northern metropolis. Sergey Kuryokhin’s avant-garde orchestra, Pop-Mekhanika, gave a concert."'' '''[29]'''

The Leningrad Rock Club helped create a musical scene of great vitality, a scene that (like the New Artists) wasn’t interested in politics. During the period of perestroika after 1985, liberalisation opened the way for an explosion of youth culture which could be witnessed in film, music and the visual arts. It was thanks to the alliance between the disciplines that bands like Kino or Akvarium shot to real stardom and the official media had no choice but to report about their successes.

[[File:HOI - (12).png|thumb|right|12. Timur Novikov, Joanna Stingray and members of Kino in the ASSA Gallery, 1985. Courtesy of Joanna Stingray]]
In Poland, the Riviera-Remont club, through the many initiatives that took place there, helped forge alliances between visual artists and musicians (from jazz-experimental and new-wave backgrounds) on an unprecedented scale. A student club financed by a branch of the Socjalistyczny Związek Studentów Polskich (Socialist Union of Polish Students) of the Warsaw University of Technology, the Riviera-Remont ran several artistic programmes in the 1970s: the Remont Gallery, managed by Henryk Gajewski; a theatre centre; a cine club called ‘Kwant’; the Remont Jazz Club and the Remont Folk Club. In 1980-1981, Andrzej Zuzak launched, with a group of friends, the Polish name (Alternative Art Agency) which was to be the first independent artistic management agency supporting young alternative rock bands and other forms of artistic activity.

[[File:HOI - (13).png|thumb|right|13. Post, no. 2, 20 September 1980. Courtesy of Piotr Rypson]]
In 1974, [[Andrzej Mitan]] initiated the ‘Diaphora of Music and Poetry’, a series of meetings taking place through 1981, presenting recent innovations in music, poetry and the visual arts. The Remont Gallery, which Gajewski ran with Andrzej Jórczak and Krzysztof Wojciechowski, was geared towards conceptual reflection in the field of photography. Exhibitions were accompanied by theoretical brochures with essays by Polish authors and translations of key international texts. Its programme’s greatest highlight was a widely advertised visit of Andy Warhol (1974) which never happened: the whole thing was a happening/prank staged by Gajewski. In 1978, the latter organised a festival called I Am (International Artist Meeting) which featured two events that were to leave a lasting impact on the Warsaw new wave scene. One was the show of the leftist British punk band, The Raincoats, cited by numerous scene members as their first contact with the new music. The other was Gajewski’s meeting with Piotr Rypson, the future manager of Tilt (a new wave group), artist and curator, for whom the festival marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with the Remont. In 1979, Gajewski reorganised the gallery, renaming it Post Remont, and started publishing with Rypson a zine called Post, combining punk and artistic reflection (figure 13). Łukasz Ronduda describes their collective activities thus:

''"In their post-gallery, Gajewski and Rypson adopted the role of artists-managers, using progressive production and marketing strategies, characteristic for pop culture in developed societies, to support punk culture. They used them to fulfil a selfless artistic vision rather than, as managers in the West, to commercialise the punk movement and commodify its music, fashion and lifestyle."'' '''[30]'''

Let us note that in this interpretation, the Post Remont appears as a subject whose scope goes far beyond even the broadest formula of an artist-run space. It was, after all, a student gallery combining conceptual art and youth music with publishing (figure 14). At the same time, all these activities were made possible by state funding. The alliance ended abruptly with the introduction of martial law in Poland in December 1981 and Gajewski’s emigration to Amsterdam.

== DIY? ==
[[File:HOI - (14).png|thumb|right|14. Kryzys playing at Post during Henryk Gajewski’s exhibition ‘Other Book for Children’, 1979]]
In the West, the litmus test ultimately distinguishing truly independent artists from those collaborating with the establishment was traditionally the label a band was on. If it was with one of the majors, the band would face accusations of betraying its principles and selling out. But in communist-era Eastern Europe this benchmark didn’t apply. At this point, the mythology bound up with the key concepts that I wish to expand on in this essay becomes fully apparent. Did publishing a record on a state-owned label carry the same ideological meaning as publishing it on a major commercial one? I will try to answer this question, again citing several examples that will allow us to distinguish a range of hues far more varied than simple opposition-based contrast. Already in the USSR, traditionally perceived as the country most restrictive in its approach towards youth culture, we deal with a whole gamut of different policies. As will be demonstrated, the status of an officially recognised artist – one allowed to represent the country abroad and therefore also hold a passport or be able to publish – didn’t depend on artistic compromises but on the policy of the different republics.

In an essay accompanying a re-edition of Sergey Kuryokhin’s record titled, tellingly, Degrees of Freedom, Alex Kan reveals the scale of the different treatment of artists in the different parts of the USSR:
[[File:HOI - (15).png|thumb|right|15. Ganelin, Tarasov, Chekasin, Con Anima, LP issued by Melodia, 1976. Cover design by Eugenijus Cukermanas. Courtesy of [[Vladimir Tarasov]]]]
''"There was no way Melodiya would consider publishing avant-garde record of an underground musician. The fact that a few years earlier, in 1976, the Ganelin trio managed to get their magnificent Con Anima published on Melodiya, seemed a total aberration, an exception which just proved the rule. The trio lived and worked in a more liberal semi-Western Lithuania, and with Tarasov playing full time with the Lithuanian Philharmonic, Ganelin holding position of the music director at a prominent theater, and Chekasin teaching at a music school, they seemed and were much more established and respectable than a wayward pianist from a much more conservative Leningrad. Even for the trio it took five long years before their second release could see the light of day – the authorities at Melodia in Moscow, having realised the gaffe they made with Con Anima, put up stubborn resistance and Concerto Grosso was not published until 1981" (figure 15).'' '''[31]'''

The history of the recording and release of Degrees of Freedom aptly reflects the working conditions of progressive musicians in Leningrad. The album, with solo piano music, was recorded late at night in the studio of the Leningrad Institute of Film, Theatre and Music by a sound engineer that Kuryokhin was friends with. Smuggled to Britain, the material was released on vinyl by Leo Feigin, owner of Leo Records (figure 16).

[[File:HOI - (16).png|thumb|right|16. Andy Warhol holding the sleeve Sergey Kuryokhin’s LP ‘Ways of Freedom’, 1985. Courtesy of Joanna Stingray]]
There was no information on the cover about the circumstances of the original recording, but there was a disclaimer – ‘The musicians do not bear any responsibility for publishing these tapes’ – which suggested that the record was in fact a bootleg. In this context, it is worth examining another example of East-West music smuggling. Joanna Stingray came to Leningrad in 1984, During this trip she managed to meet numerous artists and scene members associated with the New Artists group, the Assa Gallery and the Leningrad Rock Club. Two years later, she published, on the Australian label Big Time, the compilation Red Wave: 4 Underground Bands From the USSR, with recordings by Akvarium, Kino, Alisa and Strange Games. At the same time, she made a documentary film featuring music videos by each of the bands and a presentation of the context in which they worked, including footage of Timur Novikov playing on the utiugon, a self-made instrument. On the cover, Stingray put the following note: ‘I have brought their music to the West, in hope of creating better understanding between people. MUSIC HAS NO BORDERS! (figure 17)’ '''[32]''' But the Soviet authorities thought otherwise and Stingray was punished for illegally exporting state property. As she recounted,

''"The tracks were recorded on reel-to-reel tapes that were outdated, large and unwieldy. I hid the paper with the lyrics under the lining of my boots and the tapes in a secret pocket of my jacket. I was smuggling the music out as if I were a drug courier. The safest route was from Leningrad to Finland because they didn't search people as thoroughly in the Leningrad airport as in Moscow. (…) When I returned to the Soviet Union, I first went to the VAAP (Soviet Copyright Agency). They gave me a long lecture and a paper to sign saying that I had smuggled the recordings out without the musicians' knowledge. I quickly agreed to sign it, gave VAAP the royalty fee and thought that the matter was settled. I returned to the States riding on a cloud and prepared for my wedding to Yury Kasparyan. But after that meeting they banned me from entering the Soviet Union for six months, with the result that I missed my own wedding."'' '''[33]'''

[[File:HOI - (17).png|thumb|right|17. Red Wave’ compilation, LP, Stingray Productions, 1986. Courtesy of Joanna Stingray]]
Record smuggling and bootlegging are a constant feature of stories about early new-wave music publishing. In Poland, for example, Kryzys (as well as Deadlock) had their first album released by Blitzkrieg Records, a Barclay label, founded to publish Polish and Chinese punk (the latter represented by ‘The Dragons’, which was probably a fictitious band). Robert Brylewski, the leader of Kryzys, reminisced,

''"There was a French guy, Marc Boulet, who travelled around the world, recording avant-garde bands … He cassette tape-recorded two bands, one of which practically didn’t exist and the other had no bass player, returned home and, riding on the wave of interest in Poland at the time, sold the material to the major label. Barclay Records. which issued it with a wrapper saying, “Solidarité avec le rock polonais” [Solidarity with Polish rock]. Boulet didn’t organise anything – he simply took out the tape recorder and recorded a rehearsal at the Amplitron student club … we organised the instruments themselves, using a metal ashtray from the hallway in lieu of cymbals. … The Kryzys album was actually a random compilation, and if you happen to find a copy somewhere, you’ll see that the songs I wrote are credited to someone called Zedlecki. Who the hell is Zedlecki?"'' '''[34]'''

Was hiding the name of the songs’ composer a deliberate act of camouflage, similar to Stingray’s disclaimer on the cover of Red Wave? It’s hard to say, but it seems unlikely, for Kryzys functioned at the time as more or less a ‘legal’ band, so it didn’t need to conceal its members’ identity. In 1982, the independent British label Fresh Records released Brygada Kryzys’s live album without any prior permission from the band and even unbeknownst to it, and only later sent an envoy on a legalisation mission (figure 18). According to Brylewski: ‘I wasn’t aware at all that someone had that tape. I only learned about the record when they brought it from Berlin. A guy came in a leather jacket, begging us to sign a backdated contract’. '''[35]''' It is worth noting that another record by the band was published in the same year by the state label Tonpress.

[[File:HOI - (18).png|thumb|right|18. Brygada Kryzys, Live, LP, Fresh Records, 1982. Courtesy of Robert Brylewski]]
This means that within two years Brylewski had his music published by a major Western record company, an independent Western label and an official domestic publisher. Another special case, and not only because their albums were released by the official Soviet record company, Melodiya, were the Ganelin Trio. They were among those avant-garde jazz musicians who were allowed to perform abroad. Their first album was issued in Poland following their appearance at the Jazz Jamboree festival in Warsaw in 1976, and here again the artists didn’t have much say about the publication (the song titles, for example, were invented by the Polish publisher). Ganelin, Chekasin and Tarasov started performing behind the Iron Curtain, and their concerts featured more and more multimedia elements. They were also aware of the work of Fluxus and John Cage, and it was these influences that inspired the group’s perhaps most radical performance, Household Music-Making in Nine Rooms, presented first at the Vilnius Philharmonic in 1979 and later also in Moscow, among other places (figure 19). The show proceeded in a surprising fashion. A live album released by Leo Records credits only Chekasin and Ganelin, ignoring Tarasov who was present throughout the performance – but sleeping. Tarasov himself described the event:

''"I sleep on a bed for the entire first act, and then I leap out of bed and grab the newspaper „Pravda” upside down. It was all very blatant, but we were not afraid. … Household Music-Making was absolutely a demonstration. If I remember, I sleep, then I jump up and we play all kinds of reworked songs, we eat sandwiches. I'll never forget, after the concert at the Vilnius Philharmonic people kept repeating, ‘You fellows will have problems, you will have problems’. They were afraid. They were afraid of us of course. But they were also pleased. Maybe they were jealous, that we let ourselves do these things. The same was true at the ‘Neringa’'' '''[36]''' ''where you sat at a table telling jokes, constantly glancing back, afraid, that someone might hear you. Of course, they heard everything.''" '''[37]'''

[[File:HOI - (19).png|thumb|right|19. [[Vladimir Tarasov]] during the performance of the Ganelin trio at Vilnius Philarmonic, 1979, photograph Gregory Talas. Courtesy of [[Vladimir Tarasov]]]]
Norman Weinstein, who wrote an introductory text for the album, noted,

''"You will hear an alarm clock sound at the conclusion of ‘Home Music Making’. Tarasov was on stage – sleeping! - throughout the Ganelin/Chekasin duets wakes up! This bit of theatre of the absurd accurately summarizes the inability of many critics to understand the Russianness of these masters whose every note demands we waken. But you may need no alarm. Just put this recording on your system and listen."'' '''[38]'''

Who was awakened in the first place was the audience of this unique performance. Inspired by performance art seen in the West and transplanted to the field of music, the action left a strong impact on another generation of Lithuanian artists, some of whom, like Česlovas Lukenskas of the group Post Ars, soon started their own intermedia activities. This transfer of ideas between seemingly separate worlds of music and the visual arts was made possible by the fact that the Ganelin Trio enjoyed the status of the official representation of Soviet free jazz.

In Poland, between 1982 and 1988, Andrzej Mitan, Cezary Staniszewski and Tomasz Wilmański ran the RR Gallery at the Remont club. Mitan had already been involved in the club’s concert activities. The death of composer Andrzej Bieżan in a car accident in 1983 became a pretext for realising a unique project, started by the posthumous publication of recordings of Bieżan’s music. Mitan did something unprecedented in the Eastern Bloc, publishing a series of long-playing records with avant-garde music in covers designed by leading Polish visual artists, all that in an interesting concatenation of official and unofficial circulations. The publishing process of the Alma Art series was highly complex and required negotiation with numerous institutions. The records were co-published by the Remont Club of New Music and the Polish Student Association’s Academic Bureau of Culture and Art, with funding from the organisation’s Information and Publishing Committee. Then Alma Art had to apply to the Ministry of Culture and Art for permission to publish the first batch of the records.

With endorsement from Józef Patkowski, then president of the Association of Polish Composers and founder of the Polish Radio’s Experimental Studio, permission was granted. The artists were allowed to use the Column Room of the Primate’s Palace in Warsaw for recordings, which they made using their own equipment. Another permission was required for the Pronit plastics producer in Pionki to start pressing the records; this was done during the weekend, outside the plant’s official schedule. As some copies had artist-made covers, [[Andrzej Mitan]] and Andrzej Zaremba worked hard to organise the necessary materials – such as 10 kilograms of red pencils, velour paper or photographic paper – despite severe market shortages. Finally, the materials were assembled. '''[39]''' Mitan describes the process in terms that bring to mind the parallel economy or collective working methods characteristic for the second or third circulations: ‘In a rented vacant flat at Sienna Street in Warsaw, I set up a manufactory workshop where the artists made the designer sleeves’. '''[40]'''

The records were then sold through standard distribution channels. The whole series included nine albums: Helmut Nadolski’s Jubilee Orchestra (cover by Andrzej Szewczyk), Andrzej Bieżan (Tadeusz Rolke), Andrzej Przybielski (Jerzy Czuraj), Janusz Dziubak (Edward Krasiński), Andrzej Mitan w Świętej Racji (Ryszard Winiarski), Krzysztof Knittel (Włodzimierz Borowski), Jarosław Kozłowski (Jarosław Kozłowski), and two records of Andrzej Mitan’s music (with covers by Cezary Staniszewski) (figure 20).

[[File:HOI - (20).png|thumb|right|20. Andrzej Mitan, ‘W świętej racji’ (Holy Reason), LP, Alma-Art, 1984. Design by Ryszard Winiarski. Collection of Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź]]
E. Bizottság was also very lucky in getting their two records released in communist Hungary. The band was formed by a group of artists associated with the Vajda Lajos Stúdió in Szentendre, an artistic community dating back to the late 1960s that was geared towards non-professional and amateur art. From the very beginning the group’s output was a particular mix of youth subcultures with Dadaist and Surrealist inspirations. The following account of the community’s beginnings in early 70s captures its institutional complexity and ideological specificity:

When László feLugossy had finally avoided conscription (but was ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment instead), István Ef Zámbó organised a happening on the occasion at the Szentendre market square. He read out his text (he had already started writing books and manifestoes at the time) and handed out various useless objects, provided by Lászlo Terebessy, to members of the audience. The event was called Nalaja Happening, referring to the group’s dadaistic-surrealistic language, called the nalaja. The happening was interrupted by the police, and several participants, including Ef Zámbó himself, were arrested and prosecuted. At this point begins the counterculture myth of Szentendre, although it was mainly a series of naive actions that helped the town’s young residents to ‘bypass’ the system. Since the authorities feared the young artists, they decided to legalise their activities in order to better control them.

The group founded a discussion club, according to the Aczél principles described earlier, and adopted the name of Lajos Vajda, a pre-WWII artist active in the town, thus emphasising the significance of the classic avant-garde in Szentendre. Exhibitions as well as works by amateur artists were qualified by the Népművelési Intézet [Culture Institute], responsible for community and cultural centres, amateur groups and the promotion of art, again according to the ‘three T’ formula. Since the qualifying committee members, who enjoyed respect in the community as expert figures, usually supported the Vajda Lajos Stúdió, the town authorities gave the artists a postindustrial space as a permanent exhibition venue where the Stúdió continues to function to this day. '''[41]'''

In 1980, continuing the countercultural-amateur traditions of the Szentendre artistic community, a group of artists who were eventually to form A. E. Bizottság decided – just for fun – to take part in a talent show. Their unexpected success drew the attention of the public and of other new wave bands, but also of filmmakers. In 1982, at the Balázs Béla Studio (BBS), the idea was conceived of making a documentary film about the new music scene, including bands such as Trabant, Balaton or VHK. Soon it was decided to focus on A. E. Bizottság alone, and since the band members were artists, the filmmakers thought to conduct an unusual experiment: the band was asked to make a film about itself, with funding provided by the studio. András Wahorn, as the group’s leading member and someone with filmmaking experience, became the project leader and the original script was co-written by László feLugossy. But the resulting footage was unusable and BBS decided to cancel the project. Help came from one of their filmmakers, Gábor Bódy, who liked the experiment enough to lend Wahorn his own video camera, a crew, and some money to finish the film.

[[File:HOI - (21).png|thumb|right|21. A. E. Bizottsag, ‘Kalandra Fel!!’, LP, 1983, Start Records. Design by Andras Wahorn. Courtesy of Andras Wahorn]]
That’s how Jégkrémbalett (Ice-cream Ballet, 1984) was made. At first, it enjoyed limited screening rights at home, but when, following Bódy’s inspiration, A. E. Bizottság were invited to the Berlin Film Festival, it was banned altogether. The band described their situation as ‘undorground’, a pun on the Hungarian word undor, ‘distaste’. '''[42]''' A year earlier, A. E. Bizottság were invited by Hungaroton, the official record company, to record an album. This had been provoked by a radio interview where the company’s head was asked why a band so popular still hadn’t released a record. The apparatchik replied, falsely, that work on the record was under way. Wahorn sensed an opportunity and decided to hold Hungaroton to their word. The impossible became possible and Kalandra Fel!!, featuring strikingly avant-garde music, was published in 1983 (figure 21).

== Twittering Machines ==
[[File:HOI - (22).png|thumb|right|22. ‘DDR von Unten’ compilation LP, 1983, Aggressive Rockproduktionen. Cover design by Rolf Kerbach. Archive of Alexander Pehlemann]]
[[Zwitschermaschine]] were a legendary DDR band formed by visual artists Cornelia Schleime and Rolf Kerbach with a member of the Prenzlauer Berg poetry scene, Sascha Anderson. The group’s compositions were featured on side A of East Germany’s first punk record, DDR von Unten / eNDe, which also included tracks by Sau-Kerle (the Schleim-Keim duo under a different name) (figure 22). Published in 1983 in West Germany by the independent label Aggressive Rockproduktionen, the violent and formally complex music of [[Zwitschermaschine]] was complemented by Anderson’s poetry, which produced a unique effect, especially in combination with the relatively straightforward punk of the Schleim-Keim duo. But punk was only of the band’s inspirations; others were the intermedia experiments of an earlier generation of DDR free jazz artists, where a liaison between the music and art scenes was provided by figures such as A. R. Penck or Helge Leiberg. '''[43]''' The album, as it will turn out much later, was not just an artistic event. In his speech upon receiving the Georg Büchner Prize in 1991, Wolf Biermann revealed that Anderson had been a Stasi informer since the 1970s. '''[44]''' Based on archival research, Seth Howes further complicates the picture, writing:

''"...the evidence suggests he employed dissemblance and misdirection to ensure the record made it to production. Anderson provided information on the record’s progenitors and recording sessions only after the fact, and staved off Stasi intervention by doling out incriminating information at strategic times. Though a representative instance of his unethical ‘art of betrayal’, in this particular case, he also managed to have the record released by providing just enough information on its participants to placate his dissatisfied handlers, but little enough to ensure the project continued. Paying for the record project’s completion by betraying its participants, Anderson achieved the original goal: the release of a punk record of Eastern provenance in the West."'' '''[45]'''

At this point, all the previously mentioned divisions collapse. The last act of the ‘war’ between the regime and the punk movement took place in a recording studio. The release in the West (from smuggled tapes) of a music album recorded by an East Berlin band was made possible by an artist who was a Stasi informer. So wasn’t the record partly at least a tool of the secret police (even if we don’t know what their motivations might have been)? And who is the underground? The title of a Sau-Kerle track on DDR von Unten is intriguing in this context: Untergrund Ist Strategie.

== Underground Is a Strategy ==

The panorama sketched above is naturally a selective one. My goal has not been to describe all circumstances but rather to find examples that might revise our understanding of key concepts. But what emerges from this collection of paradoxical accounts? Above all, a narrative about the different dynamics of liberalisation and their impact on specific countercultural practices. We have seen how Western terminology was adapted for local purposes, yielding disagreements between the leaders of the different groups. But the examples cited in this essay do reflect some general principles. Firstly, as noticed by Yurchak, the underground preferred to avoid a collision course with the state; as a result, political dissidents and groups with clearly defined political goals formed alliances with the independents only under immediate duress. In all other cases, the opportunities offered by the state, whether in terms of infrastructure or other, were eagerly exploited. The enemy was not so much a specific socio-political regime as the establishment, however broadly defined.

But there is also the other side of the coin – the Eastern Bloc countries’ policies towards punk. On the one hand, punks in DDR were persecuted, on the other we have the perestroika and the independents, who came to embody political changes as much as party leaders. The history of institutions and distribution networks described herein is a history of concessions made to pacify or better control the youth. After all, one of the reasons for organising the Jarocin Rock Festival was the possibility of taking pictures of most Polish punks. This element poses significant limitations in the research of ‘independent’ circulations. The story of Sascha Anderson shows how even crucial moments in the history of counterculture may have been orchestrated or inspired, directly or not, by those in power.

In fact, Anderson isn’t the only one whose biography had to be revised after the transformation. Gábor Bódy and Egon Bondy were secret police informers too. All three were central figures in their milieus, so it is safe to assume that they had been recruited partly because of what they could do. This is a third element that needs to be added to those listed by Jonathan Bolton in the passage quoted at the beginning of this essay. Besides official documents, we should not only research the underground mythologies, but also look closely at the other side of the coin, for the underground can also be a synonym of the group guarding the establishment’s hegemony.

== References ==
'''[1] ''' Jonathan Bolton, Worlds of Dissent. Charter 77, the Plastic People of the Universe, and Czech Culture under Communism (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2012) 133.

'''[2] ''' Alexei Yurchak, ‘Gagarin and the Rave Kids: Transforming Power, Identity, and Aesthetics in Post-Soviet Nightlife’ in: Adele Marie Barker, ed., Consuming Russia: Popular Culture, Sex, and Society since Gorbachev (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999) 80.

'''[3] ''' The phrase itself is by William S. Burroughs, and the leader of The Fugs used it as a motto for the magazine Fug You.

'''[4] ''' Cf. Milan Knížák, Písně kapely Aktual, Martin Machovec and Jaroslav Riedel, eds. (Praha: MAŤA, 2003) 39.

'''[5] ''' Ivan Martin Jirous, ‘Report on the Third Czech Musical Revival’, transl. Paul Wilson, in David Crowley, Daniel Muzyczuk eds. Notes From the Underground (Łódź: Muzeum Sztuki, 2016).

'''[6]''' Ibid..

'''[7] ''' Cited in Robert Gildea, James Mark and Anette Warring, eds., Europe’s 1968.Voices of Revolt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 188.

'''[8] ''' Quoted in Gábor Danyi, Sztuka obdarowywania. Model dyseminacyjny wczesnego samizdatu na przykładzie węgierskiego czasopisma artystycznego [The art of giving. The dissemination model of early samizdat on the example of a Hungarian art periodical], paper presented at ‘Solidarity. New Approaches to the Analysis of a Social Movement’, a seminar at Collegium Civitas, Warsaw, 17 November 2014, http://solidarnosc.collegium.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Danai-paper-17-11-2014.pdf – accessed July 2016.

'''[9] ''' Martin Machovec, ‘Ideological Orientation and Political Views and Standpoints of Representatives of Czech Underground Culture, 1969–1989 (Underground and Dissidence – Allies or Enemies)’, eSamizdat, 2010–2011 (VIII) 183.

'''[10]''' ‘Pisałem dla tych chłopców z undergroundu! Z Egonem Bondym rozmawiają Václav Burian i Leszek Engelking’, in: Egon Bondy, Dzisiaj wypiłem dużo piw, transl. Leszek Engelking (Kraków: Miniatura, 1997) 165–166.

'''[11] ''' It is worth noting yet another connotation: in his 1987 book, The Velvet Prison: Artists under State Socialism, Miklós Haraszti used the term ‘velvet prison’ as a metaphor for the constraints faced by artists in the Eastern Bloc. The cell was lined with velvet if the artist didn’t express political views inconsistent with the official Party line.

'''[12] ''' Miroslav Vaněk, Byl to jenom rock’n’roll? (Praha: Academia, 2010). 59.

'''[13] ''' Remigiusz Kasprzycki, Dekada buntu. Punk w Polsce i krajach sąsiednich w latach 1977–1989 (Kraków: Libron, 2013) 143.

'''[14] ''' Miroslav Vaněk, Ostrůvky svobody: Kulturní a občanské aktivity mladé generace v 80. letech v Československu (Praha: ÚSD AV ČR Votobia, 2002) 188.

'''[15] ''' Cf. documents published by the International Labour Organization, http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:50002:0::NO::P50002_COMPLAINT_TEXT_ID:2901573 – accessed July 2016.

'''[16] ''' M. R. Makowski, M. Szymański, Obok albo ile procent Babilonu? (Katowice: Manufaktura Legenda, 2010) 233.

'''[17]''' Mikołaj Lizut, PrL – Punk Rock Later (Warszawa: Sic!, 2003) 45.

'''[18]''' Paweł Konjo Konnak, ‘Tranzytoryjna formacja Totart w drodze do Nieśmiertelności i Wolności’ in Krzysztof Skiba, Jarosław Janiszewski, Paweł Konjo Konnak, Artyści wariaci anarchiści. Opowieść o gdańskiej alternatywie lat 80-tych (Warszawa: Narodowe Centrum Kultury, 2011) 154.

'''[19]''' Timothy W. Ryback, Rock Around the Bloc. A History of Rock Music in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (New York–Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) 89.

'''[20] ''' Théo Lessour, Berlin Sampler. From Cabaret to Techno: 1904–2012, a Century of Berlin Music (Berlin: Ollendorff Verlag, 2012) 225.

'''[21] ''' Anderson, dir. Annekatrin Hendel, 2014.

'''[22] ''' Susanne Binas, ‘East-West Breakthroughs: The Significance of the GDR Pop Underground Today’ in Edward Larkey, ed,. A Sound Legacy? Music and Politics in East Germany (Washington, DC: American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, 2000) 29.

'''[23] ''' Cf. Ronald Galenza & Heinz Havemeister, ‘Either/Or in No-man's-land. Punk in the GDR 1984–89: Between Repression and Seduction’ in Michael Boehlke and Henryk Gericke, eds., ‘Too Much Future’ Ost Punk. Punk in der DDR 1979–89 (Berlin: Künstlerhaus Bethanien, 2005) 97.

'''[24]''' Anna Szemere, Up from the Underground. The Culture of Rock Music in Postsocialist Hungary (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001) 127–128.

'''[25]''' Cf. [[György Galántai]] and Júlia Klaniczay, eds., Artpool. The Experimental Art Archive of East-Central Europe (Budapest: Artpool, 2013) 84.

'''[26] ''' A secret-police file on the Artpool founder, [[György Galántai]], codenamed ‘Painter’, explains why: ‘For Galántai's competition several "works of art" (in reality plain botch-works) had been provided that are politically problematic, destructively criticize and, moreover – primarily some of those made by Hungarian "artists" – mock and attack our state and social order as well as the state security organs. Galántai was unable to separate these pieces from the rest of the works, which most probably would have been against his intentions anyway’; Artpool…, op. cit., 268.

'''[27] ''' Konstanty Usenko, Oczami radzieckiej zabawki (Wołowiec: Czarne, 2012) [e-book].

'''[28] ''' Timur Novikov, ‘Autobiography’, http://www.timurnovikov.ru/docs/books/57_autobiography_engl.pdf – accessed 30 July 2016.

'''[29] ''' Usenko, op. cit.

'''[30] ''' Łukasz Ronduda, Sztuka Polska lat 70. Awangarda (Warszawa, Jelenia Góra: Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Polski Western, 2009) 367.

'''[31] ''' Alex Kan, ‘The Ways of Freedom’, in: Sergey Kuryokhin, The Ways of Freedom, CD (London: Leo Records, 2001).

'''[32] ''' Red Wave, LP, Stingray Productions, 1986.

'''[33] ''' Denis Boyarinov, ‘Joanna Stingray, a California Girl in the U.S.S.R.’, The Moscow Times http://www.themoscowtimes.com/arts_n_ideas/article/joanna-stingray-a-california-girl-in-the-ussr/562009.html – accessed July 2016.

'''[34]''' Robert Brylewski, Kryzys w Babilonie. Autobiografia. Rozmawia Rafał Księżyk (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2012) 100–102.

'''[35] ''' Ibid., p. 121.

'''[36] ''' The Neringa Hotel restaurant was famous for its free jazz concerts from the late 1960s.

'''[37]''' ‘We Created Our Own Language. Saulius Žukas interview with Vladimir Tarasov, Vilnius, summer, 2007’, in: Vladimir Tarasov: Between Sound and Image (Vilnius: Baltos Lankos, 2008) 22.

'''[38] ''' Norman Weinstein, ‘Music Begins When Definitions are Silenced’, in: Golden Years of the Soviet New Jazz, Vol IV, CD (London: Leo Records, 2003) 13.

'''[39]''' Danuta Bierzańska, ‘Nic nie jest niemożliwe. Dość szybki utwór – na kilka orkiestr i wielu solistów. Muzyka, słowa i nabijanie tempa: Andrzej Mitan i Andrzej Zaremba’, Tytuł roboczy, 2009 (029–030) 73–81.

'''[40] ''' Andrzej Mitan, ‘Wywiad z samym sobą’, in: Tytuł roboczy (Warsaw: Galeria 2b, 2008) 15.

'''[41] ''' Katalin Balázs, ‘Sztuka efemeryczna i kontrkultura. Na przykładzie wybranych zjawisk z węgierskiej historii instytucji kultury’ [Ephemeral art and counterculture. On the example of selected phenomena from the history of Hungarian cultural institutions] in Sztuka i dokumentacja, no. 7, 37.

'''[42] ''' Cf. Szemere, op. cit., 16.

'''[43] ''' Christoph Tannert, ‘Vierte Wurzel aus Zwitschermaschine’ in Ronald Galenz and Heinz Havemeister, eds., Wir wollen immer artig sein... Punk, New Wave, HipHop, Independent-Szene in der DDR 1980–1990 (Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf Verlag, 1999) 196.

'''[44] ''' Cornelia Schleime, ‘“Killersatellit” and Randerscheinung Jeder Satellit hat einen Killersatelliten. If Only We'd Taken it Literally’ in ‘Too Much Future’ Ost Punk…, op. cit., 177.

'''[45] ''' Seth Howes, ‘“Killersatellit” and Randerscheinung: Punk and the Prenzlauer Berg’ in German Studies Review, Vol. 36, No. 3 (October 2013) 583–584.

[[Category:Czechoslovakian Contributions]] [[Category:Russian Contributions]] [[Category:Hungarian Contributions]] [[Category:East German Contributions]] [[Category:Polish Contributions]]

Freedom is Mere Illusion – Experimental Music and Media Arts in Hungary

2018-07-09T15:56:53Z

Diogo:

[[File:Viktor-lois(1).jpg|thumb|right|Viktor Lois with his »Container Man«]]
Freedom is Mere Illusion – Experimental Music and Media Arts in Hungary: An essay by Balázs Kovács for [[Sound Exchange]].

== Introduction ==
We begin with 1970s Hungary. The high point of Communism saw an intensification of all external influences in art to which the younger generations of artists resonated, and this provided the basis for currents and experiments in the work of later generations. Officially this period in music is known as »post-serialism«; still, given the region’s isolation, the influence of John Cage and minimalism blended with serialism itself, the highly disciplined dodecaphonic explorations of the previous era. The historical anachronism of this encounter in Hungary meant that the common traits of these two currents were intensified. Of these traits, we shall focus in this study on the apparent freedom enjoyed by the performer. '''[1]''' Performers of compositions that appear random, while in fact being strictly organised, have a certain room to maneuver, yet nonetheless cannot step out of the framework of a piece to assert their independence (or »set their lute aside« as the Hungarian poet János Arany would put it). Such limitations are particularly illustrative of the period. In this study I would like to illustrate how this situation has changed over subsequent decades: today one may step outside of a work, given the autonomous status of experimental music now. Still, such a breakout is inhibited by a societal environment that offers only the illusion of freedom, and hence injects a distorted image of reality into creative work as well. The performer’s apparent freedom is interconnected, thread by thread, with the audience’s own illusory freedom.

Admittedly this may be too dark a characterisation of the present day. Still, such pessimism is not unfounded if we look around ourselves in Hungary. Public life in this country today is not committed to the broad spectrum, nor does it believe in tentative experimentation, in the subcultures of selected social strata, or in »maybes« at all. We are familiar with freedom from the history books, and may if we wish believe that nothing has changed. But clearly, the subject of this study – the culture that developed together with electronic music – never played by the rules of power; rather this was the protected realm of high culture whose traits were critical opposition and irony, distortions, ad hoc groups, and all the impulses of the international and democratic spirit that every young generation nurtures and wishes to express. Hence the reality around us tends in creative spheres to call up inverse relationships rather than analogous ones. This actually offers fresh hope, even if any celebration of well-laid aesthetic foundations has long been cancelled. By contrast, in the brief survey that follows, our motivation is not bitterness but the wish to explore the avenues for problem solving. The problems involved have created a rift between the academic and independent spheres throughout this period; each sphere created its own high and popular cultures. Furthermore, it is still the case that we speak of dance music as merely dance music, and experimental music as an exclusively academic phenomenon. As long as this remains the case, all other artistic realms – and with them the artistic integration of electronic music – will continue to drift apart.

== Private Exits: Pioneers and Partisans of Electronic Music ==
The players in our historical survey are the partisans of electronic and experimental music: independent figures who offered up their own creative work (and sometimes even sacrificed their private lives) for the »common cause«. Without them, so many recordings, concerts, and performers that continue to inspire would never have surfaced, and no one would have served as a go-between bridging first the political Iron Curtain, then the cultural and moral one that has stood since the 1990s.

=== New Music, Experimental Music, and Electroacoustic Music: An Elitist Defense of the 1970s ===
The years of »Goulash Communism« in Hungary polarized artistic efforts. Some currents were banned while others received state support. The demarcation line was determined not just by the societal role of the works involved, but also quite the contrary: it sometimes even skirted the borders of art that was internationally significant but uninteresting to society at large. This made it possible for Western currents in contemporary music (Serialism, Post-serialism, Minimalism, musique concrète, sound synthesis, etc.) to take root in Hungary. Through successful international performances and recordings, one could reasonably expect a rise in Hungary’s level of recognition in the field – particularly considering the prestige of composers who had emigrated previously: Bartók, György Kurtág, György Ligeti, Péter Eötvös, and Paul Arma. Particularly important for the new generation of musicians was the New Music Studio (NMS): »What is the common thread uniting the work of the generation of the past twelve years (Barnabás Dukay, Zoltán Jeney, Zoltán Kocsis, László Sáry, and László Vidovszky)? […] What is the theoretical underpinning that incorporates the uniqueness of their inventions and local color to lend currency to their work and thereby ensure the international value of their path?« '''[2]'''

The phrasing of András Wilhelm’s questions imply their own answers. In retrospect we can see that he was correct: two decades of the Studio’s output well represent the musical history and New-Music culture of the age, while simultaneously providing a window into the special relationship between politics and art: it functioned under the political aegis of the Communist Youth Central Musical Ensemble, and its members were university students of performance or composition. Hence they received larger press, and the opportunity for regular concert performance. The works they created were printed by the national publishing house Zeneműkiadó, and their performances came out on the Hungaroton label. Still, their prestige was not as great as their name recognition. This background gave them a particular sense of freedom, allowing them (beyond undertaking new experimental works) to have both their own works and music by foreign composers in their repertoire; they were often the first to perform the latter in Hungary. They had freedom to develop an aesthetic palette, which was palpable in the works they performed. A veritable flood of new opportunities marked these two decades generally, and the work of the composers in the Studio in particular. It was a fortunate coincidence that incoming information that led to the adoption in Hungary of foreign musical influences were also present in the country at large, bringing new artistic and aesthetic approaches (leveraging the composers’ legitimated status) to an audience that itself experienced all of this as a liberation. It is understandable in this light why most composers in Hungary retained a constructivist-combinatory core in developing their individual techniques for composition, as a way of incorporating ideas that came from outside the country. But among the »young radicals«, as they are called in one interview '''[3]''', we begin to see signs of unusual currents that result from ignoring the passage of time: Jeney Zoltán’s work with minimalism and sound synthesis, László Sáry’s deconstruction of musical material, and László Vidovsky’s open works – all these born of a general interest in algorithmic techniques. Much lies behind this, including a broader perspective open to the music of distant cultures (albeit viewed through a local lens), the traditional knowledge set imparted by musical education, and the serious reception of every new conception coming in from the West. All these factors conspired to shaped the »local color« of contemporary music culture, while Hungarian composers drew inspiration from the idealized notion that they had »emigrated« from the political claustrophobia of Hungary into the globalism of their art, then »returned home« to rethink its traditions.

Electronic music is of particular importance for the new musical movements in the period we are examining. Simultaneous with the experiments of the composers of the New Music Studio, there arose in Hungary (as elsewhere) the first creative studio under the fostering aegis of larger radio stations. In 1975, for example, the Electroacoustic Music Studio, under the artistic direction of János Décsényi, was established at Magyar Rádio. Given the lack of technological infrastructure, it began operation somewhat late – in the mid-1970s – but was nonetheless receptive to international currents in music including musique concrète, mixed techniques, and multi-channel composition. It was a mix of these influences that provided the raw material from which Zoltán Pongrácz, István Szigeti, and Iván Patachich created their subjective, eclectic vision tied to the traditions of Hungarian music, as well as stimulating the demand for live performance and bringing mixed techniques to the fore. Good examples of this are recordings from 1979–2005 (Slpx11851, Slpx12371) showcasing these composers and the performances of the E.A.R. Ensemble. Also highlighting the need for live music (though with a much greater consistency, indeed with an almost mathematical precision) are the recordings of László Dubrovay, which aim to mine the new technological possibilities and explore new musical forms within the electronic realm. This embodied an attempt to re-create New Music, but also offered an example of the individual composer-performer, thereby anticipating the composers of the mid-1980s. On the other side of the spectrum, the works of Máté Victor prefigured the electroacoustic music used in rock and pop music.

The Rádio’s studio was closed in 2007, on the day before Zoltán Pongrácz’ death, owing to lack of interest from Magyar Rádio itself. '''[4]''' While it is true that lack of development in the studio’s final years meant that the Media History Archive took over its function (not entirely a negative development), the fact that composers did not en bloc take a stance in defense of the Studio only indicates the closed attitude of those who worked within it. While the Archive remained, the technical facilities went into private hands. Instruction in Electronic Composition at the Academy of Music – another Pongracz initiative – continued under the direction of the NMS’ composers, and (from the mid-1990s) under Andrea Szigetvári. Still, the loss of the functioning studio has proven irremediable, even despite its technological outdatedness (and the cult status enjoyed by analog studio technology today).

=== Resistance and Exclusion: The Late-1970s and Early-1980s Underground ===
The above makes clear how things worked in the cultural politics of the socialist Hungarian People’s Republic: everything produced under the aegis of an approved organization (in this case the Academy of Music, Magyar Rádió, the Communist Youth Organization, and Hungaroton) was tolerated, and was banned the moment its protection was abandoned, or it stepped over the line of what was permissible. In this respect, little changed even after the end of Socialism in 1989, except that tolerance became accessible outside the protector organizations as well. But around the turn of the 1980s – our focus – this scenario was still far off. Alternative groups that diverged from the officially exalted »National Beat« genres '''[5]''' were labeled »deviant« and forced into silence or emigration; today these groups (among them the Bizottság [Committee], the Spions, '''[6]''' Beatrice, and URH [UHF]) are highly regarded. This environment in which art was so tightly bound to cultural politics became the meeting place of New Music and neo-avant-garde movements, and made music the underground’s primary artistic outlet. In his study of the period, Gábor Gavra writes: »Once the borders between rock music and other forms of expression broke down or became permeable, the new wave made music an integral part of contemporary culture, and simultaneously opened the way for the musical experimentation and other directions of its exponents and those active in other branches of art.« '''[7]'''

Here he is describing that fleeting moment when »high« and »low« culture met and collaborated to create new forms we might call the unconscious state of Postmodernism. But Gavra continues to say that »[…] we cannot ignore the conclusion that this new wave in Hungary was just a temporary phase created by a bipolar power structure: a cultural-political monopoly built between the vacuum of a nonexistent music market, and the countering force of a second public.«

General opinion considers the output of this period’s long-suffering composers to be virtually worthless. On the other hand, it is rare to see the reality reflected in the »purified« works of the counter-movement that arose after the fall of the old regime called into question. '''[8]''' In defense of the former, we shall attempt to expand the sphere of genres considered, with particular emphasis on works that reflect on social realities and respond to them with such a purified approach. We shall keep the focus on music, but will also deal with the appearance of sound sculpture and sound installations below. '''[9]'''

=== Esoterica, Globalism, and Pantheism: The 1980s ===
Perhaps it was the subjective eclecticism we have seen with the electronic composers, or perhaps the general traditions of Hungarian composition, or even the new simplicity of minimalism in other arts, which was responsible for the increasing interest in the esoteric and in naïve spirituality exhibited by the composers of the 1980s. It is naturally difficult to pigeonhole these works, and indeed misleading, particularly when dealing with performance groups like the 180 Group or Tibor Szemző’s Gordiusi Čomó (Gordian Knot). But it was after all Szemző himself who ventured out of the narrow sphere of music, drawing material for his films from pop music, Hungarian cabaret songs, and archive recordings. As he describes it in an interview: »I create found material and bring found material out of the musicians, the way family movies are found materials. Then I organize music specifically to fit these materials. Formally, this music, like Indian Classical music, have a truly flowing linear texture set to polyphonic rhythms.« '''[10]'''

Most of his work is created for performance art and films, including pieces for flute and tape replay (»Water Wonder«, 1982), materials for multimedia performance inspired by pop music and dubs (»Private Exits«, 1988–89; »Tractatus«, 1991–95, etc.), or even narrative pieces moving slowly and imperceptibly between Gypsy music and contemporary jazz (such as »Skullbase Fracture«, written for the Ars Electronica Festival, 1987, 1989). All these pieces share a common trait: to give Hungarian musical traditions a place within contemporary music by throwing the two, often incompatible aesthetics together. This music drew in part on the minimalism of the early 1980s; performance in this area was dominated by the 180 Group, which premièred many works in Hungary, and introduced new composers as well, notably Béla Faragó.

The electronic composer and sitarist László Hortobágyi, already an exponent of minimalism, then turned to world music. Working from his home studio, he created the Hungarian answer to Jamaican dub, using his profound technical knowledge and an experimental urge to blend his sources: Hungarian and fictive Hungarian (»Hungistani«) folk and world music, industrial, psychedelic, and classical music. Both Szemző and Hortobágyi not only push the outer limits of music and technology, but also move outside the usual realms of art and music, incorporating motifs thoughtfully selected from other cultures and domains. The earlier problems and creative solutions that distinguished the NMS and the Electronic Music Studio were no longer signs of backwardness; these were now the tools for redefining the aesthetic of the local environment and re-contextualizing the musical sphere. Now the goal was not to attempt to follow developments abroad via an abundance of information paired with a lack of technology, but rather to use the local givens as a style of their own, opening a true two-way dialog between the global and the local.

The mutual influence of international and local Hungarian currents and the elevation of »couleur locale« to the level of its own independent style, whether transcending or still subject to the political environment – these issues have distinguished the story to this point. It is crucial to emphasize this, since these very questions will continue for some time to move experimental music towards – or away from – sonoric art, in the phase that began in the 1990s.

=== Towards a Sonoric Art: Installations, Sound Sculptures and Mixed Media ===
The continuations of the neo-avant-garde opened new frontiers for the intertwining of a variety of artistic genres in the 1980s: poetry became sound poetry (Endre Szkárosi), »outsiders« made films (Gábor Bódy and the language-of-film series from the Béla Balázs Stúdió '''[11]''') and – somewhat later – sculptors became sound-sculptors (Viktor Lois and István Harasztÿ), and programmers became media artists '''[12]''') while members of technologically more advanced ensembles, like Panta Rhei, played synthesizers of their own invention. '''[13]''' This period was the direct, if unconscious, precursor of the media art currents that were to explode in the 1990s, and its ideology exhibits the clear signs of resistance and initiative, as well as the yearning for the performance medium. Here I would mention three names which are particularly relevant to our subject: László Vidovszky played a key role in the transition to media art in composition. This founding member of the NMS led the way in his openness to collaboration on film scores as well as performances in the visual arts, dance, audiovisual media, and literary theater. As he puts it in a volume of interviews, »[…] music is fairly detached from what we call life, yet from another perspective only music might represent everything that can be called life« (Vidovszky-Weber, op. cit. 101). In this vein he is searching for the place and mission of music in a world full of changed expectations. In his collaborative installation with Ilona Keserü entitled »Hang-szín-tér« (Sound-Color-Space, 1980) sound 127 painted whistles, among which the viewer may move. His »Autokoncert« (1973)''' [14]''' is an installation-performance with an added musical element, precursor to his mechanical sound-sculptures. Here the audience sees and hears the choreographed interplay of instruments that apparently dispense with performers. Vidovszky is a trailblazer in other areas as well: after moving to Pécs he, like Zoltán Pongrácz, played an active role in Music-IT instruction in the Art department at the University there in 1995, followed in 2010 by accredited courses in Electronic Music Media Art, which was the first such university instruction in this field in Hungary. It operated in parallel with the Intermedia Department at Budapest’s University of the Fine Arts.''' [15]'''

As for kinetic sculpture, István Édeske Harasztÿ '''[16]''' furthered the creation of sounding sculpture. Moonlighting from his job as a machinist, he made objects governed electronically or interactively that were brutally critical of the bureaucratic power structure. His works are not music in the sense of composition and sound formation; rather these are devices built into the environment that emphasize or play on movements in the immediate surroundings, sounded by the conscious or unconscious intervention of the observer. Viktor Lois has been making statue as musical instruments with the devotion of a traditional instrument maker since the mid-1980s. After an improvised concert of ready-made instruments, he says, »I got the idea that you could integrate aesthetically beautiful instruments with their own special sound into traditional rock ensembles«.'''[17]''' A simple glance at his acoustic bass made of washing-machine parts, drum machine and siren, and column guitar will convey the second-hand, jerry-rigged style of the period; his Tundravoice ensemble, founded in 1993, is a resonant example. László Najmányi, former member of the group Spions, interpreted his own instrumental constructions as a performer, and achieved great results using the older theremin as well. His widely known and internationally recognized work includes theatrical and radio plays in addition to his solo concerts; the website Wordcitizen, which he maintains, presents a number of artists’ portraits. '''[18]'''

The above introduction makes it clear that a new direction was taking shape, poised between music composition, neo-avant-garde sound performances and the visual arts. That these currents peaked around the time of the fall of socialism in Hungary in 1989 is mere coincidence. All the same, as we shall see, the years that followed saw changes brought on by the liberation in the political sphere that were just as momentous as the creative world’s liberation from politics that preceded them.

== Media Art Approaches and Recedes: Experimental Music and Sound Art from 1990 to 2011 ==
When techno music came along, it didn’t say anything – but it had a message. This message cannot be translated into any language, but it was more or less this: »Forget about politics and come dancing!« So writes Dr. Hausztusz (Sándor Bernáth/y) in the journal Gépszava (Voice of the Peoplemachine) in 1997. '''[19]''' When looking at the history of experimental music in the 1990s it is impossible to ignore the waves made by techno dance music, either in Hungary or elsewhere. There are apparent contradictions between party culture and the radical experimentation that breaks all rules, but if we consider that, up to this point in the story, there has been a direct relationship between openness to outside currents in art and music’s community-building power, it also becomes clear why there is a similar back-and-forth between neo-avant-garde ensembles and exponents of the new live-act culture. Hence the importance for us of the merging of independent electronic dance music and experimental art from academe, and the creative compounding that resulted. That this unification ultimately ended in divorce may be immaterial to us now, and may merely be the sign that a new period is beginning, as far as the future is concerned. So now let us examine the situation outside of time, layer by layer.

=== Underground Independent Organizing ===
A watershed: the fall of socialism brought a democratic foundation to Hungary. The year 1989 saw the beginning of an experiment to explore whether Hungarians would prove able to adapt to freedom and use it to their advantage. Freedom naturally also had its price: it meant the end of the state system of institutions, which had provided security (in addition to stifling »wildlings«). As a result, artistic initiatives had to collaborate and organize their own structures. Once history had given things a push, many nexus points popped up at universities and in the larger cities, and even occasionally in outlying areas of the countryside. Perhaps the first of these was the Budapest club Tilos az Á (Trespassers W), which opened in 1990 just after the withdrawal of Soviet troops. This venue hosted nearly all of the above-mentioned performers and their circles, and also become a site for alternative and DJ culture. Tilos Rádio (Forbidden Rádió), Hungary’s best-known community station, also made its first pirate broadcasts from here. When Tilos az Á closed in 1995, its site became home to Bernáth/y & Son and the Lovebarricade techno series begun at the end of 1994 by the young people around them, first at the Young Artists’ Club, then at the Fáklya Club and occasionally at the Sziget Festival.

Ultimately, they found their own venue – which they still have to this day – at the SuperSonic Technicum. Bernáth/y & Son played a symbolic role: having founded the Albert Einstein Committee, the elder Bernáth was a painter in Germany in the early 90s, and his son a punk fan, when they encountered the techno culture and realized its potential. Their live act is marked by free improvisation that emphasizes beat and sequencing – but the party culture they started ultimately proved even more fertile than their music. This culture saw collaboration between DJs, live electronic music productions, VJ projects, and creators of spectacle that resulted in syntheses like the journal »Voice of the Peoplemachine« and, further on, the talent searches in Hungary by Germany’s Under Cover Music Group (UCMG) that came up with the Anima Sound System, Yonderboi, Gábor Deutsch, Miraque & Miro, and others. '''[20]''' The Lovebarricade series is just one example; like other cities of similar size, Budapest also became an incubator for underground electronic dance music, teeming with festivals like the Frankhegy, Cinetrip, and clubs like the Kultiplex or the A38 Ship, as well as open community creative centers like the Tűzraktér.

The launch of Freee Magazin helped lay the groundwork for techno-house and trance party culture; the books and articles of its editors Gábor Pánczél and Ferenc Kömlődi energized the free flow of information about the scene. (Komlődi-Panczél 2001). But there was still something missing: while the consumer side of the party culture was satisfied, its producing side consisted largely just of DJs, VJs, and the more creative organizers. There was a lack of producers, composers, and performers. Optimal and the live acts it attracted ignored this imbalance. With no drive to optimize their makeup, they gradually became marginalized. Later though, they solidified and came up with independent events like the Hármashatárhegy and nomadic sound-system parties. With this, the concept of the live act became largely synonymous with experimental and radical electronic dance music, gradually incorporating ever more noise-music and experimental composers. We will now have a look at these.

=== The Emergence of Experimental-Music Live-Act Culture ===
»I didn’t want to spend money on vinyl, so I started making my own music«, in the words of aLPi (András Murányi), the founder of the Optimal Group and HTML (Hungarian Techno Mailing List). He found plenty of willing collaborators in this, and as a result parties in the smallest, but loudest venues offered an increasing number of live acts as individual and collective improvisations, complemented by similarly individual VJ and visual concepts like Viktor Vicsek and Prell. There were a number of such groups: the same period saw the launch of Rianás (Tigrics, Prell, and Márton Mezei) in the city of Tata, Terra Rossa in Dunaújváros, Porousher (and later Nicron and c0p) in Pécs, and the Improv Group in Szeged. Their noisy, experimental, industrial, analog sound was something new in electronic music, and the creative potential of this direction was confirmed with X-Peripheria in June of 2000, the first big event that marked the beginning of a rich decade for all involved, with many experimental music, sound-art, and combined festivals (see box below). Behind it all was the C3 Center for Culture and Communication founded by the Soros Foundation in 1996, which provided the impulse for all individual and institutional intermedia initiatives that had no opportunities elsewhere. These included Pararadio '''[21]''', the first Internet radio station in Hungary, which sponsored the X-Peripheria Festival, and the Exindex new-media and art portal, together with a number of text and video archives.

'''A Selection of Important Experimental Music Events, 2000–2011:'''
<ul>
<li>1993–2002 Szünetjel (Call Signal) Festival, Budapest</li>
<li>1998–2004 Big Ear Festival, Budapest</li>
<li>2000–2003 X-peripheria, Budapest</li>
<li>2000–2008 (biennial), 2009–2010 Enter Festival, Székesfehérvár</li>
<li>2001 10/26–28 Ötödik égtáj (Fifth Quadrant), Budapest, Kultiplex</li>
<li>2003, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2010 Uh Fest</li>
<li>2004, 2008, 2009 Drótanya (Wiremother), Budapest, Gödör</li>
<li>2004–2009 Making New Waves, Budapest, Trafó</li>
<li>2005, 3/21–25 Gallery by Night 05, Budapest</li>
<li>2005, 2007, 2010 d'Arts Digital Art Festival, Veszprém</li>
<li>2005, 11/19 1st Autonomous Gigazone, Budapest, Millenáris</li>
<li>2007, 2/23 Freq-out, Budapest, Műcsarnok</li>
<li>2008– Relative Sound (Leaks) International Contemporary Music Meetup, Budapest</li>
<li>2009–2010 +3dB Festival and Symposium, Budapest</li>
</ul>

Besides the festivals, there was a new and highly visible current – precisely what had been missing from dance culture: a number of small-edition record companies (Avult, Diaspóra-Dióbél, and the Ultrahang [Ultrasound] CD-R Series), Internet publishers (Syrup, Bitlab, Sensei), both printed and online editions (Improv, the now defunct ultrahang.hu, kvart.hu, and the BATTA 2009 text collection), online radio stations (ParaRadio, Tilos [Forbidden], and Periscope), and a number of new composers and artists joined the community through searches (Ultrahang’s »What is Music« contests and the Enter Festival). '''[22]'''

But despite all efforts (or perhaps because of them), the culture of experimental music is now silent: the larger festivals either no longer exist or program a broader variety of music, while some events are facing diminishing interest or a drying up of creative material. Why might this be? In neighboring countries these performances have gradually united with media-art events (such as the Transmediale and the Club Transmediale in Berlin, the Simultan in Timisoara, or the Multiplace in the Czech Republic and Slovakia). The venues for these events have also become multi-functional. This transformation never took place in Hungary, or only slightly. The Ultrasound Festivals, for example, have survived by transforming into thematic programs rounded out by workshops; the Drótanya’s mission is to pair experimental music performers with contemporary choreographers – and to such resounding success that it has from its inception presented increasing numbers of these collaborations at the Trafó, the L1 Dance Workshop, and the MU Theater. Drótanya’s organizers also program regular events under the name of Havizaj (That Chime of the Month). But the expansion of 2000–2005 now needs to find new forms. What follows will attempt a contribution to solving this problem.

=== The Winding Ways of Experimental Music, Sound Art and Media Art ===
Much is at stake: can the art or development component of experimental music develop to the extent of giving this genre a place among the arts? There is not much hope for this at present. Sound art was not yet mature when it began to be forgotten; it is kept alive today by artists who employ sound, like Gyula Várnai and Hajnal Németh, who lives in Germany. Their work preserves the social sensitivity of sound sculpture, and so is open to assimilation into the music world of niche cultures. Another hopeful player is Alapzaj (Background Noise) from Pécs, whose exhibitions and actions from 1996–99, and then the Gallery by Night program in Budapest, constituted a series of sound installations and sound-creations that have shown there is still a demand for expanding and fine-tuning the auditory side of media art. In that vein, the Budapest group Besorolás Alatt has been organizing a dedicated sound-art festival since 2009. So the question then is whether someone in the experimental-music sphere will take up where art leaves off. Are there prospects for an opening up of composition, instrumentation, and creators’ attitudes? There is clear support for this from the previous generation of experimental musicians. Zsolt Sőrés (Ahad) is the driving force behind several experimental music projects in Hungary and abroad. He has written or translated important theoretical texts. In addition to his acoustic collaborations, he has moved into interfaces. Gábor Tóth (tgnoise) is active in performance and visual art, while Pál Tóth is involved in DJ technology and appropriation art. Attila Dóra, a constantly innovating saxophonist, has been the catalyst for countless dance-theatre and other art projects. Tamás Kopasz (Fineartsmusic) is working in audiovisuality. But in most current areas of media art (interaction, interfaces, multi-channel and specialized acoustics, network projects, radio art, sonification and hardware hacking) it is the younger generation who shine, as we shall now examine.

==== Interaction ====
Interaction in art is, given the nature of communication, possible on several levels. There is the traditional meaning of a dialogue between performer and instrument through interfaces, controllers, gesture control, and other sensors (HCI, or human-computer interaction). Furthermore, there have been developments in the interaction between the audience (or a person on the outside) and the performer or his instrument. There is yet a third category, of installation-type creations that dynamize the performer to create interaction between the spectator and the soundmaking system directly. This list reflects, in descending order, the prevalance of the implementation of these approaches in Hungary: interfaces being the most commonly used, and installations the least. This suggests that direct encounters with the performer remain popular, while there is far less of the open creative process or audience involvement. The reason for this is that nearly all experimental musicians are adept at building interfaces (self-constructed midi controllers, optical controllers, etc.), but constructing installations requires a different approach. Inspiration for crossing this boundary has come from art projects (in the above list: Gallery By Night’s 2005 programs and the d’Arts digital music festival in Veszprém in 2007) and other competitions (like the 2005 NKA [National Cultural Fund] competition for creating media art). These grants meant new opportunities for many artists and groups that had hitherto been active only in art or experimental music. But perhaps the most effective stimulus for crossing the boundary has been exploited by the binaura.net group (Bence Samu and Ágoston Nagy). Their work ranges from multimedia performances to optically controlled installations (»Strings«, a movement-controlled installation, 2007) to community creative surfaces (»grafIT«, 2007), culminating in the projects created in the Kitchen Budapest mediatechnology lab. Begun in 2007, Kitchen Budapest is a research lab aimed at opening up avenues for creativity and innovation, distributing the results, and fostering cooperation between artists and IT experts. As a result, the lab is also open to the creation and implementation of sound projects. Its current members include László Kiss and Réka Harsányi, whose works focus on this area. The Kibu, as it is known, invited Kim Cascone, leading exponent of the glitch aesthetic, to Hungary (where he is highly respected) in 2008 to create a sound installation in a public space. Furthermore, students of electronic music media art in Pécs, and at the Institute of Media and Applied Arts, also regularly create site-specific installations such as »Musical Zebra« (2008) painted on the street and using a video surveillance camera, the online »Orwell Space« (2009) that models a surveillance network, or »Mama’s Radio« (2010), an interface adapted from an old radio set. We hope that their integration into education will result in ever more productive crossovers among the genres.

==== Sonic Extremes ====
A special variety of installations and experimental music performances involves moving beyond the acoustic limitations of sound, using frequencies above or below the limits of human hearing, or inaudibly quiet volumes. Hungary’s sound artists have followed international trends in this area (notably in Japan), showing a general interest in this mode. '''[23]''' But since there is greater authenticity in works grounded in the local milieu rather than simple imitation of currents abroad, every work in this vein that reflects upon current Hungarian realities assumes particular importance. An example is a work by Tamás Szakál, a media artist who earned a degree in Leipzig, and was a founder of the Nextlab media lab. His 2005 »Shift in Control« (Dinamó Gallery, Budapest) builds on the troubles caused by the American practice of fuzzifying GPS data. As he describes it: »In case of terrorist attack and during the entire Iraq war, the signals’ precision was reduced to several hundred meters, though according to official sources this distortion ended in 2000. The false positional data of the receiver on the roof modulate the sound and light of the installation. These measurements are imprecise even now. [...] The larger the differences between the currently measured geo-locating signal and the true geographical location, the greater the effect of the receiver on the installation space.« '''[24]'''

The final result is a phenomenon of sound that, although barely perceptible to the ear, is impossible to endure for long periods.

The other side of imperceptibility is represented by works positioned on the lower end of digital sampling that cannot be made out by the senses without the help of some device. Avult (Obsolete) Editions’ work, led by R. R. Habarc but no longer in production, are mostly of this type. He pinnacle was the limited-edition double-CD collection »Komprimátum« (Compressed Object) whose illustrations are so tiny they can only be viewed under a microscope. Unscrewing and repacking this edition requires time: an order of magnitude more time than is needed to listen to all of its very brief recordings.

==== Sonification ====
Sonification is a particularly widespread electronic music technique of composition and sound synthesis. It is defined as »the transformation of data connections into connections perceivable in an acoustic manifestation«. '''[25]''' In other words, non-sonic signals – visual information, masses of data, or continuously produced signals – are transformed into sound events such as shifts in pitch and volume or other parameters. Sonification has little to do with aesthetic synesthesis or multimedia art since it is exclusively acoustic. In this sense it is closer to acousmatic music, which conceals the source of sound and aims exclusively at the absolute reception of music. There are many types, of which the best known are event-based and parameter-mapping sonification, which associate direct sound-event mapping to a given data relationship (higher sound signals to higher domains, for example), and the newest development, model-based sonification, which creates fundamental interactive opportunities for the user. In addition to abstract changes, there is a much cruder sonification technique that has become widespread: audification, the direct sonification of (mostly image-based) information. All of these techniques have proven very fruitful avenues of artistic expression in Hungary. For years there have been sonification studios at the Making New Waves festival. These allow participants to create sound for raw film with the software (Coagula, Metasynth, or MaxMSP/Jitter) and technology they wish. Joining these artists in recent years is the visual artist Zsolt Gyenes, who has collaborated with Andrea Szigetvári in planning image-sound crossovers based on CT data. Kitchen Budapest’s »Submap« is a similar, parameter-mapped sonification of the map of Hungary, displayed and manipulated visually and sonorically based on regional news from 1998–2010.

==== Network Collaborations ====
Though radio stations quite naturally mined the possibilities of network connections, media artists in Hungary have failed to view the Internet as a usable medium. As a result we do not find in Hungary any outstanding online projects like the Dutch-German Soundtransit spatial recording distributor or the Saynow message distributor. On the other hand there has been a clear growth of interest in working up the network character of musical performances in the manner of conference-telephone concerts from a pre-Internet age. Indeed, the media-historical roots of this practice happen to come from Hungary: József Chudy’s 1976 opera broadcast was the first in the world. '''[26]''' Given the special nature of the genre, network art is local only as regards its participants, but in every other respect (particularly the concert venue and audience) it is location-independent. It requires only a stable Internet connection of suitable speed. This was the conception behind the European Bridges Ensemble (EBE), created by Andrea Szigetvári and her German, English, and Serbian colleagues. The EBE is a musical ensemble whose technological foundation is being developed by Georg Hajdu under the name of quintet.net. The work of the group has generated much debate on technology and aesthetics, subjects taken up regarding an EU-financed project at the Music in the Global Village conference, as well as at the Making New Waves festivals from 2007-10 in Budapest and Pécs. Quintet.net is largely a local network group; its concerts are largely performed by the full ensemble, or with only a few members participating from remote locations. A similar group (though without the involvement of Hungarians) is the six-member Berlin-based Laptoporchester. It does however have a strong Hungarian connection, in that its director Marek Brandt regularly held concerts in Hungary from 2008-10 that premièred the works of Hungarian composers, Kristóf Weber among them. Local players were active participants at the Headphone Festival in Pécs in 2008 and 2010, which took up network communication once more: the performers were local and remote, and the productions could be listened to on headphones.

Our own creative group contributed to the dissemination of network projects through a distance concert between Germany and Hungary in 2010: »Upgrade 3.0« is a contemporary music and dance project relying on a video and sound bridge between Pécs and Dortmund, with the collaboration of remote dancers. None of these projects were continued, however, once experience showed that staging a remote concert required nearly as much energy and expense as hiring a guest performer in physical reality. Sometimes distance participation adds a special quality to the performance, and it can also happen that a piece brings out the flaws in a network and delays in transmission; the tools for remedying this are quite limited, and solution requires a long wait (even if not as long as Edgard Varèse had to wait for the appearance of electronic sound synthesis).

==== Radio Art ====
Together with experimental music performance, it is the sound play or montage for radio broadcast – real or fictive – that can look back on the greatest past. The Artpool archive is constantly in the process of preparing and disseminating cassette radio broadcasts (material played back from cassettes on mobile pirate networks), pseudo-commercials, and the like, made in the 1980s by Miklós Erdély, [[György Galántai]], Attila Grandpierre, László Lugosi Lugo and Gyula Pauer. '''[27]''' As a one-way communication environment, radio is an understandable inspiration to marginal artists to exercise (or abuse) their right to free speech while criticizing mass media that are similarly manipulative of everyday life. The Hungarian Media law that was democratically drafted in the mid-1990s made true freedom of speech a possibility for so-called nonprofit radio stations, and later (quite unusually) for community stations with a symbolic 1km broadcast range. So the revolution in the airwaves gradually died down and attention turned to mobilizing the audience that was being reached. »People were listening not to programs but to a process,« says dj Palotai, one of the founders of Tilos Rádió. [28] Tilos and ParaRádió were groundbreakers in this process: the former with its place-specific sound play and software development '''[29]''', its open mikes '''[30'''] and programs like No Wave, while the latter had a radical outlook. Both of them marked out new directions (at least in Hungary) for the bigger stations through their experimental music programming and events. It was some time after this – only in 2003 – that the first harbinger appeared in one of the public radio stations, on Petőfi Rádió’s »Mixmag« radio-play program produced by Tamás Turay (this program has since ended, with the restructuring of the station). Nearly all of Hungary’s creative musical minds had their day on the program to build and perform radio-plays. Meanwhile community and Internet radio stations began popping up. Periszkop Rádió in Pécs, in particular, has emphasized underground music since 2006, and organized a number of radio-art and development actions''' [31]'''; other such stations, to a greater or lesser degree, include Budapest’s Fiksz and Fúzió, Szeged’s Rádió MI (US /WHAT), and Erdély FM in Transylvania. From this point on, radio-art and community programming took on the tendency toward underground initiatives – and since the passing of the 2010 Media Law, they have been a face of the liberal resistance.

==== Political Reflections ====
»The minute hand has come around«, says Kornél Gáspár, founder of the New Way of Seeing Fusion band. Indeed it seems that the period is coming to an end. We have moved from art that was waking up from stifling political influence – and returned to where we started. The potential of electronic music for social and cultural criticism, and for stirring up movements, remains unexploited. Independent contemporary music seeks anarchy within the system, inasmuch as experimental music aims to undermine »the validity of activities and creations allowed and categorised as art by the capitalist ethos.« '''[32]''' In my view, however, experimental music is not a mouthpiece for anarchy: its deterministic nature comes out when disorder begins. In other words, it counterbalances the world around it. This process depends just as much on grotesque confrontation (besides the aforementioned hypersubjective texts of the New Way of Seeing/Fusion group, one might also look at the disguise performances of the Terra Rossa group), on a neo-primitive or even pseudo-elite style (the Tudósok [Scholars] Group and other works by dr. Máriás, to name a few), as it does on the choice of explicitly political topics (such as our remix entry on the closing vote of the recent Media Law '''[33]''' and some of our other actions that followed). The world as expressed through reflections on political life reminds us that free and uncontrolled (or uncontrollable) art will be useless in a society that has lost its freedom if it fails to exploit its force for creating communities and mobilising its audience.

== Conclusion: Sound Art in Search of its Artists ==
I would like to conclude my account with a personal opinion. When electronic music in all its forms suddenly appeared in the public consciousness in mid-1990s Hungary, it seemed only natural to anyone who moved in its circles that the diversity of the medium would lead to mutual reinforcement for all involved. Various creative communities sprang up in the hope of sending out the roots of something that might, given the chance, come to full flower. We were confident that we would ultimately shape these currents in music, and the forums in which they were received, through democratic means. We would, we thought, turn the notion of a passive public into an active one, liberate creativity, and allow a discourse free from hierarchy to take over. This was to happen at »the incredible moment of freedom«, '''[34]''' in the years following the fall of socialism, as we basked in this hope, weaving the new with the newer, the unusual, and the strange. But today we have come to see that only a part of these Utopian dreams have come true, and that the resulting hybrid is not strong enough to stand on its own. We should have been watering this plant not only at the roots, but on its leaves and flowers too. Without this care, it bore no fruit; experimental electronic music remains in its ivory tower, and party culture is in ruins. History – and more importantly for us now – media art, passed us by without a word.

Translation: Jim Tucker

== Acknowledgements and Bibliography ==
Contemporary history has influenced the writing of this history at several points. On top of everything, my starting point has not been Budapest, but Pécs. Still, I hope that from here I might offer a more flexible account of the most important events. I thank all the aforementioned people for their help, particularly László Vidovszky for his guidance in all those areas where, given my age, I have no direct experience. I would like to offer this essay to the students in the Electronic Music Media Art Department at the University of Pécs (PTE-MK) who might someday become the exponents of art forms still unknown in Hungary.

Barnabás Batta (ed.), »Médium, Hang, Esztétika – Zeneiség a mediális technológiák korában«, Univ Kiadó, Szeged 2009.

András Éry-Kovács, »Fiatal radikálisok – Éry-Kovács András beszélgetése Jeney ZoItánnal, Vidovszky LászIóval és Wilheim Andrással, a KISZ Központi Művészegyüttese Űj Zenei Stúdiójának tagjaival«, in: »Zenekultúránkról«, István Balázs (ed.), Kossuth, Budapest 1982, pp. 391–403. http://kbalazs.periszkopradio.hu/archiv/zenekult/szoveg/fiatal_radikalisok.doc [08/2012].

Márta Grabócz, »Zene és narrativitás – Írások 18-19. századi és kortárs zeneművekről«, Jelenkor, Pécs 2003.

József Havasréti / Zsolt K. Horváth, »Avantgárd: underground: alternatív – Popzene, művészet és szubkulturális nyilvánosság Magyarországon«, Artpool – Kijárat – PTE-BTK Kommunikációs Tanszék, Budapest/Pécs 2003.

Ferenc Kömlődi / Gábor Pánczél, »Mennyek Kapui – Az elektronikus zene évtizede«, 2001. http://www.recreation.hu/mennyek-kapui.html [08/2012].

Zoltán Pongrácz, »Az elektronikus zene«, Zeneműkiadó, Budapest 1980.

László Sáry, »Creative music activities«, Jelenkor, Pécs 1999.

László Vidovszky / Kristóf Weber, »Beszélgetések a zenéről«, Jelenkor, Pécs 1997.

[1] I have borrowed this formulation from the analysis of: Márta Grabócz, »Zene és narrativitás – Írások 18–19. századi é kortárs zeneművekről«, Jelenkor, Pécs 2003, p. 194.

[2] This text accompanies a recording of Zoltán Jeney’s music, SLPX 12059, Hungaroton, 1979.

[3] Éry-Kovács András, »Fiatal radikálisok – Éry-Kovács András beszélgetése Jeney ZoItánnal, Vidovszky LászIóval és Wilheim Andrással, a KISZ Központi Művészegyüttese Űj Zenei Stúdiójának tagjaival«, in: »Zenekultúránkról«, Balázs István ed., Kossuth, Budapest 1982, pp. 391–403. http://kbalazs.periszkopradio.hu/archiv/zenekult/szoveg/fiatal_radikalisok.doc [08/2012].

[4] see http://www.hzo.hu/vzp/index.php?mit=82&hir_id=3073&kezd=0 [08/2012], http://prae.hu/prae/articles.php?aid=608 [08/2012].

[5] János Maróthy, »A beat ürügyén a művelődésről« (On Education, by Way of Beat, 1969), in: Zenekultúránkról, Kossuth, Budapest 1982, pp. 101–108. http://kbalazs.periszkopradio.hu/archiv/zenekult/szoveg/marothy_beat.htm [08/2012].

[6] László Najmányi gives a serialized comprehensive account of the Spions in the journal Balkon, beginning with issue 2010/1.

[7] Gábor Gavra, »A neoavantgárd és a rockzene találkozása a hetvenes és nyolcvanas évek fordulóján« The Meeting of the Neo-avant-garde and Rock music around the Turn of the 90s), in: József Havasréti – K. Horváth Zsolt, »Avantgárd: underground: alternatív – Popzene, művészet és szubkulturális nyilvánosság Magyarországon«, Artpool – Kijárat – PTE-BTK Kommunikációs Tanszék, Budapest-Pécs 2003, pp. 39–54, 53.

[8] For a complex treatment of this topic see József Havasréti – K. Horváth Zsolt, 2003.

[9] It would be desirable, but beyond the scope of this paper to give an overview of the performance-type work of the neo-avant-garde artists (Miklós Erdélyi, Tamás Szentjoby György Jovánovics, György Galántai, et al.). Fortunately their oeuvre receives a much broader readership from the authors that follow, making it easy to search for them by name. I shall deal with their relevant sound works in a discussion of radio art below.

[10] »Átitatom magam velük – Szemző Tiborral Tillmann J. A. beszélget« (I Steep Myself in Them: J. A. Tillmann Speaks with Tibor Szemző) , in: Jelenkor, 2004 (47), 3, pp. 314–318, http://jelenkor.net/main.php?disp=disp&ID=507 [08/2012].

[11] This series offers short films from 1975–85 directed by non-director artists (Dóra Maurer, Zoltán Jeney, Tibor Hajas, et al.).

[12] Waliczky’s output is treated in detail by Mark B. N. Hansen, »New Philosophy for New Media«, MIT Press, Cambridge 2004.

[13] http://www.sdss.jhu.edu/~szalay/music/pantarhei.html [08/2012].

[14] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8BNqRXDTnw [08/2012], it should be noted, however, that the artist himself does not recommend exposure to the work through video. Cf. László Vidovszky – Weber Kristóf, » Beszélgetések a zenéről«, Jelenkor, Pécs 1997, p. 21.

[15] Information on the former can be found at http://art.pte.hu/211orchestra/ [08/2012], on the latter at http://www.intermedia.c3.hu/ [08/2012].

[16] http://edeske.hu/ [08/2012]. A comprehensive look at kinetic sculpture, and particularly at the INDIGO group led by Miklós Erdély can be found at: Hangyel Orsolya, »Kinetikus mûvészet Magyarországon« (Kinetic Art in Hungary), in: Mozgás '08, Faur Zsófi Ráday Galéria, Ráday Galéria és Kiadó Kft., Budapest 2008.

[17] http://www.viktorlois.com/ [08/2012].

[18] http://www.freewebs.com/wordcitizen/ [08/2012].

[19] http://www.c3.hu/othercontent/lovebarikad/gepszava/gsz3.html [08/2012].

[20] For reasons of brevity I must pass over this as well, omitting composers of downtempo and Juice Records’ »Future Sound of Budapest« selection. This subject has been treated in Hungarian only in conversations. See: Ferenc Kömlődi / Pánczél Gábor, »Mennyek Kapui – Az elektronikus zene évtizede«, 2001, sections 10 and 11, http://www.recreation.hu/mennyek-kapui.html [08/2012].

[21] Pararadio ceased operation in 2007. Its website remains active: http://www.pararadio.hu/ [08/2012].

[22] A list of these artists may be found at http://periszkopradio.hu/periwiki/index.php?title=DiY [08/2012].

[23] For more on mute music performance, see Lorraine Plourde, »Disciplined Listening in Tokyo: Onkyô and Non-Intentional Sounds«, in: Ethnomusicology (52/2), 2008, pp. 270–295, and David Novak, »Playing Off Site: The Untranslation of Onkyô«, in: Asian Music, Winter/Spring 2010, pp. 36–59. (http://www.music.ucsb.edu/PDF/NovakOnkyoAM41%201.pdf [08/2012])

[24] http://www.muvesz-vilag.hu/kepzomuveszet/esemenyek/419 [08/2012].

[25] Gregory Kramer et al., »Sonification Report: Status of the Field and Research Agenda«, 1997, http://www.icad.org/websiteV2.0/References/nsf.html [08/2012].

[26] For a more detailed examination see Siegfried Zielinski, »Deep Time of the Media – Toward an Archeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means«, ford. Gloria Custance, The MIT Press, Cambridge 2006, 184–186.

[27] This constantly expanding archive is available at http://artpool.hu/sound/archive.html [08/2012].

[28] Ferenc Kömlődi / Pánczél Gábor, 2001, p. 674

[29] Software artist Ákos Maroy tracks the applications developed by Tilos. For more, see http://akos.maroy.hu/ [08/2012].

[30] cf. dj Palotai, in: Ferenc Kömlődi / Pánczél Gábor, 2001, op. cit., p. 675. »Later we went into town, to Csörsz St. next to the College of Physical Education. Every morning we put the microphone not in the garden, but on the balcony. You could hear the 61 tram passing by on the radio. […] The most brilliant thing was that the technician, who knew where our studio was, went to see his parents on Sunday morning. He got on the 61 tram at the Déli Station, took his seat, and put on his headphones to hear what was on the radio. He heard the doors opening and closing, and the tram pulling away. Later he said if he hadn’t already been sitting down, he would have had to. It was such a shock to hear the whole thing from the outside. So there were absolutely one-person broadcasts.«

[31] http://periszkopradio.hu/ [08/2012]. Its predecessors in Pécs were Szubjektív, Ex-szubjektív, Publikum, and GFM radio stations, which followed in succession – among their work, special emphasis should be given to the Makramé MaxMSP/Jitter source collection, http://makrame.periszkopradio.hu/ [08/2012].

[32] Zsolt Sőrés, »Hang és anarchia – Gondolatok a független kortárs zene helyzetéről« (Sound and Anarchy: Thoughts on the Situation of Independent Contemporary Music), 2003, http://www.ultrahang.hu/cikk.php?t=c&id=29 [08/2012].

[33] http://total.periszkopradio.hu/fulek_zarva/?lang=en [08/2012].

[34] Cf. http://hirszerzo.hu/publicisztika/20110203_egyiptom_hogyan_tovabb [08/2012].

[[Category:Hungarian Contributions]] [[Category:Sound Exchange]] [[Category: Essays]]

Ornament & Verbrechen

2018-06-05T11:19:59Z

Diogo: Created page with "Ornament & Verbrechen is a project that was created by two brothers, Ronald and Robert Lippok in East Berlin in 1983. Prior to this, Ronald Lippok had performed in more conven..."

Ornament & Verbrechen is a project that was created by two brothers, Ronald and Robert Lippok in East Berlin in 1983. Prior to this, Ronald Lippok had performed in more conventional punk groups. The name was supposed to encompass various kinds of artistic projects and make an ironic reference to the title of Adolf Loos' 1908 essay at the same time. It was also the basis for other ensembles of the Lippoks, such as Bleibeil, or Local Moon. Inspired by industrial groups like Throbbing Gristle, the Lippoks began constructing their own instruments from everyday objects and recorded their first audio tapes. One of their early recordings appeared on the famous compilation Live in Paradise (1985) that presented several new wave groups from the GDR. The artists never applied for an official permission to perform (until they made an exception for a theatre production shortly before the collapse of the system), and so therefore (almost) all their concerts were unauthorized. They also took part in several projects by other artists including a number of performances by Holger Stark, for instance ‘Pulling The Strings Behind The Scenes’ (1988) at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Dresden. Apart from strictly musical projects, Ronald Lippok also painted and created samizdats (in collaboration with Bert Papenfuß-Gorek, a poet associated with the Prenzlauer Berg scene). Meanwhile, his brother Robert created such installations as the ‘Schimmelmaschinen’ (Mould machines) shown at an exhibition at the Wohnmaschine Gallery in Berlin in 1989. Partly a laboratory and partly kinetic sculpture, it represented the decay and decline of a city. It was also a remarkable sound installation at the same time, featuring a mechanical music box producing the sound of flute in the background.

== Related content ==
[[In a Musical No Man's Land – Unheard-of Productions on the Fringes of Rock Culture]]

[[Hues of Independence]]
[[Category: East German Figures]]

Hues of Independence

2018-06-05T11:19:33Z

Diogo:

[[File:HOI - 1.png|thumb|right|1. Still from ‘Plastic People of the Universe’, directed by C.sar de Ferrari, 1970. Courtesy of Česka Televize]]
''This article, written by Daniel Muzyczuk, explores the meaning of the underground and its role in Democratic opposition in the Eastern Bloc, focusing particularly on [[:Category:Czechoslovakia|Czech]], [[:Category:Poland|Polish]], [[:Category:Hungary|Hungarian]] and [[:Category:East Germany|East-German]] examples.''

In his insightful study about the intersecting paths of political dissidents and underground musicians in 1970s and 1980s Czechoslovakia, Jonathan Bolton notes that researchers of such relationships necessarily rely on two kinds of sources of a completely different nature:

As with samizdat, where we can never really track down the exact circulation of particular typed texts, we must read the underground legends without, ultimately, having a clear sense of their spread or reception; nevertheless, we must also remember that imaginary circulations were just as important as real ones. The legends about Bondy, Jirous, and the [[The Plastic People of the Universe|Plastic People]] were both descriptive of an underground environment and constitutive of a cultural identity. '''[1]'''

So on the one hand we have the hard facts relayed by historical sources of established credibility, while on the other hand we keep encountering mythologised stories about heroic deeds, their reach unknown. The notion of universality gains a wholly new meaning here. These differing narratives were often aimed at specific audiences: sometimes with the purpose of peer communication within alternative culture; occasionally, they were directed at the larger set of dissidents or counter-culture activists or even at the society at large or the state apparatus, particularly the security services of the respective countries. The transition to democracy has facilitated wide access to sources produced in different circulations and different contexts, as a result of which identifying the addressees of the different messages is becoming difficult, and mapping their striking distance – virtually impossible.

In this essay I will discuss the discourses and practices of special communities that combined musical and visual work, or actually saw them as one. This intermedia production was often informed by the perception of independence as the need to create a parallel culture, one that would be a world in itself and unto itself, and therefore one that has its own full cultural life. Contrary to what it might seem, this is a story about the clever exploitation of possibilities offered by states rather than a narrative of struggle, persecution and oppression. In his essay about the late-Soviet rave generation, Alexei Yurchak makes an interesting diagnosis according to which independence – at least in perestroika-era Soviet Union – meant evading the state apparatus. He wrote:

I argue … that the logic of nonofficial discourses and practices in late socialism was based most of all on attempts to have a meaningful life in spite of the state's oppression. Hence, the nonofficial (or ‘countercultural’) practices involved not so much countering, resisting, or opposing state power as simply avoiding it and carving out symbolically meaningful spaces and identities away from it. '''[2]'''

Of course, each of the countries in the Soviet Bloc had its own institutions of compulsion and control. It is also worth noting that we are talking about a very long period, from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, when liberalisation processes occurred with various degrees of intensity. By looking at a broad range of relationships between the state and the ‘independents’, we will be able to grasp the whole complexity of the issue as well as better understand what happens to countercultural terms when they are transplanted from their natural habitat of Western democracy to real socialism.

== Assaulting Culture ==
[[File:HOI - 2.png|thumb|right|2. Still from ‘Plastic People of the Universe’, directed by C.sar de Ferrari, 1970. Courtesy of Česka Televize ]]
The history of The Plastic People of the Universe, their idea of the underground and their subsequent involvement in the democratic opposition movement is well known. And yet it continues to shine uniquely as the most radical moment of Eastern European counterculture. Analyses of the writings of the group’s chief ideologist and manager, Ivan Martin ‘Magor’ Jirous, have revealed new insights reflecting how culturally complex a phenomenon The Plastic People were. Asked about the meaning of the term ‘underground’ in an interview included in Césare de Ferrari’s 1970 film entitled Plastic People of the Universe, Jirous cites The Fugs and Ed Sanders and speaks of a ‘total assault on culture’ (figure 1). '''[3]''' Already in 1965 the same phrase appears, as ‘atentát na kulturu’, in a song by the band Aktual, run by Milan Knížák, and this may have been in that context that Jirous had first heard it. '''[4]'''

So the underground was for Jirous a cultural formation, its defining characteristic being confrontation with the establishment. It is worth noting that it doesn’t matter here whether ‘the establishment’ refers to Western society or to the communist party and the cultural elites. Another source that Jirous cited in his early texts was Marcel Duchamp and his famous dictum that the ‘great artist of tomorrow will go underground’. This pays witness to a need to escape from the commercialisation of art and withdraw to an area of anonymity that would protect one from the invisible hand of the market. But the two quotations (from Sanders and Duchamp) evidence also Jirous’s ambitions to follow the example set by Andy Warhol in the Velvet Underground and create a cultural structure as rich as The Factory (figure 2).

In the interview cited above, Jirous - the artistic director of [[The Plastic People of the Universe]] - says that the band is not just the music but also the work of artists, meaning Jan Ságl and Zorka Ságlová – authors of the costumes, stage designs and, in the case of the latter, land-art projects that the members of The Plastic People helped create. A few years later, in reaction to growing pressure on the band and its milieu, Jirous was to formulate in his famous manifesto, A Report on the Third Czech Musical Revival, the theory of a second culture which was doubtless a development and concretisation of the notion of the underground as a cultural formation based on subculture.

The attack on The Plastic People of the Universe and other bands began in 1974 with the cancelling of concerts. But the group was still neither official nor unofficial. On 30 March 1974, the so called ‘České Budějovice massacre’ took place, where Czechoslovak riot police broke up a Plastic People show and clubbed the fans before herding them into a train and sending them back to Prague. In the following years tension grew, culminating in the arrest and subsequent prosecution of four leading members of the scene on 17 March 1976, a month after the Second Festival of the Second Culture in Bojanovice. The detainees included Ivan Jirous – manager and ideologist of The Plastic People of the Universe, Vratislav Brabenec – saxophone player and lyricist, Pavel Zajíček of the band [[DG 307|DG307]], and the folk singer Svatopluk Karásek. In the same year, Czechoslovak TV broadcasts a documentary titled, aptly, Atentát na kulturu (referring thus to both The Fugs and Aktual), which presents the arrested men as deviants and drug addicts who participate in orgies and use dead rats for drumsticks (sic!) (figure 3). The Report on the Third Czech Musical Revival is written during this time, becoming, in the light of the subsequent events, a crucial manifesto. In it, Jirous again refers to Sanders, but lends a new meaning to the words ascribed to him: ‘[The underground] is a movement that operates primarily with artistic means, even though its representatives are conscious of the fact that is not and should not be the end-all of an artist’s effort’. '''[5]''' Then he explains what kind of culture the underground is supposed to serve:

''"The aim of the underground here in Bohemia is the creation of a second culture: a culture that will not be dependent on official channels of communication, social recognition, and the hierarchy of values laid down by the establishment; a culture which cannot have the destruction of the establishment as its aim because in doing so, it would drive itself into the establishment’s embrace; a culture which helps those who wish to join it to rid themselves of the scepticism which says that nothing can be done and shows them that much can be done when those who make the culture desire little for themselves and much for others."'' '''[6]'''

It is worth comparing Jirous’s declarations with another source – a brief text, ‘A Silent Hungarian Underground’, published in 1973 by Béla Hap, founder of the Hungarian samizdat periodical, Szétfolyóirat. Hap described the underground as an artistic movement which neither supports nor attacks the establishment, but remains outside it. Any attack on the establishment would acknowledge its existence . . . It wants to be a form of unidentifiable, unanalysable, ungraspable, and incorruptible outsider art. PRIVATE ART. '''[7]'''

[[File:HOI - (3).png|thumb|right|3. Still from ‘Atent.t na kulturu’ (Assault on Culture), directed by Ladislav Chocholoušek, 1977. Courtesy of Česka televize]]
This definition was formulated in a milieu centred on a rather specific periodical which made evading official restrictions on production and distribution both its working method and a content management principle. Thus a term originating in the West became here not a distant and utopian idea, as in Jirous’s text, but rather a daily praxis of cultural production. This is confirmed in Hap‘s text: ‘What are the information channels of the underground? Pencil, pen, brush, nail, typewriter, photo camera, tape recorder, private home, forest, clearing, tree hollow, air, whatever, mouth, ears, telepathy etc. . . . It creates film out of film waste, out of what the superficial world discards’. '''[8]'''

But this pragmatic definition didn’t protect its author from constant surveillance and reprisals. Let us return however to Jirous and The Plastic People of the Universe. It is clear that the oppression encountered by alternative culture in Czechoslovakia made it possible to reformulate the organisation’s goals and the ways of achieving them. But the very form of government still seems unimportant for the notion of the underground. The establishments are different, but the forms of relationships with them are similar. At this point we arrive at the crucial – and heavily mythologised – moment of the publication of Charter 77 - an emanation of the underground’s alliance with the dissident movement.

[[Martin Machovec]] notes that Jirous, Hlavsa or Brabenec had no political agenda, and confrontational slogans were formulated to create space for ‘doing your own thing’ rather than to achieve any kind of political change. He also believes that state oppression played a role in the crystallisation of the underground’s positions and operating methods, writing that ‘they were compelled to become politically radicalised because of the totalitarian regime's intolerance and brutal oppression. However, their radicalism did not lead to a kind of a “world revolution” but rather to the activities of the defenders of human rights in Charter 77’. '''[9]'''

In its clash with the regime, the underground found allies in political dissidents and thus the war for culture and democratic structures in Czechoslovakia became a binary conflict: the state against Charter 77. In a 1995 interview, Egon Bondy spoke about the meaning of the term ‘underground’:
''
"It was rather the shared lot of those who’d found themselves representing positions even more radical than the ordinary dissident. We definitely wanted to distinguish ourselves from the so called ‘grey zone”’, from people, often with good jobs, who would consider themselves dissidents because they cursed the regime at home. The Czech ‘underground’ brought together people from all kinds of backgrounds and there was never any friction between them. Among my closest friends were Protestants and Catholics, deeply religious people, who still didn’t reject me, an avowed Marxist."'' '''[10]'''

Also Bondy speaks in a way which suggests that ‘the underground’ ultimately became a descriptive term, losing, as a result of the conflict, its projective, future-oriented character. In fact, at first, members of the underground had perceived dissidents as part of the establishment. This perspective can be sensed in Charter 77 itself, when it is pointed out that the signatories enjoyed better protection from oppression than figures from the underground. Jirous’s criticism of intellectuals from Havel’s milieu had been internalised, and the struggle for human rights became the groundwork of the alliance. The history of The [[Plastic People of the Universe|Plastic People]] and Charter 77 represents actually the only example of a lasting alliance between the two groups, compelled by the state. Let us notice that the very term ‘velvet revolution’ probably originated from the Velvet Underground, a key inspiration for The Plastic People. '''[11]'''

At this point it is doubtless worth noting a completely different reaction to the notion of the underground, presented by Mikoláš Chadima, member of bands such as [[Kilhets]], Extempore and MCH Band, in the introduction to his book, Alternativa. Od rekvalifikací k «Nové» vlně se starým obsahem. Chadima reconstructs the scene, noting a possible tripartition: for him, the establishment and the underground are two circles, beyond which there is also the alternative. Miroslav Vaněk saw the matter in similar terms, writing that, ‘this branch of rock music constitutes an alternative to official pop and big beat (rock and roll), but is also an alternative to the other end, the so called Underground’. '''[12]'''

[[File:HOI - (4).png|thumb|right|4. Extempore Band, IX Pražske jazzove dny (Prague Jazz Days), 1979, photograph Jiři Kučera. Courtesy of Mikolaš Chadima]]
In Vaněk’s statement, the political aspect of the distinction is lost. For the alternative, as Chadima described it – unlike the underground after 1976 – was still willing to take avail of all the opportunities offered by the state. This transition is also bound up with a generational change which means that the battles fought by the older heroes did not matter to younger musicians. An idealistic set of connotations was replaced by pragmatism. This is a similar action to the abovementioned vision of alternative culture as a practice characterised most of all by ingenuity in evading the regime. One example of a subject operating in this fashion was the Jazzová Sekce (Jazz Section) of the Union of Czechoslovak Musicians, founded on 31 November 1971, which organised concerts, festivals and exhibitions. Over 15 years, it published 28 bulletins and a series of monographic publications under the Jazz Petit imprint. They were self-published but of high quality (with subjects such as punk, land art, dada or graphic scores). It also organised the Pražské jazzové dny (Prague Jazz Days), an event that took place eleven times between 1974 and 1982. Despite its name, the festival was not only open to avant-garde rock and punk, but also to non-musical projects such as experimental film screenings or theatre shows (figure 4). '''[13]'''

The Jazz Section’s key venue was the amateur club U Zábranských, where alternative rock bands such as Kilhets or Extempore performed. '''[14]''' Due to the expansive nature of its activities, the Jazz Section found itself at odds with its patron organisation; this led to radicalisation and further expansion. In 1979, the Section joined the International Jazz Federation (member of the UNESCO International Music Council), and later joined the European Association for Musical Research and the European Nuclear Disarmament (END) movement. We can say that – like with The Plastic People of the Universe – the organisation’s radicalisation and eventual dissolution occurred despite the fact that it originally lacked any outright political goals. At the same time, the Section was increasingly involved in helping dissidents publish materials and organise concerts. At first, the regime responded by piling up bureaucratic requirements. Despite these difficulties, the Section continued operating and its membership grew. In 1984, the Section was officially dissolved, whereupon it moved underground where it continued to function for two more years in an increasingly oppressive atmosphere until, in September 1986, its five leaders were arrested and put on trial for ‘operating an unauthorised enterprise’, ‘engaging in illegal lucrative activities’, and ‘distributing illegal publications’. '''[15]''' Two of the members went to prison for over a year.

== Third Circulation ==
Exploring the Czechoslovak scene, we can clearly see key concepts and lines of division present in many countries of the bloc, but nowhere else did they achieve such density nor lead to such heated debates and a resulting crystallisation of positions. In Poland in the 1980s a brief moment of alliance between anti-communist activists and the underground can be noted, as mentioned by Piotr Rypson: ‘I have a photo where we are walking with Tomek [Lipiński] and two other friends in a Solidarity demonstration – happy, delighted, smiling. Tomek had just changed his image – he’d stopped spiking up his hair, stopped wearing metal jewellery, put on a V-neck sweater. I remember us concluding that it doesn’t make sense to antagonise the public visually at a time when society is changing – and changing the reality at hand.’ '''[16]'''

In 1981, during the short-lived ‘Solidarity carnival’, a period of liberalisation that was ended abruptly by the introduction of martial law, Brygada Kryzys, a band run at the time by Lipiński and Robert Brylewski, was invited to perform at the Solidarity-organised ‘Przegląd Piosenki Prawdziwej’ (Festival of True Song) at the Olivia venue in Gdańsk. This moment was very brief however, and Lipiński’s words explain why: ‘In 1980, the situation changed. We, as anarchists, naturally saw the regime in a similar way as Solidarity did. From the beginning of 1981, however, we began viewing Solidarity as a new establishment, one which spelled no positive prospects. On the other hand, Solidarity in itself, as an anarchistic movement, was acceptable for us . . . As long as Solidarity was anarchistic, we were on the same side’. '''[17]'''

Punks become temporary fellow travellers on a trip that lasted only until Solidarity had crystallised as a formation with specific views about its intended position in society. Also the political police perceived members of the two groups differently. Solidarity and political dissidents enjoyed a kind of esteem while youth counterculture movements were disparaged as the expression of demoralisation. Paweł ‘Konjo’ Konnak notes that the security police, the SB, clearly saw a difference between the second and third circulations. He remembers the moment when the archives of confiscated samizdat were opened: ‘It’s interesting what happened to the confiscated Totart stage props and publications. A year later, following the elections of June 1989 and pursuant to a deal negotiated by Solidarity with the communists, opposition activists whose underground production had been confiscated were able to collect it back from the SB storerooms. When we too came to claim our meagre junk, the Solidarity gentlemen kindly told us that we had never been any kind of underground and showed us the door. And the Publishing and Advertising Section of the Pill of Progression Metaphysical-Entertainment Conglomerate has the right to nothing’. [18] Paradoxically, this policy meant that materials of lesser subversive potential were irrevocably destroyed while the political samizdat survived.

Another strategy of scene division was followed in East Germany. The authorities in the German Democratic Republic were always wary of the musical scene. Erich Honecker, for example, stated in the 1960s: ‘it was overlooked that the enemy exploits this type of music to drive young people to excesses through the use of exaggerated beat rhythms. The pernicious influences of such music upon the thoughts and actions of young people is being grossly underestimated’. '''[19]'''

In 1976, Wolf Biermann went to perform in Cologne in West Germany; upon his return, he was refused re-entry to the DDR and stripped of his citizenship. The avowed Marxist and socialist bard was a persona non grata in East Germany, because his poetry was too realistic and reflected the absurdities of everyday life all too well. Thus ended a long process of growing separation between the nonconformist songwriter and the state. It was a significant moment also because the future landmarks of East German punk were already looming on the horizon. Bert Papenfuß-Gorek, a poet associated with the Prenzlauer Berg scene and the bands Rosa Extra and [[Ornament & Verbrechen]], reminisced: ‘Biermann's era was completely finished. He was still hanging around, and some friends even had his albums and were still listening to that rubbish, but I would have nothing to do with that anymore. I was on the side of the MC5 and Ton Steine Scherben’. '''[20]'''

Papenfuß-Gorek not only suggests the alleged worthlessness of Biermann’s music but also a lack of interest in its themes. There was no place here for a dissident position – the expression of an open contestation of political authority. Rather, this was an attitude that defies everything that the establishment embodies, and it didn’t matter whether it was a Western or Eastern establishment. Punk in East Berlin declared war on the system in the broadest sense. In a documentary film about Sascha Anderson, Papenfuß-Gorek says: ‘We were against the GDR party dictatorship, not explicitly against the idea of socialism or communism … there were many who described themselves as real Marxists. There was everyone from anarchists to people who saw the Western welfare state as an ideal. That was basically the spectrum’. '''[21]'''

[[File:HOI - (5).png|thumb|right|5. Licence given to AG Geige in ‘Recognition of Artistic Quality’, 1987. Archive of Frank Bretschneider]]
But the regime saw no difference and cracked down on youth subcultures as vehemently as it fought the political opposition. Following a period of direct reprisals against the punk movement, which were supposed to eradicate it by 1983, in the second half of the 1980s the East German authorities changed strategy. Instead of compulsory military service, police harassment, detention or, in some cases, imprisonment, the state sought to extend control over counterculture groups. The policy of granting licences for public performances was relaxed (figure 5). This development is described by Susanne Binas, member of the band Expander des Fortschritts:

''"It was incomparably easier to obtain a license after the mid-1980s than in earlier years. In order to perform in front of an audience, each band had to present its repertoire to a cultural commission of the district government in a special audition. In earlier years, these posts were largely occupied by political bureaucrats with little or no musical background. In contrast to that, however, our band, auditioned in front of a commission composed of jazz musicians, who were amenable to, and familiar with the broad spectrum of our musical innovations like threechord textures, slap bass, cut ups and samples, tapes, or even quotations by Heiner Müller that were peculiar to our style of music. They deflected demands for high levels of musical proficiency and expertise typical of earlier periods by upholding the principles of artistic freedom and pointing out the existence of an interested audience."'' '''[22]'''

[[File:HOI - (6).png|thumb|right|6. Jan Kummer and Frank Bretschneider during a recording session of [[AG Geige]] for radio, Karl-Marx-Stadt, 1987. Photography Lutz Schramm. Archive of Frank Bretschneider]]
But that isn’t all. As in Poland earlier, where the term ‘ Muzyka Młodej Generacji’ (music of the new generation) was floated in 1978, the phrase ‘Anderen bands’ (other bands) then entered official discourse in East Germany. The idea was to avoid Western vocabulary (the name ‘punk’ remains taboo for official media). Some bands changed their names to sound less controversial. Repackaged in this way, new wave music could be presented to a mass-media audience. In 1986, the East German youth radio station DT64 started broadcasting ‘Parocktikum’, a weekly show that played bands such as Hard Pop, Cadavre Exquis or AG. Geige (figure 6). The scene was divided into two camps: the punk underground, interested in no compromises with the state, or simply with the East German social order, and the alternative. '''[23]''' The choice of the term ‘other bands’ seems very fitting in this case. One can easily find analogies with the Czechoslovak discussions and the division between the underground and the alternative.

== Places and Structures ==
[[File:HOI - (7).png|thumb|right|7. Zuzu-Vető, ‘New Flags, New Tendencies, Communism now’, Fiatal Műveszek Klubja, Budapest, 1983. Courtesy of Janos Vető]]
The Czechoslovak case of cooperation between the Jazz Section and the U Zábranských club is worth comparing with other institutions with similar profiles (i.e., state-funded spaces that weren’t hostile to semi-official activities). Such spaces included the Fiatal Művészek Klubja (Young Artists Club) in Budapest, the Riviera-Remont club and Post in Warsaw, and the Leningrad Rock Club. Each exploited the resources offered by the state in a different way that, combined with the socio-political context, produced specific subcultures. In Hungary, the situation was seemingly clear: according to a policy implemented by prominent politician György Aczél in the 1960s, each manifestation of cultural life was labelled as belonging to one of three categories known as the ‘three Ts’ (Tiltott = banned; Tűrt = tolerated; Támogatott = supported).

However, a look at the 1980s new-wave scene confirms that the division applied to the whole culture where, as in Yurchak’s characterisation, contacts with the state were avoided but the resources and infrastructure provided by it were exploited to the full. In her book about the Hungarian music scene in the 1980s, Anna Szemere writes about a subculture that she describes as the ‘marginal intelligentsia’, the focal point of which was Budapest’s Young Artists Club. It was a meeting place for political dissidents, musicians as well as visual artists. Established in the 1960s, the Club gained full momentum only in the last decade of socialism in Hungary thanks to its open formula which accommodated punk concerts as well as political discussions with members of the democratic opposition. Such activities triggered official reprisals, including frequent event cancellations, but that only added to the place’s popularity. New wave bands such as Balaton, Trabant, [[A. E. Bizottság]] or [[Vágtázó Halottkémek]] found perfect conditions here for developing their innovative ideas. Young Artists Club was also the best environment for them due to its exhibition programme. Artist János Vető, for example, whose works created in a duo with Lóránt Méhes (as Zuzu-Vető) were presented in several exhibitions at the Club, was also a member of Trabant (figure 7). The Young Artists Club was a place where much of his artistic activity was focused. Soon new venues with a similar profile started springing up. Szemere arrives at interesting conclusions, describing this movement towards new spaces of autonomy:

''"Subconsciously, musicians must have known that only by establishing physical spaces and places (primarily venues, but also radio and television stations, etc.) could they re-create affective spaces and places, which are the stuff and goal of music-based social events and rituals. The reconfiguration of the political-social space surrounding the community compelled it to seek stability in the building of physical places. This territorial approach to renewal seemed indispensable for many members of the underground if they were to retain a minimal sense of continuity with the past and regenerate a sense of collective identity."'' '''[24]'''

[[File:HOI - (8).png|thumb|right|8. Commonpress 51, catalogue of the exhibition ‘Hungary Can Be Yours’, 1984/89. Courtesy of Artpool]]
Szemere describes the sociocultural location of this movement as ‘marginal’, a term whose semantic scope overlaps with the alternative, with the difference that marginal positions no longer seek to situate themselves ‘towards’ anything, but simply occupy those areas where the power of the establishment was weak. It is worth mentioning here one of the many examples of the practices of the Young Artists Club that reveals a successful combination of youth culture with the visual arts as well as reflecting the official attitude towards the venue’s activities. In 1984 Artpool organised at the Club an exhibition called Magyarország a tiéd lehet! (Hungary Can Be Yours!). A multimedia project, it was divided into two rooms: in a black one, together withworks by foreign artists, one could watch also a broadcast from a white one, that included artworks by Hungarians (figure 8, 9). '''[25]'''

[[File:HOI - (9).png|thumb|right|9. Floorplan of the exhibition ‘Hungary Can Be Yours’, 1984/89. Courtesy of Artpool]]
A cassette tape was also released, number six in the Artpool Radio series of compilation tapes (a kind, effectively, of an audio magazine), presenting recordings by non-conformist artists such as Tibor Hajas or Tamás Szentjóby and bands such as [[A. E. Bizottság]], [[Vágtázó Halottkémek]] or Európa Kiadó (figure 10). The authorities deemed the exhibition to be politically subversive and ordered that it be closed down. '''[26]''' The significance of the event itself and of the violence of censorship is highlighted by the fact that after the transformation, in December 1989, the project was reconstructed precisely in exactly the same place.

In Leningrad, in turn, the year 1981 saw the founding of three organisations that offered a glimpse of cultural freedom and anticipated perestroika: ‘The Leningrad KGB [state security police] decides to stage a pioneering social experiment and the following are established at the same time: The Experimental Fine Arts Society, the Literary Club and the Rock Club. They are fostered by the trade unions, whose mission includes supporting factory-affiliated cultural centres to confirm the “culturalisation” of the working masses’. '''[27]'''

[[File:HOI - (10).png|thumb|right|10. Artpool r.di. 6, audio casette, 1984. Courtesy of Artpool]]
Each of the three – the Association of Experimental Visual Art (TEII), Club 81 (a literary organisation) and the Ленинградский рок-клуб (Leningrad Rock Club) – had a different structure. Club 81 was a recognised association of some 70 unofficial writers who organised lectures, conferences and concerts at the Dostoyevsky Museum (the famous writer’s former apartment). The Leningrad Rock Club was supposed to function much like the Association of Soviet Composers, that is, to issue concert permits and to act as a censor in the field of youth popular music. What proved far more important however was the space where the institution was housed: it became an influential venue for rehearsals, live shows or simply meetings (figure 11). It was the place where bands such as Kino, Alisa, Akvarium or Zoopark successfully launched their careers. In this context it is worth noting that liberalisation did’t produce the same effects in all areas. Timur Novikov, the leader of the New Artists group, felt ill at ease in the elitist structures of TEII and for this reason sought his own, alternative, methods of collective visual-arts practice. He remembered the Club as a place of unique atmosphere:

''"The New Artists collaborated with the Leningrad Rock Club. I myself was a member of the rock club, as the official designer of Kino. The New Artists designed the Kino sets and records and held exhibitions at the club. The Leningrad Rock Club was an exciting place to be at that time. Hoards of strangely dressed young people flocked to the concerts, with the police hot on their tracks. In the 1980s, long hair was out; crew cuts dyed all the colours of the rainbow were in. All the gigs were accompanied by arrests and document checks, which only added fuel to the flames."'' '''[28]'''

[[File:HOI - (11).png|thumb|right|11. Timur Novikov, Sergey Kuryokhin, Joanna Stingray and members of Kino, Aquarium and Alisa in Leningrad Rock Club, 1985. Courtesy of Joanna Stingray]]
While most of the musicians collaborating with Novikov, such as Victor Tsoy or Sergey Kuryokhin, worked with success at the Leningrad Rock Club, Novikov himself and the painters with whom he worked decided to start their own place (figure 12). Its activities and the one-of-a-kind community that formed around it are described by Konstanty Usenko:
''
"Timur organises the legendary Assa Gallery in an abandoned komunalka. Installations exhibited there will later appear in an eponymous film. Assa’s most famous show is one presenting the works of Andy Warhol himself, little known in the USSR at the time. Novikov, who corresponded by mail with the Pop Art master, had received from him several copies of the famous Marilyn Monroe poster and exhibited them in 1986 in a vacant communal flat in Leningrad. . . . Spaces in Papa Om’s new musical squat are also populated by painters and performers. Besides the neo-expressionists, there were also necro-realist filmmakers there, led by Evgeny “Yufa” Yufit, from the first punk crew from Kupchino. “Yufa” tries his hand there in video art making. In 1988, the Friends of Mayakovsky Club, led by Novikov and the Kino drummer, Gustav, organises at H4/B4 an exhibition commemorating the ninety-fifth anniversary of the artist’s death. News about it spread rapidly around the northern metropolis. Sergey Kuryokhin’s avant-garde orchestra, Pop-Mekhanika, gave a concert."'' '''[29]'''

The Leningrad Rock Club helped create a musical scene of great vitality, a scene that (like the New Artists) wasn’t interested in politics. During the period of perestroika after 1985, liberalisation opened the way for an explosion of youth culture which could be witnessed in film, music and the visual arts. It was thanks to the alliance between the disciplines that bands like Kino or Akvarium shot to real stardom and the official media had no choice but to report about their successes.

[[File:HOI - (12).png|thumb|right|12. Timur Novikov, Joanna Stingray and members of Kino in the ASSA Gallery, 1985. Courtesy of Joanna Stingray]]
In Poland, the Riviera-Remont club, through the many initiatives that took place there, helped forge alliances between visual artists and musicians (from jazz-experimental and new-wave backgrounds) on an unprecedented scale. A student club financed by a branch of the Socjalistyczny Związek Studentów Polskich (Socialist Union of Polish Students) of the Warsaw University of Technology, the Riviera-Remont ran several artistic programmes in the 1970s: the Remont Gallery, managed by Henryk Gajewski; a theatre centre; a cine club called ‘Kwant’; the Remont Jazz Club and the Remont Folk Club. In 1980-1981, Andrzej Zuzak launched, with a group of friends, the Polish name (Alternative Art Agency) which was to be the first independent artistic management agency supporting young alternative rock bands and other forms of artistic activity.

[[File:HOI - (13).png|thumb|right|13. Post, no. 2, 20 September 1980. Courtesy of Piotr Rypson]]
In 1974, [[Andrzej Mitan]] initiated the ‘Diaphora of Music and Poetry’, a series of meetings taking place through 1981, presenting recent innovations in music, poetry and the visual arts. The Remont Gallery, which Gajewski ran with Andrzej Jórczak and Krzysztof Wojciechowski, was geared towards conceptual reflection in the field of photography. Exhibitions were accompanied by theoretical brochures with essays by Polish authors and translations of key international texts. Its programme’s greatest highlight was a widely advertised visit of Andy Warhol (1974) which never happened: the whole thing was a happening/prank staged by Gajewski. In 1978, the latter organised a festival called I Am (International Artist Meeting) which featured two events that were to leave a lasting impact on the Warsaw new wave scene. One was the show of the leftist British punk band, The Raincoats, cited by numerous scene members as their first contact with the new music. The other was Gajewski’s meeting with Piotr Rypson, the future manager of Tilt (a new wave group), artist and curator, for whom the festival marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with the Remont. In 1979, Gajewski reorganised the gallery, renaming it Post Remont, and started publishing with Rypson a zine called Post, combining punk and artistic reflection (figure 13). Łukasz Ronduda describes their collective activities thus:

''"In their post-gallery, Gajewski and Rypson adopted the role of artists-managers, using progressive production and marketing strategies, characteristic for pop culture in developed societies, to support punk culture. They used them to fulfil a selfless artistic vision rather than, as managers in the West, to commercialise the punk movement and commodify its music, fashion and lifestyle."'' '''[30]'''

Let us note that in this interpretation, the Post Remont appears as a subject whose scope goes far beyond even the broadest formula of an artist-run space. It was, after all, a student gallery combining conceptual art and youth music with publishing (figure 14). At the same time, all these activities were made possible by state funding. The alliance ended abruptly with the introduction of martial law in Poland in December 1981 and Gajewski’s emigration to Amsterdam.

== DIY? ==
[[File:HOI - (14).png|thumb|right|14. Kryzys playing at Post during Henryk Gajewski’s exhibition ‘Other Book for Children’, 1979]]
In the West, the litmus test ultimately distinguishing truly independent artists from those collaborating with the establishment was traditionally the label a band was on. If it was with one of the majors, the band would face accusations of betraying its principles and selling out. But in communist-era Eastern Europe this benchmark didn’t apply. At this point, the mythology bound up with the key concepts that I wish to expand on in this essay becomes fully apparent. Did publishing a record on a state-owned label carry the same ideological meaning as publishing it on a major commercial one? I will try to answer this question, again citing several examples that will allow us to distinguish a range of hues far more varied than simple opposition-based contrast. Already in the USSR, traditionally perceived as the country most restrictive in its approach towards youth culture, we deal with a whole gamut of different policies. As will be demonstrated, the status of an officially recognised artist – one allowed to represent the country abroad and therefore also hold a passport or be able to publish – didn’t depend on artistic compromises but on the policy of the different republics.

In an essay accompanying a re-edition of Sergey Kuryokhin’s record titled, tellingly, Degrees of Freedom, Alex Kan reveals the scale of the different treatment of artists in the different parts of the USSR:
[[File:HOI - (15).png|thumb|right|15. Ganelin, Tarasov, Chekasin, Con Anima, LP issued by Melodia, 1976. Cover design by Eugenijus Cukermanas. Courtesy of [[Vladimir Tarasov]]]]
''"There was no way Melodiya would consider publishing avant-garde record of an underground musician. The fact that a few years earlier, in 1976, the Ganelin trio managed to get their magnificent Con Anima published on Melodiya, seemed a total aberration, an exception which just proved the rule. The trio lived and worked in a more liberal semi-Western Lithuania, and with Tarasov playing full time with the Lithuanian Philharmonic, Ganelin holding position of the music director at a prominent theater, and Chekasin teaching at a music school, they seemed and were much more established and respectable than a wayward pianist from a much more conservative Leningrad. Even for the trio it took five long years before their second release could see the light of day – the authorities at Melodia in Moscow, having realised the gaffe they made with Con Anima, put up stubborn resistance and Concerto Grosso was not published until 1981" (figure 15).'' '''[31]'''

The history of the recording and release of Degrees of Freedom aptly reflects the working conditions of progressive musicians in Leningrad. The album, with solo piano music, was recorded late at night in the studio of the Leningrad Institute of Film, Theatre and Music by a sound engineer that Kuryokhin was friends with. Smuggled to Britain, the material was released on vinyl by Leo Feigin, owner of Leo Records (figure 16).

[[File:HOI - (16).png|thumb|right|16. Andy Warhol holding the sleeve Sergey Kuryokhin’s LP ‘Ways of Freedom’, 1985. Courtesy of Joanna Stingray]]
There was no information on the cover about the circumstances of the original recording, but there was a disclaimer – ‘The musicians do not bear any responsibility for publishing these tapes’ – which suggested that the record was in fact a bootleg. In this context, it is worth examining another example of East-West music smuggling. Joanna Stingray came to Leningrad in 1984, During this trip she managed to meet numerous artists and scene members associated with the New Artists group, the Assa Gallery and the Leningrad Rock Club. Two years later, she published, on the Australian label Big Time, the compilation Red Wave: 4 Underground Bands From the USSR, with recordings by Akvarium, Kino, Alisa and Strange Games. At the same time, she made a documentary film featuring music videos by each of the bands and a presentation of the context in which they worked, including footage of Timur Novikov playing on the utiugon, a self-made instrument. On the cover, Stingray put the following note: ‘I have brought their music to the West, in hope of creating better understanding between people. MUSIC HAS NO BORDERS! (figure 17)’ '''[32]''' But the Soviet authorities thought otherwise and Stingray was punished for illegally exporting state property. As she recounted,

''"The tracks were recorded on reel-to-reel tapes that were outdated, large and unwieldy. I hid the paper with the lyrics under the lining of my boots and the tapes in a secret pocket of my jacket. I was smuggling the music out as if I were a drug courier. The safest route was from Leningrad to Finland because they didn't search people as thoroughly in the Leningrad airport as in Moscow. (…) When I returned to the Soviet Union, I first went to the VAAP (Soviet Copyright Agency). They gave me a long lecture and a paper to sign saying that I had smuggled the recordings out without the musicians' knowledge. I quickly agreed to sign it, gave VAAP the royalty fee and thought that the matter was settled. I returned to the States riding on a cloud and prepared for my wedding to Yury Kasparyan. But after that meeting they banned me from entering the Soviet Union for six months, with the result that I missed my own wedding."'' '''[33]'''

[[File:HOI - (17).png|thumb|right|17. Red Wave’ compilation, LP, Stingray Productions, 1986. Courtesy of Joanna Stingray]]
Record smuggling and bootlegging are a constant feature of stories about early new-wave music publishing. In Poland, for example, Kryzys (as well as Deadlock) had their first album released by Blitzkrieg Records, a Barclay label, founded to publish Polish and Chinese punk (the latter represented by ‘The Dragons’, which was probably a fictitious band). Robert Brylewski, the leader of Kryzys, reminisced,

''"There was a French guy, Marc Boulet, who travelled around the world, recording avant-garde bands … He cassette tape-recorded two bands, one of which practically didn’t exist and the other had no bass player, returned home and, riding on the wave of interest in Poland at the time, sold the material to the major label. Barclay Records. which issued it with a wrapper saying, “Solidarité avec le rock polonais” [Solidarity with Polish rock]. Boulet didn’t organise anything – he simply took out the tape recorder and recorded a rehearsal at the Amplitron student club … we organised the instruments themselves, using a metal ashtray from the hallway in lieu of cymbals. … The Kryzys album was actually a random compilation, and if you happen to find a copy somewhere, you’ll see that the songs I wrote are credited to someone called Zedlecki. Who the hell is Zedlecki?"'' '''[34]'''

Was hiding the name of the songs’ composer a deliberate act of camouflage, similar to Stingray’s disclaimer on the cover of Red Wave? It’s hard to say, but it seems unlikely, for Kryzys functioned at the time as more or less a ‘legal’ band, so it didn’t need to conceal its members’ identity. In 1982, the independent British label Fresh Records released Brygada Kryzys’s live album without any prior permission from the band and even unbeknownst to it, and only later sent an envoy on a legalisation mission (figure 18). According to Brylewski: ‘I wasn’t aware at all that someone had that tape. I only learned about the record when they brought it from Berlin. A guy came in a leather jacket, begging us to sign a backdated contract’. '''[35]''' It is worth noting that another record by the band was published in the same year by the state label Tonpress.

[[File:HOI - (18).png|thumb|right|18. Brygada Kryzys, Live, LP, Fresh Records, 1982. Courtesy of Robert Brylewski]]
This means that within two years Brylewski had his music published by a major Western record company, an independent Western label and an official domestic publisher. Another special case, and not only because their albums were released by the official Soviet record company, Melodiya, were the Ganelin Trio. They were among those avant-garde jazz musicians who were allowed to perform abroad. Their first album was issued in Poland following their appearance at the Jazz Jamboree festival in Warsaw in 1976, and here again the artists didn’t have much say about the publication (the song titles, for example, were invented by the Polish publisher). Ganelin, Chekasin and Tarasov started performing behind the Iron Curtain, and their concerts featured more and more multimedia elements. They were also aware of the work of Fluxus and John Cage, and it was these influences that inspired the group’s perhaps most radical performance, Household Music-Making in Nine Rooms, presented first at the Vilnius Philharmonic in 1979 and later also in Moscow, among other places (figure 19). The show proceeded in a surprising fashion. A live album released by Leo Records credits only Chekasin and Ganelin, ignoring Tarasov who was present throughout the performance – but sleeping. Tarasov himself described the event:

''"I sleep on a bed for the entire first act, and then I leap out of bed and grab the newspaper „Pravda” upside down. It was all very blatant, but we were not afraid. … Household Music-Making was absolutely a demonstration. If I remember, I sleep, then I jump up and we play all kinds of reworked songs, we eat sandwiches. I'll never forget, after the concert at the Vilnius Philharmonic people kept repeating, ‘You fellows will have problems, you will have problems’. They were afraid. They were afraid of us of course. But they were also pleased. Maybe they were jealous, that we let ourselves do these things. The same was true at the ‘Neringa’'' '''[36]''' ''where you sat at a table telling jokes, constantly glancing back, afraid, that someone might hear you. Of course, they heard everything.''" '''[37]'''

[[File:HOI - (19).png|thumb|right|19. [[Vladimir Tarasov]] during the performance of the Ganelin trio at Vilnius Philarmonic, 1979, photograph Gregory Talas. Courtesy of [[Vladimir Tarasov]]]]
Norman Weinstein, who wrote an introductory text for the album, noted,

''"You will hear an alarm clock sound at the conclusion of ‘Home Music Making’. Tarasov was on stage – sleeping! - throughout the Ganelin/Chekasin duets wakes up! This bit of theatre of the absurd accurately summarizes the inability of many critics to understand the Russianness of these masters whose every note demands we waken. But you may need no alarm. Just put this recording on your system and listen."'' '''[38]'''

Who was awakened in the first place was the audience of this unique performance. Inspired by performance art seen in the West and transplanted to the field of music, the action left a strong impact on another generation of Lithuanian artists, some of whom, like Česlovas Lukenskas of the group Post Ars, soon started their own intermedia activities. This transfer of ideas between seemingly separate worlds of music and the visual arts was made possible by the fact that the Ganelin Trio enjoyed the status of the official representation of Soviet free jazz.

In Poland, between 1982 and 1988, Andrzej Mitan, Cezary Staniszewski and Tomasz Wilmański ran the RR Gallery at the Remont club. Mitan had already been involved in the club’s concert activities. The death of composer Andrzej Bieżan in a car accident in 1983 became a pretext for realising a unique project, started by the posthumous publication of recordings of Bieżan’s music. Mitan did something unprecedented in the Eastern Bloc, publishing a series of long-playing records with avant-garde music in covers designed by leading Polish visual artists, all that in an interesting concatenation of official and unofficial circulations. The publishing process of the Alma Art series was highly complex and required negotiation with numerous institutions. The records were co-published by the Remont Club of New Music and the Polish Student Association’s Academic Bureau of Culture and Art, with funding from the organisation’s Information and Publishing Committee. Then Alma Art had to apply to the Ministry of Culture and Art for permission to publish the first batch of the records.

With endorsement from Józef Patkowski, then president of the Association of Polish Composers and founder of the Polish Radio’s Experimental Studio, permission was granted. The artists were allowed to use the Column Room of the Primate’s Palace in Warsaw for recordings, which they made using their own equipment. Another permission was required for the Pronit plastics producer in Pionki to start pressing the records; this was done during the weekend, outside the plant’s official schedule. As some copies had artist-made covers, [[Andrzej Mitan]] and Andrzej Zaremba worked hard to organise the necessary materials – such as 10 kilograms of red pencils, velour paper or photographic paper – despite severe market shortages. Finally, the materials were assembled. '''[39]''' Mitan describes the process in terms that bring to mind the parallel economy or collective working methods characteristic for the second or third circulations: ‘In a rented vacant flat at Sienna Street in Warsaw, I set up a manufactory workshop where the artists made the designer sleeves’. '''[40]'''

The records were then sold through standard distribution channels. The whole series included nine albums: Helmut Nadolski’s Jubilee Orchestra (cover by Andrzej Szewczyk), Andrzej Bieżan (Tadeusz Rolke), Andrzej Przybielski (Jerzy Czuraj), Janusz Dziubak (Edward Krasiński), Andrzej Mitan w Świętej Racji (Ryszard Winiarski), Krzysztof Knittel (Włodzimierz Borowski), Jarosław Kozłowski (Jarosław Kozłowski), and two records of Andrzej Mitan’s music (with covers by Cezary Staniszewski) (figure 20).

[[File:HOI - (20).png|thumb|right|20. Andrzej Mitan, ‘W świętej racji’ (Holy Reason), LP, Alma-Art, 1984. Design by Ryszard Winiarski. Collection of Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź]]
E. Bizottság was also very lucky in getting their two records released in communist Hungary. The band was formed by a group of artists associated with the Vajda Lajos Stúdió in Szentendre, an artistic community dating back to the late 1960s that was geared towards non-professional and amateur art. From the very beginning the group’s output was a particular mix of youth subcultures with Dadaist and Surrealist inspirations. The following account of the community’s beginnings in early 70s captures its institutional complexity and ideological specificity:

When László feLugossy had finally avoided conscription (but was ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment instead), István Ef Zámbó organised a happening on the occasion at the Szentendre market square. He read out his text (he had already started writing books and manifestoes at the time) and handed out various useless objects, provided by Lászlo Terebessy, to members of the audience. The event was called Nalaja Happening, referring to the group’s dadaistic-surrealistic language, called the nalaja. The happening was interrupted by the police, and several participants, including Ef Zámbó himself, were arrested and prosecuted. At this point begins the counterculture myth of Szentendre, although it was mainly a series of naive actions that helped the town’s young residents to ‘bypass’ the system. Since the authorities feared the young artists, they decided to legalise their activities in order to better control them.

The group founded a discussion club, according to the Aczél principles described earlier, and adopted the name of Lajos Vajda, a pre-WWII artist active in the town, thus emphasising the significance of the classic avant-garde in Szentendre. Exhibitions as well as works by amateur artists were qualified by the Népművelési Intézet [Culture Institute], responsible for community and cultural centres, amateur groups and the promotion of art, again according to the ‘three T’ formula. Since the qualifying committee members, who enjoyed respect in the community as expert figures, usually supported the Vajda Lajos Stúdió, the town authorities gave the artists a postindustrial space as a permanent exhibition venue where the Stúdió continues to function to this day. '''[41]'''

In 1980, continuing the countercultural-amateur traditions of the Szentendre artistic community, a group of artists who were eventually to form A. E. Bizottság decided – just for fun – to take part in a talent show. Their unexpected success drew the attention of the public and of other new wave bands, but also of filmmakers. In 1982, at the Balázs Béla Studio (BBS), the idea was conceived of making a documentary film about the new music scene, including bands such as Trabant, Balaton or VHK. Soon it was decided to focus on A. E. Bizottság alone, and since the band members were artists, the filmmakers thought to conduct an unusual experiment: the band was asked to make a film about itself, with funding provided by the studio. András Wahorn, as the group’s leading member and someone with filmmaking experience, became the project leader and the original script was co-written by László feLugossy. But the resulting footage was unusable and BBS decided to cancel the project. Help came from one of their filmmakers, Gábor Bódy, who liked the experiment enough to lend Wahorn his own video camera, a crew, and some money to finish the film.

[[File:HOI - (21).png|thumb|right|21. A. E. Bizottsag, ‘Kalandra Fel!!’, LP, 1983, Start Records. Design by Andras Wahorn. Courtesy of Andras Wahorn]]
That’s how Jégkrémbalett (Ice-cream Ballet, 1984) was made. At first, it enjoyed limited screening rights at home, but when, following Bódy’s inspiration, A. E. Bizottság were invited to the Berlin Film Festival, it was banned altogether. The band described their situation as ‘undorground’, a pun on the Hungarian word undor, ‘distaste’. '''[42]''' A year earlier, A. E. Bizottság were invited by Hungaroton, the official record company, to record an album. This had been provoked by a radio interview where the company’s head was asked why a band so popular still hadn’t released a record. The apparatchik replied, falsely, that work on the record was under way. Wahorn sensed an opportunity and decided to hold Hungaroton to their word. The impossible became possible and Kalandra Fel!!, featuring strikingly avant-garde music, was published in 1983 (figure 21).

== Twittering Machines ==
[[File:HOI - (22).png|thumb|right|22. ‘DDR von Unten’ compilation LP, 1983, Aggressive Rockproduktionen. Cover design by Rolf Kerbach. Archive of Alexander Pehlemann]]
[[Zwitschermaschine]] were a legendary DDR band formed by visual artists Cornelia Schleime and Rolf Kerbach with a member of the Prenzlauer Berg poetry scene, Sascha Anderson. The group’s compositions were featured on side A of East Germany’s first punk record, DDR von Unten / eNDe, which also included tracks by Sau-Kerle (the Schleim-Keim duo under a different name) (figure 22). Published in 1983 in West Germany by the independent label Aggressive Rockproduktionen, the violent and formally complex music of [[Zwitschermaschine]] was complemented by Anderson’s poetry, which produced a unique effect, especially in combination with the relatively straightforward punk of the Schleim-Keim duo. But punk was only of the band’s inspirations; others were the intermedia experiments of an earlier generation of DDR free jazz artists, where a liaison between the music and art scenes was provided by figures such as A. R. Penck or Helge Leiberg. '''[43]''' The album, as it will turn out much later, was not just an artistic event. In his speech upon receiving the Georg Büchner Prize in 1991, Wolf Biermann revealed that Anderson had been a Stasi informer since the 1970s. '''[44]''' Based on archival research, Seth Howes further complicates the picture, writing:

''"...the evidence suggests he employed dissemblance and misdirection to ensure the record made it to production. Anderson provided information on the record’s progenitors and recording sessions only after the fact, and staved off Stasi intervention by doling out incriminating information at strategic times. Though a representative instance of his unethical ‘art of betrayal’, in this particular case, he also managed to have the record released by providing just enough information on its participants to placate his dissatisfied handlers, but little enough to ensure the project continued. Paying for the record project’s completion by betraying its participants, Anderson achieved the original goal: the release of a punk record of Eastern provenance in the West."'' '''[45]'''

At this point, all the previously mentioned divisions collapse. The last act of the ‘war’ between the regime and the punk movement took place in a recording studio. The release in the West (from smuggled tapes) of a music album recorded by an East Berlin band was made possible by an artist who was a Stasi informer. So wasn’t the record partly at least a tool of the secret police (even if we don’t know what their motivations might have been)? And who is the underground? The title of a Sau-Kerle track on DDR von Unten is intriguing in this context: Untergrund Ist Strategie.

== Underground Is a Strategy ==

The panorama sketched above is naturally a selective one. My goal has not been to describe all circumstances but rather to find examples that might revise our understanding of key concepts. But what emerges from this collection of paradoxical accounts? Above all, a narrative about the different dynamics of liberalisation and their impact on specific countercultural practices. We have seen how Western terminology was adapted for local purposes, yielding disagreements between the leaders of the different groups. But the examples cited in this essay do reflect some general principles. Firstly, as noticed by Yurchak, the underground preferred to avoid a collision course with the state; as a result, political dissidents and groups with clearly defined political goals formed alliances with the independents only under immediate duress. In all other cases, the opportunities offered by the state, whether in terms of infrastructure or other, were eagerly exploited. The enemy was not so much a specific socio-political regime as the establishment, however broadly defined.

But there is also the other side of the coin – the Eastern Bloc countries’ policies towards punk. On the one hand, punks in DDR were persecuted, on the other we have the perestroika and the independents, who came to embody political changes as much as party leaders. The history of institutions and distribution networks described herein is a history of concessions made to pacify or better control the youth. After all, one of the reasons for organising the Jarocin Rock Festival was the possibility of taking pictures of most Polish punks. This element poses significant limitations in the research of ‘independent’ circulations. The story of Sascha Anderson shows how even crucial moments in the history of counterculture may have been orchestrated or inspired, directly or not, by those in power.

In fact, Anderson isn’t the only one whose biography had to be revised after the transformation. Gábor Bódy and Egon Bondy were secret police informers too. All three were central figures in their milieus, so it is safe to assume that they had been recruited partly because of what they could do. This is a third element that needs to be added to those listed by Jonathan Bolton in the passage quoted at the beginning of this essay. Besides official documents, we should not only research the underground mythologies, but also look closely at the other side of the coin, for the underground can also be a synonym of the group guarding the establishment’s hegemony.

== References ==
'''[1] ''' Jonathan Bolton, Worlds of Dissent. Charter 77, the Plastic People of the Universe, and Czech Culture under Communism (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2012) 133.

'''[2] ''' Alexei Yurchak, ‘Gagarin and the Rave Kids: Transforming Power, Identity, and Aesthetics in Post-Soviet Nightlife’ in: Adele Marie Barker, ed., Consuming Russia: Popular Culture, Sex, and Society since Gorbachev (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999) 80.

'''[3] ''' The phrase itself is by William S. Burroughs, and the leader of The Fugs used it as a motto for the magazine Fug You.

'''[4] ''' Cf. Milan Knížák, Písně kapely Aktual, Martin Machovec and Jaroslav Riedel, eds. (Praha: MAŤA, 2003) 39.

'''[5] ''' Ivan Martin Jirous, ‘Report on the Third Czech Musical Revival’, transl. Paul Wilson, in David Crowley, Daniel Muzyczuk eds. Notes From the Underground (Łódź: Muzeum Sztuki, 2016).

'''[6]''' Ibid..

'''[7] ''' Cited in Robert Gildea, James Mark and Anette Warring, eds., Europe’s 1968.Voices of Revolt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 188.

'''[8] ''' Quoted in Gábor Danyi, Sztuka obdarowywania. Model dyseminacyjny wczesnego samizdatu na przykładzie węgierskiego czasopisma artystycznego [The art of giving. The dissemination model of early samizdat on the example of a Hungarian art periodical], paper presented at ‘Solidarity. New Approaches to the Analysis of a Social Movement’, a seminar at Collegium Civitas, Warsaw, 17 November 2014, http://solidarnosc.collegium.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Danai-paper-17-11-2014.pdf – accessed July 2016.

'''[9] ''' Martin Machovec, ‘Ideological Orientation and Political Views and Standpoints of Representatives of Czech Underground Culture, 1969–1989 (Underground and Dissidence – Allies or Enemies)’, eSamizdat, 2010–2011 (VIII) 183.

'''[10]''' ‘Pisałem dla tych chłopców z undergroundu! Z Egonem Bondym rozmawiają Václav Burian i Leszek Engelking’, in: Egon Bondy, Dzisiaj wypiłem dużo piw, transl. Leszek Engelking (Kraków: Miniatura, 1997) 165–166.

'''[11] ''' It is worth noting yet another connotation: in his 1987 book, The Velvet Prison: Artists under State Socialism, Miklós Haraszti used the term ‘velvet prison’ as a metaphor for the constraints faced by artists in the Eastern Bloc. The cell was lined with velvet if the artist didn’t express political views inconsistent with the official Party line.

'''[12] ''' Miroslav Vaněk, Byl to jenom rock’n’roll? (Praha: Academia, 2010). 59.

'''[13] ''' Remigiusz Kasprzycki, Dekada buntu. Punk w Polsce i krajach sąsiednich w latach 1977–1989 (Kraków: Libron, 2013) 143.

'''[14] ''' Miroslav Vaněk, Ostrůvky svobody: Kulturní a občanské aktivity mladé generace v 80. letech v Československu (Praha: ÚSD AV ČR Votobia, 2002) 188.

'''[15] ''' Cf. documents published by the International Labour Organization, http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:50002:0::NO::P50002_COMPLAINT_TEXT_ID:2901573 – accessed July 2016.

'''[16] ''' M. R. Makowski, M. Szymański, Obok albo ile procent Babilonu? (Katowice: Manufaktura Legenda, 2010) 233.

'''[17]''' Mikołaj Lizut, PrL – Punk Rock Later (Warszawa: Sic!, 2003) 45.

'''[18]''' Paweł Konjo Konnak, ‘Tranzytoryjna formacja Totart w drodze do Nieśmiertelności i Wolności’ in Krzysztof Skiba, Jarosław Janiszewski, Paweł Konjo Konnak, Artyści wariaci anarchiści. Opowieść o gdańskiej alternatywie lat 80-tych (Warszawa: Narodowe Centrum Kultury, 2011) 154.

'''[19]''' Timothy W. Ryback, Rock Around the Bloc. A History of Rock Music in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (New York–Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) 89.

'''[20] ''' Théo Lessour, Berlin Sampler. From Cabaret to Techno: 1904–2012, a Century of Berlin Music (Berlin: Ollendorff Verlag, 2012) 225.

'''[21] ''' Anderson, dir. Annekatrin Hendel, 2014.

'''[22] ''' Susanne Binas, ‘East-West Breakthroughs: The Significance of the GDR Pop Underground Today’ in Edward Larkey, ed,. A Sound Legacy? Music and Politics in East Germany (Washington, DC: American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, 2000) 29.

'''[23] ''' Cf. Ronald Galenza & Heinz Havemeister, ‘Either/Or in No-man's-land. Punk in the GDR 1984–89: Between Repression and Seduction’ in Michael Boehlke and Henryk Gericke, eds., ‘Too Much Future’ Ost Punk. Punk in der DDR 1979–89 (Berlin: Künstlerhaus Bethanien, 2005) 97.

'''[24]''' Anna Szemere, Up from the Underground. The Culture of Rock Music in Postsocialist Hungary (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001) 127–128.

'''[25]''' Cf. György Galántai and Júlia Klaniczay, eds., Artpool. The Experimental Art Archive of East-Central Europe (Budapest: Artpool, 2013) 84.

'''[26] ''' A secret-police file on the Artpool founder, György Galántai, codenamed ‘Painter’, explains why: ‘For Galántai's competition several "works of art" (in reality plain botch-works) had been provided that are politically problematic, destructively criticize and, moreover – primarily some of those made by Hungarian "artists" – mock and attack our state and social order as well as the state security organs. Galántai was unable to separate these pieces from the rest of the works, which most probably would have been against his intentions anyway’; Artpool…, op. cit., 268.

'''[27] ''' Konstanty Usenko, Oczami radzieckiej zabawki (Wołowiec: Czarne, 2012) [e-book].

'''[28] ''' Timur Novikov, ‘Autobiography’, http://www.timurnovikov.ru/docs/books/57_autobiography_engl.pdf – accessed 30 July 2016.

'''[29] ''' Usenko, op. cit.

'''[30] ''' Łukasz Ronduda, Sztuka Polska lat 70. Awangarda (Warszawa, Jelenia Góra: Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Polski Western, 2009) 367.

'''[31] ''' Alex Kan, ‘The Ways of Freedom’, in: Sergey Kuryokhin, The Ways of Freedom, CD (London: Leo Records, 2001).

'''[32] ''' Red Wave, LP, Stingray Productions, 1986.

'''[33] ''' Denis Boyarinov, ‘Joanna Stingray, a California Girl in the U.S.S.R.’, The Moscow Times http://www.themoscowtimes.com/arts_n_ideas/article/joanna-stingray-a-california-girl-in-the-ussr/562009.html – accessed July 2016.

'''[34]''' Robert Brylewski, Kryzys w Babilonie. Autobiografia. Rozmawia Rafał Księżyk (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2012) 100–102.

'''[35] ''' Ibid., p. 121.

'''[36] ''' The Neringa Hotel restaurant was famous for its free jazz concerts from the late 1960s.

'''[37]''' ‘We Created Our Own Language. Saulius Žukas interview with Vladimir Tarasov, Vilnius, summer, 2007’, in: Vladimir Tarasov: Between Sound and Image (Vilnius: Baltos Lankos, 2008) 22.

'''[38] ''' Norman Weinstein, ‘Music Begins When Definitions are Silenced’, in: Golden Years of the Soviet New Jazz, Vol IV, CD (London: Leo Records, 2003) 13.

'''[39]''' Danuta Bierzańska, ‘Nic nie jest niemożliwe. Dość szybki utwór – na kilka orkiestr i wielu solistów. Muzyka, słowa i nabijanie tempa: Andrzej Mitan i Andrzej Zaremba’, Tytuł roboczy, 2009 (029–030) 73–81.

'''[40] ''' Andrzej Mitan, ‘Wywiad z samym sobą’, in: Tytuł roboczy (Warsaw: Galeria 2b, 2008) 15.

'''[41] ''' Katalin Balázs, ‘Sztuka efemeryczna i kontrkultura. Na przykładzie wybranych zjawisk z węgierskiej historii instytucji kultury’ [Ephemeral art and counterculture. On the example of selected phenomena from the history of Hungarian cultural institutions] in Sztuka i dokumentacja, no. 7, 37.

'''[42] ''' Cf. Szemere, op. cit., 16.

'''[43] ''' Christoph Tannert, ‘Vierte Wurzel aus Zwitschermaschine’ in Ronald Galenz and Heinz Havemeister, eds., Wir wollen immer artig sein... Punk, New Wave, HipHop, Independent-Szene in der DDR 1980–1990 (Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf Verlag, 1999) 196.

'''[44] ''' Cornelia Schleime, ‘“Killersatellit” and Randerscheinung Jeder Satellit hat einen Killersatelliten. If Only We'd Taken it Literally’ in ‘Too Much Future’ Ost Punk…, op. cit., 177.

'''[45] ''' Seth Howes, ‘“Killersatellit” and Randerscheinung: Punk and the Prenzlauer Berg’ in German Studies Review, Vol. 36, No. 3 (October 2013) 583–584.

[[Category:Czechoslovakian Contributions]] [[Category:Russian Contributions]] [[Category:Hungarian Contributions]] [[Category:East German Contributions]] [[Category:Polish Contributions]]

In a Musical No Man's Land – Unheard-of Productions on the Fringes of Rock Culture

2018-06-05T11:17:25Z

Diogo:

[[File:1991 ag geige art rock festival frankfurt-kopie-(1).jpg|thumb|right|AG Geige, Internationales Art Rock Festival Frankfurt]]
In a Musical No Man's Land – Unheard-of Productions on the Fringes of Rock Culture - An essay by Susanne Binas-Preisendörfer for [[Sound Exchange]].

== CONTEXT AND THOUGHTS ON THE ARTICLE ==
The following contribution was penned in the early summer of 1991 for the magazine Positionen. Beiträge zur neuen Musik (Positions. Contributions to New Music), which regarded itself both then and now as a forum for music which is current, experimental and moves beyond borders. The article's title »In a Musical No-Man's-Land – Unheard-of Productions on the Fringes of the Rock Culture« refers to several aspects of a cultural and music scene at that time. The knowledge of the conditions under which this arose permits it to have insights into and draw conclusions about a concrete music and art scene. Some of the wording in it I would not use in the same way today, and not every generalisation is correct from today's perspective.

The intrinsic magic of the new start that occurred in 1991 on the territory of the former GDR was overstated through a lack of clarity and at times bitterness on the part of many artists. Musicians on the fringes of a cultural landscape which was barely known either at home or abroad found themselves once more in a musical-aesthetic, as indeed political, no-man's-land. The co-ordinates for their activities had become scrambled in both a positive and negative sense. That which had at one time somehow related them to each other, and especially the aesthetic rebellion and the permanent search for suitable ways to communicate by means of their art, as well as a special audience, thirsting for unusual actions or the contact with the opposition – all of this could barely be grasped anymore. In a culturally pluralist society, deviation is regarded as the norm. So we squatted in houses, factories and churches, earned West German money in back-to-work schemes or behind bar counters, and only as an exception with music.

At least these groups of musicians and artists in the East at that time did not define themselves through pop or pop music. In this sense, I even regarded rock music or avant-garde rock as an adequate reference system: loud, annoying and also a little naive, we saw ourselves more in the tradition of punk and New Wave, happenings and audio art. The article is specifically concerned with those projects and bands which had powerful artistic aspirations, yet belonged to a scene that, in addition to the literati and the visual artists, found its audiences among both young and old from all possible areas of life and work.'

Unheard-of, unusual, unique were the words sued to describe the vocal expressions by the musicians and artists – and that against the background of the situation prevailing at the time, and indeed of my own musical experiences. I grew up in East Berlin, attended music school for many years, completed my secondary education at the Händel-school and took music and cultural studies at the Humboldt University. Together with my fellow students and their friends, in the second half of the 1980s I immersed myself in the so-called »other bands« scene, and even played in the band »der expander des fortschritts«. We gave concerts in apartments, churches and galleries. We experienced »Cassiber« (Heiner Goebbels, Alfred 23 Harth, Chris Cutler) live in the Berliner Ensemble theatre, performed together with composers and electronic music ensembles in the GDR's Academy of the Arts, produced four titles for the radio show »PaRocktikum« on DT64 and a whole album for Cutler's label recommended records.

We named the 1989 concert series »Herbstoffensive« (Autumn Offensive). The well-rehearsed album after that – released in summer 1990 – was called »ad acta«. When I wrote the article, my son Leo was nine months old and I was still angry that the expander group had not been invited to the large official presentation of young art from the GDR held in La Villette in Paris.
The article printed here concerns a retrospective snapshot, one that is also intended to provide some self-reassurance and personal positioning within this scene. Despite the fact that the second album had just been released, the expander band only existed as a torso by then, because its one-time members were drifting apart. Written in brackets beneath the title is: To my Friends.

Had I been looking back in retrospect after twenty years, I would not have been able to write an article which could have described the situation then and at the end of the 1980s more thoroughly, objectively or systematically. It is a depiction from my personal perspective, which is extended by the angles provided by other players, and which can certainly claim to be a narration of a small piece of music history exactly in the way that history is envisioned: as a document of the time in which it was recorded.

== IN A MUSICAL NO-MAN'S-LAND – UNHEARD-OF PRODUCTIONS ON THE FRINGES OF THE ROCK CULTURE (SUSANNE BINAS 1991) ==

=== I - CROSS VEINS ===
The exclusivity of musical spaces is relatively insignificant for the majority of the genres and forms of popular music. The frequencies whirr and boom between the Walkman and the stadium, the intimate concert space and the pub, or the disco and the occult niche. These different spaces have themselves become material, so to speak, for music culture events; communication does not occur via individual sound structures, rhythmic patterns, metric standards, etc., but instead fundamentally via certain social spaces. Countless examples of this can be found on a completely general level in the history of popular music.

I would, however, like to concentrate on several, in my opinion, »unheard-of music productions« on the fringes of rock culture: unheard-of both in terms of occupying certain social or cultural spaces and the correspondingly confusing inventory, as well as in their acoustically »disruptive«, non-conformist »musical« space-occupying actions.

I would now like to try and recall the attempts to break out in pop music culture in the recent past, because unusual projects by these music artists from the former GDR have barely been documented. While there have certainly been no fundamental changes in what they want and do since the political and economic transformations of the past two years, the conditions for experimental productions, especially in an area like rock music – whose operations are often assumed to be solely in commercially controlled circuits – have changed completely. In order not to forget that which has been, I intend to direct my observations especially to those who once had few possibilities to occupy or fill official public spaces.

=== II ===
Anyone feeling constricted has at times only two options: confine themselves to the corset, or blast themselves out of it. Musical avant-garde is the permanent attempt to lob dynamite into solid structures of mass rock and even start a fire under »favourable« circumstances. Otherwise it devours itself, and all that remains is a rocky field of shattered hopes. However, such blasting also means loosening one's own fetters and sanctioned systems of norms, or the buttresses of one's own operating range.

Genre-overlapping art productions (mixed forms with various music genres, and especially their synthesising function in an ensemble of various arts: as so-called instrumental theatre, theatrical chamber music, song theatre, multimedia) represented a starting point for these unheard-of music productions. The players were united less by the will to have an aesthetic demarcation in relation to a critically regarded musical current, than by their knowledge of the unsatisfactory cultural situation, which was a shared experience for many.

While it was jazz musicians who, especially at the end of the 1970s, together with dancers, painters, poets and film makers, brought the unheard-of (in the form of exhibition concerts, structured improvisations and so on) to the stages and installations which had been used until then for traditional forms, the generational change (in the mid-1980s) was accompanied by a conspicuous shift to the repertoire of rock and pop. Of course there were already various attempts in the GDR to develop different musical concepts between noise jazz and rock experiments, shortly after the first signs of punk at the end of the 1970s, but in fact it was not until 1985 that the protest feeling, which had become frozen into a pose and long passed its international climax – and was now also in a friendly synthesis with the trappings of New Wave – actually arrived in the GDR. Here in East Germany, rebellion definitely was still intended to be serious: with a rough language and rough sound images as well, tinny, edgy and unrelenting. The protagonists slowly stepped out of their musty damp cellars and garage crypts, church naves and derelict rear courtyards into the light of the »organised« public arena of music culture. It remains questionable whether they were sorry they took this step. In light of the events that were to follow, their names in any case seemed like bright premonitions – AUFRUHR ZUR LIEBE (Mutiny to Love), KLICK & AUS (Click and Out), [[ORNAMENT & VERBRECHEN]] (Ornament and Crime), ROSA EXTRA... – and certainly also drew on the aftermath of the so-called German New Wave, with a slight punk clout.

The goals of this collective were existential, comprehensive and often in the guise of social utopia. It was aimed especially at the design of, or search for, new cultural spaces in which the attempt to provoke new ways of thinking and behaving ranked far above the commercial drive to succeed. That an appropriate public presence was never established, despite the truly limited terrain available – e. g. via the electronic media – could be explained from different perspectives. The rigid view of these media in the institutionalised aesthetics context was only one background reason, yet not an insignificant one, to come to terms with the situation. And ultimately there were blockers on both sides.

It is a fact that those artists named above came from surroundings which were at least moved by art, and that a large share of the spectacular tendencies were borne by the initiative of driven individuals who were always coming together in these and other projects, and who also still form the nucleus for various initiatives today. They were and are enthusiasts, sometimes dreamers and absurd »underdogs,« tirelessly seeking the opposite, there versal and the removal of their own restrictions. That some aspects curdled into clichés while doing so is in the nature of things, and it is more true today than ever that much has become exchangeable, value-free and unspectacular: arbitrariness, despite powerful signals.

=== III ===
At the beginning there was the game of getting instruments, which still managed to find their way under intense conditions (at enormously overpriced, foreign currency black market prices) to the tinkers and DIY handymen. This situation was not in any way comparable with the usual possibilities available internationally. The revolution in technological know-how in the field of music electronics never actually made it to the GDR. Yet this absence in particular gave birth to an idiosyncratic creativity. The technical and technological possibilities of the available materials were exhausted. Most of them entered an artistic no-man's-land in doing so: it neither was nor could hardly have been the aim of this work to attain complete professional mastery over the respective materials. Some affectionately called them genial dilettantes, while others ignored them completely for their commitment to no genre and thus to an undisciplined amateur status.

Hence they received nothing from the streams of subsidies from established art institutions, nor the laurels of state praise. The enthusiasts remained by themselves in informal circles and established their own publicity structure (with small cassette tape labels, »scene« sheets and publishers). The art space was deliberately limited and kept restricted, with niches of informal communities established out of necessity, in which politics was fragmented as if in a distorting mirror, yet was never directly addressed. This also denied them »major« appearances at festivals in the GDR (such as the Jazzbühne (Jazz Stage), the Festival des politischen Liedes (Political Song Festival) or the Leipziger Jazztage (Jazz Event)) to which internationally comparable »members of the avant-garde« (such as CASSIBER, Lindsay Cooper & Band, Dagmar Krause, Fred Frith or Alfred 23 Harth) were occasionally invited. It was not uncommon for an aesthetic non-conformity to be accompanied by its political counterpart.

Their widespread roots (in jazz, rock, punk, classical Modernism, education and training at conservatories, autodidactic appropriations and personal experiments) however won the players more friends than might have been expected. They could at times make use of the music culture infrastructure (clubs, galleries, student canteens, cinemas and concert halls) in the GDR, however lacking in substance it might have been, by dealing cunningly with the authorities. In this way they slipped into communication spaces which were not available in the same way in, for instance, other West European countries.

=== IV - OPEN PRODUCTION COOPERATIVES ===
Visual artists are in an unfortunate position once their product has been captured on film, wood or paper, carved in stone or etched on copperplate! For the creators are usually no longer present when the public approaches the work. By now, the history of art in the 20thcentury is familiar with countless examples of visual artists attempting to break through the limitations of panel painting into spatial-temporal dimensions, at least when dealing with »intrinsic« material, and then by exploring new levels and dimensions of the material.

[[AG Geige|AG GEIGE]] (the band's name is a grotesque allusion to the overused requirement in the GDR to develop an understanding of art as cultural-artistic propaganda for the masses, e. g. in creative folk artistic working groups, or Arbeits-Gemeinschaften – abbreviated to AG in German) was formed in the mid-1980s at the crossroads of the appropriation of the various electronic possibilities (rhythm computer and low-tech sampler) and the twin artistic talents (lyrics and painting) of their members. Sequencers provided simple clear patterns which tended to become catchy tunes – guarantees for the safe flow of the texts imposed on them, with images and Super 8 films reminding the initiated of the expressive fantasy costumes worn at the bizarre shows by the Residents (USA). They designed everything themselves, everything was omnipresent in live-seeming holograms on stage.

AG GEIGE have the courage to have visions, as one reviewer wrote about their first LP (of which they now have three). In their sweet Saxon dialect (all the members of the group come from Karl-Marx-Stadt, now Chemnitz), their aesthetics are an attack on the insults to our eyes (lace tablecloths and aluminium spoons) and nerves (cheerful service here) which were endured »by us« for years. Their low-tech samplers delivered what they could for the time – and no more. The GEIGE members used this to create their hits, between dance floor grooves and spindly frequency pranks.

By the end of the 1980s their popularity among 18- to 30-year-olds was unusual for such a project. Several titles even made their way into the upper regions of the national charts. It has now become a little quieter around the GEIGE members. They are signed with an appropriate independent record label and, with professional management, their image is now being sold and marketed reasonably well across Germany. Their personal and artistic roots are in what used to be a creative scene in Karl-Marx-Stadt: MÖBIUS or HEINZ & FRANZ produced comparable cassettes, and the bands [[Zwitschermaschine|ZWITSCHERMASCHINE]] and DIE GEHIRNE were among the familiar faces who gathered around [[Frank Bretschneider]], who recorded several unheard-of pieces of music on tape in his studio SONNENKLANG and released them on the corresponding label [[KlangFarBe]] (it was illegal to distribute your own work in the GDR).

While visual artists themselves took up synthesisers, guitars and computers in the cases described just now, there was certainly a much larger number of projects which clearly displayed symbioses; musicians together with painters, scenographers, dancers or performers.

A division of labour was prevalent during rehearsal and onstage situations with the HERR BLUM project: the father (Jürgen Wagner – action painting) and son (Thomas Wagner – guitar, rhythm computer, tapes, various noise parts) not only upended the rock idiom of the dysfunctional relationship between the generations, they also brought a completely idiosyncratic colour to the scene. Using prepared tapes between collapsing rhythms, Thomas Wagner confidently gained individuality amidst the general state of emergency as he sweated through the actual work. His regular audience was not limited by any means to »clever« students and intellectuals: he instead cast a spell over everyone who required existentially conveyed breakouts (speech, gesture, sound) as a medium for their own mental state. I remember concerts at which the air was literally burning.

One essential condition for this was – and this concerns almost all the people and projects being briefly presented here – the combination of »creator« and »interpreter« (which was enhanced in the HERR BLUM project by the direct participation in the process of creating the father's »painting,« which was richly expressive in colour as a counterpoint, orcantus firmus,to the sound production, an act of quasi-synthesis of the concept of acoustic space). The »genial dilettante« term is therefore no longer applicable, as powerful forces are being harnessed, none of which necessarily have to be artistic. Anyway, by the 1980s at the latest, even in the GDR, electroacoustic production relocated from the esoteric palaces into homes and teenagers' rooms, despite all the costs of acquisition and production. But in the shift to digital, the music lost the aura it had of being something laboriously acquired. The consecration of music in the conservatories and universities made way for the »just for fun« and »do it yourself« attitudes in clubs, rehearsal basements and even on traditional stages.

The moment had finally arrived: musical material had become universal, just like the instruments held ready their universal availability – by democratising the musical instrument, objectifying it, according it only industrial, productive powers. While musical autonomy is and always has been relative, its aesthetic is today greatly expanded. The material and skills have already found their structural-formal and tonal corrective in the process of production. This is collective in its preconditions, even when sound mixing for instance still requires soundproofing and an undisturbed space, and the result requires concentrated individual work. The aesthetic inherent in the material is immersed in the aesthetic of sociocultural »production cooperatives.« The purpose served by distribution and reception in the century-old counterbalance of musical decisions has been nullified – historically – in socialised production processes. This socialisation lurks in the cultural-symbolic forms of this extremely heterogeneous music culture, with its groups and movements which stake out their own social and cultural identities.

Strictly speaking, the starting point for an analysis of the so-called independent scene, avant-garde experiments or unusual sound projects should include an understanding of modern cultural development that reviews the history of the socio-cultural and political context which made it possible, with reference to the cultural-political wealth of the society, regardless of how the relationships of production and reproduction are understood. And this would make it clear why the »false« fraternisations into which many of the »desk composers« are coerced usually do not apply to those discussed here, as soon as the aesthetic really is nullified in a sociocultural production cooperative. That which is social does not have to be subjected to additional mediations before it manifests in a musical-representational result. The space of the »creation« is almost always identical with that being experienced, with the acoustic-visual realisation.

=== V ===
The various communities (of youth cultures) caused specific social and cultural conflict situations in the GDR and drew their content in turn from these. Embedded within them, historically very different rock scenes arose. From the mid-1980s, the so-called »other« or »weird« bands gained attention, especially in local contexts. As already indicated above, they followed the internationally known standards in the aftermath of punk and post-punk.

They included from the very beginning the Cottbus-based band SANDOW – named after one of the town's dreary new housing estates – who, in addition to their concert programmes with hard wave punk, repeatedly introduced onstage encounters with other arts. With the social bonus in the bag, they managed to create insane stage events, especially with the visual artist Hans Scheuerecker, who also came from Cottbus. In 1990, they performed a joint sound-colour-movement performance on the stage of the East Berlin »Tip« (Theater im Palast) venue as part of the Tagen der Jugend (Youth Days Event) in the Palast der Republik. There was not much applause, because the project's aim of creating an obligatorily cooperative synthesis worth seeing and hearing was maybe too ambitious. Openly displayed divisions of labour in theatre productions (e. g. in Senftenberg) seem to have been far more successful.

Critics also saw in the project »Törnen – Ein Mecklenburg-Environment« (Gymnastics – A Mecklenburg Environment, 1987) more of a display than a representation: a symbolic construction transported in a state of diffusion which failed to stimulate culture-critical awareness. »1,700 years of Mecklenburg interpreted in 180 minutes, no geography or history lessons, no folk customs, no theatre« is how it was described in the programme. In addition to painters, film makers, photographers, dancers and performers, musicians from FEELING B, FREYGANG and DEKADANCE also took part. »Actions of this kind resisted any explanation. They were designed by their makers as private myths, and expressed their determination for concealment in nearly indecipherable layers of meaning in the face of social monitoring mechanisms geared at total transparency. With increasing clarity, the allegories provided and the (German?) ›I don't know what it is supposed to mean‹ became supporting pillars for a branch of GDR art which was more concerned with a hidden meaning than with reflection and clarification.« (Christoph Tannert, 1988)

Similar aims led to a group of young artists gathering in 1987 around Arnim Bautz (concept, video, guitar and vocals), the technician and »organiser« (i. e. manager) at OFF GROUND II (an independent, risk-taking initiative in the Jugendklub Potsdam Lindenpark youth club): their goal was to stage a perfect contemporary show using the most diverse of means (i. e. media). Then, one year later, the »total« media product NEW AFFAIRE was staged: lasers pierced walls of fog, there were video and slide projections, Dark Wave and human body performances between expressive, jazz and »Bauhaus« dance: the intention was to sensually seduce the audience, provided the project was actually able to manage the somewhat oversized technical apparatus. The criteria of the undecipherable quoted above were joined here by sedate melancholy and pain, but at least it failed to fit into conventional categories familiar here in Germany. It seemed at times like an occult abyss, meditatively minimalist in the structural concept, yet still full of pomp in its illumination of human perception.

By contrast, ORNAMENT & VERBRECHEN is an independent band that has been quite successful for years. In part because they never addressed the political framework, this situation has continued since the fall of the Berlin Wall. In addition, ORNAMENT & VERBRECHEN – which began as a duo (Ronald and Robert Lippok) – were among the first to initiate offensive production relations on an open group basis. Sometimes with a smaller line-up and at other times with more members, the Lippok brothers have accompanied poets such as Rainer Schedlinski or Bert Papenfuß-Gorek during their readings. There were also such connections between Sascha Anderson and the legendary FABRIK – intelligent punk wave in performance-oriented projects (e.g. with Lutz Dambeck).

While all of this was taking palce up to the mid-1980s almost exclusively in non-public connections or spaces (such as the Sprachenkonvikt institute, the Samariterkirche or the Umweltbibliothek in Berlin), the relaxation of culture policy brought domestication. It was now tolerated and, ultimately, even demanded: as a political buffer zone and space for integration, as a fig leaf for the culture policy of (half-dead) pen pushers, but also as an invigorating auto-corrective effect using performances, and that not only because of ossified artistic development. Its fundamentally polemic, discursive character was perhaps an essential survival mechanism of a rebellious intellectual culture.

The »true« signs of modern civilisation could also be found in the GDR, especially in the dissemination of metropolitan cultural forms as the revelation of these signs. The individual's internal worlds of behaviour and experience are determineden masseby the worlds of objects and the density of events. »The concept of sensation has been rendered powerless by the increasingly unmanageable flood of events from theatres of war, explorations of the cosmos, plane crashes, industrial and environmental catastrophes... and everyone has a front row seat... The crash enlists our attention as a subscriber, as a mediator... that which had to arise, inevitably, from the culture so discovered: Object art, installations, action painting, Fluxus, performances, multimedia... In the confrontation with its own progressive forms, an attempt has been made to expose reality... the step from feeding the viewers to abandoning them, releasing them into the wilderness of reality... without any warning.« (Erhard Ertel, 1989)

In this sense, former scenographic students in Dresden attracted attention with their AUTOPERFORATIONSARTISTIK, especially as it could no longer be explained at all using traditional artistic criteria, and even vehemently rejected them. Even highly unorthodox art experts had their problems with such »hermetic actions,« being unable to grasp or decipher for themselves the meaning of the overarching impressions, which extended beyond any traditional genres. Works by Micha Brendel, Else Gabriel (today a well-travelled, internationally-acclaimed performance artist), Rainer Görß and Via Lewandowski conveyed the history of art at most using receptive and cognitive recycling, and they always found debates on the location of art either irrelevant or annoying.

Even if they no longer used instruments (in the sense of tools for dissecting), they also worked together with »proper« musicians (e.g. Nino Sandow – trained opera singer, Norbert Grandl – classical timpanist and rock drummer, Ulf Wrede – keyboards, Berd Wrede – excellent jazz guitarist and Stefan Winkler – composition studies graduate). This combination called itself BRUT (until another, uninteresting, band usurped this name, probably in ignorance of its namesake): »Picked out of the electric and underground music pellets and slaphappy. Fresh. Show-offs. Heart chamber music with rhythm disturbances. Real right through to the wrong note.« (from an advertisement) As part of the so-called MIDGARD Performance (a diploma thesis that was defended as an exhibition concept by Rainer Görß at the Dresden College of Art – a first), an opus composed by Stefan Winkler, based on texts from the Icelandic Edda saga, had its eagerly awaited première. It was dominated by artificial structures, a female voice, a male voice, cello and percussion, which were confronted with extreme outbreaks of electronic instruments (sampler, electric guitar and drums). While it was conceived as an exclusively musical element amidst the action art forms of this strangely archaic exhibition space, BRUT contextualised comparable states: rituals and therapeutic forms. And just like their »dirty«, stinking, untidy and overcrowded environment provoked the eyes and nose, the fragile musical material, ominously warped, reached the surprised ears of those present.

=== VI - LONE WOLVES ===
For many players, pre-recorded tape material, the insertion of original sounds and their distortion through sampling – ruthlessly repeatable via sequencer structures – represented an important basis for their own productions. For Thomas Wagner, mentioned earlier, this was the only way at all to present his excessive solo or two-man shows live on stage. What he managed to put together in the peace and quiet of his own home was termed in this respect »home recordings«: experiments with all the sound sources (baking tins, the sound of a diskette, tea kettles, radio) available to the various producers.

With the exception of a few specialists and their products, these musical studies almost never reached the ears of a larger audience. If we put a positive spin on this, the lack of pressure to perform in public made possible a freedom or naivety with which the sound material was accessed and processed, something which the »unheard-of« logically contains. Many of these tape music producers are extreme individualists. They want to control the resulting material down to the very last detail. In that regard, the accessible recordings can be understood as technical psychograms, in which the technical level during the recording can be discerned as well as very specific individual emotional states expressed in humour, sentimentality, fear, playfulness, irony or sarcasm.

In addition, Frank Tröger (TRÖTSCH) or Dirk Pflughaupt (FLUGZEUG), both of whom have worked primarily on the basis of sound recycling, have also integrated material developed in this way in band projects: for example in OBEN OHNE – an action with the two of them and Tatjana Gallert (vocals) and Matthias Meiner (saxophone). Taymur Strengler has used standard computer technology to prepare his own pieces and those for the band NEUN TAGE ALT in an almost professional way. Likewise, the duo Thomas Wagner (HERR BLUM) and Jörg Beilfuß (highly professional drummer), working as TOM TERROR & DAS BEIL or the band DER EXPANDER DES FORTSCHRITTS, were not prepared to forego homework in the sense of home recordings. They produced for the live context, coupled with »classic« rock music instruments. However the tape collages did not figure here as a rhythmically structured band, to which the individualists can be assigned as a disrupting factor, but rather as a completely independent »musical individual« in which the »collective musical confrontations« with sounds, functions and commentaries come together – something which would not be possible for single instrumentalists onstage.

Daniel Rund in contrast produced pure tape music – a proper boffin among the home recording freaks. He intentionally took the dreary array of low-tech equipment at his disposal, and used it to transform the »trash inspirations« of his old fairytale and kitschy GermanSchlager(MOR hits) albums as an outlet for his »hatred of Jürgen Walter and Herberth Roth (GDR folklorist and singer of kitschy hits) and his own childhood favourites (Spider Murphy Gang)« (Daniel Rund in an interview with the writer). For him, coincidental destruction represented the »good life,« and the ideal Christmas present would be »a recorder in the bathroom, always ready to record« (ibid.). He treated texts in an enchantingly rigorous manner, making associations in a Babylonian confusion of tongues. Together with Michael Möller (who was a music journalist and keyboarder at the time), he planned for the possibility of performing his material live. This actually happened during an exhibition opening in 1990, but it seems that neither of them were entirely clear about just how big a jump it really is from the living room to a public space. Filling large spaces with acoustic material calls for the most elementary knowledge of their dimensions, as well as of the unique aspects of how the sound is reflected or swallowed up.

»HERZKOTZEN – or songs against mechanics« (a play for audio tape, composition and realisation: Eckehard Binas, one performer: Uwe Baumgartner and a musician on the piano, sampler, flute and saxophone: Susanne Binas) existed from the beginning in two versions: as an audio version (cassette) and as a live performance. The latter was performed six times and was subtly adapted from the cassette version in consideration of the spatial dimension. In the stage version, the performer is placed in an unfair contest with himself (the audio tape narrator). All of the texts were by Arthur Rimbaud, they were however organised for use solely as semantic material for the piece. The figure split into three persons (a white Negro in a trialogue with himself), with the differentiation being completely subjective and thus perhaps able to provide information about the emotional state and intention of the »creator« (Eckehard Binas). On the other hand, as composers the persons lead their own lives, resulting in commentaries, illustrations, obliterations and amplifier effects. The audio tapes were produced in a rehearsal room with the technically primitive equipment that was available at the time (1989).

=== VII - SELF-DEFENCE GROUPS< ===
The names and projects presented so far are those which were from their inception open, with limited lifespans and volatile structures. However, stable group concepts (AG GEIGE) did grow from several of these loose connections, or vice versa, with some bands or individual members embarking on various projects. What they were trying to break through was the relative narrowness of what can be expressed in rock music, both in terms of the line-up as well as in the sound material used. They borrowed from New Wave, jazz and even the classics of modern serious music, as well as the tradition of Weill and Eisler. The sound images created in this way were so different individually that every effort to grasp them with musical labels was doomed from the very beginning.

Briefly: more has continued to be written about BRUT and HERR BLUM, as indeed about AG GEIGE. But there was also the band HARD POP, which drew attention during the early stages of the development of this trend for their idiosyncratic borrowings from Weill and Eisler in their rock songs, or TOM TERROR & DAS BEIL: there arose between the two extreme individualists – the expressive sampling virtuoso Thomas Wagner and Jörg Beilfuß, the most excellent percussionist in this scene in the GDR – a surely difficult but equally fruitful collaboration. Driven first and foremost by improvisation, they played their complex, compact songs with much success all the way to LA VILLETTE in Paris as part of a wide-ranging presentation of young GDR art in February 1990.

Three further musical programmes were also created for a time (the protagonists temporarily left the GDR) which also went beyond the obvious horizontal-vertical co-ordinated network of typical GDR pop music – TEURER DENN JE, FETT and LA DEUTSCHE VITA – thanks to the demanding lyrics which Leonard Lorek prepared in language grids and with poetic artifices for various musical variants: for a pop concert (TEURER DENN JE), for artificial jazz without a jazzy lack of history (FETT) and for a two-man programme (Ulf Wrede – keyboard, Fritz Zickert – guitar) which confronted old hits from the 1920s and '30s with current music (LA DEUTSCHE VITA). For pop music in the GDR, Leonard's songs with their circular linguistic movements, connected to Fritz Zickert's innovative compositional efforts on the basis of unconventional song structures, would have augured a quantum leap forward, had the decision-making media representatives ever become aware of the musicians' output.

=== VIII ===
»What do people do when they don't like the music presented to them? They make it themselves.« (Mario Persch, 1988) DER EXPANDER DES FORTSCHRITTS (founded in 1987) also regarded itself as such a self-defence group with a changing line-up (Uwe Baumgartner, Eckehard Binas, Mario Persch, Jörg Beilfuß, Susanne Binas, Stefan Schüler, Norbert Grandl, Thomas Görsch). The members were united by several peculiarities: they had all gained experience in or with rock or jazz bands, but what united them above all else was their distrust of existing band concepts and structures, like a music factory, where there was always a lead singer, someone else who wrote the lyrics, the woman always looked really sexy and someone else provided the rhythm. They were also united by a shared interest in the most diverse cultural and artistic concepts from throughout the century, and in those forms of popular music which developed beyond the standardised radio music and which referred to reality in a new way; those produced in a free, creative interaction with technology, with the most varied compositional principles and improvisation methods and which were still »pop songs,« which had managed to free themselves from the verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure without completely throwing it overboard.

DER EXPANDER DES FORTSCHRITTS abstained from autobiographical claims universal truths in favour of (far too) complex musical and contextual fields of meaning in which snippets of associations, quotations and commentaries faded in and out. Hence their interest in working with tapes, distorted sound documents, statements, and so on. This, in turn, provided the opportunity to integrate social reality – directly or mediated – into the musical structures. The resulting concept, which was occasionally conceived as superficially argumentative, gave way at the beginning of the 1990s to a more associative one (especially in terms of rhythm and sound image). This was a universally observable trend, away from the existential scream in the direction of swinging melancholy, which is no less existential in intention. For that part of the EXPANDER group which is still active, these are the archetypes of human imagination, the singsongs of hope, fear, carnal desire and pain. The »Gesang der Sirenen« (Sirens' Song) is a consequential project: »The über-message paralyses, within the confusion all song is a promise.« (from the programme)

=== IX - BUNDLED ===
The tendencies, aspects, names and projects described above are all part of a spectrum of art productions in the 20thcentury whose aim was not the creation of harmony, but rather the over-extension of the medium, as well as the over-extension of the art spaces and their socially cohesive strength. What was rejected was the overly-serious, unconditional identification with extreme emotional states. This tendency is logically very close to art-like theatrics and scenic actions. And at times it drew no distinction between the unique object and the mass product. For this purpose, the means to exercise art have to be radically expanded, the materials, methods and forms of presentation constantly questioned. This is a strenuous undertaking, because the new experiential world is dauntingly pluralist; it contains torturous seriousness as well as fun, humour and melancholy. Its enthusiasm (and its repression) is marked by a feverish, hectic pace (Susan Sontag).

Many of those named here have to a certain extent bundled this experience like an oracle, one that we are only now actually facing with all its implications. Audiences today are even less willing to voluntarily accept assaults on their ears, to tear their gaze away from the spectacle of palm fringed beaches, to provoke and challenge the senses. The public space for any pleasure in the fantastic and the exaggerated is channelled by market-friendly concepts.

=== X ===
The cards are being reshuffled. Several are lost (to drugs, the psychiatric clinics or New York), others have returned to East Berlin and now drink their Weizen beer in self-managed galleries with a bar (GALREV or Geyer Walli), or open houses solely in accordance with their own insane requirements, and others now pursue middle class professions, or try to pull one over on the solidly structured public arenas of federal German socio-culture (which is this in name only, as it criminally neglects sociocultural spaces) with their flair for cultural-artistic interconnections, using new or long cherished ideas.

© Positionen, 9/1991, pp. 9–15.

[[Category:East German Contributions]] [[Category:Sound Exchange]] [[Category: Essays]]

Andrzej Mitan

2018-06-05T11:15:54Z

Diogo: Created page with "Andrzej Mitan studied at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, the Warsaw Theological Academy and the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. Since the 1960s h..."

Andrzej Mitan studied at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, the Warsaw Theological Academy and the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. Since the 1960s he has realised his artistic objectives by forming music groups including Onomatopeja (Onomatopoeia), Święta Racja (Amen to That), Super Grupa Bez Fałszywej Skromności (Super Group Without False Modesty), and Niezależne Studio Muzyki Elektroakustycznej (Independent Studio of Electroacoustic Music). As an artist, he has engaged in many musical and artistic forms of expression. He is a vocalist of extraordinary scale and capability, and his musical output evolved from rock forms and collaborations with free jazz musicians, to experimental music. He has also been a performance artist, creator of objects and video performances. In the years 1982–1988, along with Cezary Staniszewski and Tomasz Wilmański, Mitan ran the RR Gallery, based in the Riviera Remont Club in Warsaw. During that period, he initiated a series of albums under the title of Klub Muzyki Nowej Remont, presenting compositions by some of leading composers affiliated with the Polish Radio Experimental Studio (Andrzej Bieżan, Krzysztof Knittel), improvisers (Andrzej Przybielski, Helmut Nadolski) and visual artists (Jarosław Kozłowski, Włodzimierz Borowski). All albums were released in limited editions and designed by artists. In 1987, together with Cezary Staniszewski and Emmet Williams, Mitan organised the International Seminar of Art in Warsaw (ETC). In 2015 the artist suspended his public activity.

=== Related Content ===
[[The Avant-garde Alternative of the last 20 Years in Poland]]

[[Hues of Independence]]
[[Category: Polish Figures]]

The Avant-garde Alternative of the last 20 Years in Poland

2018-06-05T11:14:25Z

Diogo:

[[File:Beksiak start img(1).jpg|thumb|right|Chopin in the city (artbloomfestival), Krakow 2010]]
"The Avant-garde Alternative of the last 20 Years in Poland: In Search of Points of Intersection" - an essay by Antoni Beksiak for [[Sound Exchange]].

== The 1990s ==
The years after 1990 were to a large degree shaped by phenomena from the last decades of the Polish People's Republic. Relative to the main trend of contemporary music, what was previously considered alternative at the Warsaw Autumn Festival – especially in the area of electroacoustic music – were activities associated with the Experimental Studio of Polish Radio, such enterprises as the Independent Electroacoustic Music Studio (1982–1984, featuring Andrzej Bieżan, Krzysztof Knittel, Stanisław Krupowicz, Mieczysław Litwiński, [[Andrzej Mitan]], Paweł Szymański and Tadeusz Sudnik) and intuitive music, a symbolic figure of which is Zdzisław Piernik (b. 1942), legendary inventor of articulation techniques for the tuba (and performer of a rich compositional repertoire). His Intuitive Music Ensemble (Bieżan, Wojciech Chyła, Jacek Malicki) was blazing trails nearly 40 years ago – ineffectively, one could say – at the Warsaw Autumn Festival.
About the character of this key festival in the 1990s, Dorota Szwarcman writes: »Meanwhile, Warsaw Autumn became a respectable middle-of-the-road festival – constantly recalling 20th-century classics, without any attempt to go beyond traditional concert halls, with only a small presence of young people’s œuvre. […] The general atmosphere was far from a creative ferment.« [i]

Against the background of that decade, what was exceptional on the Polish scene was the Audio Art Festival, existing since 1993 in Kraków (it also had/has offshoots in Warsaw and Wrocław), led by Marek Chołoniewski (b. 1953) and associated institutionally with the academic community (the Electronic Music Studio founded in 1978 by Józef Patkowski at the Academy of Music in Kraków, the Muzyka Centrum Artistic Association). Founded in 1977, Muzyka Centrum – aside from the œuvre of its members and the associated circle of artists – presented the newest music from Poland and abroad, as well as activities from the Polish Fluxus, instrumental theater and happening, inviting guest artists from outside of academic circles’. [ii]

It is interesting to prepare a list of artists who have taken part in the Krakow festival. Initially, the names appearing there were those of the previously-known Knittel [iii] (1947, for years a leading representative of alternative music in the compositional community with his incorporations of, among other things, rock music), vocalist and »orientalist« Litwiński (b. 1955), Jan Pieniążek [iv] (b. 1948) and Chołoniewski himself, who were involved in sound installations, multimedia and interactivity; Zbigniew Łowżył (1965, percussionist, creator of audio art and inter-media works), Andrzej Przybielski (1944–2011, free jazz trumpeter) and visualist Maciej Walczak (b. 1963), a regular collaborator with the compositional community. At the end of the decade, a new wave appeared at Audio Art: bassist Sławomir Janicki (b. 1967, in a duo with Piernik), one of the founders of the Bydgoszcz club Mózg; Anna Zaradny (b. 1977, saxophone) and Robert Piotrowicz (b. 1973, guitar, synthesizer); the later creators of Musica Genera, Jacek Staniszewski (b. 1969, noise artist, theorist [v]), Mazzoll (b. 1968, clarinetist, yass scene radical). Appearing twice, in different line-ups, was Zbigniew Karkowski (b. 1958) – an émigré, formally trained composer and persona non grata in the Polish compositional community who is (in)famous all over the world as a noise music guru. This choice is symptomatic of the phenomena of the last two decades.

Taking place parallel to this (also starting in 1993) was the Strefa event series, curated by Andrzej Załęski at the Gallery of Contemporary Art [vi] in Warsaw’s Ujazdowski Castle, which regularly presented alternative pop and rock, multimedia, performance art, free jazz and – probably the closest to the scope of the present article – events under the care of Maciek Sienkiewicz. The Warsaw offshoot of Audio Art [vii] also took place at the Castle. Presenting his works at the latter was Jarosław Kapuściński (b. 1964), who became more and more active in making audiovisual art and music films after emigrating at the end of the 1980s, for example »Wariacje na temat Mondriana« (Variations on a Theme by Mondrian, 1992), »Catch the Tiger! featuring piano« (1993) and »Mudry« (Mudras, 1993). [viii]

Characteristic of the 1990s in Polish music were such phenomena as »yass«. Born between Bydgoszcz and Poland’s Tri-City area, it represented a reaction to the conservative, orthodox and inbred attitude of a large portion of Poland's jazz community as it formed in the Polish People’s Republic. Declaring its inspiration in 1960s free jazz, its representatives realized in Poland to a large measure ideas analogous to the activities of the artists focused around New York's Knitting Factory. This was a necessary airing out of the genre which inspired numerous later achievements; however – placing emphasis on groove – it is only marginally of interest to us. Likewise, in the case of somewhat later activities in Warsaw – especially the concert-laboratory series Galimadjaz and Djazzpora [ix] – our subject appears on the fringes.

One of the key figures in the modest free improvisation scene, Warsaw guitarist Andrzej Izdebski (b. 1975), indicates the beginnings of the constitution of this phenomenon as follows: »Tomasz Stańko in Cecil Taylor’s group, Helmut Nadolski, Andrzej Przybielski, Zdzisław Piernik playing intuitive music with Krzysztof Knittel at Warsaw Autumn in the 1970s… […] More recent history is Mazzoll (his projects in Germany), the Bydgoszcz club Mózg and its creators: Sławek Janicki and Jacek Majewski; beyond this, such figures as Tomek Gwinciński, the leader of the band Trytony, as well as Marek Rogulus Rogulski, often performing in a duo with Tomek Szwelas Szwelnik.« [x]

In stating that the dominant phenomena in the 1990s were different, we cannot, however, forget that what crystallized in that era was a new model of the creative personality outside the hierarchy: the artist who is active with equal artistic success in an area close to popular music (in particular, as part of club culture) and in the most »ambitious« areas of avant-garde music – furthermore, not infrequently coming from the environs of the first of these two fields. In Polish we can obviously cite, for example, Krzesimir Dębski, Edward Pałłasz, and even Witold Lutosławski. Such composers, however, tried rather to create an art music habitus within the mainstream pop culture convention (which obviously had a somewhat different significance during the time of the Polish People’s Republic). For a change, the artists cited here – whose activity fell into the first decade of the 21st century – are not infrequently self-taught individuals who took lessons in the area of contemporary composition, such as Patryk Zakrocki (b. 1974) and Tomasz Gwinciński (b. 1963), who studied with Bogusław Schaeffer, or composers with degrees in higher education who have traveled in alternative music circles since their youth, such as Arturas Bumšteinas (b. 1982), resident for the past several years in Poland. The issue of formal education is not key; they are linked, however, by activity in the sphere of intensive artistic inquiries, as opposed to attempts to play to audiences’ conventional expectations (regardless of the genre of which we are speaking).

For example, Piotr Zabrodzki (b. 1982) a.k.a. Mista Pita is a classically trained pianist, graduate of the Chopin State Music Secondary School in Warsaw, but he also uses bass guitar, double bass and percussion. In the role of vocalist and keyboardist, he forms part of the ensemble Senk Że / Cinq G / 5G – which belongs to the reggae/dance hall movement – as well as numerous related endeavors. He plays in the standing ensembles of the Przybysz sisters, Natalia »Natu« and Paulina »Pinnawela« (soul vocalists who once upon a time formed the group Sistars), and he collaborates with Marta Kossakowska a.k.a. Marika, a reggae/soul singer. With another key alternative figure, Bartosz Weber a.k.a. Baaba, he has recorded two discs »drawing on fake-jazz in the manner of Lounge Lizards« [xi]. With guitarist Jan Pęczak, saxophonist Marcin Gańko and percussionist Hubert Zemler, as Blast Muzungu, he leaps back and forth in a Postmodernist manner among styles – in the spirit of John Zorn’s Naked City, from country to metal. »Avant-jazz magma is the starting point, which, depending on the caprice of the musicians, tunes in a barrel-organ aura, only to pile up a wall of glitches, squeaks and whistles in the twinkling of an eye.«[xii] With Zdzisław Piernik, he has recorded a diverse album featuring Zemler and violinist Wojciech Kondrat (Namanga, Vivo 2008035CD, 2008), on which he utilizes the tuba player's sonoristic capabilities in an intriguing manner. »He expresses himself most fully (…) as a pianist, dazzling his audience with back-breaking cluster passages« [xiii]. Zabrodzki plays free jazz, free improvisation, bruitist electronics and radical metal with equal fluency; he freely and creatively juggles styles.

== The New Century ==
In recent decades, communities of listeners and artists have appeared whose educational path has not led from performance of Mozart in their childhood, for whom twentieth-century composition is conceived rather as the antithesis of »classical« music, from Bach to Brahms. Their œuvre is rooted in various pop culture fringe movements: heavy metal (death, doom, grind, thrash), ambient and drone music, noise, industrial music, avant-rock, free-jazz and others. What is key is the moment of aesthetic approach to areas of contemporary classical music, discovery of common artistic goals and technical issues and recognition of compositional achievements. The Viennese glitch community played a crucial role in Poland, a key moment being the rise of Austrian label Mego Records around the year 2000. In May 2003, the Alt+F4 Festival, prepared by the Salvia New Forms Center as part of the first Turning Sounds International Meeting (curated by this author), showcased a dynamic group of native artists, including Viön (Artur Jaworski), Facial Index (Jacek Staniszewski), Mem (Kamil Antosiewicz), Wolfram (Dominik Kowalczyk) and Spear.

[[File:Zbigniew karkowski(1).jpg|thumb|left|Zbigniew Karkowski (2002). Photo by: Fredrik Nilsen]]

== The So-Called Laptopists ==
Noise is relatively clearly present – in a manner characteristic of this genre – on the borderline between inspiring, fresh musical experiences (for example, Bartek Kalinka, b. 1976, a.k.a. XV Parówek’s mini-album »Glued Feet« AudioTong tng1034, 2007), and perhaps even leaving the realm of music per se – a tendency by no means marginal for lovers of dazzling acoustic pressure. A frequent guest in Poland is the aforementioned Zbigniew Karkowski – however, symptomatically, not at festivals of compositional art. One of his most interesting achievements (in the role of composer and curator) is the album »Persepolis + Remixes. Edition I« (Asphodel ASP 2005, 2002), including Xenakis’ monumental work of 1971, and a disc of reinterpretations by current noise artists, showing the continuation and differences (specifically regarding tools and timbres) between bruitism and noise. In 2009, this author commissioned from Karkowski the (to date) twice-performed monumental composition »Encumbrance« for the vocal ensemble Gęba. Among the new millennium’s most important figures utilizing electroacoustic material are Wolfram (b. 1969), Emiter (Marcin Dymiter, b. 1971) and Arszyn (Krzysztof Topolski, b. 1973), the duo Emiszyn, Dawid Szczęsny and turntablist DJ Lenar (Marcin Lenarczyk).

[[File:Bumsteinas(1).jpg|thumb|right|Arturas Bumšteinas]]

From the academic community, we can point out Arturas Bumšteinas, clarinetist Michał Górczyński (b. 1977), who is on a quest for extended articulational techniques, as well as the live electronics group Phonos ek Mechanes. This ensemble of Cezary Duchnowski, Paweł Hendrich and Sławomir Kupczak joins the live electronics tradition with a wide array of inspirations, constructing unorthodox narration in terms of substance, timbre and pace, aided by recycling. It avoids this fossilized, academic uniformity so common to the output of Polish composers, even the young ones. The musicians use various computer interfaces, violin, electric guitar, even Nintendo's Wiimote, and within the sonic fabric one can find the idiosyncrasies of individual members, such as the »clockwork« ticking of Kupczak's »Anafora V«. The three Wrocław artists present considerable compositional upbringing and attention to tone, uniting dynamic spontaneity with excellent control of the structure. [xiv]
[[File:AnnaZaradny photo Szymon Roginski-300x199(1).jpg|thumb|right|Anna Zaradny. Photo by: Szymon Roginsk]]

== Free Improvisation ==
The free improvisation community in Poland is modest, since this movement has not been appreciated by musical institutions – among the few exceptions is Warsaw’s Ad Libitum Festival, organized by the Polish Music Council Foundation. Knowledge emanates, above all, from independent centers, attracting listeners and inspiring musicians. A spectacular example is the Musica Genera Festival (Szczecin 2002–2008, Warsaw 2009), led by Piotrowicz and Zaradny, which presented to Polish audiences many distinguished artists from this movement, arranged unique artistic encounters and studied the connection of improvisation with composition, sound installations and visuals. But it's Michał Libera and Krzysztof Trzewiczek, under the name of »plain« (Warsaw), who actively introduced Polish musicians to the area of free improvisation; the heir of these activities is the 4.99 Foundation.

[[File:Robert piotrowicz playgroundmag.net(1).jpg|thumb|left|Robert Piotrowicz. Photo originally in Playgroundmag.net]]
Even earlier, there were Peter Kowald’s trendsetting visits and collaborations with Polish musicians. Despite this, free improvisation is predominantly absent from contemporary music festivals, remaining one of the most specialized niche movements devoid of media channels. Piernik plays with, among others, Górczyński (»Energa One«, Kariatyda 002, 2002), Lenar and Izdebski, who in turn, together with percussionist Michał Gos (b. 1974), forms the duo Sonus Akrobata (»Mandragora«, Bôłt BR 1002, 2009). Other figures are, in particular, guitarist Piotr Bukowski, Marcin Dymiter and bassist Rafał Mazur (b. 1971); and from the academic community, pianist and improvisation teacher Szábolcs Esztényi.

 

[[File:Zygmunt Krauze photo-von-jan-bebel-von-Krauzes-homepage-300x194(1).jpg|thumb|right|Zygmunt Krauze. Photo by: Jan Bebel]]

== Sound Installations, Multimedia ==
A similar functioning in the »vacuum« between communities is characteristic of the sound installation, multimedia and related movements. This was clearly shown by the exhibition »Sound Invasion. Music and the Visual Arts« [xv]. Included were works in which music was used merely as a source of symbols and associations, or where the sound was just a side effect, as – so to speak – in an industrial machine. I consider this type of activities to go beyond the scope of the present text. Among a few exceptions, the most spectacular was Christian Marclay’s video quartet, a dazzling four-screen narration of musically-oriented clips from movies, exhibiting an intriguing, fast-paced polyphony of image and sound. Not infrequently, as well, the presence of this movement at festivals of compositional art has displayed the curators’ lack of orientation.

The Polish artistic community became interested in this movement already at its outset. Aside from the work of Krzysztof Wodiczko mentioned by Monika Pasiecznik, immediately after Stockhausen’s first inquiries in the area of »Wandelmusik« (foyer music) [xvi], the subject was taken up by Zygmunt Krauze (1938, »Space-Music Composition« from 1968, featuring interior decorator Teresa Kelm and sculptor Henryk Morel). This type of activity occasionally finds its way into the programs of various contemporary music festivals and art galleries. We will find it in the output of both alternative artists and those from the compositional community. Nevertheless, we cannot speak of a consolidated presence of this movement in Polish art, just as in the case of free improvisation. Today’s state of affairs reflects the phenomenon’s dispersion. Events from this area are relatively numerous; however, they require far-reaching research to identify their territory and locate it on the arts map.

However, it is also worth remembering that, for example, as part of the Chopin Year celebrations, many works in this area appeared. [xvii] In Kraków, four installations by Aleksander Janicki under the heading »Chopin in the City« were set up; in Warsaw, a subprogram of Warsaw Autumn (Paweł Janicki, Jarosław Kapuściński, Wiesław Michalak, Gordon Monahan, Józef Robakowski) and »Fryderyk Chopin. Ciennik osobisty« (Fryderyk Chopin. A Personal Diary Bower) (curated by this author) were realized. The latter consists of short snippets from Chopin's letters sonically elaborated by Wrocław's composer Sławomir Kupczak. The sound layer is presented spatially and allows deeper access to Chopin's personality and his complicated relationships with the world of his time, playing also with the tension between the inner space of the bower and the intrusion of surrounding city landscape. In Radom, the Mazovian Centre of Contemporary Art Elektrownia realized two installations by Grzegorz Rogala; the City Art Gallery in Łódź, the multimedia project »What next after Chopin…« featuring, among others, Krzysztof Knittel, Dobromiła Jaskot, Jacek Partyka, Marcin Stańczyk, Marta Śniada and Artur Zagajewski; while the Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in Toruń organized the »Chopin – Field of Vision/Field of Hearing« festival, encompassing the areas of contemporary music and animation (Jarosław Kapuściński), along with such spheres as DVJ (Antistatic Family, An On Bast), electronic and acoustic music (Rafał Kołacki, Jacek Doroszenko) or interactive installation (Ksawery Kaliski) [xviii].

In turn, the No Local Foundation’s endeavor Fragile Boredom included an exhibition of works by Erik Bünger, Lawrence English, Paweł Kulczyński and Anna Zaradny in Kraków and Bytom. Most consistently devoted to this type of art is Kraków’s Audio Art festival. Recent years have brought increased interest on the part of various »inquiring« festivals in the sound installation, performance and multimedia movements, which – as one can surmise – is perceived as bringing a certain prestige associated with gallery-style »high art«, though obviously also as an interesting field of artistic inquiry. Its share in the programs of such festivals as Musica Genera, Unsound (Krakow) and Warsaw Electronic Festival, as well as the pop-culture Off Festival (Silesian conurbation) and Open'er (Tri-City area), is increasing.

== Places and Channels ==
[[File:Monotype(1).jpg|thumb|right|Monotype Records Logo]]
The œuvre of these and related artists plays out, above all, in those few music clubs that include such music in the scope of their repertoire, art galleries, and non-government organizations founded for this purpose which (not without success) attempt to obtain funds from state and local government sources. A number of specialized record labels exist, such as Monotype Records and Musica Genera (also involved in improvisation); individual titles appear in the catalogs of record labels of broader profile (Bôłt, Lado ABC); most numerous, however, are publications under ephemeral labels and various »samizdat« releases (CD-R discs, cassettes) in microscopic limited editions, with strong international aspect, however.

[[File:Musicagenera(1).jpg|thumb|right|Musica Genera Festival 2009]]

Aside from CDs released in minimally-sized editions (and sales of files on the Internet, where the leading outlet is the serpent.pl shop), as well as vinyl discs, which attractive as physical objects and have audiophile connotations, of great significance are netlabels. A considerable role is played in Poland by the online label AudioTong (over 50 catalog items), which has recently »advanced« to the role of CD editor. It is co-run by an artist from the noise movement, Zenial (Łukasz Szałankiewicz, 1978). Critical recognition of this type of music is negligible. Writings on the subject are extremely dispersed and require thorough research.

== Contacts between Communities ==
In attempting to assess the results of encounters between the communities of formally and informally trained contemporary music artists, we must observe a cautious rapprochement, marked by distrust and reserve. At festivals organized by the compositional community, alternative music is either not present or »negatively« present – thanks to the community’s closed attitude and falsifications of its image. Also slowly, but consistently, repertoire from the academic community is being included in the programs of alternative events – sometimes there are performances of works by such artists as Alvin Lucier, Cornelius Cardew and the co-creators of the Experimental Studio by performers from different communities (the activity of the group presently associated with the 4.99 Foundation). In both real and virtual space, a discourse is in progress – not infrequently of a strongly antagonistic character – which does not at all mean that, for example, the majority of the young compositional community in Poland is aware of the activities of their colleagues »on the other side of the border«.

All in all, today's new generation of avant-gardists has come from elsewhere; in the Polish contemporary music community, however, it has discovered for itself Bohdan Mazurek, Eugeniusz Rudnik, Zdzisław Piernik, and other achievements relegated to the night concerts of Warsaw Autumn.

Text based in large measure on the article »Muzyka alternatywna« (Alternative Music), in: »Raport o stanie muzyki polskiej« (Report on the State of Polish Music), Institute of Music and Dance, Warsaw 2011.

== References ==

[i] Augustyn Bloch, Ruch Muzyczny XX/1991, according to: Dorota Szwarcman, »Kłopoty z wolnością. Po roku 1989« (Problems with Freedom. After 1989), Stentor, Warsaw 2007. http://free.art.pl/nowamuzyka/artykuly/teksty/szwarcman3.htm (accessed 23 June 2011), chapter »Czas Warszawskich Jesieni. O muzyce polskiej lat 1945–2007« (The Time of the Warsaw Autumn Festivals. On Polish Music from 1945 to 2007).

[ii] Conversation between Marek Chołoniewski and the author on 24 June 2011.

[iii] The presence of other Polish composers is on a rather one-off basis.

[iv] »Jan Pieniążek is an artist-engineer, engineer-dreamer, artist-ironicist«, http://www.obieg.pl/kronika-towarzyska/13312, accessed 26 June 2011.

[v] Together with Dominik »Wolfram« Kowalczyk and Artur Kozdrowski, creator of Neurobot, a group existing from 1996 to 2003 – as much an artistic ensemble as an Internet magazine (http://independent.pl/neurobot, accessed 26 June 2011).

[vi] http://csw.art.pl/kalendarium/main/archiwum.htm, accessed on 26 June 2011

[vii] Taking place parallel to Strefa was the CSW music program, initially prepared jointly with PTMW, and then with contemporary music group Nonstrom.

[viii] Dorota Szwarcman, Ibid.

[ix] For a concise panorama of 21st-century Polish alternative music, I refer the reader to a text written jointly with Łukasz Iwasiński and Małgorzata Cnota: »Alternative Music«, in: »Music in Poland. A Guide 2010«, Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Warsaw 2010.

[x] Glissando 3/2005, interview by Przemysław Psikuta.

[xi] Łukasz Iwasiński, Ibid.

[xii] Jarek Szubrycht at Onet.pl (http://muzyka.onet.pl/gatunek/alternatywa/blast-muzungu-gaijin-gabba,129601,4656396,plyta-recenzja.html), accessed on November 1, 2011, translated by this author.

[xiii] Łukasz Iwasiński, Ibid.

[xiv] Based on this author's unpublished review of the group's performance at the Audio Art festival in Warsaw on December 19, 2007.

[xv] Zachęta National Art Gallery, Warsaw, 7 April–2 August 2009.

[xvi] Cf. »Karlheinz Stockhausen«, in: Wikipedia, Ch. 2.2. 1960s, accessed 29 August 2011 via link on official Stockhausen page http://stockhausen.org; http://www.londonsinfonietta.org.uk/event/foyer-music-festival, accessed 29 August 2011

[xvii] Antoni Beksiak, »Sygnał zwrotny« (Feedback Signal), in: »Rok Chopinowski 2010. Impresje – świadectwa – ludzie« (The Year of Chopin 2010. Impressions – Testimonies – People), Chopin 2010 Celebrations Office, Warsaw 2011.

[xviii] http://csw.torun.pl/, accessed 10 March 2011.

[[Category:Polish Contributions]] [[Category:Sound Exchange]] [[Category: Essays]]

Hues of Independence

2018-06-05T11:13:35Z

Diogo:

[[File:HOI - 1.png|thumb|right|1. Still from ‘Plastic People of the Universe’, directed by C.sar de Ferrari, 1970. Courtesy of Česka Televize]]
''This article, written by Daniel Muzyczuk, explores the meaning of the underground and its role in Democratic opposition in the Eastern Bloc, focusing particularly on [[:Category:Czechoslovakia|Czech]], [[:Category:Poland|Polish]], [[:Category:Hungary|Hungarian]] and [[:Category:East Germany|East-German]] examples.''

In his insightful study about the intersecting paths of political dissidents and underground musicians in 1970s and 1980s Czechoslovakia, Jonathan Bolton notes that researchers of such relationships necessarily rely on two kinds of sources of a completely different nature:

As with samizdat, where we can never really track down the exact circulation of particular typed texts, we must read the underground legends without, ultimately, having a clear sense of their spread or reception; nevertheless, we must also remember that imaginary circulations were just as important as real ones. The legends about Bondy, Jirous, and the [[The Plastic People of the Universe|Plastic People]] were both descriptive of an underground environment and constitutive of a cultural identity. '''[1]'''

So on the one hand we have the hard facts relayed by historical sources of established credibility, while on the other hand we keep encountering mythologised stories about heroic deeds, their reach unknown. The notion of universality gains a wholly new meaning here. These differing narratives were often aimed at specific audiences: sometimes with the purpose of peer communication within alternative culture; occasionally, they were directed at the larger set of dissidents or counter-culture activists or even at the society at large or the state apparatus, particularly the security services of the respective countries. The transition to democracy has facilitated wide access to sources produced in different circulations and different contexts, as a result of which identifying the addressees of the different messages is becoming difficult, and mapping their striking distance – virtually impossible.

In this essay I will discuss the discourses and practices of special communities that combined musical and visual work, or actually saw them as one. This intermedia production was often informed by the perception of independence as the need to create a parallel culture, one that would be a world in itself and unto itself, and therefore one that has its own full cultural life. Contrary to what it might seem, this is a story about the clever exploitation of possibilities offered by states rather than a narrative of struggle, persecution and oppression. In his essay about the late-Soviet rave generation, Alexei Yurchak makes an interesting diagnosis according to which independence – at least in perestroika-era Soviet Union – meant evading the state apparatus. He wrote:

I argue … that the logic of nonofficial discourses and practices in late socialism was based most of all on attempts to have a meaningful life in spite of the state's oppression. Hence, the nonofficial (or ‘countercultural’) practices involved not so much countering, resisting, or opposing state power as simply avoiding it and carving out symbolically meaningful spaces and identities away from it. '''[2]'''

Of course, each of the countries in the Soviet Bloc had its own institutions of compulsion and control. It is also worth noting that we are talking about a very long period, from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, when liberalisation processes occurred with various degrees of intensity. By looking at a broad range of relationships between the state and the ‘independents’, we will be able to grasp the whole complexity of the issue as well as better understand what happens to countercultural terms when they are transplanted from their natural habitat of Western democracy to real socialism.

== Assaulting Culture ==
[[File:HOI - 2.png|thumb|right|2. Still from ‘Plastic People of the Universe’, directed by C.sar de Ferrari, 1970. Courtesy of Česka Televize ]]
The history of The Plastic People of the Universe, their idea of the underground and their subsequent involvement in the democratic opposition movement is well known. And yet it continues to shine uniquely as the most radical moment of Eastern European counterculture. Analyses of the writings of the group’s chief ideologist and manager, Ivan Martin ‘Magor’ Jirous, have revealed new insights reflecting how culturally complex a phenomenon The Plastic People were. Asked about the meaning of the term ‘underground’ in an interview included in Césare de Ferrari’s 1970 film entitled Plastic People of the Universe, Jirous cites The Fugs and Ed Sanders and speaks of a ‘total assault on culture’ (figure 1). '''[3]''' Already in 1965 the same phrase appears, as ‘atentát na kulturu’, in a song by the band Aktual, run by Milan Knížák, and this may have been in that context that Jirous had first heard it. '''[4]'''

So the underground was for Jirous a cultural formation, its defining characteristic being confrontation with the establishment. It is worth noting that it doesn’t matter here whether ‘the establishment’ refers to Western society or to the communist party and the cultural elites. Another source that Jirous cited in his early texts was Marcel Duchamp and his famous dictum that the ‘great artist of tomorrow will go underground’. This pays witness to a need to escape from the commercialisation of art and withdraw to an area of anonymity that would protect one from the invisible hand of the market. But the two quotations (from Sanders and Duchamp) evidence also Jirous’s ambitions to follow the example set by Andy Warhol in the Velvet Underground and create a cultural structure as rich as The Factory (figure 2).

In the interview cited above, Jirous - the artistic director of [[The Plastic People of the Universe]] - says that the band is not just the music but also the work of artists, meaning Jan Ságl and Zorka Ságlová – authors of the costumes, stage designs and, in the case of the latter, land-art projects that the members of The Plastic People helped create. A few years later, in reaction to growing pressure on the band and its milieu, Jirous was to formulate in his famous manifesto, A Report on the Third Czech Musical Revival, the theory of a second culture which was doubtless a development and concretisation of the notion of the underground as a cultural formation based on subculture.

The attack on The Plastic People of the Universe and other bands began in 1974 with the cancelling of concerts. But the group was still neither official nor unofficial. On 30 March 1974, the so called ‘České Budějovice massacre’ took place, where Czechoslovak riot police broke up a Plastic People show and clubbed the fans before herding them into a train and sending them back to Prague. In the following years tension grew, culminating in the arrest and subsequent prosecution of four leading members of the scene on 17 March 1976, a month after the Second Festival of the Second Culture in Bojanovice. The detainees included Ivan Jirous – manager and ideologist of The Plastic People of the Universe, Vratislav Brabenec – saxophone player and lyricist, Pavel Zajíček of the band [[DG 307|DG307]], and the folk singer Svatopluk Karásek. In the same year, Czechoslovak TV broadcasts a documentary titled, aptly, Atentát na kulturu (referring thus to both The Fugs and Aktual), which presents the arrested men as deviants and drug addicts who participate in orgies and use dead rats for drumsticks (sic!) (figure 3). The Report on the Third Czech Musical Revival is written during this time, becoming, in the light of the subsequent events, a crucial manifesto. In it, Jirous again refers to Sanders, but lends a new meaning to the words ascribed to him: ‘[The underground] is a movement that operates primarily with artistic means, even though its representatives are conscious of the fact that is not and should not be the end-all of an artist’s effort’. '''[5]''' Then he explains what kind of culture the underground is supposed to serve:

''"The aim of the underground here in Bohemia is the creation of a second culture: a culture that will not be dependent on official channels of communication, social recognition, and the hierarchy of values laid down by the establishment; a culture which cannot have the destruction of the establishment as its aim because in doing so, it would drive itself into the establishment’s embrace; a culture which helps those who wish to join it to rid themselves of the scepticism which says that nothing can be done and shows them that much can be done when those who make the culture desire little for themselves and much for others."'' '''[6]'''

It is worth comparing Jirous’s declarations with another source – a brief text, ‘A Silent Hungarian Underground’, published in 1973 by Béla Hap, founder of the Hungarian samizdat periodical, Szétfolyóirat. Hap described the underground as an artistic movement which neither supports nor attacks the establishment, but remains outside it. Any attack on the establishment would acknowledge its existence . . . It wants to be a form of unidentifiable, unanalysable, ungraspable, and incorruptible outsider art. PRIVATE ART. '''[7]'''

[[File:HOI - (3).png|thumb|right|3. Still from ‘Atent.t na kulturu’ (Assault on Culture), directed by Ladislav Chocholoušek, 1977. Courtesy of Česka televize]]
This definition was formulated in a milieu centred on a rather specific periodical which made evading official restrictions on production and distribution both its working method and a content management principle. Thus a term originating in the West became here not a distant and utopian idea, as in Jirous’s text, but rather a daily praxis of cultural production. This is confirmed in Hap‘s text: ‘What are the information channels of the underground? Pencil, pen, brush, nail, typewriter, photo camera, tape recorder, private home, forest, clearing, tree hollow, air, whatever, mouth, ears, telepathy etc. . . . It creates film out of film waste, out of what the superficial world discards’. '''[8]'''

But this pragmatic definition didn’t protect its author from constant surveillance and reprisals. Let us return however to Jirous and The Plastic People of the Universe. It is clear that the oppression encountered by alternative culture in Czechoslovakia made it possible to reformulate the organisation’s goals and the ways of achieving them. But the very form of government still seems unimportant for the notion of the underground. The establishments are different, but the forms of relationships with them are similar. At this point we arrive at the crucial – and heavily mythologised – moment of the publication of Charter 77 - an emanation of the underground’s alliance with the dissident movement.

[[Martin Machovec]] notes that Jirous, Hlavsa or Brabenec had no political agenda, and confrontational slogans were formulated to create space for ‘doing your own thing’ rather than to achieve any kind of political change. He also believes that state oppression played a role in the crystallisation of the underground’s positions and operating methods, writing that ‘they were compelled to become politically radicalised because of the totalitarian regime's intolerance and brutal oppression. However, their radicalism did not lead to a kind of a “world revolution” but rather to the activities of the defenders of human rights in Charter 77’. '''[9]'''

In its clash with the regime, the underground found allies in political dissidents and thus the war for culture and democratic structures in Czechoslovakia became a binary conflict: the state against Charter 77. In a 1995 interview, Egon Bondy spoke about the meaning of the term ‘underground’:
''
"It was rather the shared lot of those who’d found themselves representing positions even more radical than the ordinary dissident. We definitely wanted to distinguish ourselves from the so called ‘grey zone”’, from people, often with good jobs, who would consider themselves dissidents because they cursed the regime at home. The Czech ‘underground’ brought together people from all kinds of backgrounds and there was never any friction between them. Among my closest friends were Protestants and Catholics, deeply religious people, who still didn’t reject me, an avowed Marxist."'' '''[10]'''

Also Bondy speaks in a way which suggests that ‘the underground’ ultimately became a descriptive term, losing, as a result of the conflict, its projective, future-oriented character. In fact, at first, members of the underground had perceived dissidents as part of the establishment. This perspective can be sensed in Charter 77 itself, when it is pointed out that the signatories enjoyed better protection from oppression than figures from the underground. Jirous’s criticism of intellectuals from Havel’s milieu had been internalised, and the struggle for human rights became the groundwork of the alliance. The history of The [[Plastic People of the Universe|Plastic People]] and Charter 77 represents actually the only example of a lasting alliance between the two groups, compelled by the state. Let us notice that the very term ‘velvet revolution’ probably originated from the Velvet Underground, a key inspiration for The Plastic People. '''[11]'''

At this point it is doubtless worth noting a completely different reaction to the notion of the underground, presented by Mikoláš Chadima, member of bands such as [[Kilhets]], Extempore and MCH Band, in the introduction to his book, Alternativa. Od rekvalifikací k «Nové» vlně se starým obsahem. Chadima reconstructs the scene, noting a possible tripartition: for him, the establishment and the underground are two circles, beyond which there is also the alternative. Miroslav Vaněk saw the matter in similar terms, writing that, ‘this branch of rock music constitutes an alternative to official pop and big beat (rock and roll), but is also an alternative to the other end, the so called Underground’. '''[12]'''

[[File:HOI - (4).png|thumb|right|4. Extempore Band, IX Pražske jazzove dny (Prague Jazz Days), 1979, photograph Jiři Kučera. Courtesy of Mikolaš Chadima]]
In Vaněk’s statement, the political aspect of the distinction is lost. For the alternative, as Chadima described it – unlike the underground after 1976 – was still willing to take avail of all the opportunities offered by the state. This transition is also bound up with a generational change which means that the battles fought by the older heroes did not matter to younger musicians. An idealistic set of connotations was replaced by pragmatism. This is a similar action to the abovementioned vision of alternative culture as a practice characterised most of all by ingenuity in evading the regime. One example of a subject operating in this fashion was the Jazzová Sekce (Jazz Section) of the Union of Czechoslovak Musicians, founded on 31 November 1971, which organised concerts, festivals and exhibitions. Over 15 years, it published 28 bulletins and a series of monographic publications under the Jazz Petit imprint. They were self-published but of high quality (with subjects such as punk, land art, dada or graphic scores). It also organised the Pražské jazzové dny (Prague Jazz Days), an event that took place eleven times between 1974 and 1982. Despite its name, the festival was not only open to avant-garde rock and punk, but also to non-musical projects such as experimental film screenings or theatre shows (figure 4). '''[13]'''

The Jazz Section’s key venue was the amateur club U Zábranských, where alternative rock bands such as Kilhets or Extempore performed. '''[14]''' Due to the expansive nature of its activities, the Jazz Section found itself at odds with its patron organisation; this led to radicalisation and further expansion. In 1979, the Section joined the International Jazz Federation (member of the UNESCO International Music Council), and later joined the European Association for Musical Research and the European Nuclear Disarmament (END) movement. We can say that – like with The Plastic People of the Universe – the organisation’s radicalisation and eventual dissolution occurred despite the fact that it originally lacked any outright political goals. At the same time, the Section was increasingly involved in helping dissidents publish materials and organise concerts. At first, the regime responded by piling up bureaucratic requirements. Despite these difficulties, the Section continued operating and its membership grew. In 1984, the Section was officially dissolved, whereupon it moved underground where it continued to function for two more years in an increasingly oppressive atmosphere until, in September 1986, its five leaders were arrested and put on trial for ‘operating an unauthorised enterprise’, ‘engaging in illegal lucrative activities’, and ‘distributing illegal publications’. '''[15]''' Two of the members went to prison for over a year.

== Third Circulation ==
Exploring the Czechoslovak scene, we can clearly see key concepts and lines of division present in many countries of the bloc, but nowhere else did they achieve such density nor lead to such heated debates and a resulting crystallisation of positions. In Poland in the 1980s a brief moment of alliance between anti-communist activists and the underground can be noted, as mentioned by Piotr Rypson: ‘I have a photo where we are walking with Tomek [Lipiński] and two other friends in a Solidarity demonstration – happy, delighted, smiling. Tomek had just changed his image – he’d stopped spiking up his hair, stopped wearing metal jewellery, put on a V-neck sweater. I remember us concluding that it doesn’t make sense to antagonise the public visually at a time when society is changing – and changing the reality at hand.’ '''[16]'''

In 1981, during the short-lived ‘Solidarity carnival’, a period of liberalisation that was ended abruptly by the introduction of martial law, Brygada Kryzys, a band run at the time by Lipiński and Robert Brylewski, was invited to perform at the Solidarity-organised ‘Przegląd Piosenki Prawdziwej’ (Festival of True Song) at the Olivia venue in Gdańsk. This moment was very brief however, and Lipiński’s words explain why: ‘In 1980, the situation changed. We, as anarchists, naturally saw the regime in a similar way as Solidarity did. From the beginning of 1981, however, we began viewing Solidarity as a new establishment, one which spelled no positive prospects. On the other hand, Solidarity in itself, as an anarchistic movement, was acceptable for us . . . As long as Solidarity was anarchistic, we were on the same side’. '''[17]'''

Punks become temporary fellow travellers on a trip that lasted only until Solidarity had crystallised as a formation with specific views about its intended position in society. Also the political police perceived members of the two groups differently. Solidarity and political dissidents enjoyed a kind of esteem while youth counterculture movements were disparaged as the expression of demoralisation. Paweł ‘Konjo’ Konnak notes that the security police, the SB, clearly saw a difference between the second and third circulations. He remembers the moment when the archives of confiscated samizdat were opened: ‘It’s interesting what happened to the confiscated Totart stage props and publications. A year later, following the elections of June 1989 and pursuant to a deal negotiated by Solidarity with the communists, opposition activists whose underground production had been confiscated were able to collect it back from the SB storerooms. When we too came to claim our meagre junk, the Solidarity gentlemen kindly told us that we had never been any kind of underground and showed us the door. And the Publishing and Advertising Section of the Pill of Progression Metaphysical-Entertainment Conglomerate has the right to nothing’. [18] Paradoxically, this policy meant that materials of lesser subversive potential were irrevocably destroyed while the political samizdat survived.

Another strategy of scene division was followed in East Germany. The authorities in the German Democratic Republic were always wary of the musical scene. Erich Honecker, for example, stated in the 1960s: ‘it was overlooked that the enemy exploits this type of music to drive young people to excesses through the use of exaggerated beat rhythms. The pernicious influences of such music upon the thoughts and actions of young people is being grossly underestimated’. '''[19]'''

In 1976, Wolf Biermann went to perform in Cologne in West Germany; upon his return, he was refused re-entry to the DDR and stripped of his citizenship. The avowed Marxist and socialist bard was a persona non grata in East Germany, because his poetry was too realistic and reflected the absurdities of everyday life all too well. Thus ended a long process of growing separation between the nonconformist songwriter and the state. It was a significant moment also because the future landmarks of East German punk were already looming on the horizon. Bert Papenfuß-Gorek, a poet associated with the Prenzlauer Berg scene and the bands Rosa Extra and Ornament & Verbrechen, reminisced: ‘Biermann's era was completely finished. He was still hanging around, and some friends even had his albums and were still listening to that rubbish, but I would have nothing to do with that anymore. I was on the side of the MC5 and Ton Steine Scherben’. '''[20]'''

Papenfuß-Gorek not only suggests the alleged worthlessness of Biermann’s music but also a lack of interest in its themes. There was no place here for a dissident position – the expression of an open contestation of political authority. Rather, this was an attitude that defies everything that the establishment embodies, and it didn’t matter whether it was a Western or Eastern establishment. Punk in East Berlin declared war on the system in the broadest sense. In a documentary film about Sascha Anderson, Papenfuß-Gorek says: ‘We were against the GDR party dictatorship, not explicitly against the idea of socialism or communism … there were many who described themselves as real Marxists. There was everyone from anarchists to people who saw the Western welfare state as an ideal. That was basically the spectrum’. '''[21]'''

[[File:HOI - (5).png|thumb|right|5. Licence given to AG Geige in ‘Recognition of Artistic Quality’, 1987. Archive of Frank Bretschneider]]
But the regime saw no difference and cracked down on youth subcultures as vehemently as it fought the political opposition. Following a period of direct reprisals against the punk movement, which were supposed to eradicate it by 1983, in the second half of the 1980s the East German authorities changed strategy. Instead of compulsory military service, police harassment, detention or, in some cases, imprisonment, the state sought to extend control over counterculture groups. The policy of granting licences for public performances was relaxed (figure 5). This development is described by Susanne Binas, member of the band Expander des Fortschritts:

''"It was incomparably easier to obtain a license after the mid-1980s than in earlier years. In order to perform in front of an audience, each band had to present its repertoire to a cultural commission of the district government in a special audition. In earlier years, these posts were largely occupied by political bureaucrats with little or no musical background. In contrast to that, however, our band, auditioned in front of a commission composed of jazz musicians, who were amenable to, and familiar with the broad spectrum of our musical innovations like threechord textures, slap bass, cut ups and samples, tapes, or even quotations by Heiner Müller that were peculiar to our style of music. They deflected demands for high levels of musical proficiency and expertise typical of earlier periods by upholding the principles of artistic freedom and pointing out the existence of an interested audience."'' '''[22]'''

[[File:HOI - (6).png|thumb|right|6. Jan Kummer and Frank Bretschneider during a recording session of [[AG Geige]] for radio, Karl-Marx-Stadt, 1987. Photography Lutz Schramm. Archive of Frank Bretschneider]]
But that isn’t all. As in Poland earlier, where the term ‘ Muzyka Młodej Generacji’ (music of the new generation) was floated in 1978, the phrase ‘Anderen bands’ (other bands) then entered official discourse in East Germany. The idea was to avoid Western vocabulary (the name ‘punk’ remains taboo for official media). Some bands changed their names to sound less controversial. Repackaged in this way, new wave music could be presented to a mass-media audience. In 1986, the East German youth radio station DT64 started broadcasting ‘Parocktikum’, a weekly show that played bands such as Hard Pop, Cadavre Exquis or AG. Geige (figure 6). The scene was divided into two camps: the punk underground, interested in no compromises with the state, or simply with the East German social order, and the alternative. '''[23]''' The choice of the term ‘other bands’ seems very fitting in this case. One can easily find analogies with the Czechoslovak discussions and the division between the underground and the alternative.

== Places and Structures ==
[[File:HOI - (7).png|thumb|right|7. Zuzu-Vető, ‘New Flags, New Tendencies, Communism now’, Fiatal Műveszek Klubja, Budapest, 1983. Courtesy of Janos Vető]]
The Czechoslovak case of cooperation between the Jazz Section and the U Zábranských club is worth comparing with other institutions with similar profiles (i.e., state-funded spaces that weren’t hostile to semi-official activities). Such spaces included the Fiatal Művészek Klubja (Young Artists Club) in Budapest, the Riviera-Remont club and Post in Warsaw, and the Leningrad Rock Club. Each exploited the resources offered by the state in a different way that, combined with the socio-political context, produced specific subcultures. In Hungary, the situation was seemingly clear: according to a policy implemented by prominent politician György Aczél in the 1960s, each manifestation of cultural life was labelled as belonging to one of three categories known as the ‘three Ts’ (Tiltott = banned; Tűrt = tolerated; Támogatott = supported).

However, a look at the 1980s new-wave scene confirms that the division applied to the whole culture where, as in Yurchak’s characterisation, contacts with the state were avoided but the resources and infrastructure provided by it were exploited to the full. In her book about the Hungarian music scene in the 1980s, Anna Szemere writes about a subculture that she describes as the ‘marginal intelligentsia’, the focal point of which was Budapest’s Young Artists Club. It was a meeting place for political dissidents, musicians as well as visual artists. Established in the 1960s, the Club gained full momentum only in the last decade of socialism in Hungary thanks to its open formula which accommodated punk concerts as well as political discussions with members of the democratic opposition. Such activities triggered official reprisals, including frequent event cancellations, but that only added to the place’s popularity. New wave bands such as Balaton, Trabant, [[A. E. Bizottság]] or [[Vágtázó Halottkémek]] found perfect conditions here for developing their innovative ideas. Young Artists Club was also the best environment for them due to its exhibition programme. Artist János Vető, for example, whose works created in a duo with Lóránt Méhes (as Zuzu-Vető) were presented in several exhibitions at the Club, was also a member of Trabant (figure 7). The Young Artists Club was a place where much of his artistic activity was focused. Soon new venues with a similar profile started springing up. Szemere arrives at interesting conclusions, describing this movement towards new spaces of autonomy:

''"Subconsciously, musicians must have known that only by establishing physical spaces and places (primarily venues, but also radio and television stations, etc.) could they re-create affective spaces and places, which are the stuff and goal of music-based social events and rituals. The reconfiguration of the political-social space surrounding the community compelled it to seek stability in the building of physical places. This territorial approach to renewal seemed indispensable for many members of the underground if they were to retain a minimal sense of continuity with the past and regenerate a sense of collective identity."'' '''[24]'''

[[File:HOI - (8).png|thumb|right|8. Commonpress 51, catalogue of the exhibition ‘Hungary Can Be Yours’, 1984/89. Courtesy of Artpool]]
Szemere describes the sociocultural location of this movement as ‘marginal’, a term whose semantic scope overlaps with the alternative, with the difference that marginal positions no longer seek to situate themselves ‘towards’ anything, but simply occupy those areas where the power of the establishment was weak. It is worth mentioning here one of the many examples of the practices of the Young Artists Club that reveals a successful combination of youth culture with the visual arts as well as reflecting the official attitude towards the venue’s activities. In 1984 Artpool organised at the Club an exhibition called Magyarország a tiéd lehet! (Hungary Can Be Yours!). A multimedia project, it was divided into two rooms: in a black one, together withworks by foreign artists, one could watch also a broadcast from a white one, that included artworks by Hungarians (figure 8, 9). '''[25]'''

[[File:HOI - (9).png|thumb|right|9. Floorplan of the exhibition ‘Hungary Can Be Yours’, 1984/89. Courtesy of Artpool]]
A cassette tape was also released, number six in the Artpool Radio series of compilation tapes (a kind, effectively, of an audio magazine), presenting recordings by non-conformist artists such as Tibor Hajas or Tamás Szentjóby and bands such as [[A. E. Bizottság]], [[Vágtázó Halottkémek]] or Európa Kiadó (figure 10). The authorities deemed the exhibition to be politically subversive and ordered that it be closed down. '''[26]''' The significance of the event itself and of the violence of censorship is highlighted by the fact that after the transformation, in December 1989, the project was reconstructed precisely in exactly the same place.

In Leningrad, in turn, the year 1981 saw the founding of three organisations that offered a glimpse of cultural freedom and anticipated perestroika: ‘The Leningrad KGB [state security police] decides to stage a pioneering social experiment and the following are established at the same time: The Experimental Fine Arts Society, the Literary Club and the Rock Club. They are fostered by the trade unions, whose mission includes supporting factory-affiliated cultural centres to confirm the “culturalisation” of the working masses’. '''[27]'''

[[File:HOI - (10).png|thumb|right|10. Artpool r.di. 6, audio casette, 1984. Courtesy of Artpool]]
Each of the three – the Association of Experimental Visual Art (TEII), Club 81 (a literary organisation) and the Ленинградский рок-клуб (Leningrad Rock Club) – had a different structure. Club 81 was a recognised association of some 70 unofficial writers who organised lectures, conferences and concerts at the Dostoyevsky Museum (the famous writer’s former apartment). The Leningrad Rock Club was supposed to function much like the Association of Soviet Composers, that is, to issue concert permits and to act as a censor in the field of youth popular music. What proved far more important however was the space where the institution was housed: it became an influential venue for rehearsals, live shows or simply meetings (figure 11). It was the place where bands such as Kino, Alisa, Akvarium or Zoopark successfully launched their careers. In this context it is worth noting that liberalisation did’t produce the same effects in all areas. Timur Novikov, the leader of the New Artists group, felt ill at ease in the elitist structures of TEII and for this reason sought his own, alternative, methods of collective visual-arts practice. He remembered the Club as a place of unique atmosphere:

''"The New Artists collaborated with the Leningrad Rock Club. I myself was a member of the rock club, as the official designer of Kino. The New Artists designed the Kino sets and records and held exhibitions at the club. The Leningrad Rock Club was an exciting place to be at that time. Hoards of strangely dressed young people flocked to the concerts, with the police hot on their tracks. In the 1980s, long hair was out; crew cuts dyed all the colours of the rainbow were in. All the gigs were accompanied by arrests and document checks, which only added fuel to the flames."'' '''[28]'''

[[File:HOI - (11).png|thumb|right|11. Timur Novikov, Sergey Kuryokhin, Joanna Stingray and members of Kino, Aquarium and Alisa in Leningrad Rock Club, 1985. Courtesy of Joanna Stingray]]
While most of the musicians collaborating with Novikov, such as Victor Tsoy or Sergey Kuryokhin, worked with success at the Leningrad Rock Club, Novikov himself and the painters with whom he worked decided to start their own place (figure 12). Its activities and the one-of-a-kind community that formed around it are described by Konstanty Usenko:
''
"Timur organises the legendary Assa Gallery in an abandoned komunalka. Installations exhibited there will later appear in an eponymous film. Assa’s most famous show is one presenting the works of Andy Warhol himself, little known in the USSR at the time. Novikov, who corresponded by mail with the Pop Art master, had received from him several copies of the famous Marilyn Monroe poster and exhibited them in 1986 in a vacant communal flat in Leningrad. . . . Spaces in Papa Om’s new musical squat are also populated by painters and performers. Besides the neo-expressionists, there were also necro-realist filmmakers there, led by Evgeny “Yufa” Yufit, from the first punk crew from Kupchino. “Yufa” tries his hand there in video art making. In 1988, the Friends of Mayakovsky Club, led by Novikov and the Kino drummer, Gustav, organises at H4/B4 an exhibition commemorating the ninety-fifth anniversary of the artist’s death. News about it spread rapidly around the northern metropolis. Sergey Kuryokhin’s avant-garde orchestra, Pop-Mekhanika, gave a concert."'' '''[29]'''

The Leningrad Rock Club helped create a musical scene of great vitality, a scene that (like the New Artists) wasn’t interested in politics. During the period of perestroika after 1985, liberalisation opened the way for an explosion of youth culture which could be witnessed in film, music and the visual arts. It was thanks to the alliance between the disciplines that bands like Kino or Akvarium shot to real stardom and the official media had no choice but to report about their successes.

[[File:HOI - (12).png|thumb|right|12. Timur Novikov, Joanna Stingray and members of Kino in the ASSA Gallery, 1985. Courtesy of Joanna Stingray]]
In Poland, the Riviera-Remont club, through the many initiatives that took place there, helped forge alliances between visual artists and musicians (from jazz-experimental and new-wave backgrounds) on an unprecedented scale. A student club financed by a branch of the Socjalistyczny Związek Studentów Polskich (Socialist Union of Polish Students) of the Warsaw University of Technology, the Riviera-Remont ran several artistic programmes in the 1970s: the Remont Gallery, managed by Henryk Gajewski; a theatre centre; a cine club called ‘Kwant’; the Remont Jazz Club and the Remont Folk Club. In 1980-1981, Andrzej Zuzak launched, with a group of friends, the Polish name (Alternative Art Agency) which was to be the first independent artistic management agency supporting young alternative rock bands and other forms of artistic activity.

[[File:HOI - (13).png|thumb|right|13. Post, no. 2, 20 September 1980. Courtesy of Piotr Rypson]]
In 1974, [[Andrzej Mitan]] initiated the ‘Diaphora of Music and Poetry’, a series of meetings taking place through 1981, presenting recent innovations in music, poetry and the visual arts. The Remont Gallery, which Gajewski ran with Andrzej Jórczak and Krzysztof Wojciechowski, was geared towards conceptual reflection in the field of photography. Exhibitions were accompanied by theoretical brochures with essays by Polish authors and translations of key international texts. Its programme’s greatest highlight was a widely advertised visit of Andy Warhol (1974) which never happened: the whole thing was a happening/prank staged by Gajewski. In 1978, the latter organised a festival called I Am (International Artist Meeting) which featured two events that were to leave a lasting impact on the Warsaw new wave scene. One was the show of the leftist British punk band, The Raincoats, cited by numerous scene members as their first contact with the new music. The other was Gajewski’s meeting with Piotr Rypson, the future manager of Tilt (a new wave group), artist and curator, for whom the festival marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with the Remont. In 1979, Gajewski reorganised the gallery, renaming it Post Remont, and started publishing with Rypson a zine called Post, combining punk and artistic reflection (figure 13). Łukasz Ronduda describes their collective activities thus:

''"In their post-gallery, Gajewski and Rypson adopted the role of artists-managers, using progressive production and marketing strategies, characteristic for pop culture in developed societies, to support punk culture. They used them to fulfil a selfless artistic vision rather than, as managers in the West, to commercialise the punk movement and commodify its music, fashion and lifestyle."'' '''[30]'''

Let us note that in this interpretation, the Post Remont appears as a subject whose scope goes far beyond even the broadest formula of an artist-run space. It was, after all, a student gallery combining conceptual art and youth music with publishing (figure 14). At the same time, all these activities were made possible by state funding. The alliance ended abruptly with the introduction of martial law in Poland in December 1981 and Gajewski’s emigration to Amsterdam.

== DIY? ==
[[File:HOI - (14).png|thumb|right|14. Kryzys playing at Post during Henryk Gajewski’s exhibition ‘Other Book for Children’, 1979]]
In the West, the litmus test ultimately distinguishing truly independent artists from those collaborating with the establishment was traditionally the label a band was on. If it was with one of the majors, the band would face accusations of betraying its principles and selling out. But in communist-era Eastern Europe this benchmark didn’t apply. At this point, the mythology bound up with the key concepts that I wish to expand on in this essay becomes fully apparent. Did publishing a record on a state-owned label carry the same ideological meaning as publishing it on a major commercial one? I will try to answer this question, again citing several examples that will allow us to distinguish a range of hues far more varied than simple opposition-based contrast. Already in the USSR, traditionally perceived as the country most restrictive in its approach towards youth culture, we deal with a whole gamut of different policies. As will be demonstrated, the status of an officially recognised artist – one allowed to represent the country abroad and therefore also hold a passport or be able to publish – didn’t depend on artistic compromises but on the policy of the different republics.

In an essay accompanying a re-edition of Sergey Kuryokhin’s record titled, tellingly, Degrees of Freedom, Alex Kan reveals the scale of the different treatment of artists in the different parts of the USSR:
[[File:HOI - (15).png|thumb|right|15. Ganelin, Tarasov, Chekasin, Con Anima, LP issued by Melodia, 1976. Cover design by Eugenijus Cukermanas. Courtesy of [[Vladimir Tarasov]]]]
''"There was no way Melodiya would consider publishing avant-garde record of an underground musician. The fact that a few years earlier, in 1976, the Ganelin trio managed to get their magnificent Con Anima published on Melodiya, seemed a total aberration, an exception which just proved the rule. The trio lived and worked in a more liberal semi-Western Lithuania, and with Tarasov playing full time with the Lithuanian Philharmonic, Ganelin holding position of the music director at a prominent theater, and Chekasin teaching at a music school, they seemed and were much more established and respectable than a wayward pianist from a much more conservative Leningrad. Even for the trio it took five long years before their second release could see the light of day – the authorities at Melodia in Moscow, having realised the gaffe they made with Con Anima, put up stubborn resistance and Concerto Grosso was not published until 1981" (figure 15).'' '''[31]'''

The history of the recording and release of Degrees of Freedom aptly reflects the working conditions of progressive musicians in Leningrad. The album, with solo piano music, was recorded late at night in the studio of the Leningrad Institute of Film, Theatre and Music by a sound engineer that Kuryokhin was friends with. Smuggled to Britain, the material was released on vinyl by Leo Feigin, owner of Leo Records (figure 16).

[[File:HOI - (16).png|thumb|right|16. Andy Warhol holding the sleeve Sergey Kuryokhin’s LP ‘Ways of Freedom’, 1985. Courtesy of Joanna Stingray]]
There was no information on the cover about the circumstances of the original recording, but there was a disclaimer – ‘The musicians do not bear any responsibility for publishing these tapes’ – which suggested that the record was in fact a bootleg. In this context, it is worth examining another example of East-West music smuggling. Joanna Stingray came to Leningrad in 1984, During this trip she managed to meet numerous artists and scene members associated with the New Artists group, the Assa Gallery and the Leningrad Rock Club. Two years later, she published, on the Australian label Big Time, the compilation Red Wave: 4 Underground Bands From the USSR, with recordings by Akvarium, Kino, Alisa and Strange Games. At the same time, she made a documentary film featuring music videos by each of the bands and a presentation of the context in which they worked, including footage of Timur Novikov playing on the utiugon, a self-made instrument. On the cover, Stingray put the following note: ‘I have brought their music to the West, in hope of creating better understanding between people. MUSIC HAS NO BORDERS! (figure 17)’ '''[32]''' But the Soviet authorities thought otherwise and Stingray was punished for illegally exporting state property. As she recounted,

''"The tracks were recorded on reel-to-reel tapes that were outdated, large and unwieldy. I hid the paper with the lyrics under the lining of my boots and the tapes in a secret pocket of my jacket. I was smuggling the music out as if I were a drug courier. The safest route was from Leningrad to Finland because they didn't search people as thoroughly in the Leningrad airport as in Moscow. (…) When I returned to the Soviet Union, I first went to the VAAP (Soviet Copyright Agency). They gave me a long lecture and a paper to sign saying that I had smuggled the recordings out without the musicians' knowledge. I quickly agreed to sign it, gave VAAP the royalty fee and thought that the matter was settled. I returned to the States riding on a cloud and prepared for my wedding to Yury Kasparyan. But after that meeting they banned me from entering the Soviet Union for six months, with the result that I missed my own wedding."'' '''[33]'''

[[File:HOI - (17).png|thumb|right|17. Red Wave’ compilation, LP, Stingray Productions, 1986. Courtesy of Joanna Stingray]]
Record smuggling and bootlegging are a constant feature of stories about early new-wave music publishing. In Poland, for example, Kryzys (as well as Deadlock) had their first album released by Blitzkrieg Records, a Barclay label, founded to publish Polish and Chinese punk (the latter represented by ‘The Dragons’, which was probably a fictitious band). Robert Brylewski, the leader of Kryzys, reminisced,

''"There was a French guy, Marc Boulet, who travelled around the world, recording avant-garde bands … He cassette tape-recorded two bands, one of which practically didn’t exist and the other had no bass player, returned home and, riding on the wave of interest in Poland at the time, sold the material to the major label. Barclay Records. which issued it with a wrapper saying, “Solidarité avec le rock polonais” [Solidarity with Polish rock]. Boulet didn’t organise anything – he simply took out the tape recorder and recorded a rehearsal at the Amplitron student club … we organised the instruments themselves, using a metal ashtray from the hallway in lieu of cymbals. … The Kryzys album was actually a random compilation, and if you happen to find a copy somewhere, you’ll see that the songs I wrote are credited to someone called Zedlecki. Who the hell is Zedlecki?"'' '''[34]'''

Was hiding the name of the songs’ composer a deliberate act of camouflage, similar to Stingray’s disclaimer on the cover of Red Wave? It’s hard to say, but it seems unlikely, for Kryzys functioned at the time as more or less a ‘legal’ band, so it didn’t need to conceal its members’ identity. In 1982, the independent British label Fresh Records released Brygada Kryzys’s live album without any prior permission from the band and even unbeknownst to it, and only later sent an envoy on a legalisation mission (figure 18). According to Brylewski: ‘I wasn’t aware at all that someone had that tape. I only learned about the record when they brought it from Berlin. A guy came in a leather jacket, begging us to sign a backdated contract’. '''[35]''' It is worth noting that another record by the band was published in the same year by the state label Tonpress.

[[File:HOI - (18).png|thumb|right|18. Brygada Kryzys, Live, LP, Fresh Records, 1982. Courtesy of Robert Brylewski]]
This means that within two years Brylewski had his music published by a major Western record company, an independent Western label and an official domestic publisher. Another special case, and not only because their albums were released by the official Soviet record company, Melodiya, were the Ganelin Trio. They were among those avant-garde jazz musicians who were allowed to perform abroad. Their first album was issued in Poland following their appearance at the Jazz Jamboree festival in Warsaw in 1976, and here again the artists didn’t have much say about the publication (the song titles, for example, were invented by the Polish publisher). Ganelin, Chekasin and Tarasov started performing behind the Iron Curtain, and their concerts featured more and more multimedia elements. They were also aware of the work of Fluxus and John Cage, and it was these influences that inspired the group’s perhaps most radical performance, Household Music-Making in Nine Rooms, presented first at the Vilnius Philharmonic in 1979 and later also in Moscow, among other places (figure 19). The show proceeded in a surprising fashion. A live album released by Leo Records credits only Chekasin and Ganelin, ignoring Tarasov who was present throughout the performance – but sleeping. Tarasov himself described the event:

''"I sleep on a bed for the entire first act, and then I leap out of bed and grab the newspaper „Pravda” upside down. It was all very blatant, but we were not afraid. … Household Music-Making was absolutely a demonstration. If I remember, I sleep, then I jump up and we play all kinds of reworked songs, we eat sandwiches. I'll never forget, after the concert at the Vilnius Philharmonic people kept repeating, ‘You fellows will have problems, you will have problems’. They were afraid. They were afraid of us of course. But they were also pleased. Maybe they were jealous, that we let ourselves do these things. The same was true at the ‘Neringa’'' '''[36]''' ''where you sat at a table telling jokes, constantly glancing back, afraid, that someone might hear you. Of course, they heard everything.''" '''[37]'''

[[File:HOI - (19).png|thumb|right|19. [[Vladimir Tarasov]] during the performance of the Ganelin trio at Vilnius Philarmonic, 1979, photograph Gregory Talas. Courtesy of [[Vladimir Tarasov]]]]
Norman Weinstein, who wrote an introductory text for the album, noted,

''"You will hear an alarm clock sound at the conclusion of ‘Home Music Making’. Tarasov was on stage – sleeping! - throughout the Ganelin/Chekasin duets wakes up! This bit of theatre of the absurd accurately summarizes the inability of many critics to understand the Russianness of these masters whose every note demands we waken. But you may need no alarm. Just put this recording on your system and listen."'' '''[38]'''

Who was awakened in the first place was the audience of this unique performance. Inspired by performance art seen in the West and transplanted to the field of music, the action left a strong impact on another generation of Lithuanian artists, some of whom, like Česlovas Lukenskas of the group Post Ars, soon started their own intermedia activities. This transfer of ideas between seemingly separate worlds of music and the visual arts was made possible by the fact that the Ganelin Trio enjoyed the status of the official representation of Soviet free jazz.

In Poland, between 1982 and 1988, Andrzej Mitan, Cezary Staniszewski and Tomasz Wilmański ran the RR Gallery at the Remont club. Mitan had already been involved in the club’s concert activities. The death of composer Andrzej Bieżan in a car accident in 1983 became a pretext for realising a unique project, started by the posthumous publication of recordings of Bieżan’s music. Mitan did something unprecedented in the Eastern Bloc, publishing a series of long-playing records with avant-garde music in covers designed by leading Polish visual artists, all that in an interesting concatenation of official and unofficial circulations. The publishing process of the Alma Art series was highly complex and required negotiation with numerous institutions. The records were co-published by the Remont Club of New Music and the Polish Student Association’s Academic Bureau of Culture and Art, with funding from the organisation’s Information and Publishing Committee. Then Alma Art had to apply to the Ministry of Culture and Art for permission to publish the first batch of the records.

With endorsement from Józef Patkowski, then president of the Association of Polish Composers and founder of the Polish Radio’s Experimental Studio, permission was granted. The artists were allowed to use the Column Room of the Primate’s Palace in Warsaw for recordings, which they made using their own equipment. Another permission was required for the Pronit plastics producer in Pionki to start pressing the records; this was done during the weekend, outside the plant’s official schedule. As some copies had artist-made covers, [[Andrzej Mitan]] and Andrzej Zaremba worked hard to organise the necessary materials – such as 10 kilograms of red pencils, velour paper or photographic paper – despite severe market shortages. Finally, the materials were assembled. '''[39]''' Mitan describes the process in terms that bring to mind the parallel economy or collective working methods characteristic for the second or third circulations: ‘In a rented vacant flat at Sienna Street in Warsaw, I set up a manufactory workshop where the artists made the designer sleeves’. '''[40]'''

The records were then sold through standard distribution channels. The whole series included nine albums: Helmut Nadolski’s Jubilee Orchestra (cover by Andrzej Szewczyk), Andrzej Bieżan (Tadeusz Rolke), Andrzej Przybielski (Jerzy Czuraj), Janusz Dziubak (Edward Krasiński), Andrzej Mitan w Świętej Racji (Ryszard Winiarski), Krzysztof Knittel (Włodzimierz Borowski), Jarosław Kozłowski (Jarosław Kozłowski), and two records of Andrzej Mitan’s music (with covers by Cezary Staniszewski) (figure 20).

[[File:HOI - (20).png|thumb|right|20. Andrzej Mitan, ‘W świętej racji’ (Holy Reason), LP, Alma-Art, 1984. Design by Ryszard Winiarski. Collection of Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź]]
E. Bizottság was also very lucky in getting their two records released in communist Hungary. The band was formed by a group of artists associated with the Vajda Lajos Stúdió in Szentendre, an artistic community dating back to the late 1960s that was geared towards non-professional and amateur art. From the very beginning the group’s output was a particular mix of youth subcultures with Dadaist and Surrealist inspirations. The following account of the community’s beginnings in early 70s captures its institutional complexity and ideological specificity:

When László feLugossy had finally avoided conscription (but was ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment instead), István Ef Zámbó organised a happening on the occasion at the Szentendre market square. He read out his text (he had already started writing books and manifestoes at the time) and handed out various useless objects, provided by Lászlo Terebessy, to members of the audience. The event was called Nalaja Happening, referring to the group’s dadaistic-surrealistic language, called the nalaja. The happening was interrupted by the police, and several participants, including Ef Zámbó himself, were arrested and prosecuted. At this point begins the counterculture myth of Szentendre, although it was mainly a series of naive actions that helped the town’s young residents to ‘bypass’ the system. Since the authorities feared the young artists, they decided to legalise their activities in order to better control them.

The group founded a discussion club, according to the Aczél principles described earlier, and adopted the name of Lajos Vajda, a pre-WWII artist active in the town, thus emphasising the significance of the classic avant-garde in Szentendre. Exhibitions as well as works by amateur artists were qualified by the Népművelési Intézet [Culture Institute], responsible for community and cultural centres, amateur groups and the promotion of art, again according to the ‘three T’ formula. Since the qualifying committee members, who enjoyed respect in the community as expert figures, usually supported the Vajda Lajos Stúdió, the town authorities gave the artists a postindustrial space as a permanent exhibition venue where the Stúdió continues to function to this day. '''[41]'''

In 1980, continuing the countercultural-amateur traditions of the Szentendre artistic community, a group of artists who were eventually to form A. E. Bizottság decided – just for fun – to take part in a talent show. Their unexpected success drew the attention of the public and of other new wave bands, but also of filmmakers. In 1982, at the Balázs Béla Studio (BBS), the idea was conceived of making a documentary film about the new music scene, including bands such as Trabant, Balaton or VHK. Soon it was decided to focus on A. E. Bizottság alone, and since the band members were artists, the filmmakers thought to conduct an unusual experiment: the band was asked to make a film about itself, with funding provided by the studio. András Wahorn, as the group’s leading member and someone with filmmaking experience, became the project leader and the original script was co-written by László feLugossy. But the resulting footage was unusable and BBS decided to cancel the project. Help came from one of their filmmakers, Gábor Bódy, who liked the experiment enough to lend Wahorn his own video camera, a crew, and some money to finish the film.

[[File:HOI - (21).png|thumb|right|21. A. E. Bizottsag, ‘Kalandra Fel!!’, LP, 1983, Start Records. Design by Andras Wahorn. Courtesy of Andras Wahorn]]
That’s how Jégkrémbalett (Ice-cream Ballet, 1984) was made. At first, it enjoyed limited screening rights at home, but when, following Bódy’s inspiration, A. E. Bizottság were invited to the Berlin Film Festival, it was banned altogether. The band described their situation as ‘undorground’, a pun on the Hungarian word undor, ‘distaste’. '''[42]''' A year earlier, A. E. Bizottság were invited by Hungaroton, the official record company, to record an album. This had been provoked by a radio interview where the company’s head was asked why a band so popular still hadn’t released a record. The apparatchik replied, falsely, that work on the record was under way. Wahorn sensed an opportunity and decided to hold Hungaroton to their word. The impossible became possible and Kalandra Fel!!, featuring strikingly avant-garde music, was published in 1983 (figure 21).

== Twittering Machines ==
[[File:HOI - (22).png|thumb|right|22. ‘DDR von Unten’ compilation LP, 1983, Aggressive Rockproduktionen. Cover design by Rolf Kerbach. Archive of Alexander Pehlemann]]
[[Zwitschermaschine]] were a legendary DDR band formed by visual artists Cornelia Schleime and Rolf Kerbach with a member of the Prenzlauer Berg poetry scene, Sascha Anderson. The group’s compositions were featured on side A of East Germany’s first punk record, DDR von Unten / eNDe, which also included tracks by Sau-Kerle (the Schleim-Keim duo under a different name) (figure 22). Published in 1983 in West Germany by the independent label Aggressive Rockproduktionen, the violent and formally complex music of [[Zwitschermaschine]] was complemented by Anderson’s poetry, which produced a unique effect, especially in combination with the relatively straightforward punk of the Schleim-Keim duo. But punk was only of the band’s inspirations; others were the intermedia experiments of an earlier generation of DDR free jazz artists, where a liaison between the music and art scenes was provided by figures such as A. R. Penck or Helge Leiberg. '''[43]''' The album, as it will turn out much later, was not just an artistic event. In his speech upon receiving the Georg Büchner Prize in 1991, Wolf Biermann revealed that Anderson had been a Stasi informer since the 1970s. '''[44]''' Based on archival research, Seth Howes further complicates the picture, writing:

''"...the evidence suggests he employed dissemblance and misdirection to ensure the record made it to production. Anderson provided information on the record’s progenitors and recording sessions only after the fact, and staved off Stasi intervention by doling out incriminating information at strategic times. Though a representative instance of his unethical ‘art of betrayal’, in this particular case, he also managed to have the record released by providing just enough information on its participants to placate his dissatisfied handlers, but little enough to ensure the project continued. Paying for the record project’s completion by betraying its participants, Anderson achieved the original goal: the release of a punk record of Eastern provenance in the West."'' '''[45]'''

At this point, all the previously mentioned divisions collapse. The last act of the ‘war’ between the regime and the punk movement took place in a recording studio. The release in the West (from smuggled tapes) of a music album recorded by an East Berlin band was made possible by an artist who was a Stasi informer. So wasn’t the record partly at least a tool of the secret police (even if we don’t know what their motivations might have been)? And who is the underground? The title of a Sau-Kerle track on DDR von Unten is intriguing in this context: Untergrund Ist Strategie.

== Underground Is a Strategy ==

The panorama sketched above is naturally a selective one. My goal has not been to describe all circumstances but rather to find examples that might revise our understanding of key concepts. But what emerges from this collection of paradoxical accounts? Above all, a narrative about the different dynamics of liberalisation and their impact on specific countercultural practices. We have seen how Western terminology was adapted for local purposes, yielding disagreements between the leaders of the different groups. But the examples cited in this essay do reflect some general principles. Firstly, as noticed by Yurchak, the underground preferred to avoid a collision course with the state; as a result, political dissidents and groups with clearly defined political goals formed alliances with the independents only under immediate duress. In all other cases, the opportunities offered by the state, whether in terms of infrastructure or other, were eagerly exploited. The enemy was not so much a specific socio-political regime as the establishment, however broadly defined.

But there is also the other side of the coin – the Eastern Bloc countries’ policies towards punk. On the one hand, punks in DDR were persecuted, on the other we have the perestroika and the independents, who came to embody political changes as much as party leaders. The history of institutions and distribution networks described herein is a history of concessions made to pacify or better control the youth. After all, one of the reasons for organising the Jarocin Rock Festival was the possibility of taking pictures of most Polish punks. This element poses significant limitations in the research of ‘independent’ circulations. The story of Sascha Anderson shows how even crucial moments in the history of counterculture may have been orchestrated or inspired, directly or not, by those in power.

In fact, Anderson isn’t the only one whose biography had to be revised after the transformation. Gábor Bódy and Egon Bondy were secret police informers too. All three were central figures in their milieus, so it is safe to assume that they had been recruited partly because of what they could do. This is a third element that needs to be added to those listed by Jonathan Bolton in the passage quoted at the beginning of this essay. Besides official documents, we should not only research the underground mythologies, but also look closely at the other side of the coin, for the underground can also be a synonym of the group guarding the establishment’s hegemony.

== References ==
'''[1] ''' Jonathan Bolton, Worlds of Dissent. Charter 77, the Plastic People of the Universe, and Czech Culture under Communism (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2012) 133.

'''[2] ''' Alexei Yurchak, ‘Gagarin and the Rave Kids: Transforming Power, Identity, and Aesthetics in Post-Soviet Nightlife’ in: Adele Marie Barker, ed., Consuming Russia: Popular Culture, Sex, and Society since Gorbachev (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999) 80.

'''[3] ''' The phrase itself is by William S. Burroughs, and the leader of The Fugs used it as a motto for the magazine Fug You.

'''[4] ''' Cf. Milan Knížák, Písně kapely Aktual, Martin Machovec and Jaroslav Riedel, eds. (Praha: MAŤA, 2003) 39.

'''[5] ''' Ivan Martin Jirous, ‘Report on the Third Czech Musical Revival’, transl. Paul Wilson, in David Crowley, Daniel Muzyczuk eds. Notes From the Underground (Łódź: Muzeum Sztuki, 2016).

'''[6]''' Ibid..

'''[7] ''' Cited in Robert Gildea, James Mark and Anette Warring, eds., Europe’s 1968.Voices of Revolt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 188.

'''[8] ''' Quoted in Gábor Danyi, Sztuka obdarowywania. Model dyseminacyjny wczesnego samizdatu na przykładzie węgierskiego czasopisma artystycznego [The art of giving. The dissemination model of early samizdat on the example of a Hungarian art periodical], paper presented at ‘Solidarity. New Approaches to the Analysis of a Social Movement’, a seminar at Collegium Civitas, Warsaw, 17 November 2014, http://solidarnosc.collegium.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Danai-paper-17-11-2014.pdf – accessed July 2016.

'''[9] ''' Martin Machovec, ‘Ideological Orientation and Political Views and Standpoints of Representatives of Czech Underground Culture, 1969–1989 (Underground and Dissidence – Allies or Enemies)’, eSamizdat, 2010–2011 (VIII) 183.

'''[10]''' ‘Pisałem dla tych chłopców z undergroundu! Z Egonem Bondym rozmawiają Václav Burian i Leszek Engelking’, in: Egon Bondy, Dzisiaj wypiłem dużo piw, transl. Leszek Engelking (Kraków: Miniatura, 1997) 165–166.

'''[11] ''' It is worth noting yet another connotation: in his 1987 book, The Velvet Prison: Artists under State Socialism, Miklós Haraszti used the term ‘velvet prison’ as a metaphor for the constraints faced by artists in the Eastern Bloc. The cell was lined with velvet if the artist didn’t express political views inconsistent with the official Party line.

'''[12] ''' Miroslav Vaněk, Byl to jenom rock’n’roll? (Praha: Academia, 2010). 59.

'''[13] ''' Remigiusz Kasprzycki, Dekada buntu. Punk w Polsce i krajach sąsiednich w latach 1977–1989 (Kraków: Libron, 2013) 143.

'''[14] ''' Miroslav Vaněk, Ostrůvky svobody: Kulturní a občanské aktivity mladé generace v 80. letech v Československu (Praha: ÚSD AV ČR Votobia, 2002) 188.

'''[15] ''' Cf. documents published by the International Labour Organization, http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:50002:0::NO::P50002_COMPLAINT_TEXT_ID:2901573 – accessed July 2016.

'''[16] ''' M. R. Makowski, M. Szymański, Obok albo ile procent Babilonu? (Katowice: Manufaktura Legenda, 2010) 233.

'''[17]''' Mikołaj Lizut, PrL – Punk Rock Later (Warszawa: Sic!, 2003) 45.

'''[18]''' Paweł Konjo Konnak, ‘Tranzytoryjna formacja Totart w drodze do Nieśmiertelności i Wolności’ in Krzysztof Skiba, Jarosław Janiszewski, Paweł Konjo Konnak, Artyści wariaci anarchiści. Opowieść o gdańskiej alternatywie lat 80-tych (Warszawa: Narodowe Centrum Kultury, 2011) 154.

'''[19]''' Timothy W. Ryback, Rock Around the Bloc. A History of Rock Music in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (New York–Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) 89.

'''[20] ''' Théo Lessour, Berlin Sampler. From Cabaret to Techno: 1904–2012, a Century of Berlin Music (Berlin: Ollendorff Verlag, 2012) 225.

'''[21] ''' Anderson, dir. Annekatrin Hendel, 2014.

'''[22] ''' Susanne Binas, ‘East-West Breakthroughs: The Significance of the GDR Pop Underground Today’ in Edward Larkey, ed,. A Sound Legacy? Music and Politics in East Germany (Washington, DC: American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, 2000) 29.

'''[23] ''' Cf. Ronald Galenza & Heinz Havemeister, ‘Either/Or in No-man's-land. Punk in the GDR 1984–89: Between Repression and Seduction’ in Michael Boehlke and Henryk Gericke, eds., ‘Too Much Future’ Ost Punk. Punk in der DDR 1979–89 (Berlin: Künstlerhaus Bethanien, 2005) 97.

'''[24]''' Anna Szemere, Up from the Underground. The Culture of Rock Music in Postsocialist Hungary (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001) 127–128.

'''[25]''' Cf. György Galántai and Júlia Klaniczay, eds., Artpool. The Experimental Art Archive of East-Central Europe (Budapest: Artpool, 2013) 84.

'''[26] ''' A secret-police file on the Artpool founder, György Galántai, codenamed ‘Painter’, explains why: ‘For Galántai's competition several "works of art" (in reality plain botch-works) had been provided that are politically problematic, destructively criticize and, moreover – primarily some of those made by Hungarian "artists" – mock and attack our state and social order as well as the state security organs. Galántai was unable to separate these pieces from the rest of the works, which most probably would have been against his intentions anyway’; Artpool…, op. cit., 268.

'''[27] ''' Konstanty Usenko, Oczami radzieckiej zabawki (Wołowiec: Czarne, 2012) [e-book].

'''[28] ''' Timur Novikov, ‘Autobiography’, http://www.timurnovikov.ru/docs/books/57_autobiography_engl.pdf – accessed 30 July 2016.

'''[29] ''' Usenko, op. cit.

'''[30] ''' Łukasz Ronduda, Sztuka Polska lat 70. Awangarda (Warszawa, Jelenia Góra: Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Polski Western, 2009) 367.

'''[31] ''' Alex Kan, ‘The Ways of Freedom’, in: Sergey Kuryokhin, The Ways of Freedom, CD (London: Leo Records, 2001).

'''[32] ''' Red Wave, LP, Stingray Productions, 1986.

'''[33] ''' Denis Boyarinov, ‘Joanna Stingray, a California Girl in the U.S.S.R.’, The Moscow Times http://www.themoscowtimes.com/arts_n_ideas/article/joanna-stingray-a-california-girl-in-the-ussr/562009.html – accessed July 2016.

'''[34]''' Robert Brylewski, Kryzys w Babilonie. Autobiografia. Rozmawia Rafał Księżyk (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2012) 100–102.

'''[35] ''' Ibid., p. 121.

'''[36] ''' The Neringa Hotel restaurant was famous for its free jazz concerts from the late 1960s.

'''[37]''' ‘We Created Our Own Language. Saulius Žukas interview with Vladimir Tarasov, Vilnius, summer, 2007’, in: Vladimir Tarasov: Between Sound and Image (Vilnius: Baltos Lankos, 2008) 22.

'''[38] ''' Norman Weinstein, ‘Music Begins When Definitions are Silenced’, in: Golden Years of the Soviet New Jazz, Vol IV, CD (London: Leo Records, 2003) 13.

'''[39]''' Danuta Bierzańska, ‘Nic nie jest niemożliwe. Dość szybki utwór – na kilka orkiestr i wielu solistów. Muzyka, słowa i nabijanie tempa: Andrzej Mitan i Andrzej Zaremba’, Tytuł roboczy, 2009 (029–030) 73–81.

'''[40] ''' Andrzej Mitan, ‘Wywiad z samym sobą’, in: Tytuł roboczy (Warsaw: Galeria 2b, 2008) 15.

'''[41] ''' Katalin Balázs, ‘Sztuka efemeryczna i kontrkultura. Na przykładzie wybranych zjawisk z węgierskiej historii instytucji kultury’ [Ephemeral art and counterculture. On the example of selected phenomena from the history of Hungarian cultural institutions] in Sztuka i dokumentacja, no. 7, 37.

'''[42] ''' Cf. Szemere, op. cit., 16.

'''[43] ''' Christoph Tannert, ‘Vierte Wurzel aus Zwitschermaschine’ in Ronald Galenz and Heinz Havemeister, eds., Wir wollen immer artig sein... Punk, New Wave, HipHop, Independent-Szene in der DDR 1980–1990 (Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf Verlag, 1999) 196.

'''[44] ''' Cornelia Schleime, ‘“Killersatellit” and Randerscheinung Jeder Satellit hat einen Killersatelliten. If Only We'd Taken it Literally’ in ‘Too Much Future’ Ost Punk…, op. cit., 177.

'''[45] ''' Seth Howes, ‘“Killersatellit” and Randerscheinung: Punk and the Prenzlauer Berg’ in German Studies Review, Vol. 36, No. 3 (October 2013) 583–584.

[[Category:Czechoslovakian Contributions]] [[Category:Russian Contributions]] [[Category:Hungarian Contributions]] [[Category:East German Contributions]] [[Category:Polish Contributions]]

Pffft…!

2018-06-05T11:11:28Z

Diogo: Created page with "Jürgen Gutjahr, called „chA°s“, was the singer of Leipzigs first punk band Wutanfall, formed in 1981, and because singer were seen by the authorities as the (ideological..."

Jürgen Gutjahr, called „chA°s“, was the singer of Leipzigs first punk band Wutanfall, formed in 1981, and because singer were seen by the authorities as the (ideological) leader of the band he had to suffer the most under the Stasi repression of the early punk scene. Tired of this, but also tired of the limits of punk rock as such, he was looking for something new. He found it in industrial noise, inspired by the likes of SPK or Controlled Bleeding. With Wutanfall bass player Frank Zappe, Holger Luckas (later an important radio journalist on DT64) and the artist Hans-Jürgen Schulze he found the core of Pffft…!, a project which lasted until 1987, when most of the members had left the country. Even amongst these underground weirdos Schulze was a special case of his own: when he was a student at the Hochschule für Graﬁk und Buchkunst (HGB, i.e. Academy of Fine Arts) in Leipzig, Schulze had already polemicized against »slimy gits and conformist, paleslugs«, which was rather harmless, politically; but it did isolate him. Only when painter and HGB professor Hartwig Ebersbach, whose ﬁrst student was Schulze, recommended him, was he given a creative break. Had Schulze been approached by those in charge politically in Leipzig, his keen interest in reform could have taken effect and made the HGB a pioneering institution of an exploded standard conception of Socialist Realism as early as 1981. Schulze had the intellectual wherewithal and the energy to proclaim a constant breaking of taboos, and, with Gruppe 37,2 (Group 37.2), he took painting, improvisation, jazz, punk, performance and theory to a landslide victory. He was serious about realizing the utopia of »the social role of art« (Concept for »scientiﬁc-artistic work in socialist production«) and used the seductive power of the word to lecture for hours about labour and liberty, about property and social radiance.
When Pffft…!, with Hans J. Schulze, Frank Zappe and Jürgen Gutjahr (plus guests „Tümpel” and Karin Wieckhorst), came on stage at the Intermedia I festival in Coswig in 1985, the place was on ﬁre. Machine noise and rude banging on iron parts ripped into people’s senses, whether they liked it or not. Schulze plucked ideological rubbish from the Party newspaper Neues Deutschland, reciting headlines, ﬁrst with the intonation of a newscaster, then increasingly aggressively. Finally he exhausted himself, bellowing like a dictator. The Stasi informers in the audience were tougher than Schulze thought and stayed until the end - and after he had fallen off the stage, they simply took him away.

[[Category: East German Figures]]

Czechmate: The Frustrations of Sharing a Party Line

2018-06-05T11:09:53Z

Diogo: /* CZECHMATE: THE FRUSTRATIONS OF SHARING A PARTY LINE */

In 1980, writing for the New Musical Express, Chris Bohn travelled to [[:Category:Czechoslovakian Contributions|Czechoslovakia]] and [[:Category:Hungarian Contributions|Hungary]] in a “Journey through the Curtain to the Forbidden Zones of Eastern Rock”, and wrote a two-part piece called “Trans Europe Express”. This is the first part, dedicated to the Czech scene, and it was originally featured in NME's 10th January 1981 edition. Reprinted with the permission of Time Inc. Special thanks to Keiko Yoshida and Chris Bohn.

== CZECHMATE: THE FRUSTRATIONS OF SHARING A PARTY LINE ==
“Not all that is not forbidden is allowed here” - Czech judge, 1967
[[File:Czechmate NME COVER.jpg|thumb|right|NME Cover - Trans Europa Express]]

THE gaunt Ostbahnhof station in Berlin's Russian sector is a sombre introduction to the East, but its Third Man gloom is offset by the bustling companionship of travellers waiting for the Prague-Budapest express.

Westerners, me included, can't hide an aura of uneasy anticipation that manifests itself in nervous glances from the clock to the train indicator; not that there's any real threat – just a feeling brought on by the sudden, alienating loss of colour on crossing the wall. Eventually relieved by the train's arrival, I enter a compartment full of young army conscripts, who inquisitively look me over before continuing their raucous replay of Chaplin's Modern Times screened on East German TV the night before.

They were really tickled by the scene in which Char-lee is nailed by the cops for political agitation when all he did was innocently pick up a red flag fallen from the back of a lorry. And just when they're looking forward to next week's The Gold Rush, someone dampens their spirits by reminding them of a parade the same night...

Exit soldiers, enter a sailor and his friend heading for a week in Budapest. Why Budapest? It's a lot more relaxed there, they reply, the next best thing to travelling West.

“East Germany one big jail”, murmurs one sullenly. And for young people it's a long term sentence (until retirement when you can finally leave the country) rendered all the more frustrating by their ready access to West German media. Eager to talk music, the duo regularly watch the West German marathon Rockpalast, which brings them as close as they can get to live gigs by the likes of Patti Smith and The Police.

Leaving the cocoon-like confort of the compartment, I say goodbye to the Germans and whisper a tentative hello to Prague.

ON the surface Prague has remained unshaken by the momentous events that have unsettled its citizens since the war. Neither the uprising against the Nazis in 1945 nor the Communist takeover three years later did much damage to the city, and whatever scars were left by the Soviet led invasion of '68 have long since healed.

Which is probably why it's difficult to equate this beautiful medieval city with its status as a capital of one of the most repressive regimes inside the Eastern Bloc (directly behind East Germany in terms of its loyalty to Moscow). The feeling persists in the city's well stocked shopping centres. No lengthy food queues or empty shelves here. Bohemia as always been a wealthy, industrious province and its economic status hasn't changed much.

If the Czech communists have learnt one thing, it's that a well-fed nation is easier to control than a hungry one – as events in Poland attest. More fruitful then, as one Czech dissident pointed out, to play Big Sister dispensing sugar-coated pills than Big Brother waving a heavy stick; but the essence is the same: COMPLETE CONTROL.

And the mistake Alexander Dubcek, Party First Secretary and inspiration behind the short-lived thaw, was allowing it to slip away; or so Moscow interpreted the increased freedoms he gave the Czech people.

Today Dubcek's name has been scrubbed from the tourist guide's book and he's never mentioned officially.

One of the more open manifestations of Czechoslovakia's short-lived “liberty” was a beat boom that echoed Western Europe's. Likewise it blossomed into psychedelia, with bands like The Primitives leading the way. When the authorities started showing interest, their guitarist Josef Janicek left to form [[Plastic People of the Universe|Plastic People]], Czechoslovakia's most notorious band, who helped form a bond between the rock and intellectual movements in the dissident artist group Charter 77.

The music's uncontrollable nature inevitably meant the clampdown, thereby forcing any worthwhile bands underground. (All this is well documented in the superb booklet accompanying Plastic People's western-produced album “Egon Bondy's Happy Hearts Club Banned”.)

[[File:PLASTIC person Josef Janicek.jpg|thumb|"Plastic Person" Josef Janicek]]
The authorities acknowledge youth demand for music by licensing their own bands, but they're predictably awful. And naturally the kids aren't fooled – I mean who could take any band seriously which sought party approval, thereby allowing them to dictate song content, onstage behaviour and even the running order of records.

The reverse side of the coin is, obviously, that musicians want to work and the more purely instrumental bands aren't likely to upset the authorities anyway. Consequently jazz rock fusion music was popular for a while in the 70's, until new wave shot some vigour into the best of the older bands.

The official Czech label Supraphon does license a few Western records, like Elton John, Santana and fusion bands like Mahavishnu Orchestra and Weather Report – but only after Czech emigres Jan Hammer and Miroslav Vitous, respectively, moved on.

With practically nothing worth listening to on the official scene, kids naturally look elsewhere for entertainment. And only when you join them in the search do you realise the depth of repression in Czechoslovakia – and just how vital a media pop music is. Otherwise why are the authorities so frightened by it? Why should owning a Plastic People album mean trouble? How come bands unwilling to cramp their expression in official channels risk persecution and imprisonment?

In the West pop music might have been irretrievably corrupted by the twin figureheads of trash aesthetics and commerce, but behind the Iron Curtain playing it is something akin to a mission. And going by all accounts hundreds of bands do, only they're forced so far underground they're practically impossible to find.

SUNDAY is a sacred day in Prague. It's the day when some workers, who've spent the week conserving their energy, earn twice as much doing private jobs at black market rates. It's also a good day to go shopping. Blindfold yourself, spin round three times and hey presto! The record mart.

Stretching along a muddy ledge in one of the city's suburban foothills, up to a 1000 people meet here weekly to buy, sell or swap Western Records. It's almost a family outing and a carnival atmosphere surrounds the morning. Parents root out illicit jazz or James Last records; young kids display pop posters from Western magazines; their older brothers and sisters check out the week's disco, heavy metal or Europop bargains.

Name your poison and someone's likely to have it.

There's always a brisk trade in Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart records (two important formative influences on the Czech rock scene), Lou Reed and Velvet Underground are popular too, as are freeform and experimental albums, and – yes, it's spread this far – heavy metal and pomp.

These days there's always a bunch of eager hopefuls waiting for new wave and punk records. Someone I met had bought PIL's “The metal box” in its original canister, and coming up the road is someone with albums by The Stranglers and Wire to offload.

The market is largely a meeting place for people selling or exchanging unwanted or taped records sent by Western relatives. But there are of course plenty of opportunists who, through illicit currency dealings, collect the marks and dollars necessary to make bulk mail order purchases, subsequently to sell the records at heavily inflated prices. Similarly, other traders lower the market's innocent standing by selling jeans and watches.

They're the people the police first pounce on first during their periodic raids. But sensing perhaps the secret police or informers in the crowd, the market like as not shifts to a new location before everyone is busted. And unless anyone's foolish enough to be caught with a handful of the same album, the police usually let casual buyers go.

Maybe it's their idea of a safety valve...

Western records are a valuable source of information to be referred to, not to be copied. Czechoslovakia has established over the past decade rich, vital traditions of its own anyway, so anything new from the West acts more as a spur than booty. If you need any proof look to Plastic People.

Back in the 60's when psychedelic bands spouted magic without really understanding it, PP, and their forerunners The Primitives had the advantage of living in a city with a much more powerful magical presence than San Francisco. Alchemists occupied a street of their own, Golden Lane, winding down from the castle where, incidentally, Franz Kafka lived for a while. (The useful official guide denies the street's magic connections.) The famous European magician Paracelsus passed through Prague, too.

It seeped into the city's music, any airy leanings counterbalanced – in Plastic People's case – by their love of The Velvet Underground's raw-edged guitar. Their first album was written with the 47 year old poet / writer Egon Bondy, who has been a constant thorn in the establishment paw for decades.

A by all accounts bizarre figure, he reinterpreted the philosophy of the world from a Marxist viewpoint in six volumes. But his views were too extreme for the official party line.

Additionaly, his challengingly heavy scatological lyrics, which confronted orthodox puritanism head on, helped earn Plastic People an almost sub-human reputation with the authorities, who called the band pigs and animals as part of the campaign which led to the arrest and imprisonment of some members and followers.

I met of of these “pigs”, Josef Janicek, for a short conversation. A quiet, introverted man, our discussion is hampered by my lack of Slovak and his poor English making it difficult to stick to the agreed subject of music. Understandably, Janicek and the band are pissed off that they're always treated on a political level, often leaving their music untouched.

But it's impossible to talk round the realities of their persecution. Even as we're talking, the police might be checking to see if he's at home.

He tells me about the last concert Plastic People played almost a year ago. “We found a house in the country, about 150km from Prague, and maybe about 200 people showed up. We started playing at 10pm and it was over by 1am and everybody went home to Prague. The police didn't find out about it until two weeks later, and when they did, they destroyed the house. They said it was too close to a power station and it posed a security threat, but that wasn't true”.

He adds optimistically: “but there are plenty more houses”.

The authorities' persistent harassment of the Plastic People highlights their fear of music. “They're afraid of art that isn't under their wings”, Janicek concurs. “They know that culture has a very big influence on young people”.

The accumulative effects of arrests and busts manifested themselves in the far more introverted “Passion play”, their second album released in the West. Its deeply rooted pessimism contrasts heavily with the joyous, liberating music of their first album. But, as one observer points out, it's difficult to criticise it on that basis unless you've run the same gauntlet of experiences.

He says “Continually oppressed by the police and ignored by most of society, The Plastic People transferred the sacrifice of themselves into the Easter story of the Crucifixion of Christ. Their genuine hurt appeared on the record and lots of friends outside Czechoslovakia said the record was too depressive. But they should compare it to the reality of PP's situation.

“The radical left is mostly theory” he continues, “and if these radicals got in touch with this system, they might feel as beaten and as down as the Plastic People of this period”.

Fortunately, these days Josef is more content, his interest in music rekindled by the unlikely pairing of punk and Irish folk music.

THERE'S a popular joke in Czechoslovakia that goes something like this:

Policeman: Hey, chief, I just found this penguin on the street, what should I do with it?

Chief (exasperated): Well, take it to the zoo.

(Later on his way home, the chief sees the man still has the bird)

Chief: I thought I told you to take it to the zoo!

Policeman: I did Sir, and now we're going to the movies...

The state's unnaturally large police force is the butt of the sort of stupid jokes English people make about the Irish. But in this case deservedly. However, the joke can get sour...

Walking through Wenceslas Square, a policeman stops me for a spot check, asking for identity papers. When I start talking English he waves me on with a smile. Other people, I'm told, have spent 24 hours fretting in cells for not having their papers with them.

At least you can see the uniformed variety. Not so easy to spot secret policemen or informers in public places, though.

One lunchtime I go into a pub with friends met over in Prague. Suddenly, my drinking partner's face blanches and he abruptly ushers us out again. “What's up?”, I ask. “I just recognised a secret policeman” he replies. There's no problem, he insists, but it's safer not to be seen in the company of strangers.

Laughed at and reviled though they may be, they're also feared. Their unpopularity can work in favour of would-be-victims, as most everybody is unwilling to cooperate – excepting loyal party members and their ilk.

It is help not so much volunteered out of compassion for the victim, as also looking after number one.

Czech people, I'm repeatedly told, are wary of signing anything that commits them to a point of view which might be used against them later – be they council officials asked to support their belief in an artist, say, on paper, or a police witness asked to sign statements. Who knows when the wind might change direction? The rash of executions which followed party purges in the early 50's are not yet forgotten.

PUBLIC TIMIDITY combined with friendly co-operation saved one band called Extempore from a similar fate as Plastic People. The police intended to nail them at a concert, but they couldn't get any reliable witnesses to press complaints against them – a popular one being bad language or lewd stage movements.

Extempore were lucky that time, but living under constant fear of prosecution hasn't done their sanity much good, as their leader Mikolas (saxist, vocalist, guitarist and writer) states. “Sometimes I feel like I'm walking on the edge between lunacy and laughter”.

Describing themselves as a rock and jokes band, with a strong dada base, their music is in the Czech tradition of merrymaking balanced by passionate soloing and a sardonic line in cutting lyrics. All in their late 20's, the band admit that the scarcity of gigs – a dozen a year is rarely reached – tends to turn the music in on itself.

[[File:EXTEMPORE drummer Mirko.jpg|thumb|right|Extempore's drummer Mirko]]
But new wave / punk influences checked their more introverted moments and their latest set – based on a song cycle called “15 dreams of the city inhabitant” is an exhilarating fusion of tense thrashes, chants and sweet, controlled moments. The songs, according to an English speaking colleague of the band, are “grotesque... full of black humour, absurdity, blasphemy, anarchy and... cryptograms”.

They preview the concert to an audience of one – me – in a bedroom that serves as a rehearsal room. His rapturous description proves right. Check the horrible surrealist passage from “Under the tram”: I want to vomit / When I look at myself / I have neither arms nor legs / I am completely helpless”.

It's not one for the watchdogs of socialist realism who demand greater respect for the human condition; in this messy torso they're not likely to see a metaphor for modern man in Prague.

Extempore are eager to be heard by anyone and one evening my presence constitutes just the audience they need to run through their set as if they're playing a concert hall. Despite the cramped surroundings of the bedroom, the music pours out of them, like water from a burst dam. The “concert” over, they feel as if all those months rehearsing haven't been in vain.

Yet even here in their own home they are not totally secure. “Someone might call the police to complain about the noise”, one says. It's a common enough occurrence for bands in England, but when such a call could be used as an excuse for searching the place, bands must treat their neighbors a little more warily.

THE COMMUNIST revolution in Czechoslovakia didn't so much do away with class differences or inequalities as reverse them. Thus, in education children of traditional working class parents would have a better chance at winning a place in further education than the children of intellectuals or the likes of school teachers – whatever their respective qualifications. Similarly people find themselves promoted less on the basis of ability than their loyalty to the Party, which leads to a whole new set of antagonisms, especially in the cultural field.

Someone told me that the head of West Bohemia's biggest library used to be a tin miner who probably hadn't read anything outside party manuals. While there's an element of bitterness in what he said, imagine how a band would feel auditioning before a committee as equally well qualified.

But education poses a thornier problem. As in the West colleges turn out even more graduates unable to find suitable work. Yet because unemployment doesn't officially exist in Czechoslovakia, they're forced into intellectually unsatisfying jobs, where they grow increasingly despondent. Classed as intellectual invalids, they're lumped together with the malcontents and vagrants as potential troublemakers. Some are forced into action, to join dissident groups like Charter 77; others just give up.

But the strongest bond between workers and intellectuals is forged by their common enemy. Thus, the union of rock and roll and the intellectuals of Charter 77 has done more to break down distinctions than an unfair education system. One observer perhaps put it more succintly: “Plastic People's music describes equally the feeling of intellectual invalids and workers living outside society. Rebels are always beyond class – isolation always breaks down barriers between people”.

OF PRAGUE'S three known punk bands, Zikkurat, Dog Soldiers and Energy G, I only got to meet the students of the last. From a strong middle class background – three of their fathers are architects – I sense some resentment towards them. “Well, in Czechoslovakia there are only a very limited number of people playing electric instruments, because they're so expensive”, says a critic. “So if you have a rich father, it's naturally easier to get hold of one”.

More importantly perhaps, they have easier access to information and it depends on how they use it.

They might argue – and in fact they don't – that they've got more to lose through their involvement in music. As it is, they formed the band last April as a hobby and they were invited to play a few gigs two weeks later. “We forgot everything we learnt”, says singer Krystof. “It was terrible. They turned the electricity off after two numbers”.

The night I catch them rehearsing in a deep basement that, like the truly subterranean underground train system, will double as a bomb shelter in an emergency, they gamely run through a set composing of Brit-Punk derivatives and a version of “Ulster Boy” that would have put some Sham performances to shame. “I know what you'll say” anticipates Krystof, “You've heard it all before.” Didn't say a word.

“Well, we have plans for the music to change this winter. I know that we're only playing very fast, very hard punk now, but before this group some of us had never played”.

Punk is nevertheless a suitable medium for channeling the frustrations of living in a harsh, totalitarian state, and they do enliven it all with a touch of humour – especially when Krystof starts reeling off the band's subject matter: boredom; Prague being a very dirty town; the easiness with which people accept their lot – all figure strongly.

It's as he's suggesting they have more of a reason to protest than the punks of Western Europe, and in a sense he would be right. It's impossible to take seriously the rantings of our Oi! brigade. Protesting about boredom actually means something when most of your gigs are played in a basement. At least their music is charged with the energy and conviction to support their statements...

Later, on the streets again, their drummer – true to form, a class clown – yells out “George Davis is innocent!” Slowly, he turns to me and asks “er, who is George Davis?”

Forget George Davis, friend. You've got more worthwhile campaigns at home.

ANOTHER NIGHT, another basement, another dress rehearsal. This time I'm taken on a tour through Prague's narrow, winding streets past the secret police HQ to see The Classic Rock and Roll Band. On the way we meet a gangly, lank haired youth proudly clutching a new horde of records. Furtively looking over his shoulder, he pulls back the bag to reveal Joy Division's “Closer”, “Stations of the cross” and The Plasmatics record. An unlikely mixture, but it's nice to know that tribal barriers have yet to be erected here.

[[File:CLASSIC ROCK AND ROLL BAND.jpg|thumb|right|The Classic Rock and Roll Band]]
The Classic Rock and Roll Band are ironically a contemporary outfit some 20 years too late. Rock and Roll is relatively new to Czechoslovakia. They were still suffering from the rigours of its most brutal Stalinist period when Elvis Presley scandalised the Western world. Little chance of him getting any exposure in the Eastern Bloc then, in the pre-satellite days of easier media manipulation.

Predictably denounced as fascist in the 50's, rock and roll got lost in the noise of big beat during the more liberal 60's, only to resurface in 1968 with the Classic Rock and Roll Band. It took them some ten years and the loss of their founder / singer – who defected during a Spanish holiday – to really break through, but these days they enjoy both a semi-legal and alternative status.

Good rock and roll performed with the authenticity that Shakin' Stevens brings it, if not with his flair, always finds a market, especially in one so starved as Czechoslovakia's.

I ARRIVE in Prague in time for one of its periodic clampdowns, meaning even the licensed bands are having problems getting gigs. Worse, the annual Autumn Prague Jazzdays concert, which was to feature Western bands like This Heat, was frozen out by impossible conditions imposed by the cultural authorities.

All bands had to supply lyrics, running orders, between song patter and a description of their stage act beforehand, while semi-pro or amateur bands had to find sponsors. If the conditions weren't met the organisers would have to answer for them. Naturally, they called the whole thing off, so the sum total of Western bands who have played in Prague in the 70's still stands at Nice, Blossom Toes, Colliseum, The Art Bears and Suzy Quatro.

Conditions are bad already to kill promising careers. I heard of one musician who got so disillusioned with the effort he sold his guitar and bought a car instead. An art school styled duo have fashioned an album's worth of material and designed a sleeve, knowing that neither will ever get published.

Other pioneering groups of the 70's have since split or broke out. Plastic People contemporaries [[DG 307|DG307]] lost their lead singer to Sweden. Another band, [[Kilhets]], achieved a swift notoriety with their performances between '78-9. Like many Czech groups their concerts featured aspects of performance art; they all wore masks, but partly for security reasons. They used to open their sets with ten minutes of silence - “A natural form of expression for me” claims their leader Peter Krecan. One night he was irritated by the docility of the audience and started calling them animals. Unfortunately, the police heard about it, and when Krecan got the wind of the news he fled to Munich. He's not at all happy in the West, but we'll go into that in a future issue.

A name constantly cropping up in musical conversations is middled-aged accordionist Jiri Cert / Jim the Devil, who apparently writes extraordinary proletarian songs which he performs with stunning compassion accompanied by heart-rending accordion playing.

[[File:FROG's Phlegm.jpg|thumb|right|Frog's Phlegm]] Hundreds more bands will inevitably go undocumented; most will remain unknown to Czechs, never mind us. But no matter how tough the authorities get, regardless of victimisations, more and more will keep popping up.

In Czechoslovakia both the spirit and the flesh are willing.

While rock exists there the regime will never feel totally secure. The only sleep a totalitarian state gets comes after all alien ideas have been crushed; the very foundation of totalitarianism is a purity of thought unsullied by anyone else's. If you don't think music has any political value, just look at the effort such states make to stamp it out. They might succeed in driving it underground – and consequently strengthening it – but they'll never snuff it out completely. Rock's importance in the East is its ready accessibility.

Prohibited books, one observer tells me, are typewritten, beautifully hand-bound and illegally circulated in necessarily limited numbers. A good rock song, however, takes a matter of minutes to communicate its message, and it's easy to tape and pass on. That's why some Czechs were amused by the inference in a NME headline that they'd never heard Plastic People (Yes, it is read in Czechoslovakia).

Rock will never topple a totalitarian regime but in Czechoslovakia it sure as hell keeps it on the run.

PRAGUE is not an easy place to leave, but it's still a relief to be aboard the Budapest-bound train. Three Polish students sitting in the next seats have brought their own spirits with them – vodka included. And naturally one fuels the other.

“POLISH STRIKE GUT!” shrieks one at the complacent beer-drinking czechs sitting behind them.

“COMMUNIST PARTEI SCHEISSE!” he continues, ramming home the point.

The czechs, their security suddenly ruffled, throw back a few hostile gestures. But the young Pole needs a whole lot more vodka before he finally falls asleep. Later at the Hungarian border a Czech guard rouses him to check his visa. He drowsily comes awake a bit too slowly for the guard, who gives him two thudding slaps on the back of his head to speed up the process.

My, its really touching to see how some Eastern folk treat their own.

[[Category:Czechoslovakian Contributions]] [[Category: Essays]]

Composing like Captain Nemo. Petr Kofroň – interview

2018-06-05T11:07:46Z

Diogo:

[[File:PetrKofron1-fotKarelSuster.jpg|thumb|Petr Kofroň - Photo by Karel Šuster]]
[[Petr Kofroň]] (*1955), composer, conductor, essayist and one of the founders of the experimental ensemble Agon Orchestra, is an artist who – thanks to his attachment to “positive disintegration” – constantly evades any possible way of grasping his variable compositional, organizational, theoretical and literary activity, full of inner laughter and liminal energy. The following is an interview with him conducted by Lukáš Jiřička. This text was originally published in “HIS Voice” no. 2 (2014), which generously granted us permission to republish it.

'''Lukáš Jiřička: Could you outline the context that you entered in the eighties? What were the possibilities of creating and presenting contemporary music?'''
It’s like when my 24 year-old son would ask me what an “exit permit” is. Hard to explain, because we would have to step back not only to the eighties, but directly to the sixties. That’s when Pražská skupina Nové hudby and Skupina A from Brno were founded, although of course at the time much more was happening in Prague, where Petr Kotík and others were. Later on even, some albums came out and a couple of theoretical reflections arose – mainly thanks to Vladimír Lébl and four issues of his journal Konfrontace, banned eventually.
When I started making music, I obviously knew about these people, albums and texts. I experienced the end of the sixties, and in 1972 I went with Marek Kopelent to the Warsaw Autumn Festival. When I graduated from high school, I decided to go to the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno because I knew that there were people like Alois Piňos, with whom I later studied, or Miloš Štědroň who, along with Piňos, belonged to a composing team doing collaborative pieces... For a while longer, I was feeling a certain continuity around me, however during the seventies it gradually reached the state, where nothing was happening actually. Everything was standarized by the composers’ union and many of us had no chance to join it, which made presenting pieces more problematic. In the eighties, the situation slowly began to ease. Just for the record: Martin Smolka started to attend private lessons with Kopelent a few years after me; Miroslav Pudlák was there...
To be more exact, there was some inflow of contemporary music in the seventies of course, although it almost never had an official endorsement. Sometimes it was coming even from circles nobody expected, I mean from the underground. To these circles belonged my favourites, Karlheinz Stockhausen or John Cage. Also, some people from the sixties’ generation were still alive – we used to attend Dr. Eduard Herzog’s listening sessions – he worked as a director at a Japanese company that provided him with LPs of contemporary music as benefits; Vladimír Lébl was there, we met at his basement lab on Břehová street and we played everything we managed to get.
Anyway, in the beginning Agon was actually an association of composers. Mirek played keyboards, Martin played keyboards, and I also played a sort of keyboards, there also were various more alternative-oriented musicians, let’s say: Vojtěch Havel or Ivan “Váňa” Bierhanzl from Plastic People started with us, for example; I would call it a kind of germ. But it was Kopelent’s daughter Veronica who came up with the idea of creating a contemporary music ensemble; I remember very well, when those thirty years ago I told her “this is stupid”. It was because I doubted that anyone would be eager to play in that group and wondered who would actually listen to that.
Nevertheless, along with Mirek Pudlák and Martin Smolka, she put some people together.
For instance, the saxophonist Václav Bratrych and a bunch of people from jazz or alternative environments played with us. I was quite afraid of a certain amateurism and a confrontation with professionals, because we were far behind the Western groups specializing in contemporary music. Anyway, we finally survived the eighties unscathed, not only in relation to the regime – from this perspective it was harmless fun, basically – but in relation to the music scene of the time as well.

'''Where were you performing and what was it like?'''
We were registered under one cultural centre as an amateur ensemble. It was our governing authority, thereby we didn’t have to undergo so-called auditions – their main part was a Marxism-Leninism exam. We used to rent a rehearsal room – it wasn’t a problem, each of us was getting two hundred crowns per concert. To be honest, these concerts were quite popular, a number of people were coming to see them. Apparently our performances were perceived as something radically different and alternative enough to attract a truly wide spectrum of listeners: musicians, artists, theatre makers... the entire grey zone.

'''You listed associates and members of the Agon who played jazz or alternative music. Later on, you were also performing and collaborating on common projects with Plastic People or Filip Topol and Psí vojáci – were you open to other musical fields from the beginning of Agon?'''
In the eighties we really specialized in contemporary classical music, because in 1984, 1985 it was something completely unique. We got ahead of the other groups that were similar to ours by four or five years.
When it came to our attitude towards alternative music, opinions differed. Mirek Pudlák had a more academic standpoint, he had simply never understood it, Martin Smolka was wishy-washy; I was the most enthusiastic. At that time, experimental rock music was coming to us mostly from abroad – such as Art Zoyd or Captain Beefheart, which I particularly adored. I have to admit that if I could go back 30 years, I would have been making rock music, it was just much more likeable. Then punk rock appeared, which was another big revelation. I used to go to punk rock concerts at squalid community centres, I would do a pogo dance, I had a crop. It was still developing in an incredibly natural way, because every genre or crossover of popular and alternative music tends to evolve and interfuse constantly. Classical music has not exhibited such qualities over the past few decades. The last thing that affected us significantly was minimalism that we had got to know a bit already in the seventies. In 1983, we heard Terry Riley’s C and A Rainbow in Curved Air for the first time. We were so entranced by them that at the beginning, we started to create and play minimal pieces only. However it couldn’t last too long at the time, and it still cannot. Anytime I have depression I keep telling myself that all of this is stuck in a dead end. It’s still based on some laboratory experiments and discoveries designed for professionals, but there’s no musical feeling in a broader sense.

'''Miroslav Petříček says that rock music has changed the world a hundred times more than the discovery of quantum physics...'''
But it’s true! Unfortunately, it includes also the means: the greatest invention in the field of musical instruments was the electric guitar – not musique concrète but the electric guitar is a hallmark of the most recent and fundamental change in sonics and musical expression.
Back to the question: although we did not intend to merge with alternative music, we experienced our work as some sort of alternative music.
However, nearly simultaneously with Agon, a couple of my friends and I – among others, I can mention Vojta Havel and Váňa Bierhanzl – formed the band Drama a píseň, which was completely underground. Later on, Mirek Šimáček and I created a duo and we played only combos. We were producing contact microphone feedback obtained through the headphones and causing creaking noises during the combos. We were touring underground festivals like that. Agon was too academic for me at the time.

'''Well, if Agon was too academic for you, how were you solving these internal conflicts with Pudlák and Smolka? Don’t you think that their leaving has made Agon weaker?'''
Do you think that Hess’ flight to England made Hitler weaker?

[[File:PetrKofron2-fotKarelSuster.jpg|thumb|Petr Kofroň - Photo by Karel Šuster]]
'''Has it reflected on you?'''
Personally, I have never been attached to this. I don’t know what others have been thinking, but I have the impression that, for example, Martin Smolka also finished school thanks to a variation on Lennon’s Imagine.
I studied between 1974 and 1979, and on top of that in Brno, where New Music was still being created. Of course I did like it, but its form was collapsing a bit, it was usually made “in the Brno way” as they used to say. We couldn’t even speak about specific patterns. It may be related to one really grotesque story – I was in middle school and in the very early seventies I sent a perfectly scruffy letter to all the music schools in Europe, where I offered an exchange of contemporary classical music vinyls for whatever I could provide – i.e. Janáček, Dvořák, etc. As a result, I’ve got several hundred scratched albums that nobody wanted to listen to in such a poor quality, for example, Kagel’s Der Schall or Stockhausen’s Stimmung... Yet I started distancing myself from the Brno version of New Music, rather than forming a self-definition.
In Brno, I occupied myself with Isaak Dunayevsky, against all odds. Everyone was looking at me as though I was a complete idiot, because in the best case, they perceived Dunayevsky as a composer of romantic songs, or otherwise as a so-called involved composer. But for me, the most captivating thing in his work was the whiff of a very peculiar nihilism.

'''You’ve mentioned various Czech pioneers of New Music. However, have you found any personalities truly inspiring, like Komorous or Piňos? Weren’t you still more into rock music and songwriting?'''
The land of childhood is the one we keep treading for our entire lives. Sometimes we realize it, sometimes not at all. My inspirations while growing up were: Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, Charles Ives, Erik Satie, Josef Berg. Strauss and Mahler as admirations, Ives and Satie as life fates, Berg as a writer in music. They are all united by freedom. I was also trying to be free. No continuity, just doing what I wanted.

'''How were you getting the scores and what exactly did you use to play in the eighties? How has your repertoire changed since the Velvet Revolution?'''
As far as I remember, in the eighties we used to play mostly Petr Kofroň, Martin Smolka and Miroslav Pudlák. In our ensemble, there were also Vítek Janda and Pavel Kalina. Additionally, we played a few foreign pieces that either someone had got for us or we had borrowed from the library in Darmstadt, which allowed international borrowing. Some samples of the scores that used to appear in books or journals, we just copied – that’s how we got to Steve Reich’s work. People brought us compositions from abroad; Jan Novák’s daughter, for instance.
We put an emphasis on playing our own pieces, not because we couldn’t get the scores from abroad or we were bigheaded, but because no one else was willing to play them.
Of course a huge turnaround has come after the change of regime: in the early nineties, our activity was generously subsidised, considering the present reality. Moreover, Western publishers started to approach us with a sort of mix of curiosity and kindness, therefore they enabled us to play pieces practically for free... Dramaturgy? For me, it meant catching up with the world of post-war music.

'''Hasn’t it become a part of the order of time already? Wasn’t it organic?'''
We didn’t use to create any elaborated concerts. I can’t remember well, but I think that there always were some foreign compositions combined with ours. We used to compile the programme with pieces we just liked. I recall that we got really excited about Giacinto Scelsi, who we had heard for the first time in Darmstadt, where we managed to go in 1987. It was cool, because we didn’t have much money for food and drink for example, so anytime when those courses with the Western artists that always kept wallets stuffed with dollars in their back pockets came to an end, we used to go to the toilet and drink the tap water. We used to walk everywhere. In one shop, we were just carefully watching and trying to memorize something and put it together after coming back home.
Our heroic times lasted until the mid-nineties. In 1996, Mirek founded his own group, Martin started an international career; Ivan Bierhanzl, Mirek Šimáček and I were only ones left. At that time I begun to feel tired of New Music and we moved towards the fusions I’ve mentioned. The biggest flashpoint was a collaboration with Petr Křečan, the founder and the leader of the oddness called [[Kilhets]]. In 1979, he emigrated with his girlfriend to West Germany, then he partly returned somewhere to Tachov. We used to go there, but unfortunately Martin Smolka couldn’t stand this because Křečan’s thinking was absolutely destructive. We did one or two performances with him. It was also about our interest in graphic scores, as we believed that they could enrich our musical thinking. It was at a time when we were feeling lost, we were out of ideas, so we chose an absurd starting point, basically. Eventually we tried to bring to life our musical imagination through close cooperation and communication with rock and alternative musicians.

'''Why have you turned to the link-up with rock bands and artists? Why haven’t you continued and released your collaboration with the radical character from the Czech underground Petr Křečan? Did Kilhets really use to attract your attention?'''
We’ve done about three things with Petr Křečan, then we just moved on. Not everything has to be “released”. Some things you just do for yourself. For me, the most interesting thing on Kilhets was the absolute improvisation that indicates “positive disintegration”, which is really close to me. It means that through absolute improvisation you can reject all your skills, knowledge and everything you’ve ever heard. Then there will come a moment when you have nothing up your sleeve, you just have to listen – and listen to the sounds around you, but perhaps also around you in outer space or maybe in your inner space. There may appear a moment of epiphany as well, as a result of a musical emptiness and humility.

'''What were the similarities between Kilhets and the group Drama a píseň and what were the performances of that wild gang like? Don’t you have a feeling that thanks to experience with that music, you’ve opened up to a kind of composing technique that rejects classical notation, as a ritual music genre or music which works with a musician’s energy only?'''
Drama a píseň had nothing in common with Kilhets. For me that music was dadaistic a bit, from Šimáček to the very edge of the acoustic experiments. In the duo with Šimáček, we used to play literally ritual compositions, which function only in conjunction with the ritual. And we have done it in every possible way: music as a starting point (a musical version of The Lord’s Prayer), music as a connection with the ritual (proper intonation of the text to increase efficiency) or music as a product (spinning an amulet produces sound).

'''Energy and intuition are noticeable in many of your performances, but I’d like to ask how it is changing the role of a conductor? To what extent have you given the musicians themselves a free hand to create music?'''
Every musician has his own world, it’s more about finding musicians with the world and then just marveling at the interfusion of the universes.

'''Has the orchestra got stronger since the revolution?'''
Well, it started to get stronger during the first half of the nineties, when continual, generous subsidies began to interlock with decent earnings from concerts and tours abroad. Suddenly, we could play those great pieces.

'''Have you discovered something valuable as the conductor of the orchestra that has influenced you as the composer?'''
No. I must say that for me it was always related to stress only. Maybe once it happened to me that I felt lost in the middle of some composition by Scelsi, but, being aware of the absolute necessity, I finished conducting in a sort of trance, because I had an intense feeling that somehow I could really understand that piece. To this day, I’m not sure if I wasn’t completely beyond then. Conducting hasn’t brought anything into my composing practice. It seems to me that also at the opera I have to keep everything under control... and this is quite spastic. But I have obviously enjoyed working with people on modeling the composition.

'''How important for you is the need for provocation, a punk lack of stability or the desire to get the image of a “bad boy”, “drug addict”, someone who doesn’t act in the way the others expect?'''
It’s hard to explain today, but I was growing up at the beginning of the seventies, when the only way to maintain a consistent personality was total isolation, separation from the outside world. The absolute desire for free inner space. My motto was “composing like Captain Nemo”.
'''
I rather meant that to a certain degree you have always moderated your concerts in a really hilarious manner, sometimes you used to play a piece twice for fun or sing Do lesíčka na čekanou between particular compositions... Was it a way to parody your basically institutional position or rather, it came up for the purpose of dramaturgy, let’s say?'''
Certainly it wasn’t calculated. There are moments, when you just get into euphoric mood – they talk about my terrible drug addiction, by the way – and this kind of euphoria is associated with different behaviours. It seems to me that the situation reached its climax when I got undressed with the poet Magor Jirous... it was totally spontaneous, now I wouldn’t be able to do such a thing. They say otherwise I’m pretty boring, because I don’t go anywhere, just sit at home. I prefer to be alone and I have no friends...
I have a huge need for something called “positive disintegration”. To spell it out, I desire to fall apart so I can put myself back together in a better way. I’ve always wanted to step out of time one day and then start to look for myself again – it could mean that I would blow off the music. At the age of 35, I trained to be a bricklayer and I took over a building company from my father. I decided to do music only for entertainment. Earning a living through something different than art is definitely more satisfying for me. The old good brickwork.

'''Wasn’t that lack of calculation and your need for disintegration destructive to the orchestra, its discipline?'''
Once again, I must say that it depends on a particular composition. Now, for instance, we’re working on Milan Adamčiak’s piece, which is so challenging in terms of tempo and precise entry of each instrument that it demands completely rational conducting; there’s just no way to improvise there. On the contrary, when we were playing with Plastic People, they were capering around together and gave us a certain freedom too. Some pieces you have to conduct in peace, but sometimes you should do it differently.

'''Why is Agon playing much less in recent years?'''
The reason is quite simple: a tiredness, which has three aspects in total. First of all, there is the organizational aspect. When Váňa Bierhanzl started with the organization in 1990, there were a lot of institutions and foundations we could turn to, for example Soros’ Open Society Institute, Goethe-Institut, French Institute, etc. They were able to give us two hundred thousand crowns at the beginning and if we did well in the organizational field, then we would receive even more, which actually happened. But it’s already gone. As if out of spite, just when Heiner Goebbels came here to play at the Divadlo Komedie for a small audience, suddenly we didn’t get any subsidies. We were left one million crowns in debt. That’s how art support in Czech Republic ended up.
The second aspect of our tiredness is strictly psychological. We were doing all these things for free and apart from anything else, it’s not easy to organise such a Marathon of Contemporary Music, what’s more I did only a little. The main work was done by Váňa Bierhanzl.
Thirdly, it was caused by our tiredness of contemporary music, therefore we moved towards rock music.

'''The Agon Orchestra was considered to be the most important contemporary music group in the Czech Republic, isn’t it obliging? Hampering the Agon’s activity means hampering the activities in this small area in general...'''
I personally think that we’ve done enough with Agon, and I myself don’t want to continue it anymore. Secondly, contemporary music found its legs and something’s happening after all.

'''Do you think that if you were working more consciously, you could become autonomous and do it for a living?'''
I’ll come back to the issue that at one point separated us from Martin Smolka and Mirek Pudlák. Mirek wanted to form a regular ensemble which would be able to reach the highest professional standards, play everything thanks to great instruments, and receive some universal subsidy for that. But if you ask me, that was exactly what I didn’t want. I have never wanted to create some universal group, which would have to play everything because of some universal subsidies. The Ensemble Modern, for example, play every composition they’re expected to but they’re obviously not enthusiastic about many of them. Recently, they played something of mine and neither musicians, nor conductor enjoyed it. But I’m one hundred percent sure that they cashed in on it... For those years with Agon, we didn’t play a single piece we didn’t want to play. We took responsibility for everything we used to play. I refused to play many pieces that someone was offering me, because I knew I wouldn’t enjoy them.

'''Are your solo albums 12 Monsters and Lízaly si sladkou pěnu just private eccentricity or do you consider them a piece of your whole work? Or perhaps they belong to a separate sphere?'''
I don’t know, I would just repeat that I’m against a linear life on principle. I write books of poetry and novels, for instance. Also, I have some texts that I’ve been hoarding for about 40 years.

'''Don’t you want yourself to publish?'''
Well, I don’t know what for. I enjoy gaining experiences in different fields and I don’t have to be the best at anything. I like a trial and error method. I like stealing, playing with sentimentality. What makes me feel good is a sense or a feeling of my own wrong-headedness. I consider a computer my personal partner, which offers me something that I bring together on a certain basis of weirdness. The principle of coincidence is important for me as well.

'''Do your orchestral compositions that we can hear on the album The Red and Black e.g. have something in common with your solo work included in the albums 12 Monsters and Lízaly si sladkou pěnu or maybe are they completely independent from one another?'''
I don’t like to follow the beaten path. I enjoy going into the unknown, sometimes even intentionally getting off track. When I wander around driving my car, I take it as something positive, otherwise I would never get into those places, and I would never visit them again. In this sense, my “popular” CDs are a trip to other lands. The technique of “composing” such pieces is peculiar and based on the capabilities of the computer. It’s wandering around the world of internet waves, downloading MIDIs and various records, putting something totally different into MIDI, using irrelevant details, mixing everything into surrealistic combinations. This is just a pleasant trip by Trans-Siberian Railway with middle-class society and meeting curiosities that we throw into the pot and cook.

'''Don’t you have the impression that despite the overall dispersal, you create compositions in specific periods?'''
Of course there are periods, in music as well as in life, when your personality changes so much, that if you met a version of yourself from ten years ago today, you wouldn’t recognise yourself. In the years 1970–1975, I started to experiment with New Music, over the next five years I moved on to New Romanticism and Simplicity, over the period 1985–2000 to the ritual compositions; since 2000 I’ve been focused on pseudo-big band nonsense and pseudo-rock.

'''In this sense, are you satisfied with your position as an art director of the the National Theatre Opera?'''
Well, this is a wonderful experience, when the play really takes place, I feel that these musicians genuinely enjoy it and it does it itself actually. At the theatre, I’ve met some completely amazing characters I would have never met otherwise. Property masters, custodians, stagehands. A number of these stagehands are more intellectually and humanly interesting, inspiring, dedicated to theatre than all that artistic circle. As Josef Goebbels would say: “Whenever I hear the word artist, I reach for my revolver”.

'''At some point you were writing essays about music, aren’t you carrying on? And what about publishing your compositions? They were only partly released.'''
Now I’m not writing about music at all. As a matter of fact, I have some ideas for theoretical texts, but I would have to blow off everything else for half the year to write them. I feel that I owe the most to Josef Adamík. I would like to decently analyze his works. Also, I have a thought to analyze ten minutes of Richard Strauss in relation to Germanic runes. But I won’t get around it anymore, I suppose.
After all, I wrote everything I was supposed to write. I was forced to do it by the objective circumstances of the time. In the seventies and eighties, any theoretical reflection was missing. I wrote many analyses of my own pieces, or I asked a few friends to write something about my music and if nobody felt like doing it, then I wrote it on my own and then just countersigned it. One of those texts I have attributed to Marek Kopelent, the next to Alois Piňos, another to Jaroslav Pokorný for instance, etc. Then I sent them those texts, fifteen copies I believe. One day, Alois Piňos gave a lecture about young contemporary composers, among others, also about me, and he read the excerpts from my text dedicated to my music but with his name on it, as his own text actually. Would I like to publish something? Not really. Everything is either being thrown away or found by someone. Sometime in 1975, when I was still at school, the conceptual artist Jiří Valoch was performing his shows at Divadlo hudby in Brno. I was always sitting there all alone. After the last evening I went to him and said how fantastic it had been and how deeply sorry I was that such a meager number of people had attended to that. He told me: “Anything you do, you do for only one person. I was that lucky to do it for someone who I could meet live”. I recall that story so often.
On the contrary, sometimes I think that I might isolate myself as the Captain Nemo, clean out all of these archival records, organize them in terms of dramaturgy and create from them approximately forty CDs. There are some truly interesting pieces, for example Miroslav Šimáček’s indescribable conceptual quirks. I’m quite amazed by how high-quality these records are, although they’re analog. However, I tell myself that I would like to hire a decent symphonic orchestra and play with them the entirety of Czech modern symphonic music from Fibich and Foerster through Suk, Ostrčil, Ježek of course, and E. F. Burian up to New Music and the present.

'''You’ve staged a lot of operas but you’ve also created some musical stagings of Mauricio Kagel’s pieces. What is your attitude towards listening to the recordings of stage works which combine a stage action or improvisation directly with the music?'''
Sometimes it’s musically interesting actually, for example in Partch’s compositions, even if it results from the absurdity of their instrumentation, at other times, namely in the aforesaid Kagel’s works, as soon as they lose their visual, theatrical components, they transform into strange experimental music of the sixties, which doesn’t stand out from the standard Neue Musik output of that time period. Kagel often created strongly contextual music with genre and stylistic references to the café music of the thirties, a range of regressing genres, trivialized means of musical expression, etc. If the listener doesn’t recognize or just doesn’t understand them, he may completely miss the meaning of the composition.

'''It comes to my mind that regarding contextuality and his inclination towards conceptual art, he may compare to Josef Berg, the organiser of happenings and distinctive music drama productions...'''
First of all, it must be said that Josef Berg was primarily a writer, his literary output is huge actually. Also, in his musical work, he derived from the literature and, to a large extent, unfortunately from the Brechtian Theatre which was dominant in Brno at the time. Brecht’s plays were being staged by the director Evžen Sokolovský and everybody became fixated on them. Berg created a few chamber operas in the same spirit, according to quite a classical model mostly. The most bizarre and only experimental piece in this area is probably the opera Eufrides před branami Tymén for tenor, trumpet and some sort of announcer. This is truly a literary or literary dramatic venture with insufficient, meager and, let me say, also a banal musical constituent. Admittedly, working on his other pieces, such as Evropská turistika or Snídaně na hradě Šlankenvaldě, leads to nearly absolute music, but their structure is constantly determined by a strong literary dramatic base.
Further, there are obviously his actions. To the most famous belongs that lecture about oriental music, when he impersonated the Indian professor Salanradhak in the company of Alois Piňos as his Indian wife, in front of a still unsuspecting audience. The dramatic side is almost predominant here, notwithstanding the material, that is, the structural issues of music become unimportant in comparison with the concept itself. From today’s point of view, this is basically not different from the expression of action and conceptual art.
Finally, I must say that the majority of those “artworks” are unrepeatable mainly because of their dependence on Berg’s personal involvement. After all, he engaged in them all of himself, even his body; in this context I must recall that sometime in the mid-seventies, Petr Štembera injected a twig into a vein in his left arm.
I’ve always been fascinated by the figures who swam against the current, I mean those artists who didn’t make art for a living. It occurred to me that making music as a hobby, in a retreat would be the best solution. Berg managed to do that, because in the fifties he wrote propaganda songs, then he orchestrated for The Brno Radio Orchestra of folk instruments (BROLN) and simultaneously he earned a living by creating theatre music, which he later either cut out or used for the next compositions. For instance, he tried out his last piece Snění on the music for Ludvík Kundera’s radio drama Dva ve vánici.
Berg has always been considered a weirdo that people were laughing at, sometimes in Brno but mostly in Prague... and also in Darmstadt. When he came there once and presented his chamber opera records, from the perspective of the sixties, everybody saw him as a complete “wacko”, who did exactly the opposite of the current trends. There were two things I liked about him from the start: his sense of mystification and his capability to insert anything into anything, mixing styles – then, in the sixties! –, but above all I liked his literariness, because if I hadn’t been born in 1955 but five or ten years earlier, I would have chosen literature.

'''Why? Wasn’t music in the early seventies a safer area?'''
It was neutral. Doing your own thing in the field of writing was quite risky at the beginning of normalization. Music is abstractive, so I’ve escaped into it, nevertheless I was constantly writing texts for the drawer and I generally enjoyed literature more.

'''Is it something specific about Czech New Music?'''
It always goes beyond the music in a way – Vostřák made a shift towards the mystique, Kopelent towards emotionality, Komorous towards Eastern culture, Berg towards literature…

'''Has it made any reference to the aforementioned sixties at the level of composition?'''
The New Music of the sixties is not about “composing techniques” - I have never written a dodecaphonic piece, for instance. This is a matter of another kind of creativity and thinking about music. In this sense, the reference to the way of musical thinking in the sixties was possible.

'''Besides Berg, I can think of one more loner that sometimes used to move away from music towards the theatre, drama and theory, namely Emil František Burian. Even his works are not played often...'''
E. F. Burian. His son Honza Burian keeps his entire output in one huge cupboard, that once it burns up, everything will go to hell. One day we dug through that cupboard and we found a tremendous number of works from the twenties. Later on, we played them too...
There is that massive disadvantage of the Czech cultural environment: anytime you find an artist whose output would probably be the subject of critical publishing anywhere else in the world, there pops out a problem to set his work in a historical context, either musical, theatrical or literary. When we worked up Burian’s composition from 1926, such a strange one, we didn’t know what he had meant, what position it had occupied in his artwork, what had been his source of inspiration. Our interpretation is just absolutely ecstatic.

'''But on the other hand, the majority will stand for the immanent quality of composition. The originality of composing solutions, arrangement and so on.'''
There’s no telling, in fact. Burian consequently swam against the current. Basically, we somehow can associate him with Ježek and Bohuslav Martinů, but the difference between them is that in both Ježek’s and Martinů’s works, the context is immediately obvious. When I hear Martinů’s tango, for example, harmonized and instrumentalized in some way, I know right away: yeah, this is jazz plus France of the time, Stravinsky and so forth. With Ježek it seems to be practically the same. But in case of E. F. Burian, I often don’t know.
When it comes to the voiceband, it is such a weird issue that was thought to be finished and no one believed that it could be developed. But when we think about rap, we will discover that it’s made on the principle of the voiceband.

'''You occupy yourself with the opera. What is the main difference between the opera and the musical theatre in your opinion?'''
Put simply, the opera is a musical genre. It’s primarily about pieces of music, not music dramas. Although at the start there is a libretto, it is symptomatic that many opera librettos are totally useless at the theatre. At the musical theatre, this range is wider. Watching opera performances without the music can’t be truly exciting, even if they are directed in a really inventive way. Perhaps one of Robert Wilson’s pieces, but he’s generally humdrum.

'''The opera is created at the moment the composer finishes the score after musicalizing the libretto. Only since then director start to wonder how to stage it. On the contrary, musical theatre is formed in cooperation among actors, the scenographer, costume designer, composer and director of course.'''
Working on the opera requires finding a story and a librettist... Formerly, operas were written by full-fledged musicians, thus not by the artists who were at the border of music and theatre or music and literature. Contrarily, everything was divided, there existed professional librettists, who usually had something up their sleeves and the composer didn’t care about the text he got, as was the case with Puccini’s La Rondine. Puccini was given some opera libretto and he decided to compose something at the border of the operetta. There are exceptions, such as Wagner or Janáček who used to write librettos themselves, and it’s true that Janáček’s librettos are of a higher literary quality than those of all Czech operas put together.
The opera is a genre based on the theatrical narrative that is also formed by structuring of musical processes. A director doesn’t have to think about the tempo of performance, its rhythm, proportions. Everything is given.

'''What about opera productions from the second half of the 20th century? Composers such as Luigi Nono, Olga Neuwirth and Phil Glass introduced to us new dramatic strategies, composing techniques, they found a new way to use the voice or arrangement...'''
Well, musically it may be completely different that Schönberg, Berg, their predecessors and contemporaries, but regarding the dramaturgy, it follows the same track. It’s no problem for us to admit: “yes, this is the opera”. Even though in the cases of Bang On and Can we ask ourselves, what it exactly is, whether it is a musical or an oratorio – we will figure it out in the end. Also, in Morton Feldman’s opera Neither, we can still feel that this is basically Schönberg. To be brief, during the last century, particular components have progressed, for example in the area of theatre or music, nevertheless their combination seems to be pretty classifiable either as an oratorio, pseudo-pop music or as a completely classical opera, for instance with the works of John Adams. In my mind, it is because the authors of those artworks are musicians above all, regardless of how deeply they understand the issues of theatre.

'''Speaking about the relationship between the opera and musical theatre, isn’t it just John Cage who offers the third possible way towards i.e. performance and action; whose artwork hasn’t been continued by other artists (and I don’t mean just the opera series Europeras) because it didn’t represent any genre or method?'''
John Cage is, although everybody slobbers over him, a separate historical personality, and although he has been considered a “visionary”, since the fifties his work has been FIRMLY grounded in the poetics of that time. For me, there’s nothing inspiring about him these days.

''Translated from Czech by Kinga Szubańska, proofread by Peter Alfredson.''

[[Category: Czech Contributions]] [[Category: Interviews]]

Kilhets

2018-06-05T11:06:58Z

Diogo: Created page with "A group with a changing line-up, Kilhets was established in 1978 by Peter Křečan. Its core members were jazz guitarist Miroslav Šimáček and guitarist and saxophonist Miko..."

A group with a changing line-up, Kilhets was established in 1978 by Peter Křečan. Its core members were jazz guitarist Miroslav Šimáček and guitarist and saxophonist Mikoláš Chadima - Křečan's friend, with whom he collaborated on other alternative projects. They also cooperated with František Skála, a sculptor and illustrator of children's books. Until their split in 1980, triggered by Křečan's emigration, Kilhets gave a total of eight concerts. The group introduced an original creative method and a language of collective improvisation. They were famous for the long, bewildering pauses and performances that balanced on the edge of noise. During the 8th Prague Jazz Days in 1979 they began their performance while the Amalgam group were still playing. They were known for their distinctive costumes, which helped them build up a specific, ritual ambience on the one hand, and obscure the individual features of the musicians on the other. Like the costumes of US concept art group The Residents, Kilhets’ appearance was part of a remarkable strategy of creating a conceptually consistent, visual and musical event.

=== Related Content ===
[[Hues of Independence]]

[[Czechmate: The Frustrations of Sharing a Party Line]]

[[Composing like Captain Nemo. Petr Kofroň – interview]]

[[Category: Czechoslovakian Figures]]

Hues of Independence

2018-06-05T11:05:15Z

Diogo:

[[File:HOI - 1.png|thumb|right|1. Still from ‘Plastic People of the Universe’, directed by C.sar de Ferrari, 1970. Courtesy of Česka Televize]]
''This article, written by Daniel Muzyczuk, explores the meaning of the underground and its role in Democratic opposition in the Eastern Bloc, focusing particularly on [[:Category:Czechoslovakia|Czech]], [[:Category:Poland|Polish]], [[:Category:Hungary|Hungarian]] and [[:Category:East Germany|East-German]] examples.''

In his insightful study about the intersecting paths of political dissidents and underground musicians in 1970s and 1980s Czechoslovakia, Jonathan Bolton notes that researchers of such relationships necessarily rely on two kinds of sources of a completely different nature:

As with samizdat, where we can never really track down the exact circulation of particular typed texts, we must read the underground legends without, ultimately, having a clear sense of their spread or reception; nevertheless, we must also remember that imaginary circulations were just as important as real ones. The legends about Bondy, Jirous, and the [[The Plastic People of the Universe|Plastic People]] were both descriptive of an underground environment and constitutive of a cultural identity. '''[1]'''

So on the one hand we have the hard facts relayed by historical sources of established credibility, while on the other hand we keep encountering mythologised stories about heroic deeds, their reach unknown. The notion of universality gains a wholly new meaning here. These differing narratives were often aimed at specific audiences: sometimes with the purpose of peer communication within alternative culture; occasionally, they were directed at the larger set of dissidents or counter-culture activists or even at the society at large or the state apparatus, particularly the security services of the respective countries. The transition to democracy has facilitated wide access to sources produced in different circulations and different contexts, as a result of which identifying the addressees of the different messages is becoming difficult, and mapping their striking distance – virtually impossible.

In this essay I will discuss the discourses and practices of special communities that combined musical and visual work, or actually saw them as one. This intermedia production was often informed by the perception of independence as the need to create a parallel culture, one that would be a world in itself and unto itself, and therefore one that has its own full cultural life. Contrary to what it might seem, this is a story about the clever exploitation of possibilities offered by states rather than a narrative of struggle, persecution and oppression. In his essay about the late-Soviet rave generation, Alexei Yurchak makes an interesting diagnosis according to which independence – at least in perestroika-era Soviet Union – meant evading the state apparatus. He wrote:

I argue … that the logic of nonofficial discourses and practices in late socialism was based most of all on attempts to have a meaningful life in spite of the state's oppression. Hence, the nonofficial (or ‘countercultural’) practices involved not so much countering, resisting, or opposing state power as simply avoiding it and carving out symbolically meaningful spaces and identities away from it. '''[2]'''

Of course, each of the countries in the Soviet Bloc had its own institutions of compulsion and control. It is also worth noting that we are talking about a very long period, from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, when liberalisation processes occurred with various degrees of intensity. By looking at a broad range of relationships between the state and the ‘independents’, we will be able to grasp the whole complexity of the issue as well as better understand what happens to countercultural terms when they are transplanted from their natural habitat of Western democracy to real socialism.

== Assaulting Culture ==
[[File:HOI - 2.png|thumb|right|2. Still from ‘Plastic People of the Universe’, directed by C.sar de Ferrari, 1970. Courtesy of Česka Televize ]]
The history of The Plastic People of the Universe, their idea of the underground and their subsequent involvement in the democratic opposition movement is well known. And yet it continues to shine uniquely as the most radical moment of Eastern European counterculture. Analyses of the writings of the group’s chief ideologist and manager, Ivan Martin ‘Magor’ Jirous, have revealed new insights reflecting how culturally complex a phenomenon The Plastic People were. Asked about the meaning of the term ‘underground’ in an interview included in Césare de Ferrari’s 1970 film entitled Plastic People of the Universe, Jirous cites The Fugs and Ed Sanders and speaks of a ‘total assault on culture’ (figure 1). '''[3]''' Already in 1965 the same phrase appears, as ‘atentát na kulturu’, in a song by the band Aktual, run by Milan Knížák, and this may have been in that context that Jirous had first heard it. '''[4]'''

So the underground was for Jirous a cultural formation, its defining characteristic being confrontation with the establishment. It is worth noting that it doesn’t matter here whether ‘the establishment’ refers to Western society or to the communist party and the cultural elites. Another source that Jirous cited in his early texts was Marcel Duchamp and his famous dictum that the ‘great artist of tomorrow will go underground’. This pays witness to a need to escape from the commercialisation of art and withdraw to an area of anonymity that would protect one from the invisible hand of the market. But the two quotations (from Sanders and Duchamp) evidence also Jirous’s ambitions to follow the example set by Andy Warhol in the Velvet Underground and create a cultural structure as rich as The Factory (figure 2).

In the interview cited above, Jirous - the artistic director of [[The Plastic People of the Universe]] - says that the band is not just the music but also the work of artists, meaning Jan Ságl and Zorka Ságlová – authors of the costumes, stage designs and, in the case of the latter, land-art projects that the members of The Plastic People helped create. A few years later, in reaction to growing pressure on the band and its milieu, Jirous was to formulate in his famous manifesto, A Report on the Third Czech Musical Revival, the theory of a second culture which was doubtless a development and concretisation of the notion of the underground as a cultural formation based on subculture.

The attack on The Plastic People of the Universe and other bands began in 1974 with the cancelling of concerts. But the group was still neither official nor unofficial. On 30 March 1974, the so called ‘České Budějovice massacre’ took place, where Czechoslovak riot police broke up a Plastic People show and clubbed the fans before herding them into a train and sending them back to Prague. In the following years tension grew, culminating in the arrest and subsequent prosecution of four leading members of the scene on 17 March 1976, a month after the Second Festival of the Second Culture in Bojanovice. The detainees included Ivan Jirous – manager and ideologist of The Plastic People of the Universe, Vratislav Brabenec – saxophone player and lyricist, Pavel Zajíček of the band [[DG 307|DG307]], and the folk singer Svatopluk Karásek. In the same year, Czechoslovak TV broadcasts a documentary titled, aptly, Atentát na kulturu (referring thus to both The Fugs and Aktual), which presents the arrested men as deviants and drug addicts who participate in orgies and use dead rats for drumsticks (sic!) (figure 3). The Report on the Third Czech Musical Revival is written during this time, becoming, in the light of the subsequent events, a crucial manifesto. In it, Jirous again refers to Sanders, but lends a new meaning to the words ascribed to him: ‘[The underground] is a movement that operates primarily with artistic means, even though its representatives are conscious of the fact that is not and should not be the end-all of an artist’s effort’. '''[5]''' Then he explains what kind of culture the underground is supposed to serve:

''"The aim of the underground here in Bohemia is the creation of a second culture: a culture that will not be dependent on official channels of communication, social recognition, and the hierarchy of values laid down by the establishment; a culture which cannot have the destruction of the establishment as its aim because in doing so, it would drive itself into the establishment’s embrace; a culture which helps those who wish to join it to rid themselves of the scepticism which says that nothing can be done and shows them that much can be done when those who make the culture desire little for themselves and much for others."'' '''[6]'''

It is worth comparing Jirous’s declarations with another source – a brief text, ‘A Silent Hungarian Underground’, published in 1973 by Béla Hap, founder of the Hungarian samizdat periodical, Szétfolyóirat. Hap described the underground as an artistic movement which neither supports nor attacks the establishment, but remains outside it. Any attack on the establishment would acknowledge its existence . . . It wants to be a form of unidentifiable, unanalysable, ungraspable, and incorruptible outsider art. PRIVATE ART. '''[7]'''

[[File:HOI - (3).png|thumb|right|3. Still from ‘Atent.t na kulturu’ (Assault on Culture), directed by Ladislav Chocholoušek, 1977. Courtesy of Česka televize]]
This definition was formulated in a milieu centred on a rather specific periodical which made evading official restrictions on production and distribution both its working method and a content management principle. Thus a term originating in the West became here not a distant and utopian idea, as in Jirous’s text, but rather a daily praxis of cultural production. This is confirmed in Hap‘s text: ‘What are the information channels of the underground? Pencil, pen, brush, nail, typewriter, photo camera, tape recorder, private home, forest, clearing, tree hollow, air, whatever, mouth, ears, telepathy etc. . . . It creates film out of film waste, out of what the superficial world discards’. '''[8]'''

But this pragmatic definition didn’t protect its author from constant surveillance and reprisals. Let us return however to Jirous and The Plastic People of the Universe. It is clear that the oppression encountered by alternative culture in Czechoslovakia made it possible to reformulate the organisation’s goals and the ways of achieving them. But the very form of government still seems unimportant for the notion of the underground. The establishments are different, but the forms of relationships with them are similar. At this point we arrive at the crucial – and heavily mythologised – moment of the publication of Charter 77 - an emanation of the underground’s alliance with the dissident movement.

[[Martin Machovec]] notes that Jirous, Hlavsa or Brabenec had no political agenda, and confrontational slogans were formulated to create space for ‘doing your own thing’ rather than to achieve any kind of political change. He also believes that state oppression played a role in the crystallisation of the underground’s positions and operating methods, writing that ‘they were compelled to become politically radicalised because of the totalitarian regime's intolerance and brutal oppression. However, their radicalism did not lead to a kind of a “world revolution” but rather to the activities of the defenders of human rights in Charter 77’. '''[9]'''

In its clash with the regime, the underground found allies in political dissidents and thus the war for culture and democratic structures in Czechoslovakia became a binary conflict: the state against Charter 77. In a 1995 interview, Egon Bondy spoke about the meaning of the term ‘underground’:
''
"It was rather the shared lot of those who’d found themselves representing positions even more radical than the ordinary dissident. We definitely wanted to distinguish ourselves from the so called ‘grey zone”’, from people, often with good jobs, who would consider themselves dissidents because they cursed the regime at home. The Czech ‘underground’ brought together people from all kinds of backgrounds and there was never any friction between them. Among my closest friends were Protestants and Catholics, deeply religious people, who still didn’t reject me, an avowed Marxist."'' '''[10]'''

Also Bondy speaks in a way which suggests that ‘the underground’ ultimately became a descriptive term, losing, as a result of the conflict, its projective, future-oriented character. In fact, at first, members of the underground had perceived dissidents as part of the establishment. This perspective can be sensed in Charter 77 itself, when it is pointed out that the signatories enjoyed better protection from oppression than figures from the underground. Jirous’s criticism of intellectuals from Havel’s milieu had been internalised, and the struggle for human rights became the groundwork of the alliance. The history of The [[Plastic People of the Universe|Plastic People]] and Charter 77 represents actually the only example of a lasting alliance between the two groups, compelled by the state. Let us notice that the very term ‘velvet revolution’ probably originated from the Velvet Underground, a key inspiration for The Plastic People. '''[11]'''

At this point it is doubtless worth noting a completely different reaction to the notion of the underground, presented by Mikoláš Chadima, member of bands such as [[Kilhets]], Extempore and MCH Band, in the introduction to his book, Alternativa. Od rekvalifikací k «Nové» vlně se starým obsahem. Chadima reconstructs the scene, noting a possible tripartition: for him, the establishment and the underground are two circles, beyond which there is also the alternative. Miroslav Vaněk saw the matter in similar terms, writing that, ‘this branch of rock music constitutes an alternative to official pop and big beat (rock and roll), but is also an alternative to the other end, the so called Underground’. '''[12]'''

[[File:HOI - (4).png|thumb|right|4. Extempore Band, IX Pražske jazzove dny (Prague Jazz Days), 1979, photograph Jiři Kučera. Courtesy of Mikolaš Chadima]]
In Vaněk’s statement, the political aspect of the distinction is lost. For the alternative, as Chadima described it – unlike the underground after 1976 – was still willing to take avail of all the opportunities offered by the state. This transition is also bound up with a generational change which means that the battles fought by the older heroes did not matter to younger musicians. An idealistic set of connotations was replaced by pragmatism. This is a similar action to the abovementioned vision of alternative culture as a practice characterised most of all by ingenuity in evading the regime. One example of a subject operating in this fashion was the Jazzová Sekce (Jazz Section) of the Union of Czechoslovak Musicians, founded on 31 November 1971, which organised concerts, festivals and exhibitions. Over 15 years, it published 28 bulletins and a series of monographic publications under the Jazz Petit imprint. They were self-published but of high quality (with subjects such as punk, land art, dada or graphic scores). It also organised the Pražské jazzové dny (Prague Jazz Days), an event that took place eleven times between 1974 and 1982. Despite its name, the festival was not only open to avant-garde rock and punk, but also to non-musical projects such as experimental film screenings or theatre shows (figure 4). '''[13]'''

The Jazz Section’s key venue was the amateur club U Zábranských, where alternative rock bands such as Kilhets or Extempore performed. '''[14]''' Due to the expansive nature of its activities, the Jazz Section found itself at odds with its patron organisation; this led to radicalisation and further expansion. In 1979, the Section joined the International Jazz Federation (member of the UNESCO International Music Council), and later joined the European Association for Musical Research and the European Nuclear Disarmament (END) movement. We can say that – like with The Plastic People of the Universe – the organisation’s radicalisation and eventual dissolution occurred despite the fact that it originally lacked any outright political goals. At the same time, the Section was increasingly involved in helping dissidents publish materials and organise concerts. At first, the regime responded by piling up bureaucratic requirements. Despite these difficulties, the Section continued operating and its membership grew. In 1984, the Section was officially dissolved, whereupon it moved underground where it continued to function for two more years in an increasingly oppressive atmosphere until, in September 1986, its five leaders were arrested and put on trial for ‘operating an unauthorised enterprise’, ‘engaging in illegal lucrative activities’, and ‘distributing illegal publications’. '''[15]''' Two of the members went to prison for over a year.

== Third Circulation ==
Exploring the Czechoslovak scene, we can clearly see key concepts and lines of division present in many countries of the bloc, but nowhere else did they achieve such density nor lead to such heated debates and a resulting crystallisation of positions. In Poland in the 1980s a brief moment of alliance between anti-communist activists and the underground can be noted, as mentioned by Piotr Rypson: ‘I have a photo where we are walking with Tomek [Lipiński] and two other friends in a Solidarity demonstration – happy, delighted, smiling. Tomek had just changed his image – he’d stopped spiking up his hair, stopped wearing metal jewellery, put on a V-neck sweater. I remember us concluding that it doesn’t make sense to antagonise the public visually at a time when society is changing – and changing the reality at hand.’ '''[16]'''

In 1981, during the short-lived ‘Solidarity carnival’, a period of liberalisation that was ended abruptly by the introduction of martial law, Brygada Kryzys, a band run at the time by Lipiński and Robert Brylewski, was invited to perform at the Solidarity-organised ‘Przegląd Piosenki Prawdziwej’ (Festival of True Song) at the Olivia venue in Gdańsk. This moment was very brief however, and Lipiński’s words explain why: ‘In 1980, the situation changed. We, as anarchists, naturally saw the regime in a similar way as Solidarity did. From the beginning of 1981, however, we began viewing Solidarity as a new establishment, one which spelled no positive prospects. On the other hand, Solidarity in itself, as an anarchistic movement, was acceptable for us . . . As long as Solidarity was anarchistic, we were on the same side’. '''[17]'''

Punks become temporary fellow travellers on a trip that lasted only until Solidarity had crystallised as a formation with specific views about its intended position in society. Also the political police perceived members of the two groups differently. Solidarity and political dissidents enjoyed a kind of esteem while youth counterculture movements were disparaged as the expression of demoralisation. Paweł ‘Konjo’ Konnak notes that the security police, the SB, clearly saw a difference between the second and third circulations. He remembers the moment when the archives of confiscated samizdat were opened: ‘It’s interesting what happened to the confiscated Totart stage props and publications. A year later, following the elections of June 1989 and pursuant to a deal negotiated by Solidarity with the communists, opposition activists whose underground production had been confiscated were able to collect it back from the SB storerooms. When we too came to claim our meagre junk, the Solidarity gentlemen kindly told us that we had never been any kind of underground and showed us the door. And the Publishing and Advertising Section of the Pill of Progression Metaphysical-Entertainment Conglomerate has the right to nothing’. [18] Paradoxically, this policy meant that materials of lesser subversive potential were irrevocably destroyed while the political samizdat survived.

Another strategy of scene division was followed in East Germany. The authorities in the German Democratic Republic were always wary of the musical scene. Erich Honecker, for example, stated in the 1960s: ‘it was overlooked that the enemy exploits this type of music to drive young people to excesses through the use of exaggerated beat rhythms. The pernicious influences of such music upon the thoughts and actions of young people is being grossly underestimated’. '''[19]'''

In 1976, Wolf Biermann went to perform in Cologne in West Germany; upon his return, he was refused re-entry to the DDR and stripped of his citizenship. The avowed Marxist and socialist bard was a persona non grata in East Germany, because his poetry was too realistic and reflected the absurdities of everyday life all too well. Thus ended a long process of growing separation between the nonconformist songwriter and the state. It was a significant moment also because the future landmarks of East German punk were already looming on the horizon. Bert Papenfuß-Gorek, a poet associated with the Prenzlauer Berg scene and the bands Rosa Extra and Ornament & Verbrechen, reminisced: ‘Biermann's era was completely finished. He was still hanging around, and some friends even had his albums and were still listening to that rubbish, but I would have nothing to do with that anymore. I was on the side of the MC5 and Ton Steine Scherben’. '''[20]'''

Papenfuß-Gorek not only suggests the alleged worthlessness of Biermann’s music but also a lack of interest in its themes. There was no place here for a dissident position – the expression of an open contestation of political authority. Rather, this was an attitude that defies everything that the establishment embodies, and it didn’t matter whether it was a Western or Eastern establishment. Punk in East Berlin declared war on the system in the broadest sense. In a documentary film about Sascha Anderson, Papenfuß-Gorek says: ‘We were against the GDR party dictatorship, not explicitly against the idea of socialism or communism … there were many who described themselves as real Marxists. There was everyone from anarchists to people who saw the Western welfare state as an ideal. That was basically the spectrum’. '''[21]'''

[[File:HOI - (5).png|thumb|right|5. Licence given to AG Geige in ‘Recognition of Artistic Quality’, 1987. Archive of Frank Bretschneider]]
But the regime saw no difference and cracked down on youth subcultures as vehemently as it fought the political opposition. Following a period of direct reprisals against the punk movement, which were supposed to eradicate it by 1983, in the second half of the 1980s the East German authorities changed strategy. Instead of compulsory military service, police harassment, detention or, in some cases, imprisonment, the state sought to extend control over counterculture groups. The policy of granting licences for public performances was relaxed (figure 5). This development is described by Susanne Binas, member of the band Expander des Fortschritts:

''"It was incomparably easier to obtain a license after the mid-1980s than in earlier years. In order to perform in front of an audience, each band had to present its repertoire to a cultural commission of the district government in a special audition. In earlier years, these posts were largely occupied by political bureaucrats with little or no musical background. In contrast to that, however, our band, auditioned in front of a commission composed of jazz musicians, who were amenable to, and familiar with the broad spectrum of our musical innovations like threechord textures, slap bass, cut ups and samples, tapes, or even quotations by Heiner Müller that were peculiar to our style of music. They deflected demands for high levels of musical proficiency and expertise typical of earlier periods by upholding the principles of artistic freedom and pointing out the existence of an interested audience."'' '''[22]'''

[[File:HOI - (6).png|thumb|right|6. Jan Kummer and Frank Bretschneider during a recording session of [[AG Geige]] for radio, Karl-Marx-Stadt, 1987. Photography Lutz Schramm. Archive of Frank Bretschneider]]
But that isn’t all. As in Poland earlier, where the term ‘ Muzyka Młodej Generacji’ (music of the new generation) was floated in 1978, the phrase ‘Anderen bands’ (other bands) then entered official discourse in East Germany. The idea was to avoid Western vocabulary (the name ‘punk’ remains taboo for official media). Some bands changed their names to sound less controversial. Repackaged in this way, new wave music could be presented to a mass-media audience. In 1986, the East German youth radio station DT64 started broadcasting ‘Parocktikum’, a weekly show that played bands such as Hard Pop, Cadavre Exquis or AG. Geige (figure 6). The scene was divided into two camps: the punk underground, interested in no compromises with the state, or simply with the East German social order, and the alternative. '''[23]''' The choice of the term ‘other bands’ seems very fitting in this case. One can easily find analogies with the Czechoslovak discussions and the division between the underground and the alternative.

== Places and Structures ==
[[File:HOI - (7).png|thumb|right|7. Zuzu-Vető, ‘New Flags, New Tendencies, Communism now’, Fiatal Műveszek Klubja, Budapest, 1983. Courtesy of Janos Vető]]
The Czechoslovak case of cooperation between the Jazz Section and the U Zábranských club is worth comparing with other institutions with similar profiles (i.e., state-funded spaces that weren’t hostile to semi-official activities). Such spaces included the Fiatal Művészek Klubja (Young Artists Club) in Budapest, the Riviera-Remont club and Post in Warsaw, and the Leningrad Rock Club. Each exploited the resources offered by the state in a different way that, combined with the socio-political context, produced specific subcultures. In Hungary, the situation was seemingly clear: according to a policy implemented by prominent politician György Aczél in the 1960s, each manifestation of cultural life was labelled as belonging to one of three categories known as the ‘three Ts’ (Tiltott = banned; Tűrt = tolerated; Támogatott = supported).

However, a look at the 1980s new-wave scene confirms that the division applied to the whole culture where, as in Yurchak’s characterisation, contacts with the state were avoided but the resources and infrastructure provided by it were exploited to the full. In her book about the Hungarian music scene in the 1980s, Anna Szemere writes about a subculture that she describes as the ‘marginal intelligentsia’, the focal point of which was Budapest’s Young Artists Club. It was a meeting place for political dissidents, musicians as well as visual artists. Established in the 1960s, the Club gained full momentum only in the last decade of socialism in Hungary thanks to its open formula which accommodated punk concerts as well as political discussions with members of the democratic opposition. Such activities triggered official reprisals, including frequent event cancellations, but that only added to the place’s popularity. New wave bands such as Balaton, Trabant, [[A. E. Bizottság]] or [[Vágtázó Halottkémek]] found perfect conditions here for developing their innovative ideas. Young Artists Club was also the best environment for them due to its exhibition programme. Artist János Vető, for example, whose works created in a duo with Lóránt Méhes (as Zuzu-Vető) were presented in several exhibitions at the Club, was also a member of Trabant (figure 7). The Young Artists Club was a place where much of his artistic activity was focused. Soon new venues with a similar profile started springing up. Szemere arrives at interesting conclusions, describing this movement towards new spaces of autonomy:

''"Subconsciously, musicians must have known that only by establishing physical spaces and places (primarily venues, but also radio and television stations, etc.) could they re-create affective spaces and places, which are the stuff and goal of music-based social events and rituals. The reconfiguration of the political-social space surrounding the community compelled it to seek stability in the building of physical places. This territorial approach to renewal seemed indispensable for many members of the underground if they were to retain a minimal sense of continuity with the past and regenerate a sense of collective identity."'' '''[24]'''

[[File:HOI - (8).png|thumb|right|8. Commonpress 51, catalogue of the exhibition ‘Hungary Can Be Yours’, 1984/89. Courtesy of Artpool]]
Szemere describes the sociocultural location of this movement as ‘marginal’, a term whose semantic scope overlaps with the alternative, with the difference that marginal positions no longer seek to situate themselves ‘towards’ anything, but simply occupy those areas where the power of the establishment was weak. It is worth mentioning here one of the many examples of the practices of the Young Artists Club that reveals a successful combination of youth culture with the visual arts as well as reflecting the official attitude towards the venue’s activities. In 1984 Artpool organised at the Club an exhibition called Magyarország a tiéd lehet! (Hungary Can Be Yours!). A multimedia project, it was divided into two rooms: in a black one, together withworks by foreign artists, one could watch also a broadcast from a white one, that included artworks by Hungarians (figure 8, 9). '''[25]'''

[[File:HOI - (9).png|thumb|right|9. Floorplan of the exhibition ‘Hungary Can Be Yours’, 1984/89. Courtesy of Artpool]]
A cassette tape was also released, number six in the Artpool Radio series of compilation tapes (a kind, effectively, of an audio magazine), presenting recordings by non-conformist artists such as Tibor Hajas or Tamás Szentjóby and bands such as [[A. E. Bizottság]], [[Vágtázó Halottkémek]] or Európa Kiadó (figure 10). The authorities deemed the exhibition to be politically subversive and ordered that it be closed down. '''[26]''' The significance of the event itself and of the violence of censorship is highlighted by the fact that after the transformation, in December 1989, the project was reconstructed precisely in exactly the same place.

In Leningrad, in turn, the year 1981 saw the founding of three organisations that offered a glimpse of cultural freedom and anticipated perestroika: ‘The Leningrad KGB [state security police] decides to stage a pioneering social experiment and the following are established at the same time: The Experimental Fine Arts Society, the Literary Club and the Rock Club. They are fostered by the trade unions, whose mission includes supporting factory-affiliated cultural centres to confirm the “culturalisation” of the working masses’. '''[27]'''

[[File:HOI - (10).png|thumb|right|10. Artpool r.di. 6, audio casette, 1984. Courtesy of Artpool]]
Each of the three – the Association of Experimental Visual Art (TEII), Club 81 (a literary organisation) and the Ленинградский рок-клуб (Leningrad Rock Club) – had a different structure. Club 81 was a recognised association of some 70 unofficial writers who organised lectures, conferences and concerts at the Dostoyevsky Museum (the famous writer’s former apartment). The Leningrad Rock Club was supposed to function much like the Association of Soviet Composers, that is, to issue concert permits and to act as a censor in the field of youth popular music. What proved far more important however was the space where the institution was housed: it became an influential venue for rehearsals, live shows or simply meetings (figure 11). It was the place where bands such as Kino, Alisa, Akvarium or Zoopark successfully launched their careers. In this context it is worth noting that liberalisation did’t produce the same effects in all areas. Timur Novikov, the leader of the New Artists group, felt ill at ease in the elitist structures of TEII and for this reason sought his own, alternative, methods of collective visual-arts practice. He remembered the Club as a place of unique atmosphere:

''"The New Artists collaborated with the Leningrad Rock Club. I myself was a member of the rock club, as the official designer of Kino. The New Artists designed the Kino sets and records and held exhibitions at the club. The Leningrad Rock Club was an exciting place to be at that time. Hoards of strangely dressed young people flocked to the concerts, with the police hot on their tracks. In the 1980s, long hair was out; crew cuts dyed all the colours of the rainbow were in. All the gigs were accompanied by arrests and document checks, which only added fuel to the flames."'' '''[28]'''

[[File:HOI - (11).png|thumb|right|11. Timur Novikov, Sergey Kuryokhin, Joanna Stingray and members of Kino, Aquarium and Alisa in Leningrad Rock Club, 1985. Courtesy of Joanna Stingray]]
While most of the musicians collaborating with Novikov, such as Victor Tsoy or Sergey Kuryokhin, worked with success at the Leningrad Rock Club, Novikov himself and the painters with whom he worked decided to start their own place (figure 12). Its activities and the one-of-a-kind community that formed around it are described by Konstanty Usenko:
''
"Timur organises the legendary Assa Gallery in an abandoned komunalka. Installations exhibited there will later appear in an eponymous film. Assa’s most famous show is one presenting the works of Andy Warhol himself, little known in the USSR at the time. Novikov, who corresponded by mail with the Pop Art master, had received from him several copies of the famous Marilyn Monroe poster and exhibited them in 1986 in a vacant communal flat in Leningrad. . . . Spaces in Papa Om’s new musical squat are also populated by painters and performers. Besides the neo-expressionists, there were also necro-realist filmmakers there, led by Evgeny “Yufa” Yufit, from the first punk crew from Kupchino. “Yufa” tries his hand there in video art making. In 1988, the Friends of Mayakovsky Club, led by Novikov and the Kino drummer, Gustav, organises at H4/B4 an exhibition commemorating the ninety-fifth anniversary of the artist’s death. News about it spread rapidly around the northern metropolis. Sergey Kuryokhin’s avant-garde orchestra, Pop-Mekhanika, gave a concert."'' '''[29]'''

The Leningrad Rock Club helped create a musical scene of great vitality, a scene that (like the New Artists) wasn’t interested in politics. During the period of perestroika after 1985, liberalisation opened the way for an explosion of youth culture which could be witnessed in film, music and the visual arts. It was thanks to the alliance between the disciplines that bands like Kino or Akvarium shot to real stardom and the official media had no choice but to report about their successes.

[[File:HOI - (12).png|thumb|right|12. Timur Novikov, Joanna Stingray and members of Kino in the ASSA Gallery, 1985. Courtesy of Joanna Stingray]]
In Poland, the Riviera-Remont club, through the many initiatives that took place there, helped forge alliances between visual artists and musicians (from jazz-experimental and new-wave backgrounds) on an unprecedented scale. A student club financed by a branch of the Socjalistyczny Związek Studentów Polskich (Socialist Union of Polish Students) of the Warsaw University of Technology, the Riviera-Remont ran several artistic programmes in the 1970s: the Remont Gallery, managed by Henryk Gajewski; a theatre centre; a cine club called ‘Kwant’; the Remont Jazz Club and the Remont Folk Club. In 1980-1981, Andrzej Zuzak launched, with a group of friends, the Polish name (Alternative Art Agency) which was to be the first independent artistic management agency supporting young alternative rock bands and other forms of artistic activity.

[[File:HOI - (13).png|thumb|right|13. Post, no. 2, 20 September 1980. Courtesy of Piotr Rypson]]
In 1974, Andrzej Mitan initiated the ‘Diaphora of Music and Poetry’, a series of meetings taking place through 1981, presenting recent innovations in music, poetry and the visual arts. The Remont Gallery, which Gajewski ran with Andrzej Jórczak and Krzysztof Wojciechowski, was geared towards conceptual reflection in the field of photography. Exhibitions were accompanied by theoretical brochures with essays by Polish authors and translations of key international texts. Its programme’s greatest highlight was a widely advertised visit of Andy Warhol (1974) which never happened: the whole thing was a happening/prank staged by Gajewski. In 1978, the latter organised a festival called I Am (International Artist Meeting) which featured two events that were to leave a lasting impact on the Warsaw new wave scene. One was the show of the leftist British punk band, The Raincoats, cited by numerous scene members as their first contact with the new music. The other was Gajewski’s meeting with Piotr Rypson, the future manager of Tilt (a new wave group), artist and curator, for whom the festival marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with the Remont. In 1979, Gajewski reorganised the gallery, renaming it Post Remont, and started publishing with Rypson a zine called Post, combining punk and artistic reflection (figure 13). Łukasz Ronduda describes their collective activities thus:

''"In their post-gallery, Gajewski and Rypson adopted the role of artists-managers, using progressive production and marketing strategies, characteristic for pop culture in developed societies, to support punk culture. They used them to fulfil a selfless artistic vision rather than, as managers in the West, to commercialise the punk movement and commodify its music, fashion and lifestyle."'' '''[30]'''

Let us note that in this interpretation, the Post Remont appears as a subject whose scope goes far beyond even the broadest formula of an artist-run space. It was, after all, a student gallery combining conceptual art and youth music with publishing (figure 14). At the same time, all these activities were made possible by state funding. The alliance ended abruptly with the introduction of martial law in Poland in December 1981 and Gajewski’s emigration to Amsterdam.

== DIY? ==
[[File:HOI - (14).png|thumb|right|14. Kryzys playing at Post during Henryk Gajewski’s exhibition ‘Other Book for Children’, 1979]]
In the West, the litmus test ultimately distinguishing truly independent artists from those collaborating with the establishment was traditionally the label a band was on. If it was with one of the majors, the band would face accusations of betraying its principles and selling out. But in communist-era Eastern Europe this benchmark didn’t apply. At this point, the mythology bound up with the key concepts that I wish to expand on in this essay becomes fully apparent. Did publishing a record on a state-owned label carry the same ideological meaning as publishing it on a major commercial one? I will try to answer this question, again citing several examples that will allow us to distinguish a range of hues far more varied than simple opposition-based contrast. Already in the USSR, traditionally perceived as the country most restrictive in its approach towards youth culture, we deal with a whole gamut of different policies. As will be demonstrated, the status of an officially recognised artist – one allowed to represent the country abroad and therefore also hold a passport or be able to publish – didn’t depend on artistic compromises but on the policy of the different republics.

In an essay accompanying a re-edition of Sergey Kuryokhin’s record titled, tellingly, Degrees of Freedom, Alex Kan reveals the scale of the different treatment of artists in the different parts of the USSR:
[[File:HOI - (15).png|thumb|right|15. Ganelin, Tarasov, Chekasin, Con Anima, LP issued by Melodia, 1976. Cover design by Eugenijus Cukermanas. Courtesy of [[Vladimir Tarasov]]]]
''"There was no way Melodiya would consider publishing avant-garde record of an underground musician. The fact that a few years earlier, in 1976, the Ganelin trio managed to get their magnificent Con Anima published on Melodiya, seemed a total aberration, an exception which just proved the rule. The trio lived and worked in a more liberal semi-Western Lithuania, and with Tarasov playing full time with the Lithuanian Philharmonic, Ganelin holding position of the music director at a prominent theater, and Chekasin teaching at a music school, they seemed and were much more established and respectable than a wayward pianist from a much more conservative Leningrad. Even for the trio it took five long years before their second release could see the light of day – the authorities at Melodia in Moscow, having realised the gaffe they made with Con Anima, put up stubborn resistance and Concerto Grosso was not published until 1981" (figure 15).'' '''[31]'''

The history of the recording and release of Degrees of Freedom aptly reflects the working conditions of progressive musicians in Leningrad. The album, with solo piano music, was recorded late at night in the studio of the Leningrad Institute of Film, Theatre and Music by a sound engineer that Kuryokhin was friends with. Smuggled to Britain, the material was released on vinyl by Leo Feigin, owner of Leo Records (figure 16).

[[File:HOI - (16).png|thumb|right|16. Andy Warhol holding the sleeve Sergey Kuryokhin’s LP ‘Ways of Freedom’, 1985. Courtesy of Joanna Stingray]]
There was no information on the cover about the circumstances of the original recording, but there was a disclaimer – ‘The musicians do not bear any responsibility for publishing these tapes’ – which suggested that the record was in fact a bootleg. In this context, it is worth examining another example of East-West music smuggling. Joanna Stingray came to Leningrad in 1984, During this trip she managed to meet numerous artists and scene members associated with the New Artists group, the Assa Gallery and the Leningrad Rock Club. Two years later, she published, on the Australian label Big Time, the compilation Red Wave: 4 Underground Bands From the USSR, with recordings by Akvarium, Kino, Alisa and Strange Games. At the same time, she made a documentary film featuring music videos by each of the bands and a presentation of the context in which they worked, including footage of Timur Novikov playing on the utiugon, a self-made instrument. On the cover, Stingray put the following note: ‘I have brought their music to the West, in hope of creating better understanding between people. MUSIC HAS NO BORDERS! (figure 17)’ '''[32]''' But the Soviet authorities thought otherwise and Stingray was punished for illegally exporting state property. As she recounted,

''"The tracks were recorded on reel-to-reel tapes that were outdated, large and unwieldy. I hid the paper with the lyrics under the lining of my boots and the tapes in a secret pocket of my jacket. I was smuggling the music out as if I were a drug courier. The safest route was from Leningrad to Finland because they didn't search people as thoroughly in the Leningrad airport as in Moscow. (…) When I returned to the Soviet Union, I first went to the VAAP (Soviet Copyright Agency). They gave me a long lecture and a paper to sign saying that I had smuggled the recordings out without the musicians' knowledge. I quickly agreed to sign it, gave VAAP the royalty fee and thought that the matter was settled. I returned to the States riding on a cloud and prepared for my wedding to Yury Kasparyan. But after that meeting they banned me from entering the Soviet Union for six months, with the result that I missed my own wedding."'' '''[33]'''

[[File:HOI - (17).png|thumb|right|17. Red Wave’ compilation, LP, Stingray Productions, 1986. Courtesy of Joanna Stingray]]
Record smuggling and bootlegging are a constant feature of stories about early new-wave music publishing. In Poland, for example, Kryzys (as well as Deadlock) had their first album released by Blitzkrieg Records, a Barclay label, founded to publish Polish and Chinese punk (the latter represented by ‘The Dragons’, which was probably a fictitious band). Robert Brylewski, the leader of Kryzys, reminisced,

''"There was a French guy, Marc Boulet, who travelled around the world, recording avant-garde bands … He cassette tape-recorded two bands, one of which practically didn’t exist and the other had no bass player, returned home and, riding on the wave of interest in Poland at the time, sold the material to the major label. Barclay Records. which issued it with a wrapper saying, “Solidarité avec le rock polonais” [Solidarity with Polish rock]. Boulet didn’t organise anything – he simply took out the tape recorder and recorded a rehearsal at the Amplitron student club … we organised the instruments themselves, using a metal ashtray from the hallway in lieu of cymbals. … The Kryzys album was actually a random compilation, and if you happen to find a copy somewhere, you’ll see that the songs I wrote are credited to someone called Zedlecki. Who the hell is Zedlecki?"'' '''[34]'''

Was hiding the name of the songs’ composer a deliberate act of camouflage, similar to Stingray’s disclaimer on the cover of Red Wave? It’s hard to say, but it seems unlikely, for Kryzys functioned at the time as more or less a ‘legal’ band, so it didn’t need to conceal its members’ identity. In 1982, the independent British label Fresh Records released Brygada Kryzys’s live album without any prior permission from the band and even unbeknownst to it, and only later sent an envoy on a legalisation mission (figure 18). According to Brylewski: ‘I wasn’t aware at all that someone had that tape. I only learned about the record when they brought it from Berlin. A guy came in a leather jacket, begging us to sign a backdated contract’. '''[35]''' It is worth noting that another record by the band was published in the same year by the state label Tonpress.

[[File:HOI - (18).png|thumb|right|18. Brygada Kryzys, Live, LP, Fresh Records, 1982. Courtesy of Robert Brylewski]]
This means that within two years Brylewski had his music published by a major Western record company, an independent Western label and an official domestic publisher. Another special case, and not only because their albums were released by the official Soviet record company, Melodiya, were the Ganelin Trio. They were among those avant-garde jazz musicians who were allowed to perform abroad. Their first album was issued in Poland following their appearance at the Jazz Jamboree festival in Warsaw in 1976, and here again the artists didn’t have much say about the publication (the song titles, for example, were invented by the Polish publisher). Ganelin, Chekasin and Tarasov started performing behind the Iron Curtain, and their concerts featured more and more multimedia elements. They were also aware of the work of Fluxus and John Cage, and it was these influences that inspired the group’s perhaps most radical performance, Household Music-Making in Nine Rooms, presented first at the Vilnius Philharmonic in 1979 and later also in Moscow, among other places (figure 19). The show proceeded in a surprising fashion. A live album released by Leo Records credits only Chekasin and Ganelin, ignoring Tarasov who was present throughout the performance – but sleeping. Tarasov himself described the event:

''"I sleep on a bed for the entire first act, and then I leap out of bed and grab the newspaper „Pravda” upside down. It was all very blatant, but we were not afraid. … Household Music-Making was absolutely a demonstration. If I remember, I sleep, then I jump up and we play all kinds of reworked songs, we eat sandwiches. I'll never forget, after the concert at the Vilnius Philharmonic people kept repeating, ‘You fellows will have problems, you will have problems’. They were afraid. They were afraid of us of course. But they were also pleased. Maybe they were jealous, that we let ourselves do these things. The same was true at the ‘Neringa’'' '''[36]''' ''where you sat at a table telling jokes, constantly glancing back, afraid, that someone might hear you. Of course, they heard everything.''" '''[37]'''

[[File:HOI - (19).png|thumb|right|19. [[Vladimir Tarasov]] during the performance of the Ganelin trio at Vilnius Philarmonic, 1979, photograph Gregory Talas. Courtesy of [[Vladimir Tarasov]]]]
Norman Weinstein, who wrote an introductory text for the album, noted,

''"You will hear an alarm clock sound at the conclusion of ‘Home Music Making’. Tarasov was on stage – sleeping! - throughout the Ganelin/Chekasin duets wakes up! This bit of theatre of the absurd accurately summarizes the inability of many critics to understand the Russianness of these masters whose every note demands we waken. But you may need no alarm. Just put this recording on your system and listen."'' '''[38]'''

Who was awakened in the first place was the audience of this unique performance. Inspired by performance art seen in the West and transplanted to the field of music, the action left a strong impact on another generation of Lithuanian artists, some of whom, like Česlovas Lukenskas of the group Post Ars, soon started their own intermedia activities. This transfer of ideas between seemingly separate worlds of music and the visual arts was made possible by the fact that the Ganelin Trio enjoyed the status of the official representation of Soviet free jazz.

In Poland, between 1982 and 1988, Andrzej Mitan, Cezary Staniszewski and Tomasz Wilmański ran the RR Gallery at the Remont club. Mitan had already been involved in the club’s concert activities. The death of composer Andrzej Bieżan in a car accident in 1983 became a pretext for realising a unique project, started by the posthumous publication of recordings of Bieżan’s music. Mitan did something unprecedented in the Eastern Bloc, publishing a series of long-playing records with avant-garde music in covers designed by leading Polish visual artists, all that in an interesting concatenation of official and unofficial circulations. The publishing process of the Alma Art series was highly complex and required negotiation with numerous institutions. The records were co-published by the Remont Club of New Music and the Polish Student Association’s Academic Bureau of Culture and Art, with funding from the organisation’s Information and Publishing Committee. Then Alma Art had to apply to the Ministry of Culture and Art for permission to publish the first batch of the records.

With endorsement from Józef Patkowski, then president of the Association of Polish Composers and founder of the Polish Radio’s Experimental Studio, permission was granted. The artists were allowed to use the Column Room of the Primate’s Palace in Warsaw for recordings, which they made using their own equipment. Another permission was required for the Pronit plastics producer in Pionki to start pressing the records; this was done during the weekend, outside the plant’s official schedule. As some copies had artist-made covers, Andrzej Mitan and Andrzej Zaremba worked hard to organise the necessary materials – such as 10 kilograms of red pencils, velour paper or photographic paper – despite severe market shortages. Finally, the materials were assembled. '''[39]''' Mitan describes the process in terms that bring to mind the parallel economy or collective working methods characteristic for the second or third circulations: ‘In a rented vacant flat at Sienna Street in Warsaw, I set up a manufactory workshop where the artists made the designer sleeves’. '''[40]'''

The records were then sold through standard distribution channels. The whole series included nine albums: Helmut Nadolski’s Jubilee Orchestra (cover by Andrzej Szewczyk), Andrzej Bieżan (Tadeusz Rolke), Andrzej Przybielski (Jerzy Czuraj), Janusz Dziubak (Edward Krasiński), Andrzej Mitan w Świętej Racji (Ryszard Winiarski), Krzysztof Knittel (Włodzimierz Borowski), Jarosław Kozłowski (Jarosław Kozłowski), and two records of Andrzej Mitan’s music (with covers by Cezary Staniszewski) (figure 20).

[[File:HOI - (20).png|thumb|right|20. Andrzej Mitan, ‘W świętej racji’ (Holy Reason), LP, Alma-Art, 1984. Design by Ryszard Winiarski. Collection of Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź]]
E. Bizottság was also very lucky in getting their two records released in communist Hungary. The band was formed by a group of artists associated with the Vajda Lajos Stúdió in Szentendre, an artistic community dating back to the late 1960s that was geared towards non-professional and amateur art. From the very beginning the group’s output was a particular mix of youth subcultures with Dadaist and Surrealist inspirations. The following account of the community’s beginnings in early 70s captures its institutional complexity and ideological specificity:

When László feLugossy had finally avoided conscription (but was ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment instead), István Ef Zámbó organised a happening on the occasion at the Szentendre market square. He read out his text (he had already started writing books and manifestoes at the time) and handed out various useless objects, provided by Lászlo Terebessy, to members of the audience. The event was called Nalaja Happening, referring to the group’s dadaistic-surrealistic language, called the nalaja. The happening was interrupted by the police, and several participants, including Ef Zámbó himself, were arrested and prosecuted. At this point begins the counterculture myth of Szentendre, although it was mainly a series of naive actions that helped the town’s young residents to ‘bypass’ the system. Since the authorities feared the young artists, they decided to legalise their activities in order to better control them.

The group founded a discussion club, according to the Aczél principles described earlier, and adopted the name of Lajos Vajda, a pre-WWII artist active in the town, thus emphasising the significance of the classic avant-garde in Szentendre. Exhibitions as well as works by amateur artists were qualified by the Népművelési Intézet [Culture Institute], responsible for community and cultural centres, amateur groups and the promotion of art, again according to the ‘three T’ formula. Since the qualifying committee members, who enjoyed respect in the community as expert figures, usually supported the Vajda Lajos Stúdió, the town authorities gave the artists a postindustrial space as a permanent exhibition venue where the Stúdió continues to function to this day. '''[41]'''

In 1980, continuing the countercultural-amateur traditions of the Szentendre artistic community, a group of artists who were eventually to form A. E. Bizottság decided – just for fun – to take part in a talent show. Their unexpected success drew the attention of the public and of other new wave bands, but also of filmmakers. In 1982, at the Balázs Béla Studio (BBS), the idea was conceived of making a documentary film about the new music scene, including bands such as Trabant, Balaton or VHK. Soon it was decided to focus on A. E. Bizottság alone, and since the band members were artists, the filmmakers thought to conduct an unusual experiment: the band was asked to make a film about itself, with funding provided by the studio. András Wahorn, as the group’s leading member and someone with filmmaking experience, became the project leader and the original script was co-written by László feLugossy. But the resulting footage was unusable and BBS decided to cancel the project. Help came from one of their filmmakers, Gábor Bódy, who liked the experiment enough to lend Wahorn his own video camera, a crew, and some money to finish the film.

[[File:HOI - (21).png|thumb|right|21. A. E. Bizottsag, ‘Kalandra Fel!!’, LP, 1983, Start Records. Design by Andras Wahorn. Courtesy of Andras Wahorn]]
That’s how Jégkrémbalett (Ice-cream Ballet, 1984) was made. At first, it enjoyed limited screening rights at home, but when, following Bódy’s inspiration, A. E. Bizottság were invited to the Berlin Film Festival, it was banned altogether. The band described their situation as ‘undorground’, a pun on the Hungarian word undor, ‘distaste’. '''[42]''' A year earlier, A. E. Bizottság were invited by Hungaroton, the official record company, to record an album. This had been provoked by a radio interview where the company’s head was asked why a band so popular still hadn’t released a record. The apparatchik replied, falsely, that work on the record was under way. Wahorn sensed an opportunity and decided to hold Hungaroton to their word. The impossible became possible and Kalandra Fel!!, featuring strikingly avant-garde music, was published in 1983 (figure 21).

== Twittering Machines ==
[[File:HOI - (22).png|thumb|right|22. ‘DDR von Unten’ compilation LP, 1983, Aggressive Rockproduktionen. Cover design by Rolf Kerbach. Archive of Alexander Pehlemann]]
[[Zwitschermaschine]] were a legendary DDR band formed by visual artists Cornelia Schleime and Rolf Kerbach with a member of the Prenzlauer Berg poetry scene, Sascha Anderson. The group’s compositions were featured on side A of East Germany’s first punk record, DDR von Unten / eNDe, which also included tracks by Sau-Kerle (the Schleim-Keim duo under a different name) (figure 22). Published in 1983 in West Germany by the independent label Aggressive Rockproduktionen, the violent and formally complex music of [[Zwitschermaschine]] was complemented by Anderson’s poetry, which produced a unique effect, especially in combination with the relatively straightforward punk of the Schleim-Keim duo. But punk was only of the band’s inspirations; others were the intermedia experiments of an earlier generation of DDR free jazz artists, where a liaison between the music and art scenes was provided by figures such as A. R. Penck or Helge Leiberg. '''[43]''' The album, as it will turn out much later, was not just an artistic event. In his speech upon receiving the Georg Büchner Prize in 1991, Wolf Biermann revealed that Anderson had been a Stasi informer since the 1970s. '''[44]''' Based on archival research, Seth Howes further complicates the picture, writing:

''"...the evidence suggests he employed dissemblance and misdirection to ensure the record made it to production. Anderson provided information on the record’s progenitors and recording sessions only after the fact, and staved off Stasi intervention by doling out incriminating information at strategic times. Though a representative instance of his unethical ‘art of betrayal’, in this particular case, he also managed to have the record released by providing just enough information on its participants to placate his dissatisfied handlers, but little enough to ensure the project continued. Paying for the record project’s completion by betraying its participants, Anderson achieved the original goal: the release of a punk record of Eastern provenance in the West."'' '''[45]'''

At this point, all the previously mentioned divisions collapse. The last act of the ‘war’ between the regime and the punk movement took place in a recording studio. The release in the West (from smuggled tapes) of a music album recorded by an East Berlin band was made possible by an artist who was a Stasi informer. So wasn’t the record partly at least a tool of the secret police (even if we don’t know what their motivations might have been)? And who is the underground? The title of a Sau-Kerle track on DDR von Unten is intriguing in this context: Untergrund Ist Strategie.

== Underground Is a Strategy ==

The panorama sketched above is naturally a selective one. My goal has not been to describe all circumstances but rather to find examples that might revise our understanding of key concepts. But what emerges from this collection of paradoxical accounts? Above all, a narrative about the different dynamics of liberalisation and their impact on specific countercultural practices. We have seen how Western terminology was adapted for local purposes, yielding disagreements between the leaders of the different groups. But the examples cited in this essay do reflect some general principles. Firstly, as noticed by Yurchak, the underground preferred to avoid a collision course with the state; as a result, political dissidents and groups with clearly defined political goals formed alliances with the independents only under immediate duress. In all other cases, the opportunities offered by the state, whether in terms of infrastructure or other, were eagerly exploited. The enemy was not so much a specific socio-political regime as the establishment, however broadly defined.

But there is also the other side of the coin – the Eastern Bloc countries’ policies towards punk. On the one hand, punks in DDR were persecuted, on the other we have the perestroika and the independents, who came to embody political changes as much as party leaders. The history of institutions and distribution networks described herein is a history of concessions made to pacify or better control the youth. After all, one of the reasons for organising the Jarocin Rock Festival was the possibility of taking pictures of most Polish punks. This element poses significant limitations in the research of ‘independent’ circulations. The story of Sascha Anderson shows how even crucial moments in the history of counterculture may have been orchestrated or inspired, directly or not, by those in power.

In fact, Anderson isn’t the only one whose biography had to be revised after the transformation. Gábor Bódy and Egon Bondy were secret police informers too. All three were central figures in their milieus, so it is safe to assume that they had been recruited partly because of what they could do. This is a third element that needs to be added to those listed by Jonathan Bolton in the passage quoted at the beginning of this essay. Besides official documents, we should not only research the underground mythologies, but also look closely at the other side of the coin, for the underground can also be a synonym of the group guarding the establishment’s hegemony.

== References ==
'''[1] ''' Jonathan Bolton, Worlds of Dissent. Charter 77, the Plastic People of the Universe, and Czech Culture under Communism (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2012) 133.

'''[2] ''' Alexei Yurchak, ‘Gagarin and the Rave Kids: Transforming Power, Identity, and Aesthetics in Post-Soviet Nightlife’ in: Adele Marie Barker, ed., Consuming Russia: Popular Culture, Sex, and Society since Gorbachev (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999) 80.

'''[3] ''' The phrase itself is by William S. Burroughs, and the leader of The Fugs used it as a motto for the magazine Fug You.

'''[4] ''' Cf. Milan Knížák, Písně kapely Aktual, Martin Machovec and Jaroslav Riedel, eds. (Praha: MAŤA, 2003) 39.

'''[5] ''' Ivan Martin Jirous, ‘Report on the Third Czech Musical Revival’, transl. Paul Wilson, in David Crowley, Daniel Muzyczuk eds. Notes From the Underground (Łódź: Muzeum Sztuki, 2016).

'''[6]''' Ibid..

'''[7] ''' Cited in Robert Gildea, James Mark and Anette Warring, eds., Europe’s 1968.Voices of Revolt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 188.

'''[8] ''' Quoted in Gábor Danyi, Sztuka obdarowywania. Model dyseminacyjny wczesnego samizdatu na przykładzie węgierskiego czasopisma artystycznego [The art of giving. The dissemination model of early samizdat on the example of a Hungarian art periodical], paper presented at ‘Solidarity. New Approaches to the Analysis of a Social Movement’, a seminar at Collegium Civitas, Warsaw, 17 November 2014, http://solidarnosc.collegium.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Danai-paper-17-11-2014.pdf – accessed July 2016.

'''[9] ''' Martin Machovec, ‘Ideological Orientation and Political Views and Standpoints of Representatives of Czech Underground Culture, 1969–1989 (Underground and Dissidence – Allies or Enemies)’, eSamizdat, 2010–2011 (VIII) 183.

'''[10]''' ‘Pisałem dla tych chłopców z undergroundu! Z Egonem Bondym rozmawiają Václav Burian i Leszek Engelking’, in: Egon Bondy, Dzisiaj wypiłem dużo piw, transl. Leszek Engelking (Kraków: Miniatura, 1997) 165–166.

'''[11] ''' It is worth noting yet another connotation: in his 1987 book, The Velvet Prison: Artists under State Socialism, Miklós Haraszti used the term ‘velvet prison’ as a metaphor for the constraints faced by artists in the Eastern Bloc. The cell was lined with velvet if the artist didn’t express political views inconsistent with the official Party line.

'''[12] ''' Miroslav Vaněk, Byl to jenom rock’n’roll? (Praha: Academia, 2010). 59.

'''[13] ''' Remigiusz Kasprzycki, Dekada buntu. Punk w Polsce i krajach sąsiednich w latach 1977–1989 (Kraków: Libron, 2013) 143.

'''[14] ''' Miroslav Vaněk, Ostrůvky svobody: Kulturní a občanské aktivity mladé generace v 80. letech v Československu (Praha: ÚSD AV ČR Votobia, 2002) 188.

'''[15] ''' Cf. documents published by the International Labour Organization, http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:50002:0::NO::P50002_COMPLAINT_TEXT_ID:2901573 – accessed July 2016.

'''[16] ''' M. R. Makowski, M. Szymański, Obok albo ile procent Babilonu? (Katowice: Manufaktura Legenda, 2010) 233.

'''[17]''' Mikołaj Lizut, PrL – Punk Rock Later (Warszawa: Sic!, 2003) 45.

'''[18]''' Paweł Konjo Konnak, ‘Tranzytoryjna formacja Totart w drodze do Nieśmiertelności i Wolności’ in Krzysztof Skiba, Jarosław Janiszewski, Paweł Konjo Konnak, Artyści wariaci anarchiści. Opowieść o gdańskiej alternatywie lat 80-tych (Warszawa: Narodowe Centrum Kultury, 2011) 154.

'''[19]''' Timothy W. Ryback, Rock Around the Bloc. A History of Rock Music in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (New York–Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) 89.

'''[20] ''' Théo Lessour, Berlin Sampler. From Cabaret to Techno: 1904–2012, a Century of Berlin Music (Berlin: Ollendorff Verlag, 2012) 225.

'''[21] ''' Anderson, dir. Annekatrin Hendel, 2014.

'''[22] ''' Susanne Binas, ‘East-West Breakthroughs: The Significance of the GDR Pop Underground Today’ in Edward Larkey, ed,. A Sound Legacy? Music and Politics in East Germany (Washington, DC: American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, 2000) 29.

'''[23] ''' Cf. Ronald Galenza & Heinz Havemeister, ‘Either/Or in No-man's-land. Punk in the GDR 1984–89: Between Repression and Seduction’ in Michael Boehlke and Henryk Gericke, eds., ‘Too Much Future’ Ost Punk. Punk in der DDR 1979–89 (Berlin: Künstlerhaus Bethanien, 2005) 97.

'''[24]''' Anna Szemere, Up from the Underground. The Culture of Rock Music in Postsocialist Hungary (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001) 127–128.

'''[25]''' Cf. György Galántai and Júlia Klaniczay, eds., Artpool. The Experimental Art Archive of East-Central Europe (Budapest: Artpool, 2013) 84.

'''[26] ''' A secret-police file on the Artpool founder, György Galántai, codenamed ‘Painter’, explains why: ‘For Galántai's competition several "works of art" (in reality plain botch-works) had been provided that are politically problematic, destructively criticize and, moreover – primarily some of those made by Hungarian "artists" – mock and attack our state and social order as well as the state security organs. Galántai was unable to separate these pieces from the rest of the works, which most probably would have been against his intentions anyway’; Artpool…, op. cit., 268.

'''[27] ''' Konstanty Usenko, Oczami radzieckiej zabawki (Wołowiec: Czarne, 2012) [e-book].

'''[28] ''' Timur Novikov, ‘Autobiography’, http://www.timurnovikov.ru/docs/books/57_autobiography_engl.pdf – accessed 30 July 2016.

'''[29] ''' Usenko, op. cit.

'''[30] ''' Łukasz Ronduda, Sztuka Polska lat 70. Awangarda (Warszawa, Jelenia Góra: Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Polski Western, 2009) 367.

'''[31] ''' Alex Kan, ‘The Ways of Freedom’, in: Sergey Kuryokhin, The Ways of Freedom, CD (London: Leo Records, 2001).

'''[32] ''' Red Wave, LP, Stingray Productions, 1986.

'''[33] ''' Denis Boyarinov, ‘Joanna Stingray, a California Girl in the U.S.S.R.’, The Moscow Times http://www.themoscowtimes.com/arts_n_ideas/article/joanna-stingray-a-california-girl-in-the-ussr/562009.html – accessed July 2016.

'''[34]''' Robert Brylewski, Kryzys w Babilonie. Autobiografia. Rozmawia Rafał Księżyk (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2012) 100–102.

'''[35] ''' Ibid., p. 121.

'''[36] ''' The Neringa Hotel restaurant was famous for its free jazz concerts from the late 1960s.

'''[37]''' ‘We Created Our Own Language. Saulius Žukas interview with Vladimir Tarasov, Vilnius, summer, 2007’, in: Vladimir Tarasov: Between Sound and Image (Vilnius: Baltos Lankos, 2008) 22.

'''[38] ''' Norman Weinstein, ‘Music Begins When Definitions are Silenced’, in: Golden Years of the Soviet New Jazz, Vol IV, CD (London: Leo Records, 2003) 13.

'''[39]''' Danuta Bierzańska, ‘Nic nie jest niemożliwe. Dość szybki utwór – na kilka orkiestr i wielu solistów. Muzyka, słowa i nabijanie tempa: Andrzej Mitan i Andrzej Zaremba’, Tytuł roboczy, 2009 (029–030) 73–81.

'''[40] ''' Andrzej Mitan, ‘Wywiad z samym sobą’, in: Tytuł roboczy (Warsaw: Galeria 2b, 2008) 15.

'''[41] ''' Katalin Balázs, ‘Sztuka efemeryczna i kontrkultura. Na przykładzie wybranych zjawisk z węgierskiej historii instytucji kultury’ [Ephemeral art and counterculture. On the example of selected phenomena from the history of Hungarian cultural institutions] in Sztuka i dokumentacja, no. 7, 37.

'''[42] ''' Cf. Szemere, op. cit., 16.

'''[43] ''' Christoph Tannert, ‘Vierte Wurzel aus Zwitschermaschine’ in Ronald Galenz and Heinz Havemeister, eds., Wir wollen immer artig sein... Punk, New Wave, HipHop, Independent-Szene in der DDR 1980–1990 (Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf Verlag, 1999) 196.

'''[44] ''' Cornelia Schleime, ‘“Killersatellit” and Randerscheinung Jeder Satellit hat einen Killersatelliten. If Only We'd Taken it Literally’ in ‘Too Much Future’ Ost Punk…, op. cit., 177.

'''[45] ''' Seth Howes, ‘“Killersatellit” and Randerscheinung: Punk and the Prenzlauer Berg’ in German Studies Review, Vol. 36, No. 3 (October 2013) 583–584.

[[Category:Czechoslovakian Contributions]] [[Category:Russian Contributions]] [[Category:Hungarian Contributions]] [[Category:East German Contributions]] [[Category:Polish Contributions]]

Katalin Ladik

2018-06-05T10:58:41Z

Diogo: Created page with "Today based in Budapest, Ladik was animated and sometimes controversial spirit in the neo-avant-garde in Yugoslavia before the country’s collapse in 1992. Her output include..."

Today based in Budapest, Ladik was animated and sometimes controversial spirit in the neo-avant-garde in Yugoslavia before the country’s collapse in 1992. Her output includes a novel, poetry, sound poems, graphic scores, performances and happenings. She has enjoyed close working relations with musicians, performing, for instance, with Dubravko Detoni and Milko Kelemen’s experimental music group ACEZANTEZ in the early 1970s. Later in the decade she had a role as a vocalist in a monumental performance of Kurt Schwitter’s ‘Ursonate’ (1979). Conducted in Belgrade by Oskar Danon, it involved four vocalists, four orchestras, banks of tympany augmented with tape music by Vladan Radovanović made from fragments of folk, electronic and pop music. Ladik is also a visual artist. A member of the Bosch + Bosch group in Novi Sad, she created collage graphic scores for what she called her phonopoetics in the early 1970s. Slicing material from glossy West German women’s magazines as well as other graphic materials including sewing patterns and stamps, Ladik produced powerful images for use in public performances, interpreting them in situ. As if employing the kinds of editing, pitch-stretching and duplicating techniques available in the studio, Ladik’s ‘natural’ voice seems strangely involuntary. Ladik was a celebrity in Yugoslavia. She performed naked, treating her body like as an instrument (running a primitive bow across her hair). When, in 1975, these performances attracted the attention of mass-market magazines, she was thrown out of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia for ‘immorality’. In the paradoxical fashion of Yugoslav socialism, she then become a star on state TV, appearing in one of its forays in erotica. Never a campaigning feminist, Ladik’s performances always put female subjectivity to the fore, often in uncompromising ways.

== Related Content ==
[[Glimpses from the history of the Eastern Bloc’s neo-avant-gardes: Katalin Ladik’s collage-portrait]]

[[Category: Yugoslavian Figures]]

Glimpses from the history of the Eastern Bloc’s neo-avant-gardes: Katalin Ladik’s collage-portrait

2018-06-05T10:57:29Z

Diogo:

[[File:Still-from-Berberian-Sound-Studio.jpg|thumb|Still from Berberian Sound Studio]]
Text by Antoni Michnik, originally published in Glissando Magazine. This is a revised translation made by the autor. All of the translations within text (quotes etc.) were made by the author, unless stated differently.

== Introduction ==
(In the picture is) The opening of Peter Strickland’s movie Berberian Sound Studio [1]. The main character, British sound engineer Gilderoy (Toby Jones), is working in Italy on the soundtrack to a giallo movie. In a studio that simultaneously brings to mind all the legends about the magic of experimental music studios and also those stories about bad working conditions on C-grade flicks, the magic of film sounding occurs: from voice acting dialogues, through the use of electronic effects, to performative imitations of the film–world (Foley). One day, an unexpected guest appears on the set – a person voicing the character of a “demon”, greeted by the director with unusual courtesy. As it turns out, this is Signora Ladik, whom we later observe working in a studio, creating demonical sounds by means of a broad spectrum of extended vocal techniques.

The character is played by none other than [[Katalin Ladik]], one of the leading Eastern European artists of the 20th century, and a key figure of the Yugoslavian neo-avant-garde from the second half of the 60s until the demise of the country. An outstanding sound and visual poet, as well as a performer, sound artist and composer of conceptual music; she still belongs to the group of too–little–known figures of Eastern-European neo-avant-gardes [2]. The short episode in Berberian Sound Studio – an homage paid to her by Strickland – makes for an adequate preface to her oeuvre as it brings together a group of themes that are important to her artistic practice: the uncanniness of sound and its eroticism, the complex relationships between the visual and the aural, and finally the transcendence of the borders of language and the abolition of the division between high and low culture. In the rest of this essay we’ll examine Ladik as a sound poet, radical performer, player of new music and creator of experimental scores. Following in the footsteps of her art, we’ll journey through the different circles and tendencies of the Eastern Bloc’s neo-avant-gardes.

== 29.07.1973 – BALATONBOGLÁR ==
''“Vowel prolongation, repetition of consonants, words that seem to come from her gut, her throat, her mouth; such techniques became an early repertoire that was often performed as a shamanistic ritual, enacting the poems through the artist’s body, as an extension of her voice and her language. Sentences became embodiments, words produced their meaning through ritualized gestures, letters were spat out or swallowed—a corporeal manifestation of language.” -'' '''Hendrik Folkerts''' [3]

If we want to focus on the topic of film sounding in Ladik’s own art, we should begin with the experimental movie O-pus (1972), created in collaboration with Atilla Csernik and Imre Póth. A fine example of the translation of the principles of visual poetry into the language of film, O-pus was conceived as an intermedia entity, a piece of audiovisual poetry. The original soundtrack was lost, which turned the images themselves into a score that Ladik interpreted anew, vocally, in Balatonboglár in 1973. As David Crowley and Daniel Muzyczuk write: “The film is a poem, a piece of music, and the documentation of a highly erotic performance, all at the same time” [4]. The situation we’re facing here is similar to that of Signora Ladik in Strickland’s movie: the image demands sounding, and its framework is decided by the author, leaving a wide margin of freedom for the performer. The concrete, onomatopoeic texture of O-pus – on the textual level the soundtrack of the film consists only of repetitions of the phone “O” – leaves Ladik the space for various voice modulations, and gives her the chance to use a wide palette of extended vocal techniques. O-pus is a kind of tour de force of her voice’s abilities, transformed by the sound engineer – first and foremost through layering different vocal parts, which come to resemble the visual imposition of different letter “O”s.

<youtube>https://youtu.be/XgS4iXMGC20</youtube>

Thus, if we approach the visual material of the movie as a score for performance, it is definitely one for a vocal piece with tape. It’s a score we can witness unfold and, as it occurs, decode the schemes of its interpretation. In the second part of the film, the main theme becomes the relationship between the body and language – a topic that interested both Ladik and Csernik. Letters on human bodies were a frequent motif in Csernik’s works from that period; there is even a photo (1971) in which we can see him placing letters on Ladik’s body. Hendrik Folkerts wrote that the compositions performed by Ladik were a kind of bodily manifestation of language, a specific extension of voice [5]. It is precisely this corporeal aspect of her vocal art that makes her role in Berberian Sound Studio such a great metaphor for her oeuvre – the voice seems to live its own life, uncovering the uncanniness of extended vocal practices. Because of that aspect, her art fits well into feminist investigations of the relations between the body and language, such as can be found, for example, in works made in the 60s and 70s by Ketty La Rocca – another artist who began as an experimental poet.

The Balatonboglár chapel, where the O-pus performance took place, was one of the most important sites for the Hungarian neo-avant-garde during the first half of the 70s. Rented by György Galántai, it functioned between 1970 and 1973 as an exhibition space, gathering the most interesting Hungarian visual artists, performers and critics. In 1972 László Beke initiated international activities in the chapel; in the following two years a large number of exhibitions, situations and other meetings of members of the Eastern Bloc neo-avant-gardes were organised there [6]. The crucial part in that networking was the activity of the Bosch+Bosch group (1969-1976), which gathered artists from the Yugoslavian autonomous province of Vojvodina. Ladik became a member of the group in 1973. Born and raised on the border of two cultures among the Hungarian minority in Vojvodina, she speaks, from her childhood, both Hungarian and Serbo-Croatian. Bosch+Bosch, which included other members of complicated descent (for example Atilla Csernik), tried from the beginning to combine Yugoslavian and Hungarian avant-garde traditions. Its members engaged in various collective projects, searching for ways to overcome established categories and subvert dominant identities.

== 01.05.1968 – SZENTENDRE ==
''“On 25 June 1966 Erdély and Szentjóby organised with Gábor Altorjay the first happening in Hungary, called The Lunch [Az ebéd] (in memoriam Batu kán), during which Penderecki’s music, emitted by the artist, was accompanied by the sounds of eating a chicken and nailing it to the table, washing it down with salt water, the binding and flagellation of one of the participants with horsehair, setting the cart on fire, etc.”'' - Magdalena Radomska [7]

''“On her arrival in Budapest on the evening of 30 April 1968, Ladik was given a letter from Szentjóby by the hotel receptionist. It informed her that when she left the hotel the next morning she should follow a man waiting there with a dog and, without speaking, get into his car. This she did, and the man drove her through the town to the banks of the Danube in Szentendre. On leaving the car, Ladik saw some men taking photos of her. She followed the dog and found a human-shaped form wrapped in aluminium foil lying on the grass in the sunshine. She also saw a man – Erdély – sitting on a stool a few metres away, flagellating his naked torso with one arm and having the nails of his other hand trimmed by a woman over a basin of water with some goldfish in it. Without any instructions, Ladik did what she supposed to do: she slowly unwrapped the foil. Szentjóby sat up, opened an aluminium sardine tin, and put some fish on two slices of bread. They ate, then opened an aluminium-foil packet of chewing gum and shared the gum with Ladik – still without uttering a word. He then stood up, and they started to walk slowly away from the river.”'' - ''Klara Kemp-Welch'' [8]

Since the beginning of the 60s Ladik had been writing poems in Hungarian [9]. Her debut, Ballada az ezüstbicikliről [Ballad of the Silver Bicycle], published in 1969 in Novi Sad, gathers her poems from 1962 to 1968. Ladik at that time used to hang out with the community of a Hungarian magazine published in Novi Sad called Új Symposion, and, at the same time, in Yugoslavian neo-avant-garde circles, collaborating with Bosch+Bosch and various figures of Yugoslavian contemporary and new music. From the beginning, her poems defied the traditional boundaries of poetry: the meanings of some of the pieces in the book are connected to the typesetting and graphic design of the texts, inscribing her into the developing scene of Yugoslavian visual poetry [10]. The book also includes a vinyl record containing vocal interpretations of the poems. This indicates that even back then Ladik treated her poetry as a trans-, multi- or inter-media entity – both as text that contains a sonic dimension, and also as a kind of a score that can be the basis for performing a sound composition.

Bernard Heidseck called the poetry intended primarily for readings poésie action, and it can be argued that all of Ladik’s poems are, first and foremost, precisely that: poems to be read / performed [11]. From the first half of the 60s she was connected to the theatre, both the stage (she studied at the Dramski studio in Novi Sad) and radio theatre. In 1963 she began working for Radio Novi Sad as an actress in the so-called Mađarske drame, a Hungarian-language radio theatre special series, which turned out later to be the launch pad for Hungarian theatre in Novi Sad. Radio became the first platform for her vocal experiments and explorations in sounding texts and images. The experience of studio work on audio material influenced her writing in a major way: by the end of the 60s we can find a distinctive strain in her poetry where the sonic quality and rhythm of the spoken word is more important than its literary qualities. Meanwhile, she had already begun participating in happenings and made her own sound performances, sometimes entitled “gests”.

In Ballada az ezüstbicikliről we can find, among others, a piece called UFO Party, which contains a part embracing Dadaist-Futurist traditions, where the rhythm of the words is disrupted by typesetting (suggesting the layering of two different voices) and the inclusion of LOOOOOOOONG strings of vowels screaming at the reader. What’s crucial here is the use of a type of stage direction introducing that particular section of the poem – a voice from a tape. As has been pointed out by Jacques Donguy, the development of sound poetry in the 50s and 60s was directly connected with the introduction of various tape recorders to the market, which opened up new possibilities for performing poetry [12]. The text of UFO Party can also be interpreted as the record of a potential sound poetry performance. Its origins date back to the happening that took place on 1 May 1968 in Szentendre (near Budapest): a huge undertaking arranged by Hungarian neo-avant-gardists Miklós Erdély and Tamás Szentjóby, the organisers of the first happenings in Hungary, who also made contact with artists conducting similar activities in different Eastern Bloc countries – for example, Szentjóby took part in the performance of Tadeusz Kantor’s Panoramic Sea Happening in Osieki in 1967.

Organised by Erdély and Szentjóby, the UFO happening consisted of many simultaneous actions in the open air. It was also the first happening in which Ladik was a participant. UFO Party could be interpreted as the score of a future performance, especially as from 1970 she began using the phrase as the title of some of her performances. The text of UFO Party exists in a few different versions. Apart from the one included in Ballada az ezüstbicikliről, the artist also published it as a Dadaist collage juxtaposing different fonts and images in Új Symposion where, the previous year, Gábor Altorjay had published his memories from participation in Az ebéd (in memoriam Batu kán) [13]. That version foreshadowed the graphic scores Ladik would create in subsequent years. There’s also a manuscript of UFO Party, shown in recent years at several retrospective exhibitions, which is more of a sketch for particular performative actions, and differs a lot from the versions published in the poetry collection and the magazine. In the manuscript’s case we deal only with handwriting, but the meaning is inscribed into various positionings of the letters, as well as differences in their size, shape and thickness. This kind of score directly foreshadows the types of experiments undertaken in O-pus.

== 1-3.04.1970 – ZAGREB ==
''“It comes about in a continuous ritual game of decomposition and recurrence, whose decomposing eroticism, bearing infinite and misty fruit – the more artificial, the more real – discloses the ultimate, primordial bareness and desolation. […] This game, as cynical and self-distanced as indeed immersed in itself, dances to the rhythms of pathetic prophecies and brass music, rhymed folk songs, sometimes asymmetrically comprising wailing and mourning, or to the rhythms of super-urban perpetuum mobile radiophonic electronics, to the rhythms of absurd dialogues bantering Oriental sententiousness (perhaps an attempt at poetic transplantation of the immediacy of zen), folk riddles, and our Ionescian communication. In the heat of this game the speech is divided, the cracked and mutilated thoughts incorporate and mould into definite pieces of nonsense, the words are relieved of their initial meaning, becoming a medium of a semi-articulated ritual (‘kibla kibla kibla’ in the poem UFO Party), to be reduced for a moment to a single voice beyond this equation – a result and value equivalent to the heterogeneous mishmash of sound and thought.”'' - Judita Šalgo [14]

Ladik’s early performances were, in the first instance, transpositions of her poems. The idea of performative declamation became a starting point for explorations into the realm of sounds devoid of conventional semantics. Performances of Ladik’s poetry for a Serbian audience already contained an inherent element of the language barrier, undermining the literary level of the meaning and shifting the attention of the audience towards the musical aspects of the performances. In the photographs of a 1970 Zagreb performance entitled Šamanska pjesma [Shamanistic Gest] we can see her using her voice throughout the piece, performing among the parts of the textual score scattered on the floor, surrounded by spectators in a performance space with a burning candle in the middle. Midway through the photographic sequence we see her outfit change: dressed in a black turtleneck, black trousers and a necklace-amulet (?) at the beginning of the performance, in subsequent photos we see her girded just with leather. However, other requisites appear, including bagpipes, which she plays during last part of the performance. We see her submitting her whole body to different theatrical acting techniques, but also turning it into an instrument as she treats her hair like strings, “playing” it with an object resembling a bow.

The extensive documentation of Šamanska pjesma comes from Ladik’s appearance at the GEFF festival in Zagreb in 1970 [15]. GEFF was a fascinating biennale of experimental cinema, organised in Zagreb from 1963, and with an edition planned for 1969 that eventually took place after a year’s delay. The festival was a crucial endeavour for Yugoslavian (especially Croatian) experimental cinema of the time, as well as a place where an audience could see cinematic experiments from the whole world – where, for example, P. Adams Sitney could present a 10-hour marathon of American avant-garde film. In 1970 the theme of the festival was “Sexuality as a potential road to new humanism”, and the programme included, among others, Carolee Schneemann’s Fuses (1965). Ladik was invited to perform within the broader context of a festival analysing the (counter-)cultural tendencies of the age of sexual revolution. Right from her debut, the eroticism of Ladik’s poetry was polarising, yet it was when she began using sexuality and nudity in her performances that she was labelled a scandalist [16].

However, some saw deeper traditions behind her performances, analysing their ritualistic aspect as derived from Hungarian folk culture, and describing her art as “ethno-surrealism” [17]. Yet despite the transgressive potential of her activities, Ladik’s works are far from the oppressive Actionist performances of the 70s: her actions demonstrate power and strength, but are not violent – their transgressive energy is one of emancipation, not revenge. Her works are indeed more connected to the tradition of Surrealism, especially its emphasis on the archetypical dimension of artistic practice. With her performances, Ladik falls within the tendency of the neo-avant-garde to turn towards the past in search of primordial energy. A similar focus on the ritualistic, archetypical aspects of performance and the functions of the voice suggest comparisons with the works of Joseph Beuys, but we can find such themes in the art of many other creators of happenings, events and performances in the 60s – from Milan Knížák to Bengt af Klintberg.

In the collection of Ladik’s recordings published in 2004 on the occasion of the internet appearance of the majority of her writings, we can find a piece from 1968 called Sámánének [Shamanistic Song]. I think we can assume that at least large sections of Šamanska pjesma sounded similar to this [18]. The recording contains only a short solo vocal piece (with a percussion instrument – Ladik would often perform with a drum at the time). The voice first appears in it as a hum, then shifts to noisy sounds which stop at the border of speech, barely forming phones. Yet the voice carries meaning: it evokes breathing, fear, pain and relief. Ladik’s voice is performative, trained so well in leading the narration that it can disperse with words. It’s a voice of extra-linguistic narration, using a broad palette of acting techniques developed during her work for Radio Novi Sad. When she left the station in 1979, Ladik tried to implement a similar attitude towards the voice in repertory theatre and cinema. The turn of the 70s and 80s is marked in her artistic practice by a group of works which use the scream to directly criticise the position of women in a society of socialistic rhetoric but patriarchal reality – one should mention here her performance entitled Rupa koja vrišti [Screaming Hole, 1979] and the monodrama Bayer Aspirin (1981), written for her by Ottó Tolnai. Her voice became a social weapon, a tool of critique and emancipation [19].

== 1976 – BELGRADE ==
The best-known of Ladik’s recordings, Phonopoetica, was released in 1976 by the SKC Gallery in Belgrade and lasts for just 15 minutes. The material is, as announced on the sleeve, a “phonic interpretation of visual poetry”. On the record, Ladik interpreted a group of works by different visual poets from various circles – from Bálint Szombathy (her husband at the time and also a member of Bosch+Bosch), through Gábor Tóth (a conceptual artist, self-publishing cassettes of his own experimental music) and Franci Zagoričnik (a member of the Slovenian neo-avant-garde group OHO), to Italian visual poet Giovanna Sandri and Dutch sound poet Gerrit Jan de Rook. The crucial aspect of the material is the work of Borislav Stajić and Ivan Fece, the record’s sound engineers. The record is deeply rooted in the practices of experimental studios of the time. Phonopoetica is a coherent composition, much more futuristic than Ladik’s ritualistic performances of the early 70s. The vocal delivery is clearly an element of a longer studio process: Ladik’s voice is transformed in different ways, layered and looped. It is accompanied by the sonic equivalents of found objects – which resembles the working method of many musicians labouring at the time in experimental / electronic music studios – unused scraps of tape from the parallel recording sessions of a jazz band [20].

<youtube>https://youtu.be/zCOlpf4qkXU</youtube>

Phonopoetica shows how important the development of experimental music studios after the Second World War was for the sound poetry of the 60s and 70s. When Henri Chopin stated that Ladik’s recordings sound as if she was “conducting a verbophonic orchestra”, he was referring not only to the variety of her vocal techniques, but also to the efforts of the sound engineers she worked alongside. Chopin was among those who particularly emphasised the new possibilities of sound poetry – in an age of the ongoing development of the techniques of sound manipulation – in comparison with the phonetic poetry of the interwar avant-garde. In 1967 Chopin wrote that words were no longer the primary material of the new sound poetry, replaced in that regard by “vocal microparticles” [21]. The textual-visual premises of concrete poetry meet here with the properties of musique concrète, and the studio recordings of Ladik’s sound poetry are the product of such a meeting.

== 27.10.1975 – NOVI SAD ==
The phrase “phonic interpretation of visual poetry” is one of the keys to Ladik’s art – especially to a series of works from the 70s which are simultaneously experimental scores and visual poems. During that decade Ladik created a large group of collages exploiting various aspects and elements of musical notation. In some of them, the staff is used as the background on which chosen objects are placed, as in A “Sába Királanöje” (c. operából zenekari szólamrészet) / “Die Königin Von Saba” (a. d. Orchesterstimme) / “The Queen Of Sheba” (selection from the orchestral part) (1973). In others, the artist uses parts of cut-up notation, as in Жути болеро[Yellow Bolero, 1978], or positions given work within the field of music only through the title, as in the case of Eine kleine Nachtmusik (1972). Ladik often used press clippings in those works (especially from women’s magazines), as well as stamps and other illustrations: in particular she utilised sewing patterns and pictures showing women sewing. On the one hand, such a treatment of the score clearly evokes the feminist art of the decade, as well as the broader cultural practices of second-wave feminism with its celebration of stereotypical “female” activities as artistic practices. On the other, it refers to the old Surrealist slogan of the “chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella”. Besides, the sewing machine has, over time, become an important element of her poetry: her collection of poems published in 1978 was entitled Mesék a hétfejű varrógépről [Stories of the Seven-Headed Sewing Machine].

During the second half of the 70s, aside from collages, Ladik also began making text scores stemming directly from concrete poetry. She created a series of works which – similar to collages – she brought within the field of music, giving them particular titles such as Zsoltár [Psalm, 1977] or Ének egy beolajozott kályhacsöre és nöi hangra [Song for an Oil-coated Furnace and a Female Vocal, 1977]. She had already used concrete texts as performance scores – a good example is R.O.M.E.T. (1972), created in collaboration with the poet Janez Kocijančić, a member of the group KÔD – but during the late 70s her experiments with text scores became more frequent and more radical. Let us use as an example Tavaszi zsongás [Spring Buzzing, 1977], which can be interpreted as a table or chart score with given time brackets gathered in a grid. The visual aspect of the work is still present, but through the structure itself rather than the collaged layering and juxtaposition of different elements. The visual recedes even further into background in a series of text scores published by Ladik in 1975 in a special issue of the magazine novine Galerija SC (a bulletin of the Student Centre Gallery in Zagreb), created by members of Bosch+Bosch. The issue, entitled WOW was a catalogue of their exhibition, containing among other things Ladik’s text scores – very much in the aesthetic of event scores. These were propositions of actions “for Novi Sad” – ideas of site-specific actions mostly connected to the Danube. For example, Ladik proposed colouring the ice flowing on the river through Novi Sad or sending postcards of the city (Spuštanje novog sada kroz dunav) [22] via the river.

The last of these pieces points at crucial thread within Ladik’s artistic practice – the constant eagerness for cross-cultural exchange, apparent both in her collaborations with members of different artistic circles and the highly conscious use of different languages in her own works. The same could be said of mixing high and low culture – Ladik shared the interests of both the majority of Yugoslavian new music composers and of folk musicians. Among her visual scores we can find two cycles entitled Ausgewählte Volkslieder [Selected Folk Songs, 1973–1975] and Balkan Folk Songs (1973). These are among the best of her collage-scores, and yet what’s most striking about them is the use of foreign languages in their titles. This suggests high self-consciousness about (and critical distance towards) the (ab)uses of traditional culture(s). The search for rituals and archetypes in performances pushed Ladik towards folk music, not as a direct source for composition or as the source of texts, but rather as part of a broader, multilinguistic substance for concrete procedures that could be used to create new, radical art forms.

== 22.09.1974 – WARSAW ==
''“1: Darkness. In the center of the stage Katalin lies buried, hidden from the eyes of the audience. No one can notice her presence. In a faint glimmer, the ensemble slowly approaches the piano from all sides. They begin to play with the instrument and around it. The play becomes more and more frenzied, faster, but not a single [musical] sound is produced. At a climax of playing, at the signal of a hand everything begins to slow down. Finally everything calms down. Everybody goes to their instruments and resumes the echo of one’s decelerated play. Easier and easier… At the end, a long silence. Listening to one’s own thoughts. Listening to one’s own nervous system by means of electronics.

2: Monos III in an extremely slow tempo. Extremely long pauses. Unusual sounds, very much like electronically filtered sounds. Almost nothing is played. A gesture or voice can be used instead of a musical phrase. Like music under water.

3: At the signal of a hammer, Katalin awakes. She gets up slowly, in an impressive way. Her appearance and movements should produce a small shock. A pantomime starts, considerably more varied and contrasting, slightly more dynamic, faster but longer. It directly turns into a monologue of gestures (a story). The intensity is growing. Katalin becomes more and more nervous, her hysterical gestures become mechanical – very fast, brief, but rapid. She ascends higher and higher on an invisible crane (?) At the climax (physical and psychological), noises from the tape appear, stunning her for a while. At the same time, it is a sign for the ensemble, and they start responding to each noise. Graphics IV has thus already started.”'' - '''Dubravko Detoni''' [23]

In 1974 the Warsaw Autumn festival included for the first time a concert of the ACEZANTEZ ensemble, one of the key proponents of new music in 70s Yugoslavia, founded by Dubravko Detoni. The concert opened with La Voix du Silence, a highly theatrical composition containing a number of Detoni’s earlier pieces. The performance instructions for such a “multimedia stage fantasy” [24], published many years later, are directly connected with Ladik, who is the main protagonist of the performative story, binding together its parts. The project had premiered during the previous year at the Zagreb Biennale, as part of the happening-concert Carousel II. The choreography for La Voix du Silence was created by Milana Broš, one of the most important figures for dance in Yugoslavia at the turn of the 60s & 70s and the creator of the KASP ensemble (Komorni ansambl slobodnog plesa, Camera Ensemble of Free Dance). Detoni eagerly experimented with instrumental theatre, moving towards musical happenings. The strong performative quality of his pieces can even be heard on recordings, as he frequently used extended vocal techniques and the studio’s possibilities to create spatial effects and build futuristic, autonomous sonic worlds.

Between 1971 and 1973 Ladik was de facto a permanent vocalist for ACEZANTEZ, performing with them at numerous new music festivals, even during a concert given as an official presentation of Yugoslavian culture accompanying the Olympic Games in Munich (1972), where they performed Yebell akcija za soliste, an interpretation of Milko Keleman’s (also a member of the ensemble) piece Yebell (1972). Yebell is composed around the sonic imitation of speech, foreshadowing the later vocal-instrumental experiments of Peter Ablinger. However, the composition stands out because its sonic texture is created out of vulgarities. On the occasion of the Munich concert Ladik prepared a libretto with Csernik, and the piece was performed by ACEZANTEZ and ensemble Peters with groups of dancers and mimes.

Yet, by the time of Warsaw Autumn 74, the vocal part of La Voix du Silence was being performed by Veronika Kovačić. On a photograph from one of Ladik’s performances from her period within ACEZANTEZ (1972) we can see her performing naked, playing solo saxophone, enacting a choreography, and finally sitting between dressed and somewhat bored ensemble members with her back towards them and the camera. Later, Ladik would add the title Apparent Presence to this work, and one can think it could serve as a metaphor of her place in the historiography of experimental music in Yugoslavia. Ladik’s first performance in Warsaw would eventually happen in 1976 during the exhibition Nowoczesna Sztuka Jugosławii, therefore within the context of the performing arts, not the new music scene.

== 1969 – OPATIJA ==
There aren’t many joint recordings of Katalin Ladik and ACEZANTEZ, and the majority of existing ones are connected to Ernő Király – an ethnomusicologist, self-taught composer, inventor of instruments, and also Ladik’s husband in the 60s. Király was important to the development of Ladik’s interests – during the 60s he worked for Radio Novi Sad, gathering and cataloguing the songs of various ethnic groups living in Vojvodina. At the same time he learned via the station about musique concrète and electroacoustic music, and began composing his own pieces. As a self-taught composer he created successive systems of graphic notation, from geometric figures to photographs of plants. Detoni and ACEZANTEZ were among the first to begin playing his pieces. Király’s experience as an inventor, along with Ladik’s acting background, brought to the ensemble a new attitude towards improvisation and expanding their musical material. This can be heard on two recordings of Király’s compositions where Ladik performs with ACEZANTEZ: Abszurd Mese [Absurd Story] and Sirató [Lament] (Ernő Király, Spectrum, autobus, trAce Label, 2001). In the first we hear Ladik using methods of sound poetry to make the titular story more surreal; in the second, the expanded vocal techniques are used to audially expand a short poem from Ballada az ezüstbicikliről.

Ladik collaborated with Király for many years, starting with works made at Radio Novi Sad. She frequently performed pieces from his cycle Refleksija [Reflections], beginning with her new music festival debut during the Yugoslavian Music Tribune in Opatija (1969). On an album released in 1991 (Ernő Király, Király, Udruženje Kompozitora Vojvodine, 1991) one can find recordings of the second (Elegia) and third (Scherzo) pieces from the cycle. Ladik’s voice serves there as a counterpoint to the strings, which experiment with extended instrumental techniques. Király also composed music for her radio play Aki Darazsakról Álmodik[Who’s Dreaming About Bees?], which premiered in 1982 on National Hungarian Radio and was released on vinyl in 1989 by PGP RTB (Produkcija Gramofonskih Ploča Radio Televizije Beograd) in a different version prepared for Radio Novi Sad. It’s a surreal, Lynchian story, where the narration is given by a group of transformed, processed voices – Ladik herself plays the main character using four different voices, and she’s accompanied by the actors Júlia Biszák and Károly Fischer. The sonic background is comprised of music played by Király on instruments of his own invention – the zitherphone and tablophone [25].

== 06.10.1979 – BELGRADE ==
In the 50s Dušan Radić was one of the composers that caused the hottest disputes within new music circles in Yugoslavia. His Spisak [Name List, 1954] became a voice in debates about the character of new Yugoslavian music, torn between the neo–romanticism “nationalised” by the new state during the interwar period, the Socialist Realism still dominating in the Eastern Bloc countries, and the modernist tendencies coming from centres of new music. In the following decades Radić turned away from Darmstadt, Warsaw Autumn and post-Cagean tendencies, towards the Medieval music of the Balkan Penisula [26]. In 1974 he composed the huge Oratorium Profanum, comprising several parts and conceived as an ironic essay about the evolutionary direction of contemporary music. The piece was written for three narrators, three choirs, three camera ensembles, four orchestras, four kettledrums, organs and tape, and it incorporated fragments of the aesthetic writings of well-known neo-avant-garde proponent Bora Ćosić [27]. It premiered at the opening concert of the BEMUS festival in Belgrade in 1979. For that project, Ladik was cast as a soloist.

The piece consists of four parts. In the first (Geometrical Man) Radić presents his own search for a synthesis of early music and Hindemithian neo–classicism. In the second (Surrounding) he focuses on the connections between new music and the aesthetics and forms of mass culture – some parts paraphrase the music of the golden era of Hollywood musicals, some phrases directly refer to classic jazz, and the narrators read quotes from Claes Oldenburg. In the third part (Happening) Radić evokes the post-Cagean tradition: he creates a musical happening, applies aleatoric structures and procedures, refers to Fluxus (through the words of the narrators), and quotes Cough Piece (1961) by George Maciunas. Finally, in the fourth part (Sonic Models) he looks at the possibilities of electroacoustic music, using a recording prepared for the occasion in the Electronic Studio of Radio Belgrade by Vladan Radovanović. Ladik appeared mainly in the last two parts of the piece. In a way, Radić placed her (and her art) into the Fluxus context and Dadaist traditions, as she performed fragments of Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonate, her voice juxtaposed with traditional choral music, in a section that begins with direct reference to Fluxus. In the last part, her vocal techniques served as a counterpoint to Radovanović’s timbral experiments. Here, key meaning is attributed to the colour of her voice, in dialogue with layers of electronic sound. From today’s perspective, Ladik and Radovanović are the bright spots in an otherwise massively verbose piece. The composition as a whole sounds terribly pretentious and could serve as a symbol of the creative exhaustion of the representatives of the first generation of post-war avant-garde music in Yugoslavia.

== 02/03.1988 – NOVI SAD ==
The end of the 80s was a period when Ladik spent more time back in recording studios, following a few years of intense work in theatre and cinema, and also on frequent exhibitions. Among the projects recorded during that period, two stand out as the most interesting. The first is a collaboration with Mitar Subotić, also known as Rex Ilusivi. A leading representative of a young generation of electronic music composers, Subotić also worked in the 80s as the producer of many of the important Yugoslavian new wave bands. Drawing equal measures from Radovanović’s achievements and various post-punk genres, at the beginning of 1988 he recorded a great work in Radio Novi Sad that wasn’t released until 2015. As the Yugoslav Wars broke out, Subotić moved to Brazil, where he lived, composed and produced music until his tragic death in 1999. He found himself in Brazil as the result of a UNESCO composing contest, where was awarded the International Fund for the Promotion of Culture for his The Dreambird, In The Mooncage, in which he combined electronic sounds with field recordings of birds from Madagascar and Serbian folk songs. The material had two distinctive parts – one was closer to ambient music (released in Brazil as The Dreambird [COMEP, 1994]), and the other – darker – was further developed during sessions which included Ladik. Finally published in 2015, In The Mooncage is a document of the transformation of the post-punk/new wave underground into the alternative rock of the 90s. Keyboards and synthesizers dominate the sound, but guitar, bass and percussion also play significant roles. The voices (of Ladik and Milan Mladinović, leader of the new wave band Ekatarina Velika) are also treated as instruments, complementing the folk singing.

During that period Ladik also recorded a series of poetic sound actions that were used in two projects, and of which recordings exist. The first is Víziangyal [Water Angel], where she recites fragments of her own lyrics mixed with parts from James Joyce and Lewis Carroll. It’s a kind of sonic-textual collage, stemming from the same sessions as Aki Darazsakról Álmodik – one can also hear Biszák and Fischer, as well as Király playing his zitherphone. The first part of Víziangyal was used as a starting point for Három Árva [Three Orphans] – another composition juxtaposing electronically modified voice with recordings of folk songs – this time Hungarian. It’s a kind of “adaptation of a Hungarian folk ballad”, utilising recordings gathered by Radio Novi Sad. The sound engineer for the project was Boris Kovač, an artist from the same generation as Subotić, also fascinated with traditional music; Ladik performed on his two first records: Ritual Nova (symposion records, 1986) and Ritual Nova 2 (Points East, 1988). Kovač himself, clearly interested in the combination of traditional music and “contemporary classical” as mass music for our times [28], is of less interest to us, but his work on the “adaptation of a Hungarian folk ballad” is exceptional.

== 14.10.2016 – BUDAPEST ==
An evening at the Kassák Museum. The band Spiritus Noister is playing on the occasion of the centenary of Dada. The line-up consists of Katalin Ladik, László Lenkes, Zsolt Sőrés and Endre Szkárosi. Ladik and Szkárosi simultaneously read texts and progress into rhythmic onomatopoeias or vocal experiments; Lenkes plays guitar, sometimes accompanying the vocalists, and sometimes building walls of noise; Sőrés plays violin and operates the electronics. All wear paper hats. Despite the fairly advanced age of the performers, the concert sounds unexpectedly fresh – and Ladik’s voice is no exception. Perhaps today real radicalism means Dadaist performances by performers with older bodies.

Ladik joined the band formed by Sőrés, Szkárosi and Zsolt Kovács in 1996 when they released the cassette Nemzeti zajzárványok / National Noise-Inclusions (Bahia Music, 1996). They don’t perform very often, but in 2003 they released their interpretation of Ursonate (Kurt Schwitters, Spiritus Noister – Ursonate for 2 Voices and Musical Environment, Hungaroton Classic, 2003). The “Musical Environment” created by Sőrés and Kovács for the voices of Ladik and Szkárosi contains a wide array of guitar sounds and timbres – from post-punk rumbles and blares, through noise squeals and screeches of audio feedback, up to differing cracks and crackles – as well as electronic hums, the sounds of violin and various percussion instruments, radio static and plunderphonically used fragments of recordings from different vinyl records. All of the sound sources are used sparingly, to leave the space for the vocalists and give a distinctive character to each track.

After the Balkan Wars broke out Ladik moved to Budapest, and is nowadays primarily connected to the circles of veterans of the Hungarian neo-avant-garde. Each year she spends a few months on the Croatian island of Hvar; sometimes she performs in the former Yugoslavian countries. In 2010 she had a retrospective in Novi Sad; in recent years she has also participated in some collective exhibitions. She’s still an alien body, “apparently present” within the art history of Hungary, and only now being inserted back into the post-Yugoslavian states’ fragmented cultural histories – so far, predominantly in the history of the performing arts.

I think about two of her collage-scores from 1971, both entitled Yugoslavian Hymn. They consist of stamps glued on staves – almost all of the stamps are the same, although some of them have different colours. Four stamps on the first work correspond with the four official languages of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian and Macedonian [29]. Six stamps on the second correspond with the six republics of the country. In 1975, during a collective exhibition in Vienna, Ladik performed an action called Identifikacija [Identification]. She made two photographs with a large Yugoslavian flag hanging from the balcony above the entrance to the Academy of Fine Arts. The first shows her in front of the flag, playing with the idea of representing the country. In the second she stands behind it – it covers her face, taking away her individual identity.

It’s hard not to think about her art – full of border-crossings and expanding boundaries, connecting communities and languages – as the art of a past era, overwhelmed and burdened by the catastrophe of the 90s. She lived in Novi Sad for almost half a century. And then to the long list of her identities she added another – that of an emigrant.

== References ==

[1] Further reading: Jean Martin, Peter Strickland’s Film Soundtracks, Glissando no. 26/2015, pp. 161-167

[2] The character voicing the “goblin” in the movie is played by Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg – another great practitioner of expanded vocal techniques. He and Ladik even perform together sometimes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92ScS7IQJ0U.

[3 ] Hendrik Folkerts, Keeping Score: Notation, Embodiment, and Liveness, http://www.documenta14.de/en/south/464_keeping_score_notation_embodiment_and_liveness

[4] David Crowley, Daniel Muzyczuk, Dźwięki Elektrycznego Ciała. Eksperymenty w sztuce i muzyce w Europie Wschodniej 1957-1984 / Sounding the Body Electric: Experiments in Art and Music in Eastern Europe 1957-1984, Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź 2012, p. 123.

[5] Ibid.

[6] See Magdalena Radomska, Polityka kierunków neoawangardy węgierskiej (1966-1980), Universitas, Kraków 2013, pp. 207-236

[7] Polityka kierunków neoawangardy węgierskiej (1966-1980), Universitas, Kraków 2013, p. 38.

[8] Antipolitics in Central European Art: Reticence as Dissidence under Post-Totalitarian Rule 1956-1989, Tauris, London – New York 2014, pp. 114-115.

[9] They were translated into Serbo-Croatian from the 70s. See Miško Šuvaković [ed.], Moć žene: Katalin Ladik. Retrospektiva 1962 – 2010 / The Power of a Woman: Katalin Ladik. Retrospective 1962 – 2010, Muzej Savremene Umetnosti Vojwodine, Novi Sad 2010, pp. 11-13.

[10] See Jacques Donguy, transl. Magdalena Madej, Poezja Eksperymentalna. Epoka cyfrowa (1953-2007), słowo/obraz terytoria, Gdańsk 2014, pp. 218-219.

[11] Ibid., p. 281.

[12] Jacques Donguy, op. cit., p. 133.

[13] See Zsuzsa László, Tamás St.Turba [eds.], Happening Budapest 1966. The Lunch (In Memoriam Batu Khan), tranzit.hu, Budapest 2011.

[14] Opasne igre razgrađivanja (beleške uz poeziju Ladik Katalin), Polja no. 128 / May 1969, p. 2, transl. Miško Šuvaković, op. cit., p. 109.

[15] For more on the festival see, for example, Željko Luketić, Genre film festival (GEFF) 1963.-1969.: Propuštena obljetnica / Genre Film Festival (GEFF) 1963-1969: Missed Anniversary, http://www.oris.hr/files/pdf/svijet_osiguranja/83/genre_film_festival.pdf.

[16] Years later, Ladik remarked that her performances caused much greater outrage and controversy in Hungary. See Beata Hock, Women Artists’ Trajectories and Networks within the Hungarian Underground Art Scene and Beyond, in: Jérôme Bazin, Pascal Dubourg Glatigny, Piotr Piotrowski [eds.], Art Beyond Borders. Artistic Exchange in Communist Europe [1945-1989], Central European University Press, Budapest – New York 2016, pp. 121-122. However, that only applies to artistic circles. The introduction of nudity to the Yugoslavian mass media caused a much bigger scandal. Documentation of Ladik’s performances was published in various magazines in Yugoslavia, including – and causing a particular scandal – a magazine named Start, sometimes referred to as the “Yugoslavian Playboy”. In 1975 Ladik was excluded from the party organisation for misconduct that would “degrade the reputation of the League of Communists, undermine its unity or debase its capacity for action”, Miško Šuvaković, Moć žene… p. 85.

[17] Endre Szkárosi, The Spatial Expansion of Language in Sound Poetry of Western and Eastern Europe, in: Yael Kaduri [ed.], The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Western Art, Oxford University Press, Oxford – New York 2016, p. 440. ↩

[18] Katalin Ladik, A Négidymenziós Ablak. Válogatott versek (1962-1996), Mikes International, Hága 2004, http://mek.oszk.hu/01600/01610/01610.pdf; http://mek.oszk.hu/01600/01611/mp3/. ↩

[19] Ladik never declared herself a representative of feminist art but – especially during that period – she often underlined her position as a woman within the system of new music, as well as within the visual and performing arts in Yugoslavia.

[20] Endre Szkárosi, op. cit., p. 442.

[21] Jacques Donguy, op. cit., p. 133.

[22] WOW, special issue of noviny Galerija SC, Novi Sad 27.10.1975, http://digitizing-ideas.org/pl/wpis/19670.

[23] Detonijeve upute za izvedbe / Detoni’s Instructions for the Performances, in: Raul Knežević [ed.], Ansambl ACEZANTEZ od 1970 / Ensemble ACEZANTEZ since 1970, Muzički informacioni centar Koncertne direkcije, Zagreb 1999, pp.144-145. Translated by the author on the basis of Miško Šuvaković, Moć žene… p. 151 and Mirjana Veselinović-Hofman, Problems and Paradoxes of Yugoslav Avant-garde Music (Outlines for a Reinterpretation), in: Dubravka Durić, Miško Šuvaković [eds.], Impossible Histories: Historical Avant-gardes, Neo-avant-gardes and Post-avant-gardes in Yugoslavia 1918-1989, MIT Press, Cambridge – London 2003, p. 435.

[24] Mirjana Veselinović-Hofman, ibid.

[25] More about the instruments: Anna Szwajgier, Muzyka Centrum – działalność i repertuar jako odzwierciedlenie głównych nurtów muzyki 2. połowy XX wieku oraz przemian dokonujących się w formach jej prezentacji, http://www.muzykacentrum.krakow.pl/AnnaSzwajgierMuzykaCentrum.pdf, pp. 91-92.

[26] Melita Milin, Serbian Music of the Second Half of the 20th Century: From Socialist Realism to Postmodernism, in: Katy Romanou [ed.], Serbian and Greek Art Music. A Patch to Western Music History, Intellect, Bristol – Chicago 2009, pp. 86-87. ↩

[27] Bora Ćosić, Mixed Media, self-published, Beograd 1970. ↩

[28] In the late 90s he formed LaDaABa Orchest (La Danza Apocalyptica Balcanica), a band that would play “ballroom dance music” combining various traditions of Balkan music with “contemporary classical” to exorcise the madness of the Balkan Wars. ↩

[29] There were de facto two types of Serbo-Croatian; however, they could also be counted as one, with the Albanian language – the de facto second official language in the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo – counted as the fourth language. ↩

[[Category: Hungarian Contributions]] [[Category: Yugoslavian Contributions]]

Aktual

2018-06-05T10:57:01Z

Diogo:

The group were established by Milan Knížák in Mariánské Lázně in 1967. Initially, Knížák invited only amateur musicians to collaborate with him. As a result of the drummer Jan Mach joining the group, Aktual began composing songs with a beat-like character. Aktual experimented with an unusual range of instruments, adding sirens, drilling machines and even a motorcycle to their conventional ensemble. They also made use of existing tunes, which they rearranged, adding new lyrics. Knížák's lyricism was full of humour and irony, and often mocked the official jargon of the Communist Party. Thanks to its primitive structure, their music seemed to be a parody of beat music. At first, their lyrics were in Czech only: after Knížák's trip to USA at the end of the 1960s, they included some English songs. Expressive musical scores, presenting lyrics and music in an idiosyncratic visual setting and performed by the frontman, became an important part of the project. Although the group only played a few concerts and their recordings were released only in 2003, their influence on the Czechoslovak underground scene is indisputable. The [[Plastic People of the Universe]] began performing original songs in Czech after playing a joint gig with them, and the establishing of the first incarnation of [[DG 307]] group (existing between 1973 and 1975) was directly inspired by Aktual, both in terms of the use of everyday objects as instruments, as well as the utmost simplification of the music.
The song on this record was later performed also by Plastic People of the Universe. For the authorities it became a symbol of renegade culture and it was used as the title of a tv broadcast in 1977 that condemned musicians and signatories of Charter 77 protest letter.

[[Category: Czechoslovakian Figures]]

Aktual

2018-06-05T10:54:00Z

Diogo: Created page with "The group were established by Milan Knížák in Mariánské Lázně in 1967. Initially, Knížák invited only amateur musicians to collaborate with him. As a result of the d..."

The group were established by Milan Knížák in Mariánské Lázně in 1967. Initially, Knížák invited only amateur musicians to collaborate with him. As a result of the drummer Jan Mach joining the group, Aktual began composing songs with a beat-like character. Aktual experimented with an unusual range of instruments, adding sirens, drilling machines and even a motorcycle to their conventional ensemble. They also made use of existing tunes, which they rearranged, adding new lyrics. Knížák's lyricism was full of humour and irony, and often mocked the official jargon of the Communist Party. Thanks to its primitive structure, their music seemed to be a parody of beat music. At first, their lyrics were in Czech only: after Knížák's trip to USA at the end of the 1960s, they included some English songs. Expressive musical scores, presenting lyrics and music in an idiosyncratic visual setting and performed by the frontman, became an important part of the project. Although the group only played a few concerts and their recordings were released only in 2003, their influence on the Czechoslovak underground scene is indisputable. The Plastic People of the Universe began performing original songs in Czech after playing a joint gig with them, and the establishing of the first incarnation of DG 307 group (existing between 1973 and 1975) was directly inspired by Aktual, both in terms of the use of everyday objects as instruments, as well as the utmost simplification of the music.
The song on this record was later performed also by Plastic People of the Universe. For the authorities it became a symbol of renegade culture and it was used as the title of a tv broadcast in 1977 that condemned musicians and signatories of Charter 77 protest letter.

[[Category: Czechoslovakian Figures]]

Praffdata

2018-06-05T10:52:09Z

Diogo: Created page with "An independent artistic group bringing together musicians and visual artists, Praffdata was founded in 1984 in Warsaw. It was established at a Szkolnym Ośrodku Socjoterapii (..."

An independent artistic group bringing together musicians and visual artists, Praffdata was founded in 1984 in Warsaw. It was established at a Szkolnym Ośrodku Socjoterapii (Youth Sociotherapy Centre / SOS) in the Grochów district. The Centre's mission was to reach out to so-called ‘difficult youth’ – young people having problems adjusting to high-school education. The creators of the SOS chose to communicate with the young through art, thus the first collective musical and performative actions of Praffdata were encouraged and facilitated by the educators. The two painters associated with Praffdata, Faustyn Chełmecki and Maciej Wilski also engaged in spontaneous painting sessions during the group's concerts. Members of the group: Dudi, Guła, Sylwian and Jakubek also created their own instruments. Other members include Janusz Rołt and Jerzy Czuraj. Praffdata's actions combined trance-like improvisations with happenings, often with political meaning. They argued for the legalisation of marijuana and against the construction of a nuclear power plant. Praffdata's actions stretched much further than one-off concerts or happenings. In principle, they were supposed to be a continuous, situationist endeavour transforming everyday life through rituals and new urban tribalism. At the beginning of the 1990s, members of the collective moved to Bałąg, a small town in Warmia, aiming to implement counter-cultural ideals of autonomy there. Each year in Bałąg they organised Światowych Zawodów W Rzucie Młotkiem Do Telewizora (the World Championships in Throwing Hammers at TV Sets), and also established the Gotki Rural Club where they held rave parties.

[[Category: Polish Figures]]

DG 307

2018-06-05T10:50:46Z

Diogo: Created page with "DG 307, a Czechoslovak group that took its name from the legal exemption from national service on the grounds of mental health, co-opted their instruments from everyday life...."

DG 307, a Czechoslovak group that took its name from the legal exemption from national service on the grounds of mental health, co-opted their instruments from everyday life. In his samizdat ‘Report on the Third Czech Musical Revival’ circulated in 1975, Ivan 'Magor' Jirous claimed ‘DG 307 is more youthful, far more liberated from the conventions of rock or any other type of music. This is further emphasised by the untraditional instruments they use (they play on iron bars, vacuum cleaner tubes, typewriters, etc). A great deal of space is left for the accident.’ What was required to play such instruments was not technique but imagination. The sources for free creativity were to be found within the individual: all that was required was to throw off the shackles of convention. The band embraced primitivism in lyrics and music creating noisy pre industrial music jams. The first incarnation of the ensemble was dissolved when Pavel Zajíček got arrested, alongside other heroes of the Czechoslovak underground, in 1976. That was the moment which gave rise to the initiative known as Charter 77, where members of the civilised avant-garde – political dissidents – decided to offer their support to a group of long-haired ‘cavemen’. Zajíček reformed the band after his release in late '70s.

[[Category: Czechoslovakian Figures]]

NSRD

2018-06-05T10:47:25Z

Diogo: Created page with "NSRD or Nebijušu Sajūtu Restaurēšanas Darbnīca (Restoration Workshop of Unfelt Feelings) was a Latvian electronic group formed in 1982 by multimedia artists Hardijs Ledi..."

NSRD or Nebijušu Sajūtu Restaurēšanas Darbnīca (Restoration Workshop of Unfelt Feelings) was a Latvian electronic group formed in 1982 by multimedia artists Hardijs Lediņš (b. 1955 – d. 2004) and Juris Boiko (b. 1954 – d. 2002). In 1977-78 Lediņš and Boiko had already collaborated by writing an absurd novel entitled ZUN (the only art samizdat in Soviet Latvia). An architect by training, Lediņš was also a theorist, penning a number of essays criticising the alienating effects of modernism in architecture and urban planning. As the group’s name suggests, NSRD sought to stimulate feelings which had been deadened by the restrictions of Soviet life. New wave pioneers, Lediņš and Boiko brought a highly eccentric and conceptual approach to NSRD’s recordings, performances and video projects. Lediņš began his creative career organising what he called ‘Disco Lectures’ mixing music and philosophy at the Students’ Club of the Polytechnical Institute in a disused Anglican church in Riga in the mid 1970s. He also organised a Festival of Avant-Garde Music in 1976 and 1977 with Boris Avramets where avant-garde music (Riley, Cage, etc.) and new sacred compositions (Martynov, Pärt, etc.) were performed. Directors of the students’ club were dismissed after the second festival, accused of promoting religious propaganda. In 1977 Lediņš also created his own record label, Seque, producing one-off magnetic tape albums with hand-made covers in English. The first was of a recording of a performance on a prepared piano. This improvised approach to creativity continued throughout the activities of NSRD, even when it had access to synths and other relatively sophisticated equipment in the late 1980s. With a changing line-up, NSRD drew on other musicians, designers and actors. Performances like Dr Enesera binokulāro deju kursi (Dr Eneser’s Binocular Dance Courses) at the Salaspils Botanical Gardens (1987) involved elaborate costumes, and biomechanical approaches to movement and dance. Nevertheless, the group’s music maintained a kind of sparse character, eschewing the emotional clichés and overblown formulas of rock music.

== Related Content ==
[[Avant-garde Trends in Latvian Music, 1970s–1990s]]

[[Category:Latvian Figures]]

A. E. Bizottság

2018-06-05T10:44:22Z

Diogo: Created page with "A. E. Bizottság, a Hungarian musical group, was established in 1979 in Vajda Lajos Stúdió, a commune of amateur artists, at Szentendre. The group consisted of András Wahor..."

A. E. Bizottság, a Hungarian musical group, was established in 1979 in Vajda Lajos Stúdió, a commune of amateur artists, at Szentendre. The group consisted of András Wahorn, László feLugossy, István Szulovszky, István Zámbó, Kukta Erzsébet Szabóné, Mária Bán and Sándor Bernáth. In 1980 they entered a showcase under the name Bizottság (Committee), which offered a TV appearance to its winners. Despite a lack of success in the competition, their specific, exuberant performance was noted by the organisers of Fekete Bárányok (Black Sheep) Festival, taking place that same year. The invitation allowed them to perform alongside such stars as Beatrice or Hobo Blues Band. A. E. Bizottság joined the circle of young new wave groups, such as Trabant, Balaton or [[Vágtázó Halottkémek]]. Thanks to a stroke of luck, in 1983 a collection of their early live recordings were published under the title Kalandra Fel!! (Adventure time!!), released by a label called Start, a sublabel of Hungaroton. In order to obscure the explicitly political connotations of the group's name, they decided to add an abbreviation – A.E. (standing for Albert Einstein). Their concert at the Young Artists Club (Fiatal Művészek Klubja) in Budapest was recorded and later used by Gábor Bódy in his film Kutya éji dala (Dog’s Night Song, 1983). As a result of that meeting, the director came up with a proposition to shoot a movie with the group using the resources of the Balázs Béla Stúdió. Consequently, Jégkrémbalett (Icecreamballet) came into being – an extraordinary film, full of absurd humour and a true product of their dadaistic imagination. On a wave of success, an album with the soundtrack to the film was released by Start again. Nevertheless, the controversial picture was banned by the authorities. The group broke up in 1985, shortly returning after a tour across Western Europe.

==Related Content==
[[Hues of Independence]]

[[Category: Hungarian Figures]]

Borghesia

2018-06-05T10:39:58Z

Diogo: Created page with "Borghesia was formed in Slovenia 1982 by Aldo Ivančič and Dario Seraval, both connected to the FV-112/15 alternative theatre group in Ljubljana. The line-up subsequently ext..."

Borghesia was formed in Slovenia 1982 by Aldo Ivančič and Dario Seraval, both connected to the FV-112/15 alternative theatre group in Ljubljana. The line-up subsequently extended to include Zemira Alajbegović, Goran Devid and Neven Korda. Rapidly abandoning the conventions of the stage, Borghesia evolved rapidly into something like a multimedia infrastructure for the production of alternative forms of culture, much in the DIY spirit of punk. In 1981 it established a regular club night in Ljubljana, Disko FV, as well as a Video Club; and it participated in the organisation of Magnus, festival of gay and lesbian films in 1984. Borghesia’s lyrics often made reference to avant-garde literature and film, including the works of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Jean Genet. Focusing on ‘marginal’ sexual identities and practices, Borghesia’s images and music critiqued the bourgeois conventions of life in socialist Yugoslavia. This track appeared on their first cassette in 1983. Their debut LP, Ljubav je Hladnija od Smrti (Love is Colder Than Death) and compilation of music videos, Tako Mladi (So Young) was released on FV Založba, a label which they initially ran. In the late 1980s, Borghesia enjoyed international success, releasing their albums on the Play It Again Sam label based in Belgium.

[[Category: Slovenian Figures]]

MediaWiki:Sidebar

2018-06-04T14:13:12Z

Diogo:

MediaWiki:Sidebar

2018-06-04T14:13:02Z

Diogo:

New Composers

2018-05-29T14:47:21Z

Diogo: Created page with "New Composers The New Composers were founded in 1983 in Leningrad by Valery Alakhov and Igor Verichev. From the very beginning, their output c..."

[[File:New Composers.jpg|thumb|New Composers]]
The New Composers were founded in 1983 in Leningrad by Valery Alakhov and Igor Verichev. From the very beginning, their output combined sound materials from everyday life, Soviet mass culture and the media, resulting in a mix of radio broadcasts, propaganda films and TV programmes. Because of the similarities of their creative methods and those of the New Artists group, Timur Novikov suggested that the duo should call itself the New Composers. In 1987, together with Sergey Kuryokhin, they recorded the album ‘Insect Culture’, an exceptional amalgamation of Alakhov's and Verichev's plunderphonic creative methods with those of Kuryokhin. Saxophonist Igor Butman was also invited to contribute his improvisation techniques to the project. In the same year, an audio cassette under the title ‘Start’ was released, containing material recorded with members of Kino − Andrey Krisanov, Georgy Guryanov and Yuri Kasparyan. In 1987 the New Composers embarked on organizing some of the first rave parties, taking place in squats. They also created the Science Fiction Club located in the Leningrad Planetarium, which quickly became famous for its dance parties. That year Brian Eno visited the club, resulting in Verichev's and Alakhov's invitation to Great Britain, where they recorded a single called ‘Sputnik of Life’. They have recorded several dozen albums to date.

== Related Content ==
[[Russian Electronic Music: People and Instruments]]

[[Alexei Borisov interviewed by Anna Ceeh]]

[[Category: Russian Figures]]

File:New Composers.jpg

2018-05-29T14:46:04Z

Diogo:

New Composers. Photo taken from Discogs

Vágtázó Halottkémek

2018-05-29T14:23:27Z

Diogo: Created page with "Galloping Coroners (Picture by Janos Vetö) Vágtázó Halottkémek (Galloping Coroners, VHK) were not only a musical or artistic phenome..."

[[File:Galloping Coroners.png|thumb|Galloping Coroners (Picture by Janos Vetö)]]
Vágtázó Halottkémek (Galloping Coroners, VHK) were not only a musical or artistic phenomenon but also a social one. Founded in 1975, the band had to wait quite a long time for wide recognition. This only came with punk, when it turned out that the ecstatic and noisy music of the Hungarian ensemble resonated perfectly with the mood of the youth subculture. The band’s music was and is not just a kind of secular ritual acted out during live performances; it is an expression of a philosophy informed by mysticism, occultism and folk culture. Their music is loud, repetitive and ritualistic. Combining rock instruments with punk aesthetics, The Galloping Coroners seek to revive the trance traditions of folk music. A return to the sources and to folk music should be construed here as an act of resistance against the official policy of forcibly integrating folk culture with the culture of the socialist state in Hungary. Attila Grandpierre is the group’s main ideologist as well as pursuing a professional career as an astronomer. He also played a major role in Gábor Bódy’s film Kutya éji dala [Dog’s Night Song, 1983]. In 1985 the members of VHK were invited by György Galántai to explore together the potential of his metal sound sculptures. Parts of this show as well as other live material by VHK was released by Galantai on his tape label Artpool Radio.

== Related Content ==
[[Hues of Independence]]

[[Hungarian Rhapsody and Other Magyar Melodies]]

[[Category: Hungarian Figures]]

Tibor Szemzö

2018-05-29T14:20:52Z

Diogo:

[[File:Szemzo 2015.jpg|thumb|Tibor Szemzö in 2015]]
Tibor Szemző is one of the most significant and prolific figures in contemporary music in Hungary. As a founder (with Béla Faragó, László Melis and András Soós) of the minimalist ensemble [[180 CSOPORT|Csoport 180]] (Group 180) in 1979, he was instrumental in bringing the music of Frederic Rzewski and Steve Reich to Hungary. As a solo artist from 1983, his output has often combined music with spoken word and visual art. His concerts are usually multi-media events. He has also treated cameras as musical instruments: in the 1980s he rigged up sensors to record the mechanical sounds of his 8mm camera, making it an ‘8mm-fónra’ (8millimetreophone). Szemző has enjoyed close creative relations with visual artists including Péter Forgács, often supplying musical compositions to accompany the filmmaker’s explorations into history and memory using amateur found footage (including Szemző’s 1987 LP ‘Snapshot from the Island’ released in the UK on Leo Records). He also composed memorial works for Tibor Hajas and Miklós Erdély, the central figure in Hungarian conceptual art. ‘A halál szexepilje’ (The Sex Appeal Of Death, 1981) employs an essay by Hajas (a performance artist and poet who had died in a car crash in 1980) on the taboos surrounding death as a libretto that Szemző had his 11 year old daughter read over a single long chime. In 1985 Szemző made Koponyaalapi törés (Skullbase Fracture) an experimental film for the Béla Balázs Studio (BBS) under a scheme that invited musicians and other artists to make films with professional and technical resources. A narrator seated in a restaurant offers reflections on life and the mind, and engages conversation with a character who appears on the screen of the television on his table. Behind him, a gypsy band circles through different musical compositions. This was the first of a large number of experimental films made by Szemző which refuse to yield up easy meaning or simple narrative effects.

== Related Content ==
[[Freedom is Mere Illusion – Experimental Music and Media Arts in Hungary]]

[[180 CSOPORT]]

[[Category: Hungarian Figures]]

Zwitschermaschine

2018-05-29T14:20:30Z

Diogo:

[[File:Zwitschermaschine.jpg|thumb|Zwitschermaschine]]
It is not certain whether the name of the band came from Paul Klee’s painting of the same title. Sometimes they added an „fourth root from” or played under a different name. What is certain is that the artstudents Cornelia Schleime and Ralf Kerbach, studying at the academy in Dresden, were fed up with oppressive regulation and the restriction of their experimental playing ﬁeld in real socialism. Following an exhibition that was spoiled due to the restricting circumstances, they got tough and started their band project in 1979. Kerbach, who left the country for Westberlin in 1982, had a high regard for the Sex Pistols and The Stranglers, while Cornelia Schleime wanted to give a voice to her own lyrics, and this led to a constellation that began to change as new members, such as Michael Rom, Lothar Fiedler and Helge Leiberg, joined for long or short periods. Michael Rom’s rather romantic lyrics are waiting to be rediscovered. How much of the radicalism of the lyrics written by Sascha Anderson, their third singer, has survived since it became known that he worked for the Stasi remains to be determined.

== Related Content ==
[[In a Musical No Man's Land – Unheard-of Productions on the Fringes of Rock Culture]]

[[Hues of Independence]]

[[Category: East German Figures]]

Der Demokratische Konsum

2018-05-29T14:19:24Z

Diogo: Created page with "Der demokratische Konsum was closest to a GDR variant of the Geniale Dilletanten from Westberlin. A term, dropped in 1981 by Wolfgang Müller, whose book of the same title was..."

Der demokratische Konsum was closest to a GDR variant of the Geniale Dilletanten from Westberlin. A term, dropped in 1981 by Wolfgang Müller, whose book of the same title was in circulation in the scene of East Germany and was of course understood by dissenters of all stripes as a conﬁrmation of their own action. Der demokratische Konsum was a group entity of weird characters performing radical noise freely and without any rehearsals, which acted with a knack for theatrics and staging performances, disguised as “people's art collective” on stage and in absurd every-day life. Besides their rare performances some of the members were for instance responsible (and made a lot of profit out of) the successful attempt to establish Soviet army clothes as a new fashion thing. Another track from the same live recording appeared on the compilation Live in Paradise (1985, Good Noise) that presented several underground groups from the GDR in the West (without the permission of the bands but anonymously in order to avoid a possibly harsh reaction by the state). Deo Buschkowski soon after played with Elektro Artist and Heiko Röder much later had an improvisational group called Tante Dille.

[[Category:East German Figures]]

Zwitschermaschine

2018-05-29T14:15:03Z

Diogo: Created page with "Zwitschermaschine It is not certain whether the name of the band came from Paul Klee’s painting of the same title. Sometimes they added..."

File:Zwitschermaschine.jpg

2018-05-29T14:13:53Z

Diogo:

Zwitschermaschine. Photo taken from Wikipedia

Hues of Independence

2018-05-29T14:06:21Z

Diogo:

[[File:HOI - 1.png|thumb|right|1. Still from ‘Plastic People of the Universe’, directed by C.sar de Ferrari, 1970. Courtesy of Česka Televize]]
''This article, written by Daniel Muzyczuk, explores the meaning of the underground and its role in Democratic opposition in the Eastern Bloc, focusing particularly on [[:Category:Czechoslovakia|Czech]], [[:Category:Poland|Polish]], [[:Category:Hungary|Hungarian]] and [[:Category:East Germany|East-German]] examples.''

In his insightful study about the intersecting paths of political dissidents and underground musicians in 1970s and 1980s Czechoslovakia, Jonathan Bolton notes that researchers of such relationships necessarily rely on two kinds of sources of a completely different nature:

As with samizdat, where we can never really track down the exact circulation of particular typed texts, we must read the underground legends without, ultimately, having a clear sense of their spread or reception; nevertheless, we must also remember that imaginary circulations were just as important as real ones. The legends about Bondy, Jirous, and the [[The Plastic People of the Universe|Plastic People]] were both descriptive of an underground environment and constitutive of a cultural identity. '''[1]'''

So on the one hand we have the hard facts relayed by historical sources of established credibility, while on the other hand we keep encountering mythologised stories about heroic deeds, their reach unknown. The notion of universality gains a wholly new meaning here. These differing narratives were often aimed at specific audiences: sometimes with the purpose of peer communication within alternative culture; occasionally, they were directed at the larger set of dissidents or counter-culture activists or even at the society at large or the state apparatus, particularly the security services of the respective countries. The transition to democracy has facilitated wide access to sources produced in different circulations and different contexts, as a result of which identifying the addressees of the different messages is becoming difficult, and mapping their striking distance – virtually impossible.

In this essay I will discuss the discourses and practices of special communities that combined musical and visual work, or actually saw them as one. This intermedia production was often informed by the perception of independence as the need to create a parallel culture, one that would be a world in itself and unto itself, and therefore one that has its own full cultural life. Contrary to what it might seem, this is a story about the clever exploitation of possibilities offered by states rather than a narrative of struggle, persecution and oppression. In his essay about the late-Soviet rave generation, Alexei Yurchak makes an interesting diagnosis according to which independence – at least in perestroika-era Soviet Union – meant evading the state apparatus. He wrote:

I argue … that the logic of nonofficial discourses and practices in late socialism was based most of all on attempts to have a meaningful life in spite of the state's oppression. Hence, the nonofficial (or ‘countercultural’) practices involved not so much countering, resisting, or opposing state power as simply avoiding it and carving out symbolically meaningful spaces and identities away from it. '''[2]'''

Of course, each of the countries in the Soviet Bloc had its own institutions of compulsion and control. It is also worth noting that we are talking about a very long period, from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, when liberalisation processes occurred with various degrees of intensity. By looking at a broad range of relationships between the state and the ‘independents’, we will be able to grasp the whole complexity of the issue as well as better understand what happens to countercultural terms when they are transplanted from their natural habitat of Western democracy to real socialism.

== Assaulting Culture ==
[[File:HOI - 2.png|thumb|right|2. Still from ‘Plastic People of the Universe’, directed by C.sar de Ferrari, 1970. Courtesy of Česka Televize ]]
The history of The Plastic People of the Universe, their idea of the underground and their subsequent involvement in the democratic opposition movement is well known. And yet it continues to shine uniquely as the most radical moment of Eastern European counterculture. Analyses of the writings of the group’s chief ideologist and manager, Ivan Martin ‘Magor’ Jirous, have revealed new insights reflecting how culturally complex a phenomenon The Plastic People were. Asked about the meaning of the term ‘underground’ in an interview included in Césare de Ferrari’s 1970 film entitled Plastic People of the Universe, Jirous cites The Fugs and Ed Sanders and speaks of a ‘total assault on culture’ (figure 1). '''[3]''' Already in 1965 the same phrase appears, as ‘atentát na kulturu’, in a song by the band Aktual, run by Milan Knížák, and this may have been in that context that Jirous had first heard it. '''[4]'''

So the underground was for Jirous a cultural formation, its defining characteristic being confrontation with the establishment. It is worth noting that it doesn’t matter here whether ‘the establishment’ refers to Western society or to the communist party and the cultural elites. Another source that Jirous cited in his early texts was Marcel Duchamp and his famous dictum that the ‘great artist of tomorrow will go underground’. This pays witness to a need to escape from the commercialisation of art and withdraw to an area of anonymity that would protect one from the invisible hand of the market. But the two quotations (from Sanders and Duchamp) evidence also Jirous’s ambitions to follow the example set by Andy Warhol in the Velvet Underground and create a cultural structure as rich as The Factory (figure 2).

In the interview cited above, Jirous - the artistic director of [[The Plastic People of the Universe]] - says that the band is not just the music but also the work of artists, meaning Jan Ságl and Zorka Ságlová – authors of the costumes, stage designs and, in the case of the latter, land-art projects that the members of The Plastic People helped create. A few years later, in reaction to growing pressure on the band and its milieu, Jirous was to formulate in his famous manifesto, A Report on the Third Czech Musical Revival, the theory of a second culture which was doubtless a development and concretisation of the notion of the underground as a cultural formation based on subculture.

The attack on The Plastic People of the Universe and other bands began in 1974 with the cancelling of concerts. But the group was still neither official nor unofficial. On 30 March 1974, the so called ‘České Budějovice massacre’ took place, where Czechoslovak riot police broke up a Plastic People show and clubbed the fans before herding them into a train and sending them back to Prague. In the following years tension grew, culminating in the arrest and subsequent prosecution of four leading members of the scene on 17 March 1976, a month after the Second Festival of the Second Culture in Bojanovice. The detainees included Ivan Jirous – manager and ideologist of The Plastic People of the Universe, Vratislav Brabenec – saxophone player and lyricist, Pavel Zajíček of the band DG307, and the folk singer Svatopluk Karásek. In the same year, Czechoslovak TV broadcasts a documentary titled, aptly, Atentát na kulturu (referring thus to both The Fugs and Aktual), which presents the arrested men as deviants and drug addicts who participate in orgies and use dead rats for drumsticks (sic!) (figure 3). The Report on the Third Czech Musical Revival is written during this time, becoming, in the light of the subsequent events, a crucial manifesto. In it, Jirous again refers to Sanders, but lends a new meaning to the words ascribed to him: ‘[The underground] is a movement that operates primarily with artistic means, even though its representatives are conscious of the fact that is not and should not be the end-all of an artist’s effort’. '''[5]''' Then he explains what kind of culture the underground is supposed to serve:

''"The aim of the underground here in Bohemia is the creation of a second culture: a culture that will not be dependent on official channels of communication, social recognition, and the hierarchy of values laid down by the establishment; a culture which cannot have the destruction of the establishment as its aim because in doing so, it would drive itself into the establishment’s embrace; a culture which helps those who wish to join it to rid themselves of the scepticism which says that nothing can be done and shows them that much can be done when those who make the culture desire little for themselves and much for others."'' '''[6]'''

It is worth comparing Jirous’s declarations with another source – a brief text, ‘A Silent Hungarian Underground’, published in 1973 by Béla Hap, founder of the Hungarian samizdat periodical, Szétfolyóirat. Hap described the underground as an artistic movement which neither supports nor attacks the establishment, but remains outside it. Any attack on the establishment would acknowledge its existence . . . It wants to be a form of unidentifiable, unanalysable, ungraspable, and incorruptible outsider art. PRIVATE ART. '''[7]'''

[[File:HOI - (3).png|thumb|right|3. Still from ‘Atent.t na kulturu’ (Assault on Culture), directed by Ladislav Chocholoušek, 1977. Courtesy of Česka televize]]
This definition was formulated in a milieu centred on a rather specific periodical which made evading official restrictions on production and distribution both its working method and a content management principle. Thus a term originating in the West became here not a distant and utopian idea, as in Jirous’s text, but rather a daily praxis of cultural production. This is confirmed in Hap‘s text: ‘What are the information channels of the underground? Pencil, pen, brush, nail, typewriter, photo camera, tape recorder, private home, forest, clearing, tree hollow, air, whatever, mouth, ears, telepathy etc. . . . It creates film out of film waste, out of what the superficial world discards’. '''[8]'''

But this pragmatic definition didn’t protect its author from constant surveillance and reprisals. Let us return however to Jirous and The Plastic People of the Universe. It is clear that the oppression encountered by alternative culture in Czechoslovakia made it possible to reformulate the organisation’s goals and the ways of achieving them. But the very form of government still seems unimportant for the notion of the underground. The establishments are different, but the forms of relationships with them are similar. At this point we arrive at the crucial – and heavily mythologised – moment of the publication of Charter 77 - an emanation of the underground’s alliance with the dissident movement.

[[Martin Machovec]] notes that Jirous, Hlavsa or Brabenec had no political agenda, and confrontational slogans were formulated to create space for ‘doing your own thing’ rather than to achieve any kind of political change. He also believes that state oppression played a role in the crystallisation of the underground’s positions and operating methods, writing that ‘they were compelled to become politically radicalised because of the totalitarian regime's intolerance and brutal oppression. However, their radicalism did not lead to a kind of a “world revolution” but rather to the activities of the defenders of human rights in Charter 77’. '''[9]'''

In its clash with the regime, the underground found allies in political dissidents and thus the war for culture and democratic structures in Czechoslovakia became a binary conflict: the state against Charter 77. In a 1995 interview, Egon Bondy spoke about the meaning of the term ‘underground’:
''
"It was rather the shared lot of those who’d found themselves representing positions even more radical than the ordinary dissident. We definitely wanted to distinguish ourselves from the so called ‘grey zone”’, from people, often with good jobs, who would consider themselves dissidents because they cursed the regime at home. The Czech ‘underground’ brought together people from all kinds of backgrounds and there was never any friction between them. Among my closest friends were Protestants and Catholics, deeply religious people, who still didn’t reject me, an avowed Marxist."'' '''[10]'''

Also Bondy speaks in a way which suggests that ‘the underground’ ultimately became a descriptive term, losing, as a result of the conflict, its projective, future-oriented character. In fact, at first, members of the underground had perceived dissidents as part of the establishment. This perspective can be sensed in Charter 77 itself, when it is pointed out that the signatories enjoyed better protection from oppression than figures from the underground. Jirous’s criticism of intellectuals from Havel’s milieu had been internalised, and the struggle for human rights became the groundwork of the alliance. The history of The Plastic People and Charter 77 represents actually the only example of a lasting alliance between the two groups, compelled by the state. Let us notice that the very term ‘velvet revolution’ probably originated from the Velvet Underground, a key inspiration for The Plastic People. '''[11]'''

At this point it is doubtless worth noting a completely different reaction to the notion of the underground, presented by Mikoláš Chadima, member of bands such as Kilhets, Extempore and MCH Band, in the introduction to his book, Alternativa. Od rekvalifikací k «Nové» vlně se starým obsahem. Chadima reconstructs the scene, noting a possible tripartition: for him, the establishment and the underground are two circles, beyond which there is also the alternative. Miroslav Vaněk saw the matter in similar terms, writing that, ‘this branch of rock music constitutes an alternative to official pop and big beat (rock and roll), but is also an alternative to the other end, the so called Underground’. '''[12]'''

[[File:HOI - (4).png|thumb|right|4. Extempore Band, IX Pražske jazzove dny (Prague Jazz Days), 1979, photograph Jiři Kučera. Courtesy of Mikolaš Chadima]]
In Vaněk’s statement, the political aspect of the distinction is lost. For the alternative, as Chadima described it – unlike the underground after 1976 – was still willing to take avail of all the opportunities offered by the state. This transition is also bound up with a generational change which means that the battles fought by the older heroes did not matter to younger musicians. An idealistic set of connotations was replaced by pragmatism. This is a similar action to the abovementioned vision of alternative culture as a practice characterised most of all by ingenuity in evading the regime. One example of a subject operating in this fashion was the Jazzová Sekce (Jazz Section) of the Union of Czechoslovak Musicians, founded on 31 November 1971, which organised concerts, festivals and exhibitions. Over 15 years, it published 28 bulletins and a series of monographic publications under the Jazz Petit imprint. They were self-published but of high quality (with subjects such as punk, land art, dada or graphic scores). It also organised the Pražské jazzové dny (Prague Jazz Days), an event that took place eleven times between 1974 and 1982. Despite its name, the festival was not only open to avant-garde rock and punk, but also to non-musical projects such as experimental film screenings or theatre shows (figure 4). '''[13]'''

The Jazz Section’s key venue was the amateur club U Zábranských, where alternative rock bands such as Kilhets or Extempore performed. '''[14]''' Due to the expansive nature of its activities, the Jazz Section found itself at odds with its patron organisation; this led to radicalisation and further expansion. In 1979, the Section joined the International Jazz Federation (member of the UNESCO International Music Council), and later joined the European Association for Musical Research and the European Nuclear Disarmament (END) movement. We can say that – like with The Plastic People of the Universe – the organisation’s radicalisation and eventual dissolution occurred despite the fact that it originally lacked any outright political goals. At the same time, the Section was increasingly involved in helping dissidents publish materials and organise concerts. At first, the regime responded by piling up bureaucratic requirements. Despite these difficulties, the Section continued operating and its membership grew. In 1984, the Section was officially dissolved, whereupon it moved underground where it continued to function for two more years in an increasingly oppressive atmosphere until, in September 1986, its five leaders were arrested and put on trial for ‘operating an unauthorised enterprise’, ‘engaging in illegal lucrative activities’, and ‘distributing illegal publications’. '''[15]''' Two of the members went to prison for over a year.

== Third Circulation ==
Exploring the Czechoslovak scene, we can clearly see key concepts and lines of division present in many countries of the bloc, but nowhere else did they achieve such density nor lead to such heated debates and a resulting crystallisation of positions. In Poland in the 1980s a brief moment of alliance between anti-communist activists and the underground can be noted, as mentioned by Piotr Rypson: ‘I have a photo where we are walking with Tomek [Lipiński] and two other friends in a Solidarity demonstration – happy, delighted, smiling. Tomek had just changed his image – he’d stopped spiking up his hair, stopped wearing metal jewellery, put on a V-neck sweater. I remember us concluding that it doesn’t make sense to antagonise the public visually at a time when society is changing – and changing the reality at hand.’ '''[16]'''

In 1981, during the short-lived ‘Solidarity carnival’, a period of liberalisation that was ended abruptly by the introduction of martial law, Brygada Kryzys, a band run at the time by Lipiński and Robert Brylewski, was invited to perform at the Solidarity-organised ‘Przegląd Piosenki Prawdziwej’ (Festival of True Song) at the Olivia venue in Gdańsk. This moment was very brief however, and Lipiński’s words explain why: ‘In 1980, the situation changed. We, as anarchists, naturally saw the regime in a similar way as Solidarity did. From the beginning of 1981, however, we began viewing Solidarity as a new establishment, one which spelled no positive prospects. On the other hand, Solidarity in itself, as an anarchistic movement, was acceptable for us . . . As long as Solidarity was anarchistic, we were on the same side’. '''[17]'''

Punks become temporary fellow travellers on a trip that lasted only until Solidarity had crystallised as a formation with specific views about its intended position in society. Also the political police perceived members of the two groups differently. Solidarity and political dissidents enjoyed a kind of esteem while youth counterculture movements were disparaged as the expression of demoralisation. Paweł ‘Konjo’ Konnak notes that the security police, the SB, clearly saw a difference between the second and third circulations. He remembers the moment when the archives of confiscated samizdat were opened: ‘It’s interesting what happened to the confiscated Totart stage props and publications. A year later, following the elections of June 1989 and pursuant to a deal negotiated by Solidarity with the communists, opposition activists whose underground production had been confiscated were able to collect it back from the SB storerooms. When we too came to claim our meagre junk, the Solidarity gentlemen kindly told us that we had never been any kind of underground and showed us the door. And the Publishing and Advertising Section of the Pill of Progression Metaphysical-Entertainment Conglomerate has the right to nothing’. [18] Paradoxically, this policy meant that materials of lesser subversive potential were irrevocably destroyed while the political samizdat survived.

Another strategy of scene division was followed in East Germany. The authorities in the German Democratic Republic were always wary of the musical scene. Erich Honecker, for example, stated in the 1960s: ‘it was overlooked that the enemy exploits this type of music to drive young people to excesses through the use of exaggerated beat rhythms. The pernicious influences of such music upon the thoughts and actions of young people is being grossly underestimated’. '''[19]'''

In 1976, Wolf Biermann went to perform in Cologne in West Germany; upon his return, he was refused re-entry to the DDR and stripped of his citizenship. The avowed Marxist and socialist bard was a persona non grata in East Germany, because his poetry was too realistic and reflected the absurdities of everyday life all too well. Thus ended a long process of growing separation between the nonconformist songwriter and the state. It was a significant moment also because the future landmarks of East German punk were already looming on the horizon. Bert Papenfuß-Gorek, a poet associated with the Prenzlauer Berg scene and the bands Rosa Extra and Ornament & Verbrechen, reminisced: ‘Biermann's era was completely finished. He was still hanging around, and some friends even had his albums and were still listening to that rubbish, but I would have nothing to do with that anymore. I was on the side of the MC5 and Ton Steine Scherben’. '''[20]'''

Papenfuß-Gorek not only suggests the alleged worthlessness of Biermann’s music but also a lack of interest in its themes. There was no place here for a dissident position – the expression of an open contestation of political authority. Rather, this was an attitude that defies everything that the establishment embodies, and it didn’t matter whether it was a Western or Eastern establishment. Punk in East Berlin declared war on the system in the broadest sense. In a documentary film about Sascha Anderson, Papenfuß-Gorek says: ‘We were against the GDR party dictatorship, not explicitly against the idea of socialism or communism … there were many who described themselves as real Marxists. There was everyone from anarchists to people who saw the Western welfare state as an ideal. That was basically the spectrum’. '''[21]'''

[[File:HOI - (5).png|thumb|right|5. Licence given to AG Geige in ‘Recognition of Artistic Quality’, 1987. Archive of Frank Bretschneider]]
But the regime saw no difference and cracked down on youth subcultures as vehemently as it fought the political opposition. Following a period of direct reprisals against the punk movement, which were supposed to eradicate it by 1983, in the second half of the 1980s the East German authorities changed strategy. Instead of compulsory military service, police harassment, detention or, in some cases, imprisonment, the state sought to extend control over counterculture groups. The policy of granting licences for public performances was relaxed (figure 5). This development is described by Susanne Binas, member of the band Expander des Fortschritts:

''"It was incomparably easier to obtain a license after the mid-1980s than in earlier years. In order to perform in front of an audience, each band had to present its repertoire to a cultural commission of the district government in a special audition. In earlier years, these posts were largely occupied by political bureaucrats with little or no musical background. In contrast to that, however, our band, auditioned in front of a commission composed of jazz musicians, who were amenable to, and familiar with the broad spectrum of our musical innovations like threechord textures, slap bass, cut ups and samples, tapes, or even quotations by Heiner Müller that were peculiar to our style of music. They deflected demands for high levels of musical proficiency and expertise typical of earlier periods by upholding the principles of artistic freedom and pointing out the existence of an interested audience."'' '''[22]'''

[[File:HOI - (6).png|thumb|right|6. Jan Kummer and Frank Bretschneider during a recording session of AG Geige for radio, Karl-Marx-Stadt, 1987. Photography Lutz Schramm. Archive of Frank Bretschneider]]
But that isn’t all. As in Poland earlier, where the term ‘ Muzyka Młodej Generacji’ (music of the new generation) was floated in 1978, the phrase ‘Anderen bands’ (other bands) then entered official discourse in East Germany. The idea was to avoid Western vocabulary (the name ‘punk’ remains taboo for official media). Some bands changed their names to sound less controversial. Repackaged in this way, new wave music could be presented to a mass-media audience. In 1986, the East German youth radio station DT64 started broadcasting ‘Parocktikum’, a weekly show that played bands such as Hard Pop, Cadavre Exquis or AG. Geige (figure 6). The scene was divided into two camps: the punk underground, interested in no compromises with the state, or simply with the East German social order, and the alternative. '''[23]''' The choice of the term ‘other bands’ seems very fitting in this case. One can easily find analogies with the Czechoslovak discussions and the division between the underground and the alternative.

== Places and Structures ==
[[File:HOI - (7).png|thumb|right|7. Zuzu-Vető, ‘New Flags, New Tendencies, Communism now’, Fiatal Műveszek Klubja, Budapest, 1983. Courtesy of Janos Vető]]
The Czechoslovak case of cooperation between the Jazz Section and the U Zábranských club is worth comparing with other institutions with similar profiles (i.e., state-funded spaces that weren’t hostile to semi-official activities). Such spaces included the Fiatal Művészek Klubja (Young Artists Club) in Budapest, the Riviera-Remont club and Post in Warsaw, and the Leningrad Rock Club. Each exploited the resources offered by the state in a different way that, combined with the socio-political context, produced specific subcultures. In Hungary, the situation was seemingly clear: according to a policy implemented by prominent politician György Aczél in the 1960s, each manifestation of cultural life was labelled as belonging to one of three categories known as the ‘three Ts’ (Tiltott = banned; Tűrt = tolerated; Támogatott = supported).

However, a look at the 1980s new-wave scene confirms that the division applied to the whole culture where, as in Yurchak’s characterisation, contacts with the state were avoided but the resources and infrastructure provided by it were exploited to the full. In her book about the Hungarian music scene in the 1980s, Anna Szemere writes about a subculture that she describes as the ‘marginal intelligentsia’, the focal point of which was Budapest’s Young Artists Club. It was a meeting place for political dissidents, musicians as well as visual artists. Established in the 1960s, the Club gained full momentum only in the last decade of socialism in Hungary thanks to its open formula which accommodated punk concerts as well as political discussions with members of the democratic opposition. Such activities triggered official reprisals, including frequent event cancellations, but that only added to the place’s popularity. New wave bands such as Balaton, Trabant, A. E. Bizottság or Vágtázó Halottkémek found perfect conditions here for developing their innovative ideas. Young Artists Club was also the best environment for them due to its exhibition programme. Artist János Vető, for example, whose works created in a duo with Lóránt Méhes (as Zuzu-Vető) were presented in several exhibitions at the Club, was also a member of Trabant (figure 7). The Young Artists Club was a place where much of his artistic activity was focused. Soon new venues with a similar profile started springing up. Szemere arrives at interesting conclusions, describing this movement towards new spaces of autonomy:

''"Subconsciously, musicians must have known that only by establishing physical spaces and places (primarily venues, but also radio and television stations, etc.) could they re-create affective spaces and places, which are the stuff and goal of music-based social events and rituals. The reconfiguration of the political-social space surrounding the community compelled it to seek stability in the building of physical places. This territorial approach to renewal seemed indispensable for many members of the underground if they were to retain a minimal sense of continuity with the past and regenerate a sense of collective identity."'' '''[24]'''

[[File:HOI - (8).png|thumb|right|8. Commonpress 51, catalogue of the exhibition ‘Hungary Can Be Yours’, 1984/89. Courtesy of Artpool]]
Szemere describes the sociocultural location of this movement as ‘marginal’, a term whose semantic scope overlaps with the alternative, with the difference that marginal positions no longer seek to situate themselves ‘towards’ anything, but simply occupy those areas where the power of the establishment was weak. It is worth mentioning here one of the many examples of the practices of the Young Artists Club that reveals a successful combination of youth culture with the visual arts as well as reflecting the official attitude towards the venue’s activities. In 1984 Artpool organised at the Club an exhibition called Magyarország a tiéd lehet! (Hungary Can Be Yours!). A multimedia project, it was divided into two rooms: in a black one, together withworks by foreign artists, one could watch also a broadcast from a white one, that included artworks by Hungarians (figure 8, 9). '''[25]'''

[[File:HOI - (9).png|thumb|right|9. Floorplan of the exhibition ‘Hungary Can Be Yours’, 1984/89. Courtesy of Artpool]]
A cassette tape was also released, number six in the Artpool Radio series of compilation tapes (a kind, effectively, of an audio magazine), presenting recordings by non-conformist artists such as Tibor Hajas or Tamás Szentjóby and bands such as A. E. Bizottság, Vágtázó Halottkémek or Európa Kiadó (figure 10). The authorities deemed the exhibition to be politically subversive and ordered that it be closed down. '''[26]''' The significance of the event itself and of the violence of censorship is highlighted by the fact that after the transformation, in December 1989, the project was reconstructed precisely in exactly the same place.

In Leningrad, in turn, the year 1981 saw the founding of three organisations that offered a glimpse of cultural freedom and anticipated perestroika: ‘The Leningrad KGB [state security police] decides to stage a pioneering social experiment and the following are established at the same time: The Experimental Fine Arts Society, the Literary Club and the Rock Club. They are fostered by the trade unions, whose mission includes supporting factory-affiliated cultural centres to confirm the “culturalisation” of the working masses’. '''[27]'''

[[File:HOI - (10).png|thumb|right|10. Artpool r.di. 6, audio casette, 1984. Courtesy of Artpool]]
Each of the three – the Association of Experimental Visual Art (TEII), Club 81 (a literary organisation) and the Ленинградский рок-клуб (Leningrad Rock Club) – had a different structure. Club 81 was a recognised association of some 70 unofficial writers who organised lectures, conferences and concerts at the Dostoyevsky Museum (the famous writer’s former apartment). The Leningrad Rock Club was supposed to function much like the Association of Soviet Composers, that is, to issue concert permits and to act as a censor in the field of youth popular music. What proved far more important however was the space where the institution was housed: it became an influential venue for rehearsals, live shows or simply meetings (figure 11). It was the place where bands such as Kino, Alisa, Akvarium or Zoopark successfully launched their careers. In this context it is worth noting that liberalisation did’t produce the same effects in all areas. Timur Novikov, the leader of the New Artists group, felt ill at ease in the elitist structures of TEII and for this reason sought his own, alternative, methods of collective visual-arts practice. He remembered the Club as a place of unique atmosphere:

''"The New Artists collaborated with the Leningrad Rock Club. I myself was a member of the rock club, as the official designer of Kino. The New Artists designed the Kino sets and records and held exhibitions at the club. The Leningrad Rock Club was an exciting place to be at that time. Hoards of strangely dressed young people flocked to the concerts, with the police hot on their tracks. In the 1980s, long hair was out; crew cuts dyed all the colours of the rainbow were in. All the gigs were accompanied by arrests and document checks, which only added fuel to the flames."'' '''[28]'''

[[File:HOI - (11).png|thumb|right|11. Timur Novikov, Sergey Kuryokhin, Joanna Stingray and members of Kino, Aquarium and Alisa in Leningrad Rock Club, 1985. Courtesy of Joanna Stingray]]
While most of the musicians collaborating with Novikov, such as Victor Tsoy or Sergey Kuryokhin, worked with success at the Leningrad Rock Club, Novikov himself and the painters with whom he worked decided to start their own place (figure 12). Its activities and the one-of-a-kind community that formed around it are described by Konstanty Usenko:
''
"Timur organises the legendary Assa Gallery in an abandoned komunalka. Installations exhibited there will later appear in an eponymous film. Assa’s most famous show is one presenting the works of Andy Warhol himself, little known in the USSR at the time. Novikov, who corresponded by mail with the Pop Art master, had received from him several copies of the famous Marilyn Monroe poster and exhibited them in 1986 in a vacant communal flat in Leningrad. . . . Spaces in Papa Om’s new musical squat are also populated by painters and performers. Besides the neo-expressionists, there were also necro-realist filmmakers there, led by Evgeny “Yufa” Yufit, from the first punk crew from Kupchino. “Yufa” tries his hand there in video art making. In 1988, the Friends of Mayakovsky Club, led by Novikov and the Kino drummer, Gustav, organises at H4/B4 an exhibition commemorating the ninety-fifth anniversary of the artist’s death. News about it spread rapidly around the northern metropolis. Sergey Kuryokhin’s avant-garde orchestra, Pop-Mekhanika, gave a concert."'' '''[29]'''

The Leningrad Rock Club helped create a musical scene of great vitality, a scene that (like the New Artists) wasn’t interested in politics. During the period of perestroika after 1985, liberalisation opened the way for an explosion of youth culture which could be witnessed in film, music and the visual arts. It was thanks to the alliance between the disciplines that bands like Kino or Akvarium shot to real stardom and the official media had no choice but to report about their successes.

[[File:HOI - (12).png|thumb|right|12. Timur Novikov, Joanna Stingray and members of Kino in the ASSA Gallery, 1985. Courtesy of Joanna Stingray]]
In Poland, the Riviera-Remont club, through the many initiatives that took place there, helped forge alliances between visual artists and musicians (from jazz-experimental and new-wave backgrounds) on an unprecedented scale. A student club financed by a branch of the Socjalistyczny Związek Studentów Polskich (Socialist Union of Polish Students) of the Warsaw University of Technology, the Riviera-Remont ran several artistic programmes in the 1970s: the Remont Gallery, managed by Henryk Gajewski; a theatre centre; a cine club called ‘Kwant’; the Remont Jazz Club and the Remont Folk Club. In 1980-1981, Andrzej Zuzak launched, with a group of friends, the Polish name (Alternative Art Agency) which was to be the first independent artistic management agency supporting young alternative rock bands and other forms of artistic activity.

[[File:HOI - (13).png|thumb|right|13. Post, no. 2, 20 September 1980. Courtesy of Piotr Rypson]]
In 1974, Andrzej Mitan initiated the ‘Diaphora of Music and Poetry’, a series of meetings taking place through 1981, presenting recent innovations in music, poetry and the visual arts. The Remont Gallery, which Gajewski ran with Andrzej Jórczak and Krzysztof Wojciechowski, was geared towards conceptual reflection in the field of photography. Exhibitions were accompanied by theoretical brochures with essays by Polish authors and translations of key international texts. Its programme’s greatest highlight was a widely advertised visit of Andy Warhol (1974) which never happened: the whole thing was a happening/prank staged by Gajewski. In 1978, the latter organised a festival called I Am (International Artist Meeting) which featured two events that were to leave a lasting impact on the Warsaw new wave scene. One was the show of the leftist British punk band, The Raincoats, cited by numerous scene members as their first contact with the new music. The other was Gajewski’s meeting with Piotr Rypson, the future manager of Tilt (a new wave group), artist and curator, for whom the festival marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with the Remont. In 1979, Gajewski reorganised the gallery, renaming it Post Remont, and started publishing with Rypson a zine called Post, combining punk and artistic reflection (figure 13). Łukasz Ronduda describes their collective activities thus:

''"In their post-gallery, Gajewski and Rypson adopted the role of artists-managers, using progressive production and marketing strategies, characteristic for pop culture in developed societies, to support punk culture. They used them to fulfil a selfless artistic vision rather than, as managers in the West, to commercialise the punk movement and commodify its music, fashion and lifestyle."'' '''[30]'''

Let us note that in this interpretation, the Post Remont appears as a subject whose scope goes far beyond even the broadest formula of an artist-run space. It was, after all, a student gallery combining conceptual art and youth music with publishing (figure 14). At the same time, all these activities were made possible by state funding. The alliance ended abruptly with the introduction of martial law in Poland in December 1981 and Gajewski’s emigration to Amsterdam.

== DIY? ==
[[File:HOI - (14).png|thumb|right|14. Kryzys playing at Post during Henryk Gajewski’s exhibition ‘Other Book for Children’, 1979]]
In the West, the litmus test ultimately distinguishing truly independent artists from those collaborating with the establishment was traditionally the label a band was on. If it was with one of the majors, the band would face accusations of betraying its principles and selling out. But in communist-era Eastern Europe this benchmark didn’t apply. At this point, the mythology bound up with the key concepts that I wish to expand on in this essay becomes fully apparent. Did publishing a record on a state-owned label carry the same ideological meaning as publishing it on a major commercial one? I will try to answer this question, again citing several examples that will allow us to distinguish a range of hues far more varied than simple opposition-based contrast. Already in the USSR, traditionally perceived as the country most restrictive in its approach towards youth culture, we deal with a whole gamut of different policies. As will be demonstrated, the status of an officially recognised artist – one allowed to represent the country abroad and therefore also hold a passport or be able to publish – didn’t depend on artistic compromises but on the policy of the different republics.

In an essay accompanying a re-edition of Sergey Kuryokhin’s record titled, tellingly, Degrees of Freedom, Alex Kan reveals the scale of the different treatment of artists in the different parts of the USSR:
[[File:HOI - (15).png|thumb|right|15. Ganelin, Tarasov, Chekasin, Con Anima, LP issued by Melodia, 1976. Cover design by Eugenijus Cukermanas. Courtesy of [[Vladimir Tarasov]]]]
''"There was no way Melodiya would consider publishing avant-garde record of an underground musician. The fact that a few years earlier, in 1976, the Ganelin trio managed to get their magnificent Con Anima published on Melodiya, seemed a total aberration, an exception which just proved the rule. The trio lived and worked in a more liberal semi-Western Lithuania, and with Tarasov playing full time with the Lithuanian Philharmonic, Ganelin holding position of the music director at a prominent theater, and Chekasin teaching at a music school, they seemed and were much more established and respectable than a wayward pianist from a much more conservative Leningrad. Even for the trio it took five long years before their second release could see the light of day – the authorities at Melodia in Moscow, having realised the gaffe they made with Con Anima, put up stubborn resistance and Concerto Grosso was not published until 1981" (figure 15).'' '''[31]'''

The history of the recording and release of Degrees of Freedom aptly reflects the working conditions of progressive musicians in Leningrad. The album, with solo piano music, was recorded late at night in the studio of the Leningrad Institute of Film, Theatre and Music by a sound engineer that Kuryokhin was friends with. Smuggled to Britain, the material was released on vinyl by Leo Feigin, owner of Leo Records (figure 16).

[[File:HOI - (16).png|thumb|right|16. Andy Warhol holding the sleeve Sergey Kuryokhin’s LP ‘Ways of Freedom’, 1985. Courtesy of Joanna Stingray]]
There was no information on the cover about the circumstances of the original recording, but there was a disclaimer – ‘The musicians do not bear any responsibility for publishing these tapes’ – which suggested that the record was in fact a bootleg. In this context, it is worth examining another example of East-West music smuggling. Joanna Stingray came to Leningrad in 1984, During this trip she managed to meet numerous artists and scene members associated with the New Artists group, the Assa Gallery and the Leningrad Rock Club. Two years later, she published, on the Australian label Big Time, the compilation Red Wave: 4 Underground Bands From the USSR, with recordings by Akvarium, Kino, Alisa and Strange Games. At the same time, she made a documentary film featuring music videos by each of the bands and a presentation of the context in which they worked, including footage of Timur Novikov playing on the utiugon, a self-made instrument. On the cover, Stingray put the following note: ‘I have brought their music to the West, in hope of creating better understanding between people. MUSIC HAS NO BORDERS! (figure 17)’ '''[32]''' But the Soviet authorities thought otherwise and Stingray was punished for illegally exporting state property. As she recounted,

''"The tracks were recorded on reel-to-reel tapes that were outdated, large and unwieldy. I hid the paper with the lyrics under the lining of my boots and the tapes in a secret pocket of my jacket. I was smuggling the music out as if I were a drug courier. The safest route was from Leningrad to Finland because they didn't search people as thoroughly in the Leningrad airport as in Moscow. (…) When I returned to the Soviet Union, I first went to the VAAP (Soviet Copyright Agency). They gave me a long lecture and a paper to sign saying that I had smuggled the recordings out without the musicians' knowledge. I quickly agreed to sign it, gave VAAP the royalty fee and thought that the matter was settled. I returned to the States riding on a cloud and prepared for my wedding to Yury Kasparyan. But after that meeting they banned me from entering the Soviet Union for six months, with the result that I missed my own wedding."'' '''[33]'''

[[File:HOI - (17).png|thumb|right|17. Red Wave’ compilation, LP, Stingray Productions, 1986. Courtesy of Joanna Stingray]]
Record smuggling and bootlegging are a constant feature of stories about early new-wave music publishing. In Poland, for example, Kryzys (as well as Deadlock) had their first album released by Blitzkrieg Records, a Barclay label, founded to publish Polish and Chinese punk (the latter represented by ‘The Dragons’, which was probably a fictitious band). Robert Brylewski, the leader of Kryzys, reminisced,

''"There was a French guy, Marc Boulet, who travelled around the world, recording avant-garde bands … He cassette tape-recorded two bands, one of which practically didn’t exist and the other had no bass player, returned home and, riding on the wave of interest in Poland at the time, sold the material to the major label. Barclay Records. which issued it with a wrapper saying, “Solidarité avec le rock polonais” [Solidarity with Polish rock]. Boulet didn’t organise anything – he simply took out the tape recorder and recorded a rehearsal at the Amplitron student club … we organised the instruments themselves, using a metal ashtray from the hallway in lieu of cymbals. … The Kryzys album was actually a random compilation, and if you happen to find a copy somewhere, you’ll see that the songs I wrote are credited to someone called Zedlecki. Who the hell is Zedlecki?"'' '''[34]'''

Was hiding the name of the songs’ composer a deliberate act of camouflage, similar to Stingray’s disclaimer on the cover of Red Wave? It’s hard to say, but it seems unlikely, for Kryzys functioned at the time as more or less a ‘legal’ band, so it didn’t need to conceal its members’ identity. In 1982, the independent British label Fresh Records released Brygada Kryzys’s live album without any prior permission from the band and even unbeknownst to it, and only later sent an envoy on a legalisation mission (figure 18). According to Brylewski: ‘I wasn’t aware at all that someone had that tape. I only learned about the record when they brought it from Berlin. A guy came in a leather jacket, begging us to sign a backdated contract’. '''[35]''' It is worth noting that another record by the band was published in the same year by the state label Tonpress.

[[File:HOI - (18).png|thumb|right|18. Brygada Kryzys, Live, LP, Fresh Records, 1982. Courtesy of Robert Brylewski]]
This means that within two years Brylewski had his music published by a major Western record company, an independent Western label and an official domestic publisher. Another special case, and not only because their albums were released by the official Soviet record company, Melodiya, were the Ganelin Trio. They were among those avant-garde jazz musicians who were allowed to perform abroad. Their first album was issued in Poland following their appearance at the Jazz Jamboree festival in Warsaw in 1976, and here again the artists didn’t have much say about the publication (the song titles, for example, were invented by the Polish publisher). Ganelin, Chekasin and Tarasov started performing behind the Iron Curtain, and their concerts featured more and more multimedia elements. They were also aware of the work of Fluxus and John Cage, and it was these influences that inspired the group’s perhaps most radical performance, Household Music-Making in Nine Rooms, presented first at the Vilnius Philharmonic in 1979 and later also in Moscow, among other places (figure 19). The show proceeded in a surprising fashion. A live album released by Leo Records credits only Chekasin and Ganelin, ignoring Tarasov who was present throughout the performance – but sleeping. Tarasov himself described the event:

''"I sleep on a bed for the entire first act, and then I leap out of bed and grab the newspaper „Pravda” upside down. It was all very blatant, but we were not afraid. … Household Music-Making was absolutely a demonstration. If I remember, I sleep, then I jump up and we play all kinds of reworked songs, we eat sandwiches. I'll never forget, after the concert at the Vilnius Philharmonic people kept repeating, ‘You fellows will have problems, you will have problems’. They were afraid. They were afraid of us of course. But they were also pleased. Maybe they were jealous, that we let ourselves do these things. The same was true at the ‘Neringa’'' '''[36]''' ''where you sat at a table telling jokes, constantly glancing back, afraid, that someone might hear you. Of course, they heard everything.''" '''[37]'''

[[File:HOI - (19).png|thumb|right|19. [[Vladimir Tarasov]] during the performance of the Ganelin trio at Vilnius Philarmonic, 1979, photograph Gregory Talas. Courtesy of [[Vladimir Tarasov]]]]
Norman Weinstein, who wrote an introductory text for the album, noted,

''"You will hear an alarm clock sound at the conclusion of ‘Home Music Making’. Tarasov was on stage – sleeping! - throughout the Ganelin/Chekasin duets wakes up! This bit of theatre of the absurd accurately summarizes the inability of many critics to understand the Russianness of these masters whose every note demands we waken. But you may need no alarm. Just put this recording on your system and listen."'' '''[38]'''

Who was awakened in the first place was the audience of this unique performance. Inspired by performance art seen in the West and transplanted to the field of music, the action left a strong impact on another generation of Lithuanian artists, some of whom, like Česlovas Lukenskas of the group Post Ars, soon started their own intermedia activities. This transfer of ideas between seemingly separate worlds of music and the visual arts was made possible by the fact that the Ganelin Trio enjoyed the status of the official representation of Soviet free jazz.

In Poland, between 1982 and 1988, Andrzej Mitan, Cezary Staniszewski and Tomasz Wilmański ran the RR Gallery at the Remont club. Mitan had already been involved in the club’s concert activities. The death of composer Andrzej Bieżan in a car accident in 1983 became a pretext for realising a unique project, started by the posthumous publication of recordings of Bieżan’s music. Mitan did something unprecedented in the Eastern Bloc, publishing a series of long-playing records with avant-garde music in covers designed by leading Polish visual artists, all that in an interesting concatenation of official and unofficial circulations. The publishing process of the Alma Art series was highly complex and required negotiation with numerous institutions. The records were co-published by the Remont Club of New Music and the Polish Student Association’s Academic Bureau of Culture and Art, with funding from the organisation’s Information and Publishing Committee. Then Alma Art had to apply to the Ministry of Culture and Art for permission to publish the first batch of the records.

With endorsement from Józef Patkowski, then president of the Association of Polish Composers and founder of the Polish Radio’s Experimental Studio, permission was granted. The artists were allowed to use the Column Room of the Primate’s Palace in Warsaw for recordings, which they made using their own equipment. Another permission was required for the Pronit plastics producer in Pionki to start pressing the records; this was done during the weekend, outside the plant’s official schedule. As some copies had artist-made covers, Andrzej Mitan and Andrzej Zaremba worked hard to organise the necessary materials – such as 10 kilograms of red pencils, velour paper or photographic paper – despite severe market shortages. Finally, the materials were assembled. '''[39]''' Mitan describes the process in terms that bring to mind the parallel economy or collective working methods characteristic for the second or third circulations: ‘In a rented vacant flat at Sienna Street in Warsaw, I set up a manufactory workshop where the artists made the designer sleeves’. '''[40]'''

The records were then sold through standard distribution channels. The whole series included nine albums: Helmut Nadolski’s Jubilee Orchestra (cover by Andrzej Szewczyk), Andrzej Bieżan (Tadeusz Rolke), Andrzej Przybielski (Jerzy Czuraj), Janusz Dziubak (Edward Krasiński), Andrzej Mitan w Świętej Racji (Ryszard Winiarski), Krzysztof Knittel (Włodzimierz Borowski), Jarosław Kozłowski (Jarosław Kozłowski), and two records of Andrzej Mitan’s music (with covers by Cezary Staniszewski) (figure 20).

[[File:HOI - (20).png|thumb|right|20. Andrzej Mitan, ‘W świętej racji’ (Holy Reason), LP, Alma-Art, 1984. Design by Ryszard Winiarski. Collection of Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź]]
E. Bizottság was also very lucky in getting their two records released in communist Hungary. The band was formed by a group of artists associated with the Vajda Lajos Stúdió in Szentendre, an artistic community dating back to the late 1960s that was geared towards non-professional and amateur art. From the very beginning the group’s output was a particular mix of youth subcultures with Dadaist and Surrealist inspirations. The following account of the community’s beginnings in early 70s captures its institutional complexity and ideological specificity:

When László feLugossy had finally avoided conscription (but was ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment instead), István Ef Zámbó organised a happening on the occasion at the Szentendre market square. He read out his text (he had already started writing books and manifestoes at the time) and handed out various useless objects, provided by Lászlo Terebessy, to members of the audience. The event was called Nalaja Happening, referring to the group’s dadaistic-surrealistic language, called the nalaja. The happening was interrupted by the police, and several participants, including Ef Zámbó himself, were arrested and prosecuted. At this point begins the counterculture myth of Szentendre, although it was mainly a series of naive actions that helped the town’s young residents to ‘bypass’ the system. Since the authorities feared the young artists, they decided to legalise their activities in order to better control them.

The group founded a discussion club, according to the Aczél principles described earlier, and adopted the name of Lajos Vajda, a pre-WWII artist active in the town, thus emphasising the significance of the classic avant-garde in Szentendre. Exhibitions as well as works by amateur artists were qualified by the Népművelési Intézet [Culture Institute], responsible for community and cultural centres, amateur groups and the promotion of art, again according to the ‘three T’ formula. Since the qualifying committee members, who enjoyed respect in the community as expert figures, usually supported the Vajda Lajos Stúdió, the town authorities gave the artists a postindustrial space as a permanent exhibition venue where the Stúdió continues to function to this day. '''[41]'''

In 1980, continuing the countercultural-amateur traditions of the Szentendre artistic community, a group of artists who were eventually to form A. E. Bizottság decided – just for fun – to take part in a talent show. Their unexpected success drew the attention of the public and of other new wave bands, but also of filmmakers. In 1982, at the Balázs Béla Studio (BBS), the idea was conceived of making a documentary film about the new music scene, including bands such as Trabant, Balaton or VHK. Soon it was decided to focus on A. E. Bizottság alone, and since the band members were artists, the filmmakers thought to conduct an unusual experiment: the band was asked to make a film about itself, with funding provided by the studio. András Wahorn, as the group’s leading member and someone with filmmaking experience, became the project leader and the original script was co-written by László feLugossy. But the resulting footage was unusable and BBS decided to cancel the project. Help came from one of their filmmakers, Gábor Bódy, who liked the experiment enough to lend Wahorn his own video camera, a crew, and some money to finish the film.

[[File:HOI - (21).png|thumb|right|21. A. E. Bizottsag, ‘Kalandra Fel!!’, LP, 1983, Start Records. Design by Andras Wahorn. Courtesy of Andras Wahorn]]
That’s how Jégkrémbalett (Ice-cream Ballet, 1984) was made. At first, it enjoyed limited screening rights at home, but when, following Bódy’s inspiration, A. E. Bizottság were invited to the Berlin Film Festival, it was banned altogether. The band described their situation as ‘undorground’, a pun on the Hungarian word undor, ‘distaste’. '''[42]''' A year earlier, A. E. Bizottság were invited by Hungaroton, the official record company, to record an album. This had been provoked by a radio interview where the company’s head was asked why a band so popular still hadn’t released a record. The apparatchik replied, falsely, that work on the record was under way. Wahorn sensed an opportunity and decided to hold Hungaroton to their word. The impossible became possible and Kalandra Fel!!, featuring strikingly avant-garde music, was published in 1983 (figure 21).

== Twittering Machines ==
[[File:HOI - (22).png|thumb|right|22. ‘DDR von Unten’ compilation LP, 1983, Aggressive Rockproduktionen. Cover design by Rolf Kerbach. Archive of Alexander Pehlemann]]
[[Zwitschermaschine]] were a legendary DDR band formed by visual artists Cornelia Schleime and Rolf Kerbach with a member of the Prenzlauer Berg poetry scene, Sascha Anderson. The group’s compositions were featured on side A of East Germany’s first punk record, DDR von Unten / eNDe, which also included tracks by Sau-Kerle (the Schleim-Keim duo under a different name) (figure 22). Published in 1983 in West Germany by the independent label Aggressive Rockproduktionen, the violent and formally complex music of [[Zwitschermaschine]] was complemented by Anderson’s poetry, which produced a unique effect, especially in combination with the relatively straightforward punk of the Schleim-Keim duo. But punk was only of the band’s inspirations; others were the intermedia experiments of an earlier generation of DDR free jazz artists, where a liaison between the music and art scenes was provided by figures such as A. R. Penck or Helge Leiberg. '''[43]''' The album, as it will turn out much later, was not just an artistic event. In his speech upon receiving the Georg Büchner Prize in 1991, Wolf Biermann revealed that Anderson had been a Stasi informer since the 1970s. '''[44]''' Based on archival research, Seth Howes further complicates the picture, writing:

''"...the evidence suggests he employed dissemblance and misdirection to ensure the record made it to production. Anderson provided information on the record’s progenitors and recording sessions only after the fact, and staved off Stasi intervention by doling out incriminating information at strategic times. Though a representative instance of his unethical ‘art of betrayal’, in this particular case, he also managed to have the record released by providing just enough information on its participants to placate his dissatisfied handlers, but little enough to ensure the project continued. Paying for the record project’s completion by betraying its participants, Anderson achieved the original goal: the release of a punk record of Eastern provenance in the West."'' '''[45]'''

At this point, all the previously mentioned divisions collapse. The last act of the ‘war’ between the regime and the punk movement took place in a recording studio. The release in the West (from smuggled tapes) of a music album recorded by an East Berlin band was made possible by an artist who was a Stasi informer. So wasn’t the record partly at least a tool of the secret police (even if we don’t know what their motivations might have been)? And who is the underground? The title of a Sau-Kerle track on DDR von Unten is intriguing in this context: Untergrund Ist Strategie.

== Underground Is a Strategy ==

The panorama sketched above is naturally a selective one. My goal has not been to describe all circumstances but rather to find examples that might revise our understanding of key concepts. But what emerges from this collection of paradoxical accounts? Above all, a narrative about the different dynamics of liberalisation and their impact on specific countercultural practices. We have seen how Western terminology was adapted for local purposes, yielding disagreements between the leaders of the different groups. But the examples cited in this essay do reflect some general principles. Firstly, as noticed by Yurchak, the underground preferred to avoid a collision course with the state; as a result, political dissidents and groups with clearly defined political goals formed alliances with the independents only under immediate duress. In all other cases, the opportunities offered by the state, whether in terms of infrastructure or other, were eagerly exploited. The enemy was not so much a specific socio-political regime as the establishment, however broadly defined.

But there is also the other side of the coin – the Eastern Bloc countries’ policies towards punk. On the one hand, punks in DDR were persecuted, on the other we have the perestroika and the independents, who came to embody political changes as much as party leaders. The history of institutions and distribution networks described herein is a history of concessions made to pacify or better control the youth. After all, one of the reasons for organising the Jarocin Rock Festival was the possibility of taking pictures of most Polish punks. This element poses significant limitations in the research of ‘independent’ circulations. The story of Sascha Anderson shows how even crucial moments in the history of counterculture may have been orchestrated or inspired, directly or not, by those in power.

In fact, Anderson isn’t the only one whose biography had to be revised after the transformation. Gábor Bódy and Egon Bondy were secret police informers too. All three were central figures in their milieus, so it is safe to assume that they had been recruited partly because of what they could do. This is a third element that needs to be added to those listed by Jonathan Bolton in the passage quoted at the beginning of this essay. Besides official documents, we should not only research the underground mythologies, but also look closely at the other side of the coin, for the underground can also be a synonym of the group guarding the establishment’s hegemony.

== References ==
'''[1] ''' Jonathan Bolton, Worlds of Dissent. Charter 77, the Plastic People of the Universe, and Czech Culture under Communism (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2012) 133.

'''[2] ''' Alexei Yurchak, ‘Gagarin and the Rave Kids: Transforming Power, Identity, and Aesthetics in Post-Soviet Nightlife’ in: Adele Marie Barker, ed., Consuming Russia: Popular Culture, Sex, and Society since Gorbachev (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999) 80.

'''[3] ''' The phrase itself is by William S. Burroughs, and the leader of The Fugs used it as a motto for the magazine Fug You.

'''[4] ''' Cf. Milan Knížák, Písně kapely Aktual, Martin Machovec and Jaroslav Riedel, eds. (Praha: MAŤA, 2003) 39.

'''[5] ''' Ivan Martin Jirous, ‘Report on the Third Czech Musical Revival’, transl. Paul Wilson, in David Crowley, Daniel Muzyczuk eds. Notes From the Underground (Łódź: Muzeum Sztuki, 2016).

'''[6]''' Ibid..

'''[7] ''' Cited in Robert Gildea, James Mark and Anette Warring, eds., Europe’s 1968.Voices of Revolt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 188.

'''[8] ''' Quoted in Gábor Danyi, Sztuka obdarowywania. Model dyseminacyjny wczesnego samizdatu na przykładzie węgierskiego czasopisma artystycznego [The art of giving. The dissemination model of early samizdat on the example of a Hungarian art periodical], paper presented at ‘Solidarity. New Approaches to the Analysis of a Social Movement’, a seminar at Collegium Civitas, Warsaw, 17 November 2014, http://solidarnosc.collegium.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Danai-paper-17-11-2014.pdf – accessed July 2016.

'''[9] ''' Martin Machovec, ‘Ideological Orientation and Political Views and Standpoints of Representatives of Czech Underground Culture, 1969–1989 (Underground and Dissidence – Allies or Enemies)’, eSamizdat, 2010–2011 (VIII) 183.

'''[10]''' ‘Pisałem dla tych chłopców z undergroundu! Z Egonem Bondym rozmawiają Václav Burian i Leszek Engelking’, in: Egon Bondy, Dzisiaj wypiłem dużo piw, transl. Leszek Engelking (Kraków: Miniatura, 1997) 165–166.

'''[11] ''' It is worth noting yet another connotation: in his 1987 book, The Velvet Prison: Artists under State Socialism, Miklós Haraszti used the term ‘velvet prison’ as a metaphor for the constraints faced by artists in the Eastern Bloc. The cell was lined with velvet if the artist didn’t express political views inconsistent with the official Party line.

'''[12] ''' Miroslav Vaněk, Byl to jenom rock’n’roll? (Praha: Academia, 2010). 59.

'''[13] ''' Remigiusz Kasprzycki, Dekada buntu. Punk w Polsce i krajach sąsiednich w latach 1977–1989 (Kraków: Libron, 2013) 143.

'''[14] ''' Miroslav Vaněk, Ostrůvky svobody: Kulturní a občanské aktivity mladé generace v 80. letech v Československu (Praha: ÚSD AV ČR Votobia, 2002) 188.

'''[15] ''' Cf. documents published by the International Labour Organization, http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:50002:0::NO::P50002_COMPLAINT_TEXT_ID:2901573 – accessed July 2016.

'''[16] ''' M. R. Makowski, M. Szymański, Obok albo ile procent Babilonu? (Katowice: Manufaktura Legenda, 2010) 233.

'''[17]''' Mikołaj Lizut, PrL – Punk Rock Later (Warszawa: Sic!, 2003) 45.

'''[18]''' Paweł Konjo Konnak, ‘Tranzytoryjna formacja Totart w drodze do Nieśmiertelności i Wolności’ in Krzysztof Skiba, Jarosław Janiszewski, Paweł Konjo Konnak, Artyści wariaci anarchiści. Opowieść o gdańskiej alternatywie lat 80-tych (Warszawa: Narodowe Centrum Kultury, 2011) 154.

'''[19]''' Timothy W. Ryback, Rock Around the Bloc. A History of Rock Music in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (New York–Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) 89.

'''[20] ''' Théo Lessour, Berlin Sampler. From Cabaret to Techno: 1904–2012, a Century of Berlin Music (Berlin: Ollendorff Verlag, 2012) 225.

'''[21] ''' Anderson, dir. Annekatrin Hendel, 2014.

'''[22] ''' Susanne Binas, ‘East-West Breakthroughs: The Significance of the GDR Pop Underground Today’ in Edward Larkey, ed,. A Sound Legacy? Music and Politics in East Germany (Washington, DC: American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, 2000) 29.

'''[23] ''' Cf. Ronald Galenza & Heinz Havemeister, ‘Either/Or in No-man's-land. Punk in the GDR 1984–89: Between Repression and Seduction’ in Michael Boehlke and Henryk Gericke, eds., ‘Too Much Future’ Ost Punk. Punk in der DDR 1979–89 (Berlin: Künstlerhaus Bethanien, 2005) 97.

'''[24]''' Anna Szemere, Up from the Underground. The Culture of Rock Music in Postsocialist Hungary (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001) 127–128.

'''[25]''' Cf. György Galántai and Júlia Klaniczay, eds., Artpool. The Experimental Art Archive of East-Central Europe (Budapest: Artpool, 2013) 84.

'''[26] ''' A secret-police file on the Artpool founder, György Galántai, codenamed ‘Painter’, explains why: ‘For Galántai's competition several "works of art" (in reality plain botch-works) had been provided that are politically problematic, destructively criticize and, moreover – primarily some of those made by Hungarian "artists" – mock and attack our state and social order as well as the state security organs. Galántai was unable to separate these pieces from the rest of the works, which most probably would have been against his intentions anyway’; Artpool…, op. cit., 268.

'''[27] ''' Konstanty Usenko, Oczami radzieckiej zabawki (Wołowiec: Czarne, 2012) [e-book].

'''[28] ''' Timur Novikov, ‘Autobiography’, http://www.timurnovikov.ru/docs/books/57_autobiography_engl.pdf – accessed 30 July 2016.

'''[29] ''' Usenko, op. cit.

'''[30] ''' Łukasz Ronduda, Sztuka Polska lat 70. Awangarda (Warszawa, Jelenia Góra: Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Polski Western, 2009) 367.

'''[31] ''' Alex Kan, ‘The Ways of Freedom’, in: Sergey Kuryokhin, The Ways of Freedom, CD (London: Leo Records, 2001).

'''[32] ''' Red Wave, LP, Stingray Productions, 1986.

'''[33] ''' Denis Boyarinov, ‘Joanna Stingray, a California Girl in the U.S.S.R.’, The Moscow Times http://www.themoscowtimes.com/arts_n_ideas/article/joanna-stingray-a-california-girl-in-the-ussr/562009.html – accessed July 2016.

'''[34]''' Robert Brylewski, Kryzys w Babilonie. Autobiografia. Rozmawia Rafał Księżyk (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2012) 100–102.

'''[35] ''' Ibid., p. 121.

'''[36] ''' The Neringa Hotel restaurant was famous for its free jazz concerts from the late 1960s.

'''[37]''' ‘We Created Our Own Language. Saulius Žukas interview with Vladimir Tarasov, Vilnius, summer, 2007’, in: Vladimir Tarasov: Between Sound and Image (Vilnius: Baltos Lankos, 2008) 22.

'''[38] ''' Norman Weinstein, ‘Music Begins When Definitions are Silenced’, in: Golden Years of the Soviet New Jazz, Vol IV, CD (London: Leo Records, 2003) 13.

'''[39]''' Danuta Bierzańska, ‘Nic nie jest niemożliwe. Dość szybki utwór – na kilka orkiestr i wielu solistów. Muzyka, słowa i nabijanie tempa: Andrzej Mitan i Andrzej Zaremba’, Tytuł roboczy, 2009 (029–030) 73–81.

'''[40] ''' Andrzej Mitan, ‘Wywiad z samym sobą’, in: Tytuł roboczy (Warsaw: Galeria 2b, 2008) 15.

'''[41] ''' Katalin Balázs, ‘Sztuka efemeryczna i kontrkultura. Na przykładzie wybranych zjawisk z węgierskiej historii instytucji kultury’ [Ephemeral art and counterculture. On the example of selected phenomena from the history of Hungarian cultural institutions] in Sztuka i dokumentacja, no. 7, 37.

'''[42] ''' Cf. Szemere, op. cit., 16.

'''[43] ''' Christoph Tannert, ‘Vierte Wurzel aus Zwitschermaschine’ in Ronald Galenz and Heinz Havemeister, eds., Wir wollen immer artig sein... Punk, New Wave, HipHop, Independent-Szene in der DDR 1980–1990 (Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf Verlag, 1999) 196.

'''[44] ''' Cornelia Schleime, ‘“Killersatellit” and Randerscheinung Jeder Satellit hat einen Killersatelliten. If Only We'd Taken it Literally’ in ‘Too Much Future’ Ost Punk…, op. cit., 177.

'''[45] ''' Seth Howes, ‘“Killersatellit” and Randerscheinung: Punk and the Prenzlauer Berg’ in German Studies Review, Vol. 36, No. 3 (October 2013) 583–584.

[[Category:Czechoslovakian Contributions]] [[Category:Russian Contributions]] [[Category:Hungarian Contributions]] [[Category:East German Contributions]] [[Category:Polish Contributions]]

In a Musical No Man's Land – Unheard-of Productions on the Fringes of Rock Culture

2018-05-29T14:05:34Z

Diogo:

[[File:1991 ag geige art rock festival frankfurt-kopie-(1).jpg|thumb|right|AG Geige, Internationales Art Rock Festival Frankfurt]]
In a Musical No Man's Land – Unheard-of Productions on the Fringes of Rock Culture - An essay by Susanne Binas-Preisendörfer for [[Sound Exchange]].

== CONTEXT AND THOUGHTS ON THE ARTICLE ==
The following contribution was penned in the early summer of 1991 for the magazine Positionen. Beiträge zur neuen Musik (Positions. Contributions to New Music), which regarded itself both then and now as a forum for music which is current, experimental and moves beyond borders. The article's title »In a Musical No-Man's-Land – Unheard-of Productions on the Fringes of the Rock Culture« refers to several aspects of a cultural and music scene at that time. The knowledge of the conditions under which this arose permits it to have insights into and draw conclusions about a concrete music and art scene. Some of the wording in it I would not use in the same way today, and not every generalisation is correct from today's perspective.

The intrinsic magic of the new start that occurred in 1991 on the territory of the former GDR was overstated through a lack of clarity and at times bitterness on the part of many artists. Musicians on the fringes of a cultural landscape which was barely known either at home or abroad found themselves once more in a musical-aesthetic, as indeed political, no-man's-land. The co-ordinates for their activities had become scrambled in both a positive and negative sense. That which had at one time somehow related them to each other, and especially the aesthetic rebellion and the permanent search for suitable ways to communicate by means of their art, as well as a special audience, thirsting for unusual actions or the contact with the opposition – all of this could barely be grasped anymore. In a culturally pluralist society, deviation is regarded as the norm. So we squatted in houses, factories and churches, earned West German money in back-to-work schemes or behind bar counters, and only as an exception with music.

At least these groups of musicians and artists in the East at that time did not define themselves through pop or pop music. In this sense, I even regarded rock music or avant-garde rock as an adequate reference system: loud, annoying and also a little naive, we saw ourselves more in the tradition of punk and New Wave, happenings and audio art. The article is specifically concerned with those projects and bands which had powerful artistic aspirations, yet belonged to a scene that, in addition to the literati and the visual artists, found its audiences among both young and old from all possible areas of life and work.'

Unheard-of, unusual, unique were the words sued to describe the vocal expressions by the musicians and artists – and that against the background of the situation prevailing at the time, and indeed of my own musical experiences. I grew up in East Berlin, attended music school for many years, completed my secondary education at the Händel-school and took music and cultural studies at the Humboldt University. Together with my fellow students and their friends, in the second half of the 1980s I immersed myself in the so-called »other bands« scene, and even played in the band »der expander des fortschritts«. We gave concerts in apartments, churches and galleries. We experienced »Cassiber« (Heiner Goebbels, Alfred 23 Harth, Chris Cutler) live in the Berliner Ensemble theatre, performed together with composers and electronic music ensembles in the GDR's Academy of the Arts, produced four titles for the radio show »PaRocktikum« on DT64 and a whole album for Cutler's label recommended records.

We named the 1989 concert series »Herbstoffensive« (Autumn Offensive). The well-rehearsed album after that – released in summer 1990 – was called »ad acta«. When I wrote the article, my son Leo was nine months old and I was still angry that the expander group had not been invited to the large official presentation of young art from the GDR held in La Villette in Paris.
The article printed here concerns a retrospective snapshot, one that is also intended to provide some self-reassurance and personal positioning within this scene. Despite the fact that the second album had just been released, the expander band only existed as a torso by then, because its one-time members were drifting apart. Written in brackets beneath the title is: To my Friends.

Had I been looking back in retrospect after twenty years, I would not have been able to write an article which could have described the situation then and at the end of the 1980s more thoroughly, objectively or systematically. It is a depiction from my personal perspective, which is extended by the angles provided by other players, and which can certainly claim to be a narration of a small piece of music history exactly in the way that history is envisioned: as a document of the time in which it was recorded.

== IN A MUSICAL NO-MAN'S-LAND – UNHEARD-OF PRODUCTIONS ON THE FRINGES OF THE ROCK CULTURE (SUSANNE BINAS 1991) ==

=== I - CROSS VEINS ===
The exclusivity of musical spaces is relatively insignificant for the majority of the genres and forms of popular music. The frequencies whirr and boom between the Walkman and the stadium, the intimate concert space and the pub, or the disco and the occult niche. These different spaces have themselves become material, so to speak, for music culture events; communication does not occur via individual sound structures, rhythmic patterns, metric standards, etc., but instead fundamentally via certain social spaces. Countless examples of this can be found on a completely general level in the history of popular music.

I would, however, like to concentrate on several, in my opinion, »unheard-of music productions« on the fringes of rock culture: unheard-of both in terms of occupying certain social or cultural spaces and the correspondingly confusing inventory, as well as in their acoustically »disruptive«, non-conformist »musical« space-occupying actions.

I would now like to try and recall the attempts to break out in pop music culture in the recent past, because unusual projects by these music artists from the former GDR have barely been documented. While there have certainly been no fundamental changes in what they want and do since the political and economic transformations of the past two years, the conditions for experimental productions, especially in an area like rock music – whose operations are often assumed to be solely in commercially controlled circuits – have changed completely. In order not to forget that which has been, I intend to direct my observations especially to those who once had few possibilities to occupy or fill official public spaces.

=== II ===
Anyone feeling constricted has at times only two options: confine themselves to the corset, or blast themselves out of it. Musical avant-garde is the permanent attempt to lob dynamite into solid structures of mass rock and even start a fire under »favourable« circumstances. Otherwise it devours itself, and all that remains is a rocky field of shattered hopes. However, such blasting also means loosening one's own fetters and sanctioned systems of norms, or the buttresses of one's own operating range.

Genre-overlapping art productions (mixed forms with various music genres, and especially their synthesising function in an ensemble of various arts: as so-called instrumental theatre, theatrical chamber music, song theatre, multimedia) represented a starting point for these unheard-of music productions. The players were united less by the will to have an aesthetic demarcation in relation to a critically regarded musical current, than by their knowledge of the unsatisfactory cultural situation, which was a shared experience for many.

While it was jazz musicians who, especially at the end of the 1970s, together with dancers, painters, poets and film makers, brought the unheard-of (in the form of exhibition concerts, structured improvisations and so on) to the stages and installations which had been used until then for traditional forms, the generational change (in the mid-1980s) was accompanied by a conspicuous shift to the repertoire of rock and pop. Of course there were already various attempts in the GDR to develop different musical concepts between noise jazz and rock experiments, shortly after the first signs of punk at the end of the 1970s, but in fact it was not until 1985 that the protest feeling, which had become frozen into a pose and long passed its international climax – and was now also in a friendly synthesis with the trappings of New Wave – actually arrived in the GDR. Here in East Germany, rebellion definitely was still intended to be serious: with a rough language and rough sound images as well, tinny, edgy and unrelenting. The protagonists slowly stepped out of their musty damp cellars and garage crypts, church naves and derelict rear courtyards into the light of the »organised« public arena of music culture. It remains questionable whether they were sorry they took this step. In light of the events that were to follow, their names in any case seemed like bright premonitions – AUFRUHR ZUR LIEBE (Mutiny to Love), KLICK & AUS (Click and Out), ORNAMENT & VERBRECHEN (Ornament and Crime), ROSA EXTRA... – and certainly also drew on the aftermath of the so-called German New Wave, with a slight punk clout.

The goals of this collective were existential, comprehensive and often in the guise of social utopia. It was aimed especially at the design of, or search for, new cultural spaces in which the attempt to provoke new ways of thinking and behaving ranked far above the commercial drive to succeed. That an appropriate public presence was never established, despite the truly limited terrain available – e. g. via the electronic media – could be explained from different perspectives. The rigid view of these media in the institutionalised aesthetics context was only one background reason, yet not an insignificant one, to come to terms with the situation. And ultimately there were blockers on both sides.

It is a fact that those artists named above came from surroundings which were at least moved by art, and that a large share of the spectacular tendencies were borne by the initiative of driven individuals who were always coming together in these and other projects, and who also still form the nucleus for various initiatives today. They were and are enthusiasts, sometimes dreamers and absurd »underdogs,« tirelessly seeking the opposite, there versal and the removal of their own restrictions. That some aspects curdled into clichés while doing so is in the nature of things, and it is more true today than ever that much has become exchangeable, value-free and unspectacular: arbitrariness, despite powerful signals.

=== III ===
At the beginning there was the game of getting instruments, which still managed to find their way under intense conditions (at enormously overpriced, foreign currency black market prices) to the tinkers and DIY handymen. This situation was not in any way comparable with the usual possibilities available internationally. The revolution in technological know-how in the field of music electronics never actually made it to the GDR. Yet this absence in particular gave birth to an idiosyncratic creativity. The technical and technological possibilities of the available materials were exhausted. Most of them entered an artistic no-man's-land in doing so: it neither was nor could hardly have been the aim of this work to attain complete professional mastery over the respective materials. Some affectionately called them genial dilettantes, while others ignored them completely for their commitment to no genre and thus to an undisciplined amateur status.

Hence they received nothing from the streams of subsidies from established art institutions, nor the laurels of state praise. The enthusiasts remained by themselves in informal circles and established their own publicity structure (with small cassette tape labels, »scene« sheets and publishers). The art space was deliberately limited and kept restricted, with niches of informal communities established out of necessity, in which politics was fragmented as if in a distorting mirror, yet was never directly addressed. This also denied them »major« appearances at festivals in the GDR (such as the Jazzbühne (Jazz Stage), the Festival des politischen Liedes (Political Song Festival) or the Leipziger Jazztage (Jazz Event)) to which internationally comparable »members of the avant-garde« (such as CASSIBER, Lindsay Cooper & Band, Dagmar Krause, Fred Frith or Alfred 23 Harth) were occasionally invited. It was not uncommon for an aesthetic non-conformity to be accompanied by its political counterpart.

Their widespread roots (in jazz, rock, punk, classical Modernism, education and training at conservatories, autodidactic appropriations and personal experiments) however won the players more friends than might have been expected. They could at times make use of the music culture infrastructure (clubs, galleries, student canteens, cinemas and concert halls) in the GDR, however lacking in substance it might have been, by dealing cunningly with the authorities. In this way they slipped into communication spaces which were not available in the same way in, for instance, other West European countries.

=== IV - OPEN PRODUCTION COOPERATIVES ===
Visual artists are in an unfortunate position once their product has been captured on film, wood or paper, carved in stone or etched on copperplate! For the creators are usually no longer present when the public approaches the work. By now, the history of art in the 20thcentury is familiar with countless examples of visual artists attempting to break through the limitations of panel painting into spatial-temporal dimensions, at least when dealing with »intrinsic« material, and then by exploring new levels and dimensions of the material.

[[AG Geige|AG GEIGE]] (the band's name is a grotesque allusion to the overused requirement in the GDR to develop an understanding of art as cultural-artistic propaganda for the masses, e. g. in creative folk artistic working groups, or Arbeits-Gemeinschaften – abbreviated to AG in German) was formed in the mid-1980s at the crossroads of the appropriation of the various electronic possibilities (rhythm computer and low-tech sampler) and the twin artistic talents (lyrics and painting) of their members. Sequencers provided simple clear patterns which tended to become catchy tunes – guarantees for the safe flow of the texts imposed on them, with images and Super 8 films reminding the initiated of the expressive fantasy costumes worn at the bizarre shows by the Residents (USA). They designed everything themselves, everything was omnipresent in live-seeming holograms on stage.

AG GEIGE have the courage to have visions, as one reviewer wrote about their first LP (of which they now have three). In their sweet Saxon dialect (all the members of the group come from Karl-Marx-Stadt, now Chemnitz), their aesthetics are an attack on the insults to our eyes (lace tablecloths and aluminium spoons) and nerves (cheerful service here) which were endured »by us« for years. Their low-tech samplers delivered what they could for the time – and no more. The GEIGE members used this to create their hits, between dance floor grooves and spindly frequency pranks.

By the end of the 1980s their popularity among 18- to 30-year-olds was unusual for such a project. Several titles even made their way into the upper regions of the national charts. It has now become a little quieter around the GEIGE members. They are signed with an appropriate independent record label and, with professional management, their image is now being sold and marketed reasonably well across Germany. Their personal and artistic roots are in what used to be a creative scene in Karl-Marx-Stadt: MÖBIUS or HEINZ & FRANZ produced comparable cassettes, and the bands [[Zwitschermaschine|ZWITSCHERMASCHINE]] and DIE GEHIRNE were among the familiar faces who gathered around [[Frank Bretschneider]], who recorded several unheard-of pieces of music on tape in his studio SONNENKLANG and released them on the corresponding label [[KlangFarBe]] (it was illegal to distribute your own work in the GDR).

While visual artists themselves took up synthesisers, guitars and computers in the cases described just now, there was certainly a much larger number of projects which clearly displayed symbioses; musicians together with painters, scenographers, dancers or performers.

A division of labour was prevalent during rehearsal and onstage situations with the HERR BLUM project: the father (Jürgen Wagner – action painting) and son (Thomas Wagner – guitar, rhythm computer, tapes, various noise parts) not only upended the rock idiom of the dysfunctional relationship between the generations, they also brought a completely idiosyncratic colour to the scene. Using prepared tapes between collapsing rhythms, Thomas Wagner confidently gained individuality amidst the general state of emergency as he sweated through the actual work. His regular audience was not limited by any means to »clever« students and intellectuals: he instead cast a spell over everyone who required existentially conveyed breakouts (speech, gesture, sound) as a medium for their own mental state. I remember concerts at which the air was literally burning.

One essential condition for this was – and this concerns almost all the people and projects being briefly presented here – the combination of »creator« and »interpreter« (which was enhanced in the HERR BLUM project by the direct participation in the process of creating the father's »painting,« which was richly expressive in colour as a counterpoint, orcantus firmus,to the sound production, an act of quasi-synthesis of the concept of acoustic space). The »genial dilettante« term is therefore no longer applicable, as powerful forces are being harnessed, none of which necessarily have to be artistic. Anyway, by the 1980s at the latest, even in the GDR, electroacoustic production relocated from the esoteric palaces into homes and teenagers' rooms, despite all the costs of acquisition and production. But in the shift to digital, the music lost the aura it had of being something laboriously acquired. The consecration of music in the conservatories and universities made way for the »just for fun« and »do it yourself« attitudes in clubs, rehearsal basements and even on traditional stages.

The moment had finally arrived: musical material had become universal, just like the instruments held ready their universal availability – by democratising the musical instrument, objectifying it, according it only industrial, productive powers. While musical autonomy is and always has been relative, its aesthetic is today greatly expanded. The material and skills have already found their structural-formal and tonal corrective in the process of production. This is collective in its preconditions, even when sound mixing for instance still requires soundproofing and an undisturbed space, and the result requires concentrated individual work. The aesthetic inherent in the material is immersed in the aesthetic of sociocultural »production cooperatives.« The purpose served by distribution and reception in the century-old counterbalance of musical decisions has been nullified – historically – in socialised production processes. This socialisation lurks in the cultural-symbolic forms of this extremely heterogeneous music culture, with its groups and movements which stake out their own social and cultural identities.

Strictly speaking, the starting point for an analysis of the so-called independent scene, avant-garde experiments or unusual sound projects should include an understanding of modern cultural development that reviews the history of the socio-cultural and political context which made it possible, with reference to the cultural-political wealth of the society, regardless of how the relationships of production and reproduction are understood. And this would make it clear why the »false« fraternisations into which many of the »desk composers« are coerced usually do not apply to those discussed here, as soon as the aesthetic really is nullified in a sociocultural production cooperative. That which is social does not have to be subjected to additional mediations before it manifests in a musical-representational result. The space of the »creation« is almost always identical with that being experienced, with the acoustic-visual realisation.

=== V ===
The various communities (of youth cultures) caused specific social and cultural conflict situations in the GDR and drew their content in turn from these. Embedded within them, historically very different rock scenes arose. From the mid-1980s, the so-called »other« or »weird« bands gained attention, especially in local contexts. As already indicated above, they followed the internationally known standards in the aftermath of punk and post-punk.

They included from the very beginning the Cottbus-based band SANDOW – named after one of the town's dreary new housing estates – who, in addition to their concert programmes with hard wave punk, repeatedly introduced onstage encounters with other arts. With the social bonus in the bag, they managed to create insane stage events, especially with the visual artist Hans Scheuerecker, who also came from Cottbus. In 1990, they performed a joint sound-colour-movement performance on the stage of the East Berlin »Tip« (Theater im Palast) venue as part of the Tagen der Jugend (Youth Days Event) in the Palast der Republik. There was not much applause, because the project's aim of creating an obligatorily cooperative synthesis worth seeing and hearing was maybe too ambitious. Openly displayed divisions of labour in theatre productions (e. g. in Senftenberg) seem to have been far more successful.

Critics also saw in the project »Törnen – Ein Mecklenburg-Environment« (Gymnastics – A Mecklenburg Environment, 1987) more of a display than a representation: a symbolic construction transported in a state of diffusion which failed to stimulate culture-critical awareness. »1,700 years of Mecklenburg interpreted in 180 minutes, no geography or history lessons, no folk customs, no theatre« is how it was described in the programme. In addition to painters, film makers, photographers, dancers and performers, musicians from FEELING B, FREYGANG and DEKADANCE also took part. »Actions of this kind resisted any explanation. They were designed by their makers as private myths, and expressed their determination for concealment in nearly indecipherable layers of meaning in the face of social monitoring mechanisms geared at total transparency. With increasing clarity, the allegories provided and the (German?) ›I don't know what it is supposed to mean‹ became supporting pillars for a branch of GDR art which was more concerned with a hidden meaning than with reflection and clarification.« (Christoph Tannert, 1988)

Similar aims led to a group of young artists gathering in 1987 around Arnim Bautz (concept, video, guitar and vocals), the technician and »organiser« (i. e. manager) at OFF GROUND II (an independent, risk-taking initiative in the Jugendklub Potsdam Lindenpark youth club): their goal was to stage a perfect contemporary show using the most diverse of means (i. e. media). Then, one year later, the »total« media product NEW AFFAIRE was staged: lasers pierced walls of fog, there were video and slide projections, Dark Wave and human body performances between expressive, jazz and »Bauhaus« dance: the intention was to sensually seduce the audience, provided the project was actually able to manage the somewhat oversized technical apparatus. The criteria of the undecipherable quoted above were joined here by sedate melancholy and pain, but at least it failed to fit into conventional categories familiar here in Germany. It seemed at times like an occult abyss, meditatively minimalist in the structural concept, yet still full of pomp in its illumination of human perception.

By contrast, ORNAMENT & VERBRECHEN is an independent band that has been quite successful for years. In part because they never addressed the political framework, this situation has continued since the fall of the Berlin Wall. In addition, ORNAMENT & VERBRECHEN – which began as a duo (Ronald and Robert Lippok) – were among the first to initiate offensive production relations on an open group basis. Sometimes with a smaller line-up and at other times with more members, the Lippok brothers have accompanied poets such as Rainer Schedlinski or Bert Papenfuß-Gorek during their readings. There were also such connections between Sascha Anderson and the legendary FABRIK – intelligent punk wave in performance-oriented projects (e.g. with Lutz Dambeck).

While all of this was taking palce up to the mid-1980s almost exclusively in non-public connections or spaces (such as the Sprachenkonvikt institute, the Samariterkirche or the Umweltbibliothek in Berlin), the relaxation of culture policy brought domestication. It was now tolerated and, ultimately, even demanded: as a political buffer zone and space for integration, as a fig leaf for the culture policy of (half-dead) pen pushers, but also as an invigorating auto-corrective effect using performances, and that not only because of ossified artistic development. Its fundamentally polemic, discursive character was perhaps an essential survival mechanism of a rebellious intellectual culture.

The »true« signs of modern civilisation could also be found in the GDR, especially in the dissemination of metropolitan cultural forms as the revelation of these signs. The individual's internal worlds of behaviour and experience are determineden masseby the worlds of objects and the density of events. »The concept of sensation has been rendered powerless by the increasingly unmanageable flood of events from theatres of war, explorations of the cosmos, plane crashes, industrial and environmental catastrophes... and everyone has a front row seat... The crash enlists our attention as a subscriber, as a mediator... that which had to arise, inevitably, from the culture so discovered: Object art, installations, action painting, Fluxus, performances, multimedia... In the confrontation with its own progressive forms, an attempt has been made to expose reality... the step from feeding the viewers to abandoning them, releasing them into the wilderness of reality... without any warning.« (Erhard Ertel, 1989)

In this sense, former scenographic students in Dresden attracted attention with their AUTOPERFORATIONSARTISTIK, especially as it could no longer be explained at all using traditional artistic criteria, and even vehemently rejected them. Even highly unorthodox art experts had their problems with such »hermetic actions,« being unable to grasp or decipher for themselves the meaning of the overarching impressions, which extended beyond any traditional genres. Works by Micha Brendel, Else Gabriel (today a well-travelled, internationally-acclaimed performance artist), Rainer Görß and Via Lewandowski conveyed the history of art at most using receptive and cognitive recycling, and they always found debates on the location of art either irrelevant or annoying.

Even if they no longer used instruments (in the sense of tools for dissecting), they also worked together with »proper« musicians (e.g. Nino Sandow – trained opera singer, Norbert Grandl – classical timpanist and rock drummer, Ulf Wrede – keyboards, Berd Wrede – excellent jazz guitarist and Stefan Winkler – composition studies graduate). This combination called itself BRUT (until another, uninteresting, band usurped this name, probably in ignorance of its namesake): »Picked out of the electric and underground music pellets and slaphappy. Fresh. Show-offs. Heart chamber music with rhythm disturbances. Real right through to the wrong note.« (from an advertisement) As part of the so-called MIDGARD Performance (a diploma thesis that was defended as an exhibition concept by Rainer Görß at the Dresden College of Art – a first), an opus composed by Stefan Winkler, based on texts from the Icelandic Edda saga, had its eagerly awaited première. It was dominated by artificial structures, a female voice, a male voice, cello and percussion, which were confronted with extreme outbreaks of electronic instruments (sampler, electric guitar and drums). While it was conceived as an exclusively musical element amidst the action art forms of this strangely archaic exhibition space, BRUT contextualised comparable states: rituals and therapeutic forms. And just like their »dirty«, stinking, untidy and overcrowded environment provoked the eyes and nose, the fragile musical material, ominously warped, reached the surprised ears of those present.

=== VI - LONE WOLVES ===
For many players, pre-recorded tape material, the insertion of original sounds and their distortion through sampling – ruthlessly repeatable via sequencer structures – represented an important basis for their own productions. For Thomas Wagner, mentioned earlier, this was the only way at all to present his excessive solo or two-man shows live on stage. What he managed to put together in the peace and quiet of his own home was termed in this respect »home recordings«: experiments with all the sound sources (baking tins, the sound of a diskette, tea kettles, radio) available to the various producers.

With the exception of a few specialists and their products, these musical studies almost never reached the ears of a larger audience. If we put a positive spin on this, the lack of pressure to perform in public made possible a freedom or naivety with which the sound material was accessed and processed, something which the »unheard-of« logically contains. Many of these tape music producers are extreme individualists. They want to control the resulting material down to the very last detail. In that regard, the accessible recordings can be understood as technical psychograms, in which the technical level during the recording can be discerned as well as very specific individual emotional states expressed in humour, sentimentality, fear, playfulness, irony or sarcasm.

In addition, Frank Tröger (TRÖTSCH) or Dirk Pflughaupt (FLUGZEUG), both of whom have worked primarily on the basis of sound recycling, have also integrated material developed in this way in band projects: for example in OBEN OHNE – an action with the two of them and Tatjana Gallert (vocals) and Matthias Meiner (saxophone). Taymur Strengler has used standard computer technology to prepare his own pieces and those for the band NEUN TAGE ALT in an almost professional way. Likewise, the duo Thomas Wagner (HERR BLUM) and Jörg Beilfuß (highly professional drummer), working as TOM TERROR & DAS BEIL or the band DER EXPANDER DES FORTSCHRITTS, were not prepared to forego homework in the sense of home recordings. They produced for the live context, coupled with »classic« rock music instruments. However the tape collages did not figure here as a rhythmically structured band, to which the individualists can be assigned as a disrupting factor, but rather as a completely independent »musical individual« in which the »collective musical confrontations« with sounds, functions and commentaries come together – something which would not be possible for single instrumentalists onstage.

Daniel Rund in contrast produced pure tape music – a proper boffin among the home recording freaks. He intentionally took the dreary array of low-tech equipment at his disposal, and used it to transform the »trash inspirations« of his old fairytale and kitschy GermanSchlager(MOR hits) albums as an outlet for his »hatred of Jürgen Walter and Herberth Roth (GDR folklorist and singer of kitschy hits) and his own childhood favourites (Spider Murphy Gang)« (Daniel Rund in an interview with the writer). For him, coincidental destruction represented the »good life,« and the ideal Christmas present would be »a recorder in the bathroom, always ready to record« (ibid.). He treated texts in an enchantingly rigorous manner, making associations in a Babylonian confusion of tongues. Together with Michael Möller (who was a music journalist and keyboarder at the time), he planned for the possibility of performing his material live. This actually happened during an exhibition opening in 1990, but it seems that neither of them were entirely clear about just how big a jump it really is from the living room to a public space. Filling large spaces with acoustic material calls for the most elementary knowledge of their dimensions, as well as of the unique aspects of how the sound is reflected or swallowed up.

»HERZKOTZEN – or songs against mechanics« (a play for audio tape, composition and realisation: Eckehard Binas, one performer: Uwe Baumgartner and a musician on the piano, sampler, flute and saxophone: Susanne Binas) existed from the beginning in two versions: as an audio version (cassette) and as a live performance. The latter was performed six times and was subtly adapted from the cassette version in consideration of the spatial dimension. In the stage version, the performer is placed in an unfair contest with himself (the audio tape narrator). All of the texts were by Arthur Rimbaud, they were however organised for use solely as semantic material for the piece. The figure split into three persons (a white Negro in a trialogue with himself), with the differentiation being completely subjective and thus perhaps able to provide information about the emotional state and intention of the »creator« (Eckehard Binas). On the other hand, as composers the persons lead their own lives, resulting in commentaries, illustrations, obliterations and amplifier effects. The audio tapes were produced in a rehearsal room with the technically primitive equipment that was available at the time (1989).

=== VII - SELF-DEFENCE GROUPS< ===
The names and projects presented so far are those which were from their inception open, with limited lifespans and volatile structures. However, stable group concepts (AG GEIGE) did grow from several of these loose connections, or vice versa, with some bands or individual members embarking on various projects. What they were trying to break through was the relative narrowness of what can be expressed in rock music, both in terms of the line-up as well as in the sound material used. They borrowed from New Wave, jazz and even the classics of modern serious music, as well as the tradition of Weill and Eisler. The sound images created in this way were so different individually that every effort to grasp them with musical labels was doomed from the very beginning.

Briefly: more has continued to be written about BRUT and HERR BLUM, as indeed about AG GEIGE. But there was also the band HARD POP, which drew attention during the early stages of the development of this trend for their idiosyncratic borrowings from Weill and Eisler in their rock songs, or TOM TERROR & DAS BEIL: there arose between the two extreme individualists – the expressive sampling virtuoso Thomas Wagner and Jörg Beilfuß, the most excellent percussionist in this scene in the GDR – a surely difficult but equally fruitful collaboration. Driven first and foremost by improvisation, they played their complex, compact songs with much success all the way to LA VILLETTE in Paris as part of a wide-ranging presentation of young GDR art in February 1990.

Three further musical programmes were also created for a time (the protagonists temporarily left the GDR) which also went beyond the obvious horizontal-vertical co-ordinated network of typical GDR pop music – TEURER DENN JE, FETT and LA DEUTSCHE VITA – thanks to the demanding lyrics which Leonard Lorek prepared in language grids and with poetic artifices for various musical variants: for a pop concert (TEURER DENN JE), for artificial jazz without a jazzy lack of history (FETT) and for a two-man programme (Ulf Wrede – keyboard, Fritz Zickert – guitar) which confronted old hits from the 1920s and '30s with current music (LA DEUTSCHE VITA). For pop music in the GDR, Leonard's songs with their circular linguistic movements, connected to Fritz Zickert's innovative compositional efforts on the basis of unconventional song structures, would have augured a quantum leap forward, had the decision-making media representatives ever become aware of the musicians' output.

=== VIII ===
»What do people do when they don't like the music presented to them? They make it themselves.« (Mario Persch, 1988) DER EXPANDER DES FORTSCHRITTS (founded in 1987) also regarded itself as such a self-defence group with a changing line-up (Uwe Baumgartner, Eckehard Binas, Mario Persch, Jörg Beilfuß, Susanne Binas, Stefan Schüler, Norbert Grandl, Thomas Görsch). The members were united by several peculiarities: they had all gained experience in or with rock or jazz bands, but what united them above all else was their distrust of existing band concepts and structures, like a music factory, where there was always a lead singer, someone else who wrote the lyrics, the woman always looked really sexy and someone else provided the rhythm. They were also united by a shared interest in the most diverse cultural and artistic concepts from throughout the century, and in those forms of popular music which developed beyond the standardised radio music and which referred to reality in a new way; those produced in a free, creative interaction with technology, with the most varied compositional principles and improvisation methods and which were still »pop songs,« which had managed to free themselves from the verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure without completely throwing it overboard.

DER EXPANDER DES FORTSCHRITTS abstained from autobiographical claims universal truths in favour of (far too) complex musical and contextual fields of meaning in which snippets of associations, quotations and commentaries faded in and out. Hence their interest in working with tapes, distorted sound documents, statements, and so on. This, in turn, provided the opportunity to integrate social reality – directly or mediated – into the musical structures. The resulting concept, which was occasionally conceived as superficially argumentative, gave way at the beginning of the 1990s to a more associative one (especially in terms of rhythm and sound image). This was a universally observable trend, away from the existential scream in the direction of swinging melancholy, which is no less existential in intention. For that part of the EXPANDER group which is still active, these are the archetypes of human imagination, the singsongs of hope, fear, carnal desire and pain. The »Gesang der Sirenen« (Sirens' Song) is a consequential project: »The über-message paralyses, within the confusion all song is a promise.« (from the programme)

=== IX - BUNDLED ===
The tendencies, aspects, names and projects described above are all part of a spectrum of art productions in the 20thcentury whose aim was not the creation of harmony, but rather the over-extension of the medium, as well as the over-extension of the art spaces and their socially cohesive strength. What was rejected was the overly-serious, unconditional identification with extreme emotional states. This tendency is logically very close to art-like theatrics and scenic actions. And at times it drew no distinction between the unique object and the mass product. For this purpose, the means to exercise art have to be radically expanded, the materials, methods and forms of presentation constantly questioned. This is a strenuous undertaking, because the new experiential world is dauntingly pluralist; it contains torturous seriousness as well as fun, humour and melancholy. Its enthusiasm (and its repression) is marked by a feverish, hectic pace (Susan Sontag).

Many of those named here have to a certain extent bundled this experience like an oracle, one that we are only now actually facing with all its implications. Audiences today are even less willing to voluntarily accept assaults on their ears, to tear their gaze away from the spectacle of palm fringed beaches, to provoke and challenge the senses. The public space for any pleasure in the fantastic and the exaggerated is channelled by market-friendly concepts.

=== X ===
The cards are being reshuffled. Several are lost (to drugs, the psychiatric clinics or New York), others have returned to East Berlin and now drink their Weizen beer in self-managed galleries with a bar (GALREV or Geyer Walli), or open houses solely in accordance with their own insane requirements, and others now pursue middle class professions, or try to pull one over on the solidly structured public arenas of federal German socio-culture (which is this in name only, as it criminally neglects sociocultural spaces) with their flair for cultural-artistic interconnections, using new or long cherished ideas.

© Positionen, 9/1991, pp. 9–15.

[[Category:East German Contributions]] [[Category:Sound Exchange]] [[Category: Essays]]

Tibor Szemzö

2018-05-29T14:04:08Z

Diogo: Created page with "Tibor Szemzö in 2015 Tibor Szemző is one of the most significant and prolific figures in contemporary music in Hungary. As a founder (with Bé..."

File:Szemzo 2015.jpg

2018-05-29T14:02:31Z

Diogo:

Tibor Szemzö in 2015. Picture taken from the artist's website: http://szemzo.org/en/tibor-szemzo-2/

Vladimir Tarasov

2018-05-29T13:45:35Z

Diogo: Created page with "Vladimir Tarasov in 2007 A composer, drummer and visual artist, Vladimir Tarasov has lived and worked in Vilnius, Lithuania, since 196..."

[[File:Vladimir Tarasov 2007.jpg|thumb|Vladimir Tarasov in 2007]]
A composer, drummer and visual artist, Vladimir Tarasov has lived and worked in Vilnius, Lithuania, since 1968. He has played in the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra for many years. Between 1971 and 1986, he was a member of the famous GTC group (Viacheslav Ganelin, Vladimir Tarasov, Vladimir Tchekhasin). The musicians frequently incorporated performative actions into their concerts. Operating in Lithuania, the GTC had better opportunities to travel abroad and present their work at festivals. Their first album was released on a Polish label PolJazz in 1975. Tarasov has recorded over one hundred albums. He writes orchestral music, along with film and theatrical scores. Since 1991 he has been active in the visual arts, making solo works and collaborating with artists like Ilya Kabakov and Sarah Flohr. Tarasov's works were exhibited in Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf (1991), in Venice (La Biennale di Venezia, 1993), at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (1993), the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris (1995) and the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg (2004). The film, 634 takta Vladimira Tarasova (Vladimir Tarasov's 634 Measures), directed in 1989 by Sviatoslav Tchekhin, is an impressionistic portrait of the musician, interlacing scenes of everyday life with a recording of a concert during which Tarasov performs a composition for drum set and electronics from his 1990 album Atto IV. The film also highlights a large collection of contemporary art, including works by Kabakov, Ivana Tchuykov and Eugenijus Cukermanas. One of the first sound installations made by Tarasov was his 1993 Concert for Flies. The work, evoking a space where flies perform the composition, refers to the surreal humour characteristic of Moscow Conceptualism, and raises questions about the boundaries of improvisation and value of aesthetic criteria.

== Related Content ==
[[Hues of Independence]]

[[Mike_Zwerin:_"Siberia_-_Out_Of_The_Very_Cool"|Mike Zwerin:"Siberia - Out Of The Very Cool"]]

[[Contemporary Music, Sound Art and Media in Lithuania: From a Historical Perspective to the Present]]

File:Vladimir Tarasov 2007.jpg

2018-05-29T13:41:00Z

Diogo:

Vladimir Tarasov in 2007. Photo source: Wikipedia

Contemporary Music, Sound Art and Media in Lithuania: From a Historical Perspective to the Present

2018-05-29T13:30:03Z

Diogo:

Contemporary Music, Sound Art and Media in Lithuania: From a Historical Perspective to the Present - An essay by Tautvydas Bajarkevicius for [[Sound Exchange]].
== »Terza Prattica« ==

By delving into the relationship between music and media, experimental music and sound art, we find ourselves in a broad field of phenomena and contexts, which characterise these themes and genres. In the Eastern European context, it is quite common to distinguish between the academic understanding of experimental music and practices which have nothing in common with formal, conventional musical literacy, and which are based on entirely different premises. However, a large number of those creating electronic and electroacoustic music are, along with sound artists, quite knowledgeable in at least a few of the different global contexts which influence their contemporary work, and which co-exist without necessarily being directly related to one another. On a local scale, the connections between and among these historical musical contexts are frayed and tenuous, and the differing aesthetic and institutional identities have created gulfs between them. Sometimes, contextual connections appear only in hindsight, i. e. by examining the history of music or, to phrase it more colourfully, by conducting an archaeological excavation of its ideas and practices. This is one of the primary strategies of this paper.

Musicologist Veronika Janatjeva’s study entitled »Terza Prattica, Its Manifestations and Imitations in Lithuanian Music« [i] provides the most comprehensive overview of the history of music, covering academic electronic music, electroacoustic and music with other non-traditional musical instruments, along with music created and performed using technology from the 20th and 21st centuries. This paper is the result of the indirect cooperation of two authors. Using the study by Veronika Janatjeva mentioned above, which provides us with a historical map of the ideas and practices of academic music using media and technology (most often electronic technology), I have decided to concentrate on what I believe are the primary aspects in terms of this discourse, and supplement the analysis with own my point of view. At the same time, I would like to broaden its scope by applying my own theoretical and practical experience by posing questions concerning artistic identity, and by discussing the phenomena of the sound art and informal experimental music scene, along with some issues of an institutional nature.

When translated literally from Latin, »terza prattica« means »the third practice«. In music it describes the practice of electronic music and everything that is connected with it, including the specific character of sounds and their qualities, forms of expression, methods of composing and performing, and its function in society. [ii] The broader meaning of the term could be described using the concept of terza prattica developed by German-born composer and musicologist Konrad Boehmer. According to Janatjeva, »Konrad Boehmer’s describes a totally new musical paradigm (though it was only discussed in the context of Western music culture) with the term terza prattica, the theoretical, aesthetic and finally practical premises of which formed already at the beginning of the last century or even earlier, like the Utopian visions of the future of music.«[iii] With innovations in technology and their ever-easier integration in the creation of music, specific creative ideas and research into matters of style are replacing the lofty, visionary-like language and manifesto-like intentions of musical works, and are shaping the identities of composers and artists. Futuristic intonations are becoming an everyday reality, changing the discourse of art theory and practice, as well as identifying real trends. The search for links between the historical perspective and current context is one of the main goals of this paper.

== The Origins of Discourse in Lithuanian Electronic Music Practice and Theory ==

[[File:Vytautas bacevicius.jpg|thumb|right|Vytautas Bacevičius (1905-1970) Photo: Lithuanian Archives of Literature and Art]]
After the Jauna muzika (Young Music) electronic music festival in 2005, Janatjeva stated the following: »In 1961 when Yuri Gagarin ascended to the cosmos, electronic music was born in Lithuania. The first composer who wrote an electronic [music] composition of sinus tones created using a synthesizer was Vytautas Bičiūnas. Less than 20 heard this work, and only a few remember it. Thus formally we can state that electronic music has existed for about 40 years already in Lithuania.«[iv]

This work was called »Kosmosas« (Cosmos). »It is not difficult to guess that it was inspired by the first flight to cosmic space. The composition repeats the decade-old German electronic music model: it was a montage of tape recorder tapes, and the source for the sound was sinusoidal tone generators.« [v] It is said that Bičiūnas, who is a musicologist and sound director [vi], did not hold these creative attempts in particularly high regard, thus they did not survive (along with other works, if there were any).

What is both interesting and consistent is that the beginning of electronic music in Lithuania is linked with the Utopian dreams of the modernization of the first half of the 20th century, including sweeping visions of technological progress, eternal industrial evolution and the conquest of the cosmos, which were without a doubt viable, and which influenced the work of Lithuanian composers during the interwar years, as well as during later periods when electronic music had yet to appear. »Among the rare musical reflections of the moods of the industrial century were Vytautas Bacevičius’ ›Kosminė poema‹ (Cosmic Poem, 1928) for an enormous symphony orchestra (for 180 musicians!), ›Elektrinė poema‹ (Electric Poem, 1932), and the ballet ›Šokių sūkuryje‹ (In the Throes of Dance, 1932), along with his Simfonija Nr. 2 ›Alla guerra‹ (Symphony Nr. 2 ›Alla guerra‹) – which depicted the tragic reality of war, a departure from the Romantic ideals of war propagated by the ›The Four Winds‹ [vii] movement – plus Julius Gaidelis’ symphonic poem ›Aliarmas‹ (Alarm, 1945).« [viii]

The category of the cosmos was also important for Vytautas Bacevičius, the first Lithuanian composer we could consider to be an electronic music theorist. He was particularly important in marking the historical beginning of the articulation of ideas about a discourse concerning electronic music. Bacevičius was impressed by the field of electronic music, which revealed »unearthly beauty«, innocence, even a purity that was described in scientific terms (the »pure frequencies« are those that don’t exist in nature: they are »purified« of overtones, giving character and individuality to each natural timbre). An aesthetic promise was made, to contemplate the transcendental spaces of spirituality, and to reflect the universe in the prefiguration of the inner cosmos, using music. Vytautas Bacevičius, who had faithfully promoted avant-garde ideas, became influenced by Constructivism and Expressionism, and in the 1950s and 1960s began to advance closer to what was called in biographies his »cosmic period« (one could mention works such as »Cosmic Symphony«, »Graphics« for a symphony orchestra, »Cosmic Poem« for piano, and »Cosmic Rays« for the organ), during which the ideas that had been important to him intertwined with his meditations on electronic music: »True cosmic music elements must be sought in one’s own inner universe. By going this way, one can rise to the highest Abstract, where the loftiest Wisdom, Logic, Perfection, Truth, Beauty, Virtue, Freedom of Spirit and the highest Creative Force with its endless sources and, finally, omnipotent Will reign.«[ix]

Bacevičius finished his 1963 analytical article »Concrete Music, Electronic Music and Music of the Future« [x] with this Romantic manifesto, which we can consider the first theoretical articulation of electronic and electroacoustic music in Lithuanian music. This text is especially valuable as it summarizes the discussion that was occurring at the time between individuals from both schools, raising the question of live performance on stage and the »liveliness« of the process of electronic or electroacoustic composition, as well as providing certain visionary predictions for the future of music. Most of these insights (except, perhaps, for a too clearly-defined differentiation between pure electronic music and electroacoustic music) are relevant and interesting in various aspects in today’s context.

The primary difference between the preconditions for concrete music and electronic music in Bacevičius’ assessments were based on motifs of »spirituality«. In his opinion, the creators of concrete music were only interested in the physical characteristics of sounds, i.e. »they portray and imitate any and all sounds of a physical and natural nature« [xi]. Bacevičius idealises the ability to make electronic music and the goal of using pure tones. He also examines the rules of this school which cause them to rise against the makers of concrete music: »Composers of electronic music, by being representatives of absolute music, are not interested in the acoustic problems of sound, because they care about spiritual expression, mood, sublimity, etc. Those representing electronic music lead a constant war against the makers of concrete music, whom they consider to be beneath them«. [xii]

Vytautas Bacevičius was in exile from the beginning of World War II. This circumstance most likely did not greatly influence his ideas and work in the historical processes of Lithuanian music. The different contexts and circumstances of his work may, up to a point, have impacted the different trajectories taken by this exile composer and the development of Lithuanian music, limited direct contact, and determined the peripheral status of Vytautas Bacevičius in music history during the Soviet period.

== Music and Technology: Towards Ideas and Instruments ==
[[File:Mindaugas urbaitis c arunas baltenas(1).jpg|thumb|right|Mindaugas Urbaitis. Photo: Arūnas Baltėnas]]

Along with the problematic issues of aesthetic orientation that were connected with technological progress and avant-garde ideas in Soviet Lithuania, there is the relevant question of access to technology and its quality and possibilities in the 1960s and 1970s, during a time that marked what could be called the »youth« of music based on the use of new technologies. There is an interesting link between the first creators of this music and national radio stations and television channels. According to Janatjeva, Bičiūnas »worked as a sound director at Lithuanian Radio starting in 1945, became the first sound director for Lithuanian Television and Radio in 1956, and worked at the Vilnius-based recording studio Melodija from 1961. It was precisely this that gave him the rare chance to experiment with the only accessible tools for making electronic music – the studio magnetophones and sound generators which were used to test the equipment. The case of Jurgis Juozapaitis was similar: he was a composer who worked as a sound director for Lithuanian Television and Radio starting in 1969.« [xiii]

With musicology and cultural studies being mostly focused on serious music and phenomena related to intellectual culture, connections between media and music in the context of popular culture are of particular interest for studies of an interdisciplinary nature on audiovisual art, cultural history and visual anthropology, which are otherwise left out on the periphery. At the same time, the professional interest of composers of serious academic music, and the search for new forms and methods of aesthetic expression connected with technology, draw them toward creative experiments. One of the innovators in this field was Jurgis Juozapaitis, who wrote the chamber symphony »Jūratė ir Kastytis« in 1974, which was the first Lithuanian concert piece to employ a pre-recorded tape. In 1979 he used a magnetic tape editing technique and composed an electroacoustic work entitled »UFO«, while in the 1980s he bought a computer and wrote »Kolapsaras« (Collapse) in 1985, which, according to V. Janatjeva, was the first work created and executed by a computer in Lithuania.

It was not only the composition of musical works that provided technological challenges, but also the performance of these works. This aspect is particularly important for the common paradigm of stage performance, where a new dimension is added by the direction of space and acoustics on stage, and by different approaches to stage direction. The first works of a longer length which used a tape, electrified traditional instruments (violoncello) or live electronic music were made in the 1970s. Mindaugas Urbaitis should be mentioned as a pioneer in this field, using an early version of the tape recorder in his work »Invencijos« (Inventions) for oboe in 1976. His 1979 composition »Meilės daina ir išsiskyrimas« (Song of Love and Separation) for solo soprano and delay system employed an interactive interplay of sound and electronic music during a live stage performance. Urbaitis’ interest in new technological tools for composing music reflects his identity as a composer, as well as his stylistic independence from what is known as the »machinist generation«, which we will look at later.

The link between technological and compositional aspects and problematic issues is revealed by the creative experiments of composer Osvaldas Balakauskas in the 1970s and 1980s. Osvaldas Balakauskas was fascinated by the possibilities of the electric violoncello. One of his notable works is »Ludus modorum« for electronic violoncello and chamber orchestra. A considerable part of this modern piece is for tape and small ensembles as well as for solo performances. The tape usually featured sections, modified in one way or another, which had been recorded beforehand by the performers who were playing on stage. [xiv] This kind of technique provided a number of compositional advantages. According to Vytautas Landsbergis: »Sound recording and reproduction equipment, allowing one to play the tape back or at different speeds, helps to enrich the sound with new colours, upside-down sounds that can’t be produced with regular methods, unheard-of virtuoso possibilities that instruments don’t have. [...] The texture is enriched, embellished, accessible where needed, a strong symphonic sound, the impression of a complex orchestral score. However, the composer wins in terms of the chamber-like character – his symphonies with tape are portable, and can be offered to somewhat broader strata of listeners without an enormous orchestra or special premises.« [xv] However, especially when keeping that period in mind, it was the technological aspects that were the most difficult to predict, and the realization of ideas linked with them became problematic. According to the composer, »the electronic audio equipment basis is not at the level it needs to be (or sometimes there simply isn’t any [level]). Due to this, not all the aforementioned possibilities give the expected result, and often it fails entirely«. [xvi]

This situation, paradoxically, greatly influenced what was known as the »machinist generation«, who were very productive in the mid-1980s, manifesting their creative identity in alternative and experimental ways and forcing their way into the Lithuanian academic music environment with a distinct taste for contexts that had, up until that point, been rather foreign to the current dominant aesthetic tastes.

== Innovative Strategies for Creative Work and Manifestations of Identity ==

[[File:Dadacongress79 sarunas nakas(1).jpg|thumb|right|DADA-Congress (1979, Lithuania). Photo: Sarunas Nakas]]

This generation includes the work of composers Šarūnas Nakas, Rytis Mažulis, Tomas Juzeliūnas, Nomeda Valančiūtė and Gintaras Sodeika. In one way or another they clearly displayed or partially reflected »machinism« – the cult of technology, mathematical precision, pure logic and related ideas – in music, and included a Modernist flair or neo-Dadaist irony. The concept of »machinism«, which from the very beginning seems to have been used more by critics than articulated consciously by the composers themselves, served as an aesthetic programme and paradigm for creative identity. This concept as such was not limited by a concrete aspect – the form these ideas took was in a sense secondary – that is, they could assume various forms. However, it was precisely the power and expression of this idea which revealed the very beauty, courage and rebellious energy of »machinism,« and created the aura of creative breakthrough surrounding this group of composers.

Works that have merited the still-relevant »machinist generation« label for these composers include Šarūnas Nakas‘ »Merz-machine« for 33 electronic and acoustic instruments, »Vox-machine« (1985) for 25 electronically modified voices and Mažulis' »Čiauškanti mašina« (Twittering Machine, 1986) for four pianists. V. Janatjeva describes Nakas‘ compositions in the following way: »Concentrated compositions swelling with energy (and sometimes with open aggression), composed of maximally autonomous lines or layers, pulsating with mechanically repeating segments of dense patterns and assaulting the listener with sharp ›urbanist‹ sound produced with electroacoustic instruments...« [xvii]

[[File:Sarunas nakas 1984.jpg|thumb|RIGHT|Šarūnas Nakas, 1984]]

The composers themselves have expressed different opinions about being grouped together on one shelf in the annals of music history. Gintaras Sodeika says that »it is a particular generation that forms a specific cultural and aesthetic background«. [xviii] Šarūnas Nakas’ position is not as clear-cut: »I look at generations cautiously. Those who are born in the same year don’t necessarily have similarities. Often there is a generation label, description or sign that is created to make it easier to label them.« Despite this reserved comparison by Šarūnas Nakas of the machinists with a generation or stylistic movement, there are certain characteristics that define the work of the aforementioned composers: the strategies they use to create their identities and their ties with the traditions of the 1980s clearly set them apart from the overall panorama of Lithuanian academic music.
[[File:Sarunas nakas merz-machine score.jpg|thumb|right|Šarūnas Nakas »Merz-machine«, score page]]

In some cases, the issue of identity is particularly striking. Worthy of mention are two much later works: Rytis Mažulis' »Grynojo proto klavyras« [xix] (1992–1994) for two pianists and tape, which was a reference to Immanuel Kant’s work »Critique of Pure Reason«, and the work »Gyvybės vandens klavyras« [xx] for two pianos and tape (1983) by Algirdas Martinaitis, who was from the Lithuanian school of Neo-Romantic music. Rytis Mažulis' minimalist piece reflects the basic principles of machinist composition, a mathematically precise organisation of the structure that seems to multiply the motif that is chosen as the point of departure for the work, reminding the listener of the intertwined garlands of melodies in Martinaitis’ composition: here, however, they do not intertwine into picturesque Romantic compositional threads with an Eastern sound, as in Martinaitis' work, but rather obey a strict and mechanical compositional logic. This work, though it was made in the 1990s, reflects rather well the situation of the identity of the machinist generation – in one way or another, their creative manifestations became a counterbalance to the dominant Neo-Romantic style. In the case of Rytis Mažulis, they became minimalist compositions organized along canonical progression. Šarūnas Nakas employed the use of Dadaist, futuristic, jazz and other compositional ornaments, while on the discourse level he employed socially active and chameleon-like mythologies concerning artistic identity. [xxi]

Mindaugas Urbaitis expanded innovative strategies for composing by employingtechnology, while at a later date Gintaras Sodeika, concentrating on the (post-)minimalist musical tradition, consistently progressed towards writing works possessing elements of performances, happenings and actions, which surpassed the borders of musical composition. At the end of the 1980s Sodeika was regularly working together with creators of contemporary fine art and with members of performance groups (such as the group Žalias lapas).

The end of the 1980s was a particularly stormy period, full of creative experiments. The theatrical concerts of the Free Sound Sessions featured works by composers from different generations which were inspired by the Fluxus movement, and which oscillated between fanciful and absurd decorations and were inspired by a spirit that had been freed from all canons. For example, Vidmantas Bartulis’ composition »Mein Lieber Freund Beethoven« used radio receivers, recordings of Beethoven’s music, and petard explosions.

The middle of the 1980s also featured the appearance of the Jaunimo kamerinės muzikos dienos (Youth Chamber Music Days, which became the Druskomanija Festival), which was an open forum in which young composers could experiment, and which even had its own musicology publication, Jauna Muzika (Young Music), which examined the problems facing contemporary music. While the machinists did not only define their identity with technological terms or limit themselves to an arsenal of concrete tools for expression, they were among the most active in raising the question of the need for electronic studios (which paradoxically has remained relevant in the 21st century, due to the lack of education in media culture) in order to go beyond the trends of Lithuanian academic music which were dominant at the time. According to Vita Gruodytė, »Digital music today has achieved the level of laser surgery and all kinds of other informatized Western spheres of life, which is why the lagging behind of Lithuanian composers is determined not by whether or not they possess the technology, but by the lack of contemplation of or thinking about technology. It is just not clear – is it because of a distrust of technology, the non-existence of innovative spirit, or the lack of funds? Perhaps the first reason, and the second, and the third?« [xxii]

== Interdisciplinary Artistic Practices. Multi-Layered Contexts ==
[[File:Vladimir tarasov nocturne for paper.jpg|thumb|right|[[Vladimir Tarasov]] »Nocturne for Paper«, Installation 1998]]

After the 2005 Jauna Muzika electronic music festival, machinist composer Rytis Mažulis admitted that the performance of Japanese noise musician »Merzbow« left an enormous impression on him. In the world of experimental music, Merzbow has been one of the most influential figures since the 1970s. However, we are clearly talking about two phenomena from separate fields, academic music and the experimental music scene.

Most sound artists or contemporary experimental musicians without an academic musical education are influenced by a particularly broad context of musical practices. Thanks to the pioneers of these practices, which included Max Neuhaus, Christina Kubisch, Alvin Lucier and others, the term »sound art« was coined to describe them. In some cases, however, the contemporary generation of sound artists, especially creators of experimental music, were influenced more by musical currents and various (sub-)cultural phenomena that emerged from and were formed by the counter-culture, such as noise music, rock music, industrial music, psychedelic culture, krautrock, punk rock and a number of other phenomena.

The local movement associated with sound art has been uniquely anti-establishment from the very beginning up to the mid-1990s, and, looking at it from the perspective of »serious culture«, it is situated on the fringes. It is hard to find a single nucleus for the expression of sound art on the map of artistic movements in Soviet Lithuania which would provide an adequate point of comparison with what was happening elsewhere in the world. It is, however, worth mentioning a few parallel examples which can be indirectly linked with experimental music or sound art. In the field of discourse we have a letter sent in 1963 by Jurgis Mačiūnas (one of the most famous Lithuanian artists in exile, internationally known as George Maciunas) to musicologist Vytautas Landsbergis (who later became the most influential figure of the Sąjūdis Reform Movement and the first head of a restored Lithuanian state). In this letter, Jurgis Mačiūnas wrote about avant-garde music, Fluxus art, mentioned John Cage’s scores, and also enquired about the possibility of returning to Lithuania to give concerts. What is interesting is that the letter highlighted the left-wing, pro-socialist character of Fluxus ideas and the political proximity of the movement to a socialist order, the kind that Jurgis Mačiūnas was imagining from his position in exile. [xxiii]

However, the visit by Fluxus members to Lithuania did not take place, and contacts allowing an exchange of information across the Atlantic about avant-garde art, including music, were only of a personal nature, and did not have any substantial influence on local art processes. In terms of expressions of informal culture in later years, one should mention the aura that hovered around the concerts of the GTČ free jazz trio with Ganelin, Tarasov, and Chekasin (otherwise known as Ganelin Trio). The trio’s improvisational style was unique in the Soviet Union. In addition, the concerts and performances that took place in the Neringa Cafe or in artists' studios brought a number of artists and intellectuals together in one group, and it existed as a kind of island of informal, lively underground culture, the energy of which spread into artists’ studios, where Lithuanian artists developed ties with Moscow Conceptualists, and the newest information on international art was discussed (or at least as much news as was available).

We can find the first elements of performance art in the work of the GTČ trio at the end of the 1970s (»Catalogue: Live in East Germany« LP/Leo 1979). For example, the concert known as »Home Music Making In Nine Rooms« which took place in the Vilnius Philharmonic in 1979, mixed elements of musical improvisation and theatre with aspects of performance and happening derived from the visual arts. [xxiv] It was these attempts to exceed the limits of music which led to the first installations by [[Vladimir Tarasov]] at the end of the 1980s, which can be considered the beginning of sound art in Lithuania.

A somewhat different environment, which could truly be called a hotbed of the counter-culture, was the unique avant-rock phenomenon »Ir Visa Tai Kas Yra Gražu Yra Gražu« (And Everything That is Beautiful is Beautiful, often abbreviated as I.V.T.K.Y.G.Y.G.), which surrounded itself with an intense informal movement and the bohemians of Vilnius. The group’s central figure was Artūras Barysas, who was known as an experimental film maker and music collector who had rather mysteriously managed to acquire an almost unimaginable music collection, given the Soviet context. Artūras Barysas became the prototype of Magas, who was a character in a series of novels by Robertas Kundrotas and Algimantas Lyva. In 1990 Robertas Kundrotas and Linas Vyliaudas founded Tango, the first magazine to cover the international history of experimental, electronic, and improvisational music alongside current developments. The magazine was not published regularly, but it was relatively consistent, as a total of nine issues came out until 2001, giving an analytical and varied overview of themes such as avant-garde music, experimental music, avant-garde rock, free jazz and minimalism, along with other topics. [xxv]

Most of the artistic practices of the last two decades connected to experimental electronic music which identify themselves with the international scene have emerged from the environment of informal culture. A number of artists in this cultural sphere have gradually received local and international recognition as founders of practices of an interdisciplinary character bringing together sound art, contemporary music and visual arts.

The musical project »naj« was established by Kaunas residents Rolandas Cikanavičius, Algimantas Milius and Darius Čiuta in the 1990s, and distinguished itself with its radical aesthetic, balancing between industrial music and noise music. A similar aesthetic was noticeable in the radical sound experiments of guitarist Juozas Milašius. However, starting in the middle of the decade, with the chance to use the first widely accessible digital technology, »naj« member Darius Čiuta began his own explorations in search of his own form of aesthetic expression, and began to research various options for a conceptual approach to sound, starting with collages of sonic cut-ups or musical quotations, an interest (which was radical at the time) in soft, barely audible sound structures that were drawn out over long stretches of time to expose their malleable timbre and spaciousness, and ending with various interdisciplinary projects. As a professional architect, Darius Čiuta often sees sound in the context of a specific situation, event or spatial diffusion, and articulates both its plastic and semantic characteristics. For example, the project »Baltic Flour Mills« [xxvi] (a collaboration between Darius Čuita and Artūras Raila) considers the context of a post-war building in the Gateshead neighbourhood of Newcastle shortly before it is renovated and re-inaugurated as a contemporary arts centre. Darius Čuita employed field recordings to record the industrial ambience of the ghostly building.

Also deserving of mention is Gintas Kraptavičius, known by his stage name Gintas K [xxvii], an example of someone with a consistent and successful career on the informal scene who has recently garnered considerable attention on the international experimental music and sound art scene. Gintas K already began his musical career at the end of the 1980s with Modus, one of the first industrial music groups in Lithuania. In the mid-1990s, G. Kraptavičius turned toward conceptual artistic actions reminiscent of Fluxus. The most interesting work of this time is probably the performance entitled »Invitation for Tea«: the sound of water being boiled was amplified by contact microphones, from the lowest sound elements at the beginning of this generative composition to the multi-layered mass of noise at the end as the water boils. At the end of the performance, audience members were invited for a cup of tea made from the water used in the piece.

A few years later, already known as Gintas K, Kraptavičius joined the international network of sound artists based on partially virtual collaborations, participating in a number of festivals, creative workshops, projects and artistic collaborations. In 2007 his work received special recognition at Berlin’s prestigious Transmediale digital art festival. [xxviii] Antanas Jasenka and young composer and visual artist Arturas Bumšteinas should also be mentioned, as artists who have found themselves in a peculiar »in-between« situation. Both composers, despite their traditional academic education, orient their work toward experimental music and interdisciplinary art as well as other rather unconventional artistic practices. Starting in the mid-1990s, Jasenka began expanding his own aesthetic of electroacoustic composition, manipulating cuttings of cassette tapes, individual sound fragments and sound collages. Employing digital technology, Jasenka focussed on developing a style that could be described using constructivist, technological, neo-futuristic metaphors of the relationship between man and machine, based on collages of digitally generated tones, intense dynamics, and a dense tonal palette. This style is clearly seen in Jasenka’s works »Deusexmachina« (2001), »Elektroninės sutartinės« (Electronic Polophonic Songs, 2003), »Sonic Machine« (2005), »Boarding Pass« (2005), and »point.exe« (2006), among others.

The initiation of radical collective improvisations using digital technology was one of the early creative approaches of Arturas Bumšteinas. The projects »No Video – No Noise«, »Audio Shrift«, »massON«, »Chaos?«, »Life After the Earthquake«, »Experimental Sound Mixer«, and »mixthemixthemix« brought together participants in the informal music scene, and put into practice the idea of collective mixing, the final result of which was an almost uncontrollable mass of sound. Conceptual ideas expressed in sound and images were explored at first in the artistic duet of A. Bumšteinas and Laura Garbštienė, G-Lab, and later in Bumšteinas’ solo projects. Recently, the palette of A. Bumšteinas’ aesthetic expression has been very broad, from objects for gallery spaces to the creation of performance situations and documentary shows, from chamber works for acoustic instruments to concerts by the laptop quartet Twentytwentyone (which he founded).

The above-mentioned composers have been singled out not only for the importance of their work in the context of the experimental music scene of sound art, but also because of their artistic identity, creative models and specific strategies which refuse to be categorized using standard classifications. This could also be said of a large group of other artists, their projects and initiatives, the listing of which alone would require a separate text, not to mention a more complete overview.

== A Few Institutional Aspects ==

Like any other cultural phenomenon, the fate of technologically-based musical works, the conditions for their creation and the vitality of a favourable environment largely depends on institutional models, educational processes, cultural management and policies. In the first decade of this century, we can already observe a positive shift, and say for a fact that opportunities are appearing for the more active expansion of electronic music. However, although electronic music has already achieved a certain kind of folklore status, and interest in it as well as the spectrum of related creative practices has taken on all forms possible, the institutional articulation of these processes is still in the earliest stages.

In twenty years of independence, the only institutional initiative in Lithuania to have consistently worked in the field of visual art, media art and media culture and to have initiated diverse artistic projects is the independent institutional creation Jutempus, established by artists Gediminas and Nomeda Urbonas. In the mid-1990s a few projects initiated by Jutempus garnered broad recognition on the contemporary art scene in Lithuania, beginning with an international collaboration with a group of British artists called Ground Control, and ending with the television show tvvv.plotas. Gediminas and Nomeda Urbonas used Jutempus to articulate themes of art and technology and also electronic music on a wider scale, and actively implemented practices linked to electronic music in later projects like Ruta Remake or Re-Approaching New Media (RAM), which served as a network for the Baltic countries, and a cycle of creative workshops which took place in 2004 for new media art initiatives. Other practices linked to media art and the context of media culture were, and still are, relatively sporadic.

In contemporary music, those forms of media art belonging to the spectrum of »serious« or intellectual culture are best represented by the Jauna muzika festival, which since 2002 has focused exclusively on academic and non-academic electronic music, electroacoustic music, sound art, and connections between music and technology. It is a regularly staged annual festival, attracting international sound art and contemporary music stars, Lithuanian artists and a broad audience that enjoys this music. Stars that have performed on the Jauna Muzika stage, including Merzbow, Ryoji Ikeda, Carsten Nicolai, Frank Bretschneider, Thomas Köner, CM von Hausswolff, Farmers Manual, eRikm, Richard Chartier, and Pita bear witness to the unique nature of the festival not only in the context of Lithuania, but the whole of Eastern Europe.

There are a number of music and media art festivals and projects that have devoted considerable attention to electronic music over the last ten years. One could mention the festivals Enter and Virus (held in Šiauliai), which are devoted to media art, the festival Centras (in Kaunas) that ran until 2006 and is once again being staged, Garso zona (Sound Zone, in Kaunas and Vilnius), the more academically-oriented festival Iš Arti (Up Close, in Kaunas), Permainų muzika (Music of Change, in Klaipėda), and the young composers' festival Druskomanija (in Druskininkai). Interesting and energetic interdisciplinary initiatives like the audio-visual poetry festival Tarp (Between) and Naujosios operos akcija (New Opera Action), which experiments with contemporary forms of opera, have become ongoing projects.

Nevertheless, there are still deficiencies amidst this host of positive phenomena. The institutional infrastructure is not well-disposed toward modern interpretations of art practices in the field of sound art and electronic music, as they does not support a stable and consistent environment in which expert skills can be professionally developed. There are no regular residency programmes for the fields of visual art or contemporary music (or at least there is a lack of them), electronic and electroacoustic art, as well as studies devoted to radio art, which would be open to sound art professionals (ultimately, the very concept »sound art professional« currently sounds rather unrealistic in Lithuania), nor are there a sufficiently well-developed creative industries and other industrial branches based on audiovisual media to support professional skills in this field. There is a lack of cooperation between the exact sciences and the creative sector, which could otherwise effectively expand scientific research and artistic practices based on the relationship between music and technology. Finally, a vocabulary for adequate interdisciplinary art research discourse and perspectives for interpreting this kind of musical work is beginning to appear in local musicological discourse, albeit slowly.

It is only in the last decade that the educational infrastructure linked with this field has begun to improve, and has slowly become a more regular and consistent part of an academic programme. A department for sound and video art technology has been established at the Faculty of Humanities in Kaunas, and Šiaulių University is expanding their audio-visual studies. In addition, there are courses in audio-visual art and sound art in the Department of Photography and Media at the Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts. Kaunas’ Vytautas Magnus University is developing programmes focused on media arts, while Vilnius Gediminas Technical University already offers the possibility of technology and art studies (as well as music) of various types and levels. The Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre is delving deeper into contemporary music and sound on both a theoretical and practical level: however, it is difficult to discern elements of a more consistent and conscientious programme that would allow one to more actively shape discourse on the relationship of music and media in an environment including the new generation of composers and performers. This is why the interdisciplinary educational initiatives organized by composers from the new generation are particularly vital and justified, such as the network of creative music laboratories in 2009 called »Procesas«, a cycle in six parts devoted to music recordings, acoustic music, contemporary forms of opera, musical visualisation, electronic music and discourse on 21st century music.

To briefly sum up, it can be said that the long history of electronic music, electroacoustic music and other technology-based music in Lithuania reveals a potentially rich map of musical ideas that, up until now, have been rarely articulated. This historical heritage is an eloquent comment on today’s situation. Our age, called by many the Golden Age of electronic music, opens up inexhaustible and attainable artistic perspectives. Thus a historical and cultural experience linked with this kind of art, which has suffered a traumatic feeling of deficiency, emptiness of context, fear of innovation, and a feeling of isolation that has been exacerbated by a narrow definition of the discipline, now seems like a horizon that has never been so wide with possibilities, and never so rich with productive and creative visions.

Translation: Jayde Will

== References ==

[1] V. Janatjeva, »Terza Prattica, Its Expressions and Imitations in Lithuanian Music. Some Historical, Technological, Compositional and Aesthetic Aspects«, LMTA M.A. thesis, Vilnius 2006.

The author is grateful to Veronika Janatjeva, whose text »Terza Prattica« was an indispensable source in the process of writing this article.

[2] V. Janatjeva, Vilnius 2006. p. 3.

[3] Ibid.

[4] »Embrionas, vaisius ar naujagimis?« (Embryo, Fetus or Newborn?), Muzikos barai, 2005 May-June, p. 33. A conversation initiated by musicologist Asta Pakarklyte about the Jauna muzika electronic music festival.

[5] V. Janatjeva, Vilnius 2006, p. 33.

[6] V. Bičiūnas is the author of »The Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics« (Vilniaus mokslas, 1988) and »Recordings of Music« (Kaunas, Šviesa, 1988).

[7] »The Four Winds« was a literary movement of Futurists during the interwar period in Lithuania.

[8] V. Janatjeva, Vilnius 2006.

[9] Vytautas Bacevičius, »Concrete Music, Electronic Music and Music of the Future« / Vytautas Bacevičius. The Score of Life. Compiled by Ona Narbutiene. Petro ofsetas, Vilnius 2005, p. 281.

[10] Vytautas Bacevičius, Vilnius 2005. The article originally appeared in the Lithuanian exile periodical Draugas (Friend, 1963).

[11] Vytautas Bacevičius, Vilnius 2005, p. 279.

[12] Ibid.

[13] V. Janatjeva, Vilnius 2006, p. 35.

[14] The works »Orgija. Katarsis« (Orgy. Catharsis, 1979), »Heterofonija« (Heterophony, 1979), »Raštai« (Writing, 1981), »Muzikos« (Musics, 1982 version), »Ludus modorum« (1982 version), »Do Nata« (1982), »Gaida« (Melody, 1983) were created according to this principle.

[15] Vytautas Landsbergis, »O. Balakausko ›Raštai‹ ir ›Muzikos‹« (O. Balakauskas‘ Writings and Music), Literatura ir menas, June 26, 1982 (quoted from: V. Janatjeva, Vilnius 2006, p. 37).

[16] Iminas Kučinskas, Violončele ir nūdiena (Violoncello and the Present Day), Muzika 9-10, Vilnius: Muzika, 1992, p. 28 (quoted from: V. Janatjeva, Vilnius 2006, p. 37).

[17] V. Janatjeva, Vilnius 2006, p. 41.

[18] http://www.culture.lt/lmenas/?leid_id=2985&kas=straipsnis&st_id=3998 , 8/2012. (no longer available)

[19] Piano For Pure Reason.

[20] Piano of the Life-Giving Water.

[21] To learn more, read Rūtos Gotautienė’s article »Autorystės strategijos ir naujas muzikos main reimas / Paymetos teritorijos« (Authorship strategies and a new regime for change in music). Tyto alba, Vilnius 2005, pp. 168–191.

[22] Vita Gruodytė. Nauja muzika, senos tradicijos / Pažymėtos teritorijos. (New Music, Old Traditions / Marked Territories), Tyto alba, Vilnius 2005, p. 157.

[23] Jurgio Mačiūno laiškas Vytautui Landsbergiui / Tylusis modernizmas Lietuvoje 1962–1982 (Jurgis Mačiūnas’ Letter to Vytautas Landsbergis / Silent Modernism in Lithuania 1962–1982. Compiled by Elona Lubytė. Tyto Alba, Vilnius 1997, pp. 89–90.

[24] More about the work of GT can be found in an interview with Saulius Fukas and Vladimiras Tarasovas in »Vladimiras Tarasovas: tarp garso ir vaizdo« (We Created Our Own Language / Vladimiras Tarasovas: Between Sound and Image), compiled by Tautvydas Bajarkevicius. Baltos lankos, Vilnius 2008, pp. 10–27. The influence of the work of the GT trio on the art world is revealed by Elona Lubytė’s conversation with Vladimiras Tarasovas in »Vladimiras Tarasovas. Diazo muzikantas. Pokalbis Valentino Antanaviciaus dirbtuvėje / Tylusis modernizmas Lietuvoje« 1962–1982« (Vladimiras Tarasovas, Jazz Musician. A Conversation in Valentinas Antanavicius’ Workshop / Silent Modernism in Lithuania 1962–1982), compiled by Elona Lubytė. Tyto Alba, Vilnius 1997, pp. 89–90.

[25] A majority of the texts published in the magazine can be found at http://www.testsound.lt/tango/Tango/Tango.html (no longer available)

[26] Artūras Raila and Darius Čiutas project Baltic Flour Mills is part of the complex project Ground Control, which was included in Vilnius‘ Jutempus Gallery, the Contemporary Art Centre of Vilnius and galleries in London and Newcastle.

[27] Gintas K’s website (no longer available)

[28] G. Kraptavičius became a member of the Lithuanian Composers Union in 2011.

[[Category: Lithuanian Contributions]] [[Category: Sound Exchange]] [[Category: Essays]]