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
Johann Gottfried Schadow’s “Double Statue of the Princesses Luise and Friederike of Prussia”, 1795.
(Photo: National Museums in Berlin/ Andres Kilger)
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
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”
Soazig de La Moissonière, the French President’s photographer, at work.
(Photo: Thomas Coex/AFP)
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
Classic: Cellist Raphaela Gromes with “Femmes”
The noble Hildegard von Bingen (1098 – 1179) would certainly be amazed that her antiphon “O virtus sapientiae” comes to life around 900 years later as an arrangement (Julian Riem) for cello and strings, performed so elegantly and lightly by the Munich cellist Raphaela Gromes and the Festival Strings Luzern. Arranged opera arias such as Henry Purcell’s “Dido’s Lament” or Wolfgang Amadé Mozart’s Susanna aria from “The Marriage of Figaro”, romantic cello pieces such as Clara Schumann’s Romance or Fanny Hensel’s G minor Fantasy, pieces from the 20th century by Rebecca Clarke, Amy Beach, Dolores White or Lera Auerbach, a Carmen fantasy based on Georges Bizet by Julian Riem and various dance pieces – all this is offered on this double CD album that Raphaela Gromes and her piano partner and arranger Julian Riem offer to the “femmes”, the composing women , have dedicated.
Certainly it sometimes seems as if only one short piece follows the other like a chain of encores. But Gromes plays the diversity of this unfortunate little-known music with elastic impetus, always mindful of vocal quality and broad perspectives, so that one not only listens curiously, but often with excitement and amazement. Clara Schumann’s gripping romance, Hensel’s elegiac fantasy or Rebecca Clarke’s haunting “Epilogue” are great cello pieces, as are the impressionistic pieces by the siblings Nadia and Lilli Boulanger. The world premiere recording of Matilde Capuis’ (1913 – 2017) “Tre momenti” is just as worthwhile as encountering so much music that is not only different in terms of epoch, but always original. It would be very desirable to tackle and discover more extensive, larger-format pieces by the composers, so that these embarrassing gaps in the history of music reception can finally be fundamentally closed. Harold Eggebrecht