A fast, driving electro beat reminiscent of the early eighties, but also of the techno sound of the nineties. In addition, rotating spotlights, twitching flashes of a strobe light and colorful light reflections that come from a disco ball. All that’s missing now are dancing, sweating bodies and the ingredients for a hot club night would be perfect. But exactly this promise does not and does not want to be kept in “Lights (Body)”. Instead, in Wolfgang Tillmans’ video, the camera sticks to the mechanical movements of the lights. The music also sounds like an eternal prelude, like the intro of a song that never gets going. And so you rock along with excitement – and in the end you remain caught up in your expectations.
A symbol for the Corona period? You could say so. But Wolfgang Tillmans’ work was created more than 20 years ago. The German photographer and Turner award winner shot the video in 2000 during a regular club night on a Saturday. There are nights like that in the Under deck given. A bar that is not far from Marienplatz in Munich’s old town and, like all bars and clubs, was closed almost continuously during the pandemic. Now the lower deck, on whose written walls and worn-out leather sofas the traces of bygone nights are visible, is open again. But at unusual times. And instead of dancing and celebrating yourself, you can watch other people doing it in videos.
Mark Leckey has combined videos from the UK underground club scene
“Pleasure Beach” is the title of the exhibition curated by Cornelia Gockel, in which videos from the Munich Goetz collection run that deal with club culture from the eighties to the 2000s. “Lights (Body)” by Tillmans plays on the wall behind the small stage. The other four works of the small but intense and coherent show are spread across the room. Seth Price’s computer animation “Cologne Waves/Blues” (2005/2008) begins, which runs on a flat screen on a wooden table directly opposite the entrance. It shows a grey, artificial wave that always builds up in the same rhythm. If you put on the headphones in front of it, you hear alienated fragments of a blues session.
“Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore”: In his work from 1999, Mark Leckey combined club material from the seventies to the nineties and alienated it digitally.
(Photo: Mark Leckey/Courtesy Goetz Collection, Munich)
The basis of the work is a six-second screen saver that Seth Price edited and extended to twelve minutes. Since there has been talk of waves in an almost inflationary manner lately, you have to think of Corona right away and get the blues inside. Diagonally opposite in a niche on the wall is “Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore” (1999) by Mark Leckey. In it, the British artist combined and digitally alienated found footage material from the underground club scene in Great Britain from the seventies to the nineties. You see young people practicing disco dance collectively in a large hall. Then a northern soul party and techno raves follow, and at the end you see a cloudy sky. Scenes that make you nostalgic, that are sometimes bizarre, but also appear nightmarish due to the alienation.
Nina Könnemann’s eponymous video “Pleasure Beach” (2001) runs on a monitor at the bar. In it you can see party-mad young people in the seaside resort of Blackpool, which is something like the English Ballermann. A lot of alcohol flows until at some point a storm arises. You hear police sirens, a girl throws up, and the initially boisterous mood gives way to a ghostly mood. In the small room next to the stage, which is used as a backstage at concerts, a screen set up there shows “Why I Never Became a Dancer” (1995) by Tracey Emin. With shaky Super 8 footage from the British coastal town of Margate, where Emin comes from, the artist tells of early sexual experiences and what dancing meant to her. When she was called a slut at a dance competition, all she wanted to do was leave. She did it. At the end you see her dancing happily in her studio.
Will celebrating after Corona be like it used to be?
Is that the future, i.e. the private dancer? For Cornelia Gockel, this is one of the key questions behind the exhibition, i.e. how the pandemic is changing celebrations, interpersonal relationships, clubs as places where borders are crossed. Will it be like before after Corona? When the clubs were suddenly allowed to reopen for six weeks last October, it was a great time for Tobias Lintz. “People were in such a good mood and extremely grateful,” recalls the below-deck operator. Then came the next curfew and it was all over again.
Party-mad young people in the seaside resort of Blackpool: Nina Könnemann’s video “Pleasure Beach” from 2001.
(Photo: Nina Könnemann/Courtesy Goetz Collection, Munich)
As for the rest of the time, they would not have made it through without Corona aid and their own reserves, says Lintz. But at the same time he also criticizes the “over-bureaucratization” of the aid. Right now he’s hoping for two or three good months should they be able to reopen in March or April. And they want to compensate for the annual summer lull with open-air concerts. About the exhibition he says: “I’m glad that we have this here now and that there is a bit of life here.” Incidentally, this should also include accompanying talks and discussions. And with a beer or Prosecco in hand, you could even get a bit of a bar atmosphere.
Pleasure Beach, until March 6th, Unter Deck, Oberanger 26, all information below www.sammlung-goetz.de