Favorites of the week: News from “castrated philosophers” and more – culture

Exhibition: Museum of Failure

Schadenfreude is a baser instinct. In the context of the critique of capitalism, however, this becomes an intellectually justifiable breakdown show. For example, when corporations crash entire product lines. That’s why the “Museum of Failure” exists. This museum of failure was originally a traveling exhibition. During Corona, the collection was digitized. On collection.museumoffailure.com you can now look at all the things in the consumer world that have failed with karacho and millions. Coca-Cola BlāK, for example, a black brew intended to compete with coffee chains. Or the data glasses Google Glass, whose wearers traded as “Glassholes”. A perfume by Harley Davidson, the surveillance doll Cayla or the monoski. “Innovation needs failure” is the motto of the website. That’s about as credible as the announcement that you buy it playboy because of the interviews. Andrian Kreye

FINE ART: Schadow’s Liberal Princesses

The double statue that Johann Gottfried Schadow created in 1795 of the sisters Luise and Friederike von Prussia (maiden names Mecklenburg) is one of the other highlights in Berlin’s National Gallery. But only now – last chance until February 19th – can you see the freshly restored plaster model and marble version in one and the same room. Because it is mirrored, even from all sides at the same time. (The plaster is of course still a bit more touching.) The reason is the special show on Schadow’s “Touching Forms”, which Yvette Deseyve curated here. It is worth seeing because it shows the genesis of this standing next to each other in a casual embrace: figures that show togetherness and at the same time independence. There was more than enough We standing to attention, especially in Prussia. Peter Richter

Pop: The Castrated Philosophers

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So let’s assume for the moment that it did exist after all: a German pop underground apart from power plant, which shines to this day. Of course, that’s not really likely, and it doesn’t become much more likely, just because with this best-of (in popistically blessed countries one would speak of an “anthology”) there is a small collection of evidence that it could have happened after all. In any case, this would have to be conceded here: If there ever was pop from Germany that took itself very seriously without getting cramped about it, that possibly even had an international approach in mind, but on its own terms, standards, claims, then in the immediate vicinity it could castrated philosophers to have grown up.

After the band broke up again in the late 1990s, Matthias Arfmann actually produced a few of the country’s most important, enduring albums: “Bambule” by the absolute beginners, just for example. Katrin Achinger started a really fine solo career. And now they have compiled the joint work on “Years // 1981 – 2021 (+1)”. Quite an impressive affair.

Take “Bou Jeloud (Father of Skins)”, recorded in 1994. Housey groove glory, driven by what sounds a lot like a tabla, but all around it thumps and chirps and shimmers and rumbles really, quite beautifully analogue and warm and , well yes: really. And then place the song next to the chamber drama-like, silhouette-beautiful “Love Factory” (1986), the psychedelic-cowboy music of “Liquid Sky” (1991), or the indie-pop number “Lady P.” (1987). And it’s already clear why half of Hamburg and a quarter of Germany are still cranky because of this band. Rocko Schamoni: “The philosophers were my teachers in the big city.” Kristof Schreuf, who died just too young: “Compared to Katrin Achinger and Matthias Arfmann, I felt like a country bumpkin.” The musician and director Bernadette la Hengst: “The castrated philosophers are timeless and placeless. They are looking for music between outer space and the apple orchards.” That’s the way it is. Jacob Biazza

Photography: Macron’s “Photographe officielle”

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Emmanuel Macron sprawled on a couch, his shirt open far too wide. Macron sprints to some appointment. Macron’s back view, Kylian Mbappé is crying on his shoulders after losing the World Cup final. Have you ever wondered why the French President looks so damn cool in pictures? This may only be partly due to his politics, but more to his French nonchalance. Above all, this is due to Soazig de La Moissonnière, Macron’s “Photographe officielle”. She photographs him at all appointments and shares her pictures on Instagram. She succeeds disturbingly well in presenting the president as sexy as he is likeable, as dynamic as he is human and, in any case, always totally committed to the French people. So you scroll enthusiastically through La Moissonnière’s photos and briefly mourn that we don’t have someone like her in Germany. Christian Lutz

Book: “Like Punk Never Happened” by Dave Rimmer

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This book ends with the hilarious moment when the guitarists of the two bands duran duran and Frankie Goes To Hollywood Standing in a crowded bar at night during the legendary San Remo Festival in 1985 – and suddenly opening your pants to compare your privates. Anyone who can relate to the names will probably immediately sense what this slightly disgusting scene is all about: the crystallization point of genius and decadence, arrogance and a creative thirst for adventure. The moment in which a heyday of European pop culture finally tipped into its decline.

The British journalist Dave Rimmer talked about this in 1986 in “Like Punk Never Happened”, a long-lost classic of music reporting, which is now finally available again (Faber & Faber, approx. 12 euros), supplemented by some accompanying texts and a foreword by Pet- Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant. In the 1980s, Rimmer worked for the London magazine “Smash Hits”, a unique amalgamation of teenage magazine and post-structural satirical magazine. There he was for the band Culture Club responsible, whose surprising success helped raise the circulation of “Smash Hits” to over a million at times. Briefly but violently, British bands with a new understanding of pop born out of the rubble of punk dominated world entertainment, selling Americans their own disco and soul sound. But they also gradually reduced the art anarchy ad absurdum, which they felt after the sex pistols-Revolution had given undreamt-of freedoms.

Dave Rimmer’s book, which is as funny as it is malicious, analytical as it is artistic, and eminently intelligent, is set against the background of a chaotic Japan tour of Culture Club, which he was allowed to accompany as a backstage correspondent. Of course, one could no longer write such texts under today’s conditions. But maybe you don’t have to: The author even explains the currently valid attention economy – around ten years before the Internet – with impressive clarity. Only the title is misleading: Of course, without punk none of this would have happened. Joachim Hentschel