[I conducted this interview with Blixa Bargeld in London
during the summer of 1999. We published it in Deep later that year. I
caught up with Blixa while he was performing several solo pieces in London, as
part of Nick Cave's Meltdown at the Southbank and in tandem with the
Cubitt and Sadie Cole galleries. The photo, by Ali Kepenek, was one we used in the original piece, and was part of Bargeld's press package at the time.]
star shine: a talk with blixa bargeld
by nancy stockdale
Blixa Bargeld borders on the Shivaic. For nearly twenty
years now the intellect and voice fronting Einstürzende Neubauten has used
pun-ridden poetics, retrieved scrap objects, and a distinctly urban sensibility
to brutalize his audiences' inclinations and give birth to moments of horrific
magnificence in substitution. Now, with the release of their new EP Total
Eclipse of the Sun, Einstürzende Neubauten tear apart their own tendency of
filling up a track with a myriad of sound levels and have produced instead
three spare, minimalist meditations on the principles and effects of the most
awesome of natural occurrences. "All I really really really really really
really really really really want to see is the total eclipse of the sun,"
Bargeld sings softly in the title track. The man notorious for his shattering
screams and explosive stage presence is nearly silenced by the astronomical
event to hit Europe August 11th. He's so excited about the eclipse that he
plans to record it, capturing for eternity the ephemeral transience of the
universe.
What goes unnoticed in much of the English-language press
about Bargeld is the host of projects that he consumes himself with. When he's
not working with EN or playing guitar as one of Nick Cave's infamous Bad Seeds,
Bargeld is a performance artist of admirable dedication. In London to take part
in Nick Cave's Meltdown Festival at the South Bank Centre earlier this summer,
Bargeld performed his solo Rede/Speech and produced and led the first
English-language installment of his world-wide project The Execution of
Precious Memories. Coinciding with all of this was a gallery opening featuring
his serialbathroomdummyrun photo exhibit at Sadie Cole's Gallery in
Soho, a spoken word Philosophical Tournament at Islington's Cubitt
Gallery, and a one-night-only stint with the Bad Seeds at the Royal Festival
Hall. I sat down with Blixa Bargeld to talk with him about these
lesser-recognized projects, as well as the latest Einstürzende Neubauten EP, in
the cool of the basement of the Cubitt on a stifling hot July afternoon.
memory
Nancy Stockdale: Regarding the Execution
of Precious Memories, I was wondering first about your inspiration for it?
Because it's a very huge undertaking.
Blixa Bargeld: Yes. Sometimes we have to say something
bigger. It happened very much by chance. There was a poetry festival in Berlin,
probably 1992-93, and they wanted to do something with a Polish composer called
Zbigniew Karkowski, and to have a composer at a poetry festival requires
poetry. So I was approached and ....I think suddenly I just met him and talked
with him, and in whatever he was saying he suddenly used the word
"memory" in some connection, and that somehow triggered it off for
me, and I just said "hmmm, maybe I should do something with
memories." And my particular interest at that time, in that year, was
working with forms--forms as in forms to be filled in--and so I developed a
form to be filled in and did it as a pseudo-scientific survey working with the
precious memories of people. And then I just continued doing that, and it took
a different shape every time. The London performance certainly was different
than, say, the one that I did four months ago in Yaounde, Cameroon; that was
African musicians, African memories, African voices. And in September I do it
in New Delhi and it will be entirely different again.
NS: What were some of the African memories like that
came out that really struck you?
BB: There were quite obvious differences between all of
these performances so far, in the results that I got. Quite obvious in the
African ones was that the idea of nature--because one of the questions is, Do
you have any precious memories in connection with nature?--it was very obvious
for a westerner that the idea of nature as we perceive it is entirely different
from the African idea of nature. For, on that question you would expect to get
a lot of answers from people in Cameroon--many of the childhood memories having
taken place in the villages and in the bush--and you would hardly get any
answers. That was certainly nothing that had to do with any of our plans. This
idea of nature needed the separation from nature, which is typical for a
western person; to look at nature you have to have some distance, and as long
as you are in it all the time you don't really perceive nature. So, you would
get answers like, "the death of my grandmother," and after a while I
just noticed there's more of a concept of bigger circles in it, that nature is
basically everything that has to do with being born, living and dying, and the
whole circle of generations, and winter, summer, whatever circles you want to
name. That was the kind of obvious thing in the African memories.
Obvious as well was that everybody had a lot to say about
religious and mystical memories. But, "religion" was always the
Christian religion or, in a few cases Islam, and
"mystical"--translated to "mysterious"--was anything that
had to do with animistic and nature religions, marabous, and medicine men in
the village; they were classified as "mystic"...mysterieux. It was in
French most of the time. And everything "religion" had to do with
Sunday School or the nuns, or "my circumcision" most of the
time...."circumcision"..."circumcision"...lots of
disciplinary measurements from teachers and parents, that was kind of obvious.
NS: I know they keep insects as pets in Japan.
BB: Yeah, that was appearing in the memories quite
often. Going collecting insects in the underground with Grandma, and then
keeping them in a shoe carton till the next spring, things like that.
NS: I thought it was striking that last night even some
of the nature aspects of the British memory were about importing things from
outside nature, like pornography, for example.
BB: Yeah, well, they were very western memories. Nature
is the place once you've left the city, or even if you go to a park; you know,
these little resorts--everything was kind of resort feeling, the secret
beaches, or the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve in Australia. And you could see as
well, that, of course, in the melting pot of London, a lot of people didn't
come from London, they had memories connected with totally different places.
While in Japan you can guess that most of the people are talking about Japan.
NS: So the questionnaire doesn't
change from country to country?
BB: No.
NS: So, in Cameroon, for example, how did the questions
about sexuality get answered?
BB: Well, I was expecting to not hear very much, but I
did hear a lot. The least amount of answers to that we got in Japan. "I
didn't have any sexual memories yet but I plan to do some in the future."
Or, "He touched my knee under the table in a soba noodle shop."
NS: I'm interested in the questionnaire; when I was
filling it out it became quite an ordeal...but, I enjoyed it, and you are
definitely affecting peoples' memories by having them fill it out.
BB: Yes...that's why there is the last question,
"Do you think telling your memories has actually affected the quality of
them." That's why it is called "The Execution Of Precious
Memories," you actually change the level of what memories are. Memories
through narration become something else, they become a piece of literature, and
once you actually make these pieces of literature public they become
something else again. I'm full of memories of people that I haven't even met, I
know all these things by heart from all these performances. I know there's this
story and there's that story, and I can tell them like they were my own.
NS: As I heard something that I had written read out in
the performance I thought, "Oh my god, this is a text, this is a
totally different piece of literature now then when I wrote it, and when I
thought of it before I wrote it." There seemed to be an emphasis on the
sensual, though, more than an emotional level.
BB: Yes. I had the interest of how much smell is
involved in it, that was something that I was just presently interested in.
There is a theoretical text that I didn't read yesterday, which I have read at
some of the performances, which is called "Smell Is The Key Of
Memory." You know, memory has a lot of functions and consciousness is very
much necessary to create metaphors. And smell is not creating metaphors. That's
why it is more of a direct key. A smell of freshly mowed grass is triggering
off something directly without you being able to assign how freshly
mowed grass is smelling, except for what it is, your personal memory. You say,
"this smells like when I was with Grandma when I was six years old, and
Grandfather mowed the grass." Or, you have other, more specific memories
with it, but there is no metaphor to go along with that.
NS: Would I be correct in saying also that you have an
emphasis on positive memories in this?
BB: Yeah, I wanted precious memories.
NS: So, can you have precious memories though that are
negative?
BB: Yes.
NS: But you don't really want to explore those in the
performance?
BB: In Argentina a lot of the memories were everything
else but precious in the true sense of the word; people were talking about the
military dictatorship and how Father was arrested, or somebody put a gun to the
head of their parents and things like that. And they still considered them
precious memories. There seems to be a matter of interpretation with it.
NS: How do you find the people that are going to take
part in this, the other artists?
BB: Well, I leave that up to my muse, really. I just
see whoever and whatever gravitates to it and so far that has worked. I like
the tension for me for the week or ten days before, I don't actually know who's
going to be with me. It could happen as well that I'm just going to be alone on
stage and just do it all by myself. But so far it worked that there were other
people getting involved with it, and then I'm able to make them a unified force
within a couple of days.
NS: What are your expectations when you go into it? Or
do you try to keep those expectations at bay?
BB: Yeah, I try to not really expect anything in
particular. Let me say, it has a big self satisfaction element to me. I do this
because I want to do this, and it's a project that's very dear to my heart. You
know, if there were only ten people there I would have still done the same
thing, I don't really care. I mean, usually, artists say that very often:
"I don't care if anyone likes it or not." Of course I do care if
somebody likes it or not, and of course I'm flattered if somebody says that was
great, or all that, but I do not try to come in with any expectations
in this. It is self-sufficient as it is. Even if I just end up with a text, and
I take a whole box of text home with me, that is satisfying enough.
NS: So, how does the language affect your experience of
it, as a performer?
BB: Apart from the first performance in Berlin, the
London performance was the only one where I had the direct access to the
language. I have to admit that I did understand the languages much better, and
learn much more about a language doing this, but my Swedish is nil and my
Japanese is very rudimentary, and I guess you get a different quality of
somebody performing in a language that he doesn't know. Laurie Anderson used to
do that, perform even in German. It works. You could understand her.
NS: What about the States? Do you have any plans to
bring it to the States at all?
BB: I have to have North America in it...but
it's just a matter of organizing it. It's not like a rock band, it's not an
easy thing to do. It requires a couple of months of work, and it requires ten
days of rehearsal time. I'm working on it.
NS: Do you know where it might be in the States?
BB: Well, I can imagine it would be one of the major
cities, Canada or United States, wherever I get any help from the Göethe
Institute. This one was one of the few performances I have done without the
help of the Göethe Institute. The Göethe Institute is supporting this whole
project, and I guess they're going to support it even more, the more I go along
with it, the more they see it works. But the Göethe Institutes do sit in all
the major cities, so...I could a combination, East-West coast. I think that
would be all possible.
words
NS: About the Rede/Speech...I
was wondering if you have plans on releasing any of it, or is it just too
ephemeral?
BB: I will release something somehow, but I don't know
how...I don't know! [laughs] I don't know, I enjoy the fact that I do something
outside the normal consuming mechanisms, like what I do tonight as well
[the Philosophical
Tournament]. The performance I do tonight is technically not much different
from what I did at Speech, the one point is that I burn CDs of it at the
same time and I sell these original CDs, and they're not going to be repeated,
they're not going to be duplicated. I've done that before [Temporäre
CD-Brennerei] and I only burned one CD of each performance, I performed one
piece after another one, and I burned 68 CDs and sold the single CDs,
which are the masters. So, you can own a composition that is only
existing in that form, full stop.
NS: This project is obviously reliant completely on
language, as you are making songs out of words, and I found that really amazing
because they kind of ceased to be words to me after awhile...
BB: Yes.
NS: ...But for you, as a performer, does that happen to
you as well? Or does the word always have to have its significance? I mean,
tonight at the Philosophical Tournament you're going to be taking
words and pitting them against each other based on their meanings...how do you
experience it yourself?
BB: I try to forget about myself in the whole process.
I just try to open up a channel and let something flow through me, in the true
idea of a medium. I don't really want to get myself mixed in it. I am somehow
there, but the best for me is when the things just happen without my real
control over it.
NS: So you see yourself as a channeler in a way?
BB: Yeah...in the true sense of the word, without the
new age undertone to it. And the other word, in the true sense of the word, as
a medium, as the thing in between something.
NS: How was it doing Rede/Speech in English
compared to in German? Obviously your English is impeccable, but it must be
different for you?
BB: Yeah, well it's a different feel, but it's probably
even easier for me to lose control in a language that I don't master. It's
probably harder to lose control in a language that you do master.
meaningless rooms
NS: I want to ask you about serialbathroomdummyrun,
because I'm fascinated by this whole idea. Why bathrooms, as opposed to other
parts of the room?
BB: Usually a hotel room has only two rooms, the
bedroom and the bathroom. The bedroom has a metaphorically-charged quality to
it, the bathroom hasn't. That's the reason. I didn't want it to mean anything.
NS: You just started doing it?
BB: I didn't want...photographing the bed in a hotel
room, it's just metaphorically charged. It would mean something. It
was a place where somebody slept, it was a place where somebody fucked, it's
metaphorically charged. But the bathroom, it's kind of neutral, it's full of
unimportant details, it doesn't mean anything.
NS: So, do you do this now just out of habit, or is it
an obsession with you?
BB: It's not an obsession, it's a game. It's a game and
I follow the rules.
NS: What are some of those rules?
BB: You start the game and then you discover the rules
one after another. One clear element in every of these bathrooms is, it always
has a mirror. So, I always photograph the mirror first. And then I photograph
all the details that seem to be interesting for me in that very second, and
that's it. And I don't really care what's on the photos; I don't care if
they're out of focus, in focus, if they are black, if the flash works or not. I
develop them and I just put the name of the hotel and the date on them. Then I
arrange them as text. They're text for me, you know, they have horizontal and
vertical formats. The formats are very similar to the ups and downs in a line
of poetry. So you have one bathroom making one line, and a whole segment would
be sequencing bathrooms in that time period, so you have 16th of April, 17th of
April, 19th of April, 20th of April, 21st, 22nd. And they either become a piece
of poetry, or they become a litany, in the monotonous output of what is written
there.
NS: And do you ever walk into a bathroom and just get
really excited because it's so interesting, or are you kind of beyond that?
BB: It happens, yeah, well, sure...you can do that for
several years and then suddenly it's, "Wow! Now I'm in a hotel and the
bathroom is incredible! It's all checkerboard tiles and all black and white and
there's bright orange curtains on the window!!" And you think, "Wow!
This is gonna be a great series. It's gonna be fantastic!"
NS: And where's it all leading?
BB: I don't know....that's the one rule I haven't
discovered yet...how to end this.
totality
NS: What about the total eclipse on August 11th? You
are doing sound recordings of or the eclipse...Are you just waiting
to see what happens?
BB: Yes.
NS: Do you know where you are going to be?
BB: I am going to be in east Austria, that's in the
belt of the totality. [Laughs] I get emails from people about that from New
York saying, "How can we participate?" I say, "You can't, it's a
European thing."
NS: Yeah, I'm very sad I'm missing it myself. But you
are soliciting for people to get involved. What's your larger project with that?
BB: Well, I basically just want to see the total
eclipse of the sun. That's what I want to see. That's why the actual refrain
line of the single is, "All I really really really really really really
really really really want to see is the total eclipse of the sun." And I
just thought that everybody's doing public photos, videos--this will be the
most world-wide, most well covered ever visual thing happening. And I just
thought maybe I should just make sound recordings of it. I want to hear what
happens a) to the sounds of nature, how and if they change; I want to hear as
well what happens to my surroundings, all the "oh"s and
"ahh"s of the people, I want to hear that, and I wouldn't mind having
that covered by large numbers of other people in other surroundings. I don't
know! Maybe it's not going to be anything, but I'll just try it.
NS: So, the Neubauten EP, is it attached
to an album coming out?
BB: No, it's not attached to an album coming out, it
just stands by itself.
NS: And Neubauten have a tour coming up of South
America.
BB: Yes.
NS: What can people expect from that?
BB: Same as ever.
NS: Similar to the tour of the States last year?
BB: I would assume so...with more new material in it.
NS: What were some of the conditions of recording
"Total Eclipse of the Sun?"
BB: The basic tracks were recorded in our rehearsal
room, in one take fashion...everything played together including the vocals.
And then over that some reworks have been done at Conny's Studio.
NS: And how would you describe it?
BB: Slow, melancholy, beautiful, all circling around
the Sun--all the three tracks are.
NS: How does your environment affect what you are
doing? I mean, Neubauten was founded on tools from the environment, but your
environment is a lot different now, and your work has gone into so many
different directions since then. How do you find your environment affecting
your work now? Say, for example, Berlin: in the last ten years it is a totally
different world than it was twenty years ago.
BB: Yeah, but basically it's still a city and it still
has the city debris, that has not really changed. But of course we are not
going to the inside of hollow highway bridges anymore. But I guess we've
developed a particular love for materials, for things. You have to
actually like these objects as you play with them. It's not really a
protest statement, you have to actually like...you have to have a certain
affinity with these things, and you can still have that even if you don't play
in hollow highway bridges. You still have to tickle out of a particular piece
what is in it.
NS: So what are some of the instruments, or tools, that
you have used in "Total Eclipse of the Sun?"
BB: Are there any? [thinks for a moment] I don't think
anything new. Just the same old Neubauten rubbish that we've had for a long
time...Oh! Helium! The substance that the Sun is made of, I sing on helium on
one of the tracks. It was an interesting experience, but I thought it would
shift the voice to a different pitch, which it does, but your range gets very
narrow too. It doesn't transport the whole range to a higher frequency. Whoop!
sums it all up, on this small great wave of energy, and you can hardly control
it.
NS: And it's very short, it doesn't last very long.
BB: One breath.
NS: What about the Bad
Seeds? Do you have any plans to go back into the studio?
BB: I hope there are plans, but I don't know anything
about them.
projections
NS: Last night at your performance I had a weird
experience. I was sitting in the audience, waiting for your show to start, and
I was surrounded by people that were very obsessed with you, and talking
obsessively about you, and I was just wondering about your experience of fame,
and how you really experience that?
BB: Well, I don' t even know if it is connected to
fame. Fame has certainly made it more, to avoid to say "better"
or "worse." But as long as I remember myself in connection with other
people, as a social force, I always triggered obsession. So, I don't really
think it is something that has entirely to do with fame. I truly believe this,
that it is just something within my personality that triggers obsession. I know
that people might be obsessed with me, and I didn't have necessarily a lot of
good experiences with that.
NS: No, it seems very frightening to me. So, what do
you think it is about you that gets people obsessed?
BB: A quality to present myself as a blank surface on
which you can project something. That's what triggers obsession. I don't in
particular try to do this, but as much as I can analyze myself, that's what I
am doing.
NS: So you are a tabula rasa for the people
in a way?
BB: Sometimes. I'm a projectional surface.
NS: It kind of gets back to the precious memories as
well, in the relation of them.
BB: Yes. I know you get things, and famous
people...there's always a following that is somehow obsessed with them. But I
know just from my childhood and my puberty that I always had people obsessed
with me. So I don't think it was necessarily something that had to do with
fame. I just think fame made it worse, or better, made it just more.
Stalkers are really frightening me. It seems to be the same
person always, the same kind of person, coming in. Just imagine I am
standing in a sphere. Within this sphere everything I do and everything I say,
I punctuate like a needle a little hole in this sphere. This hole makes the
star shine. Sometimes these holes even become bigger, they become cracks.
Through these cracks people leak in. Through these cracks people leak in and
come to the inside of that sphere, and that's the point that gets frightening.
And what leaks in there, it seems always to be the same substance, that same
substance of what surrounds the sphere. They are always made from the same
material. And the people look at themselves, and essentially can just see
myself. I can't see what it is that I create in their minds' eye to be. I just
see that they have something relative with me, they have something to do with
me, they see something in me that is within them, or the other way round. But
it is the crack that I have created in the sphere at first that makes it
possible for them to leak in. And once that happens, you know, the whole
firmament is shattered, and the whole firmament is endangered to fall into
pieces, because the crack's getting wider. So, I have to be careful with
everything I say because all I should do is just make punctuating needle marks
where the star should shine.
NS: So what drove you in the beginning, going back to
early Neubauten time, to make music, or to get involved in public performance
and the culture you were in at the time, in a public way?
BB: I don't think I had much choice, really. I don't
have any background of money, and I don't have any profession that I could
possibly do. I'm a school dropout. And at that particular time, in that
particular place, meaning West Berlin, end '70s, there were basically only two
things that I could possibly do: either become a painter or become a musician.
And it happened only by chance that I became a musician. I never wanted to be a
musician. It just literally happened with somebody coming up to me and saying,
"Would you like to perform?" on that day, and then I founded a band.
And I performed on that day. And I wouldn't have thought that this band was
still going on after twenty years.
NS: But did you have a background in music before, or
play an instrument or anything?
BB: No. I have no musical education, I didn't own any
instruments...no background.
NS: That's very punk, I mean, it's classic kind of punk
in a way.
BB: That was the one fascinating aspect about punk,
breaking the rules of that. Yesterday, the man that I worked with inPrecious
Memories that I didn't know three or four days ago, Richard [Sanderson],
he's the one that played all the little toy percussions...at some point in the
rehearsal he said, "I didn't fight the punk wars to do blah blah
blah..!" I thought this was a nice thing to say. What did I actually
fight the punk wars for? I fought the punk wars for a very similar thing, that
I don't have to be dictated to anymore to own an amp, a guitar, or to do this
or that. I like to be closer to the basic breakdown, to break open into a
myriad of possibilities.
NS: Yeah, I think that's why I liked Rede/Speech so
much, because you were just using your voice.
BB: Well, that was another going back to the roots kind
of thing. I just wanted to do something that doesn't require anything. I mean,
to the maximum of it I would love to be not even there. Or even reduce it even
more...not even have a microphone. Just announce that I'm going to be at a
certain place, and everybody could come and we could have a nice time together,
and that's all. That would be a nice end point for the whole thing.
(Copyright © Nancy L. Stockdale, 1999-2015. all rights reserved)
[I conducted this interview with Blixa Bargeld in London
during the summer of 1999. We published it in Deep later that year. I
caught up with Blixa while he was performing several solo pieces in London, as
part of Nick Cave's Meltdown at the Southbank and in tandem with the
Cubitt and Sadie Cole galleries. The photo, by Ali Kepenek, was one we used in the original piece, and was part of Bargeld's press package at the time.]
by nancy stockdale
Blixa Bargeld borders on the Shivaic. For nearly twenty
years now the intellect and voice fronting Einstürzende Neubauten has used
pun-ridden poetics, retrieved scrap objects, and a distinctly urban sensibility
to brutalize his audiences' inclinations and give birth to moments of horrific
magnificence in substitution. Now, with the release of their new EP Total
Eclipse of the Sun, Einstürzende Neubauten tear apart their own tendency of
filling up a track with a myriad of sound levels and have produced instead
three spare, minimalist meditations on the principles and effects of the most
awesome of natural occurrences. "All I really really really really really
really really really really want to see is the total eclipse of the sun,"
Bargeld sings softly in the title track. The man notorious for his shattering
screams and explosive stage presence is nearly silenced by the astronomical
event to hit Europe August 11th. He's so excited about the eclipse that he
plans to record it, capturing for eternity the ephemeral transience of the
universe.
What goes unnoticed in much of the English-language press
about Bargeld is the host of projects that he consumes himself with. When he's
not working with EN or playing guitar as one of Nick Cave's infamous Bad Seeds,
Bargeld is a performance artist of admirable dedication. In London to take part
in Nick Cave's Meltdown Festival at the South Bank Centre earlier this summer,
Bargeld performed his solo Rede/Speech and produced and led the first
English-language installment of his world-wide project The Execution of
Precious Memories. Coinciding with all of this was a gallery opening featuring
his serialbathroomdummyrun photo exhibit at Sadie Cole's Gallery in
Soho, a spoken word Philosophical Tournament at Islington's Cubitt
Gallery, and a one-night-only stint with the Bad Seeds at the Royal Festival
Hall. I sat down with Blixa Bargeld to talk with him about these
lesser-recognized projects, as well as the latest Einstürzende Neubauten EP, in
the cool of the basement of the Cubitt on a stifling hot July afternoon.
memory
Nancy Stockdale: Regarding the Execution
of Precious Memories, I was wondering first about your inspiration for it?
Because it's a very huge undertaking.
Blixa Bargeld: Yes. Sometimes we have to say something
bigger. It happened very much by chance. There was a poetry festival in Berlin,
probably 1992-93, and they wanted to do something with a Polish composer called
Zbigniew Karkowski, and to have a composer at a poetry festival requires
poetry. So I was approached and ....I think suddenly I just met him and talked
with him, and in whatever he was saying he suddenly used the word
"memory" in some connection, and that somehow triggered it off for
me, and I just said "hmmm, maybe I should do something with
memories." And my particular interest at that time, in that year, was
working with forms--forms as in forms to be filled in--and so I developed a
form to be filled in and did it as a pseudo-scientific survey working with the
precious memories of people. And then I just continued doing that, and it took
a different shape every time. The London performance certainly was different
than, say, the one that I did four months ago in Yaounde, Cameroon; that was
African musicians, African memories, African voices. And in September I do it
in New Delhi and it will be entirely different again.
NS: What were some of the African memories like that
came out that really struck you?
BB: There were quite obvious differences between all of
these performances so far, in the results that I got. Quite obvious in the
African ones was that the idea of nature--because one of the questions is, Do
you have any precious memories in connection with nature?--it was very obvious
for a westerner that the idea of nature as we perceive it is entirely different
from the African idea of nature. For, on that question you would expect to get
a lot of answers from people in Cameroon--many of the childhood memories having
taken place in the villages and in the bush--and you would hardly get any
answers. That was certainly nothing that had to do with any of our plans. This
idea of nature needed the separation from nature, which is typical for a
western person; to look at nature you have to have some distance, and as long
as you are in it all the time you don't really perceive nature. So, you would
get answers like, "the death of my grandmother," and after a while I
just noticed there's more of a concept of bigger circles in it, that nature is
basically everything that has to do with being born, living and dying, and the
whole circle of generations, and winter, summer, whatever circles you want to
name. That was the kind of obvious thing in the African memories.
Obvious as well was that everybody had a lot to say about
religious and mystical memories. But, "religion" was always the
Christian religion or, in a few cases Islam, and
"mystical"--translated to "mysterious"--was anything that
had to do with animistic and nature religions, marabous, and medicine men in
the village; they were classified as "mystic"...mysterieux. It was in
French most of the time. And everything "religion" had to do with
Sunday School or the nuns, or "my circumcision" most of the
time...."circumcision"..."circumcision"...lots of
disciplinary measurements from teachers and parents, that was kind of obvious.
And in Japanese memories you had them predominantly talking
about insects, all the childhood nature memories are very much focused on
insects. But I talked to the people I was working with in Japan, and they
agreed, there's a much more friendly, friendship kind of relationship between
humans and insects.
NS: I know they keep insects as pets in Japan.
BB: Yeah, that was appearing in the memories quite
often. Going collecting insects in the underground with Grandma, and then
keeping them in a shoe carton till the next spring, things like that.
NS: I thought it was striking that last night even some
of the nature aspects of the British memory were about importing things from
outside nature, like pornography, for example.
BB: Yeah, well, they were very western memories. Nature
is the place once you've left the city, or even if you go to a park; you know,
these little resorts--everything was kind of resort feeling, the secret
beaches, or the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve in Australia. And you could see as
well, that, of course, in the melting pot of London, a lot of people didn't
come from London, they had memories connected with totally different places.
While in Japan you can guess that most of the people are talking about Japan.
NS: So the questionnaire doesn't
change from country to country?
BB: No.
NS: So, in Cameroon, for example, how did the questions
about sexuality get answered?
BB: Well, I was expecting to not hear very much, but I
did hear a lot. The least amount of answers to that we got in Japan. "I
didn't have any sexual memories yet but I plan to do some in the future."
Or, "He touched my knee under the table in a soba noodle shop."
NS: I'm interested in the questionnaire; when I was
filling it out it became quite an ordeal...but, I enjoyed it, and you are
definitely affecting peoples' memories by having them fill it out.
BB: Yes...that's why there is the last question,
"Do you think telling your memories has actually affected the quality of
them." That's why it is called "The Execution Of Precious
Memories," you actually change the level of what memories are. Memories
through narration become something else, they become a piece of literature, and
once you actually make these pieces of literature public they become
something else again. I'm full of memories of people that I haven't even met, I
know all these things by heart from all these performances. I know there's this
story and there's that story, and I can tell them like they were my own.
NS: As I heard something that I had written read out in
the performance I thought, "Oh my god, this is a text, this is a
totally different piece of literature now then when I wrote it, and when I
thought of it before I wrote it." There seemed to be an emphasis on the
sensual, though, more than an emotional level.
BB: Yes. I had the interest of how much smell is
involved in it, that was something that I was just presently interested in.
There is a theoretical text that I didn't read yesterday, which I have read at
some of the performances, which is called "Smell Is The Key Of
Memory." You know, memory has a lot of functions and consciousness is very
much necessary to create metaphors. And smell is not creating metaphors. That's
why it is more of a direct key. A smell of freshly mowed grass is triggering
off something directly without you being able to assign how freshly
mowed grass is smelling, except for what it is, your personal memory. You say,
"this smells like when I was with Grandma when I was six years old, and
Grandfather mowed the grass." Or, you have other, more specific memories
with it, but there is no metaphor to go along with that.
NS: Would I be correct in saying also that you have an
emphasis on positive memories in this?
BB: Yeah, I wanted precious memories.
NS: So, can you have precious memories though that are
negative?
BB: Yes.
NS: But you don't really want to explore those in the
performance?
BB: In Argentina a lot of the memories were everything
else but precious in the true sense of the word; people were talking about the
military dictatorship and how Father was arrested, or somebody put a gun to the
head of their parents and things like that. And they still considered them
precious memories. There seems to be a matter of interpretation with it.
NS: How do you find the people that are going to take
part in this, the other artists?
BB: Well, I leave that up to my muse, really. I just
see whoever and whatever gravitates to it and so far that has worked. I like
the tension for me for the week or ten days before, I don't actually know who's
going to be with me. It could happen as well that I'm just going to be alone on
stage and just do it all by myself. But so far it worked that there were other
people getting involved with it, and then I'm able to make them a unified force
within a couple of days.
NS: What are your expectations when you go into it? Or
do you try to keep those expectations at bay?
BB: Yeah, I try to not really expect anything in
particular. Let me say, it has a big self satisfaction element to me. I do this
because I want to do this, and it's a project that's very dear to my heart. You
know, if there were only ten people there I would have still done the same
thing, I don't really care. I mean, usually, artists say that very often:
"I don't care if anyone likes it or not." Of course I do care if
somebody likes it or not, and of course I'm flattered if somebody says that was
great, or all that, but I do not try to come in with any expectations
in this. It is self-sufficient as it is. Even if I just end up with a text, and
I take a whole box of text home with me, that is satisfying enough.
NS: So, how does the language affect your experience of
it, as a performer?
BB: Apart from the first performance in Berlin, the
London performance was the only one where I had the direct access to the
language. I have to admit that I did understand the languages much better, and
learn much more about a language doing this, but my Swedish is nil and my
Japanese is very rudimentary, and I guess you get a different quality of
somebody performing in a language that he doesn't know. Laurie Anderson used to
do that, perform even in German. It works. You could understand her.
NS: What about the States? Do you have any plans to
bring it to the States at all?
BB: I have to have North America in it...but
it's just a matter of organizing it. It's not like a rock band, it's not an
easy thing to do. It requires a couple of months of work, and it requires ten
days of rehearsal time. I'm working on it.
NS: Do you know where it might be in the States?
BB: Well, I can imagine it would be one of the major
cities, Canada or United States, wherever I get any help from the Göethe
Institute. This one was one of the few performances I have done without the
help of the Göethe Institute. The Göethe Institute is supporting this whole
project, and I guess they're going to support it even more, the more I go along
with it, the more they see it works. But the Göethe Institutes do sit in all
the major cities, so...I could a combination, East-West coast. I think that
would be all possible.
words
NS: About the Rede/Speech...I
was wondering if you have plans on releasing any of it, or is it just too
ephemeral?
BB: I will release something somehow, but I don't know
how...I don't know! [laughs] I don't know, I enjoy the fact that I do something
outside the normal consuming mechanisms, like what I do tonight as well
[the Philosophical
Tournament]. The performance I do tonight is technically not much different
from what I did at Speech, the one point is that I burn CDs of it at the
same time and I sell these original CDs, and they're not going to be repeated,
they're not going to be duplicated. I've done that before [Temporäre
CD-Brennerei] and I only burned one CD of each performance, I performed one
piece after another one, and I burned 68 CDs and sold the single CDs,
which are the masters. So, you can own a composition that is only
existing in that form, full stop.
NS: This project is obviously reliant completely on
language, as you are making songs out of words, and I found that really amazing
because they kind of ceased to be words to me after awhile...
BB: Yes.
NS: ...But for you, as a performer, does that happen to
you as well? Or does the word always have to have its significance? I mean,
tonight at the Philosophical Tournament you're going to be taking
words and pitting them against each other based on their meanings...how do you
experience it yourself?
BB: I try to forget about myself in the whole process.
I just try to open up a channel and let something flow through me, in the true
idea of a medium. I don't really want to get myself mixed in it. I am somehow
there, but the best for me is when the things just happen without my real
control over it.
NS: So you see yourself as a channeler in a way?
BB: Yeah...in the true sense of the word, without the
new age undertone to it. And the other word, in the true sense of the word, as
a medium, as the thing in between something.
NS: How was it doing Rede/Speech in English
compared to in German? Obviously your English is impeccable, but it must be
different for you?
BB: Yeah, well it's a different feel, but it's probably
even easier for me to lose control in a language that I don't master. It's
probably harder to lose control in a language that you do master.
meaningless rooms
NS: I want to ask you about serialbathroomdummyrun,
because I'm fascinated by this whole idea. Why bathrooms, as opposed to other
parts of the room?
BB: Usually a hotel room has only two rooms, the
bedroom and the bathroom. The bedroom has a metaphorically-charged quality to
it, the bathroom hasn't. That's the reason. I didn't want it to mean anything.
NS: You just started doing it?
BB: I didn't want...photographing the bed in a hotel
room, it's just metaphorically charged. It would mean something. It
was a place where somebody slept, it was a place where somebody fucked, it's
metaphorically charged. But the bathroom, it's kind of neutral, it's full of
unimportant details, it doesn't mean anything.
NS: So, do you do this now just out of habit, or is it
an obsession with you?
BB: It's not an obsession, it's a game. It's a game and
I follow the rules.
NS: What are some of those rules?
BB: You start the game and then you discover the rules
one after another. One clear element in every of these bathrooms is, it always
has a mirror. So, I always photograph the mirror first. And then I photograph
all the details that seem to be interesting for me in that very second, and
that's it. And I don't really care what's on the photos; I don't care if
they're out of focus, in focus, if they are black, if the flash works or not. I
develop them and I just put the name of the hotel and the date on them. Then I
arrange them as text. They're text for me, you know, they have horizontal and
vertical formats. The formats are very similar to the ups and downs in a line
of poetry. So you have one bathroom making one line, and a whole segment would
be sequencing bathrooms in that time period, so you have 16th of April, 17th of
April, 19th of April, 20th of April, 21st, 22nd. And they either become a piece
of poetry, or they become a litany, in the monotonous output of what is written
there.
NS: And do you ever walk into a bathroom and just get
really excited because it's so interesting, or are you kind of beyond that?
BB: It happens, yeah, well, sure...you can do that for
several years and then suddenly it's, "Wow! Now I'm in a hotel and the
bathroom is incredible! It's all checkerboard tiles and all black and white and
there's bright orange curtains on the window!!" And you think, "Wow!
This is gonna be a great series. It's gonna be fantastic!"
NS: And where's it all leading?
BB: I don't know....that's the one rule I haven't
discovered yet...how to end this.
totality
NS: What about the total eclipse on August 11th? You
are doing sound recordings of or the eclipse...Are you just waiting
to see what happens?
BB: Yes.
NS: Do you know where you are going to be?
BB: I am going to be in east Austria, that's in the
belt of the totality. [Laughs] I get emails from people about that from New
York saying, "How can we participate?" I say, "You can't, it's a
European thing."
NS: Yeah, I'm very sad I'm missing it myself. But you
are soliciting for people to get involved. What's your larger project with that?
BB: Well, I basically just want to see the total
eclipse of the sun. That's what I want to see. That's why the actual refrain
line of the single is, "All I really really really really really really
really really really want to see is the total eclipse of the sun." And I
just thought that everybody's doing public photos, videos--this will be the
most world-wide, most well covered ever visual thing happening. And I just
thought maybe I should just make sound recordings of it. I want to hear what
happens a) to the sounds of nature, how and if they change; I want to hear as
well what happens to my surroundings, all the "oh"s and
"ahh"s of the people, I want to hear that, and I wouldn't mind having
that covered by large numbers of other people in other surroundings. I don't
know! Maybe it's not going to be anything, but I'll just try it.
NS: So, the Neubauten EP, is it attached
to an album coming out?
BB: No, it's not attached to an album coming out, it
just stands by itself.
NS: And Neubauten have a tour coming up of South
America.
BB: Yes.
NS: What can people expect from that?
BB: Same as ever.
NS: Similar to the tour of the States last year?
BB: I would assume so...with more new material in it.
NS: What were some of the conditions of recording
"Total Eclipse of the Sun?"
BB: The basic tracks were recorded in our rehearsal
room, in one take fashion...everything played together including the vocals.
And then over that some reworks have been done at Conny's Studio.
NS: And how would you describe it?
BB: Slow, melancholy, beautiful, all circling around
the Sun--all the three tracks are.
NS: How does your environment affect what you are
doing? I mean, Neubauten was founded on tools from the environment, but your
environment is a lot different now, and your work has gone into so many
different directions since then. How do you find your environment affecting
your work now? Say, for example, Berlin: in the last ten years it is a totally
different world than it was twenty years ago.
BB: Yeah, but basically it's still a city and it still
has the city debris, that has not really changed. But of course we are not
going to the inside of hollow highway bridges anymore. But I guess we've
developed a particular love for materials, for things. You have to
actually like these objects as you play with them. It's not really a
protest statement, you have to actually like...you have to have a certain
affinity with these things, and you can still have that even if you don't play
in hollow highway bridges. You still have to tickle out of a particular piece
what is in it.
NS: So what are some of the instruments, or tools, that
you have used in "Total Eclipse of the Sun?"
BB: Are there any? [thinks for a moment] I don't think
anything new. Just the same old Neubauten rubbish that we've had for a long
time...Oh! Helium! The substance that the Sun is made of, I sing on helium on
one of the tracks. It was an interesting experience, but I thought it would
shift the voice to a different pitch, which it does, but your range gets very
narrow too. It doesn't transport the whole range to a higher frequency. Whoop!
sums it all up, on this small great wave of energy, and you can hardly control
it.
NS: And it's very short, it doesn't last very long.
BB: One breath.
NS: What about the Bad
Seeds? Do you have any plans to go back into the studio?
BB: I hope there are plans, but I don't know anything
about them.
projections
NS: Last night at your performance I had a weird
experience. I was sitting in the audience, waiting for your show to start, and
I was surrounded by people that were very obsessed with you, and talking
obsessively about you, and I was just wondering about your experience of fame,
and how you really experience that?
BB: Well, I don' t even know if it is connected to
fame. Fame has certainly made it more, to avoid to say "better"
or "worse." But as long as I remember myself in connection with other
people, as a social force, I always triggered obsession. So, I don't really
think it is something that has entirely to do with fame. I truly believe this,
that it is just something within my personality that triggers obsession. I know
that people might be obsessed with me, and I didn't have necessarily a lot of
good experiences with that.
NS: No, it seems very frightening to me. So, what do
you think it is about you that gets people obsessed?
BB: A quality to present myself as a blank surface on
which you can project something. That's what triggers obsession. I don't in
particular try to do this, but as much as I can analyze myself, that's what I
am doing.
NS: So you are a tabula rasa for the people
in a way?
BB: Sometimes. I'm a projectional surface.
NS: It kind of gets back to the precious memories as
well, in the relation of them.
BB: Yes. I know you get things, and famous
people...there's always a following that is somehow obsessed with them. But I
know just from my childhood and my puberty that I always had people obsessed
with me. So I don't think it was necessarily something that had to do with
fame. I just think fame made it worse, or better, made it just more.
Stalkers are really frightening me. It seems to be the same
person always, the same kind of person, coming in. Just imagine I am
standing in a sphere. Within this sphere everything I do and everything I say,
I punctuate like a needle a little hole in this sphere. This hole makes the
star shine. Sometimes these holes even become bigger, they become cracks.
Through these cracks people leak in. Through these cracks people leak in and
come to the inside of that sphere, and that's the point that gets frightening.
And what leaks in there, it seems always to be the same substance, that same
substance of what surrounds the sphere. They are always made from the same
material. And the people look at themselves, and essentially can just see
myself. I can't see what it is that I create in their minds' eye to be. I just
see that they have something relative with me, they have something to do with
me, they see something in me that is within them, or the other way round. But
it is the crack that I have created in the sphere at first that makes it
possible for them to leak in. And once that happens, you know, the whole
firmament is shattered, and the whole firmament is endangered to fall into
pieces, because the crack's getting wider. So, I have to be careful with
everything I say because all I should do is just make punctuating needle marks
where the star should shine.
NS: So what drove you in the beginning, going back to
early Neubauten time, to make music, or to get involved in public performance
and the culture you were in at the time, in a public way?
BB: I don't think I had much choice, really. I don't
have any background of money, and I don't have any profession that I could
possibly do. I'm a school dropout. And at that particular time, in that
particular place, meaning West Berlin, end '70s, there were basically only two
things that I could possibly do: either become a painter or become a musician.
And it happened only by chance that I became a musician. I never wanted to be a
musician. It just literally happened with somebody coming up to me and saying,
"Would you like to perform?" on that day, and then I founded a band.
And I performed on that day. And I wouldn't have thought that this band was
still going on after twenty years.
NS: But did you have a background in music before, or
play an instrument or anything?
BB: No. I have no musical education, I didn't own any
instruments...no background.
NS: That's very punk, I mean, it's classic kind of punk
in a way.
BB: That was the one fascinating aspect about punk,
breaking the rules of that. Yesterday, the man that I worked with inPrecious
Memories that I didn't know three or four days ago, Richard [Sanderson],
he's the one that played all the little toy percussions...at some point in the
rehearsal he said, "I didn't fight the punk wars to do blah blah
blah..!" I thought this was a nice thing to say. What did I actually
fight the punk wars for? I fought the punk wars for a very similar thing, that
I don't have to be dictated to anymore to own an amp, a guitar, or to do this
or that. I like to be closer to the basic breakdown, to break open into a
myriad of possibilities.
NS: Yeah, I think that's why I liked Rede/Speech so
much, because you were just using your voice.
BB: Well, that was another going back to the roots kind
of thing. I just wanted to do something that doesn't require anything. I mean,
to the maximum of it I would love to be not even there. Or even reduce it even
more...not even have a microphone. Just announce that I'm going to be at a
certain place, and everybody could come and we could have a nice time together,
and that's all. That would be a nice end point for the whole thing.
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