GUT

 

photo: Mara von Kummer

Just caught up with GUT, the 3-part series which aired in Germany last year. Made by and about music legend Gudrun Gut, it is a fascinating portrait of the artist as country Frau. Once I stopped thinking of it as a documentary and more as experimental film I quite enjoyed it. 

Gut's rural home in Uckermark is the setting for the programmes, with her resplendent in overalls and sometimes wellies, striding around her property collecting apples, followed by cats (not clear how many there were) in what looks like high summer. It is a gorgeous setting, perfect for reflecting on a life in music and much more. 

Each of the three episodes has a theme, seemingly plucked from the aether: the blank page, Mmmmm and everyday life. Why these when so many others could have worked? No idea. Perhaps that was Gut's whimsy. 

But these do give the viewer a chance to hear some choice anecdotes and witness visits by musical collaborators Manon Pepita and Bettina Köster (online) from previous bands, as well as Monika Werkstatt artists Pilocka Krach and Midori Harano, who rock up and twiddle some knobs in the outdoors  in the final episode before everyone sits down for a fish supper, courtesy of Gut's visit to a fish farm earlier on. Yes, really.

It's quite eccentric in tone, with a lot of visual flourishes, such as turning the green leaves pink or setting Gut and her partner Thomas adrift on a lake with an abnormally large moon shining down on them. I liked that it was not just a talking heads profile. 

She mentions a possible second series set in Berlin, so it will be fun to see what outfit she chooses as she speeds around the metropolis on her bicycle. 

Ether10: Berlin Sounds

Queen Elizabeth Hall, 23 April

A funny ol' evening, this. It wasn't clear until a few hours beforehand whether everyone had made it over from various locales, including Finland, for this celebration of Berlin music, owing to our friend, The Ash Cloud. But, happily all were present and accounted for: Vladislav Delay, Thomas Fehlmann, To Rococo Rot, and, of most interest to me, Greie und Gut.

The latest collaborative effort by restless creative spirits Antye Greie and Gudrun Gut, Greie und Gut--or Greie Gut Fraktion, as they also style themselves--gave the UK premiere of their intriguing concept piece, Baustelle. Inspired by the building work they themselves were undertaking last year, the piece comprises some nine parts, each on a theme: concrete, stone, etc.

Amusingly, they arrived on-stage in character, wearing boots and coveralls and with their laptops draped in safety tape. Unlike Gut's early band, Einstürzende Neubauten, they didn't take any heavy machinery to the stage. But, the screen behind them did show some building work in practice, artfully rendered in black and white. And, at one point, they did don hard hats.

It's intriguing to speculate on just who contributed what to the works. Greie handled most of the singing, with Gut contributing some understated (and sometimes inaudible) vocalising into two mics, one presumably with effects. Some of the pieces were more like tone poems than songs, but others were downright funky and poppy. Imagine that! They also covered "Wir bauen eine neue Stadt", by Palais Schaumburg, Fehlmann's old band. He kept the crowds entertained with a laptop DJ set in The Front Room after the main gig (see pic).

Very much looking forward to hearing the Baustelle album, which Gudrun handed me afterward. I had hoped to speak with GGF, but, sadly for me, Greie slipped away, tired out from her long day.

Around the World in 60 Days with Gudrun Gut

Right about now Gudrun Gut should be on her long journey home after a two-week Antipodean trip, with a festival appearances and other gigs. Before she touches down in Berlin, though, the Monika boss has a stopover in Beijing where she plays on the 8th, International Women's Day. Later in the spring, it's off to the USA. So, busy, busy.

And indeed, she was so busy that it was difficult to link up for an interview while I was in Berlin earlier this year. However, before she set off last month, we spoke briefly about her plans over the next few months and about the new EP, her first foray into download-only releases.

Coming up on 19 March is the premiere of her collaboration with sound artist AGF, which will air on Late Junction on BBC Radio 3 in the UK. The theme sprang from a shared interest of the two, as she explained. "It's called Baustelle, it's about a building site, because she built a house and I built a house. But she built a house in Finland and so she doesn't live here anymore. We developed four new pieces for this. And we really enjoyed that, actually, and so we're gonna do more. We want to do an album out of that and that we wanna have finished for autumn, actually. We already have 20 minutes, so it's not so much. We want to do some live shows together."

Gudrun's house is the country house she is building in Brandenburg, north of Berlin. It is one aspect of her new-found interest in nature, which extends to artwork she contributed to the Transgression exhibit as well as her new EP, whose title is almost as long as the four songs within: Apples, Pears & Deer In Poland touches on romanticism and nature.

I can't remember discussing fruit in an interview but Gudrun was quite enthused by her rediscovery of "these sorta like really old German normal fruits", as opposed to the foreign imports that dominate the market. "But going back and eating a good German apple and a good German pear is something really exciting, I thought. Especially if it's not treated and stuff, it tastes beautiful and it looks beautiful. And I thought that it's so different if you have it in the shop or if you just have it from the tree. They just look much more beautiful when they are not so polished."

Another track on the EP, "Harz4Schleife", finds her taking a walk through nature and balancing her response to the beauty of the surroundings with the reality of the inhabitants. "You know, in Germany we have a problem: Landflucht. People from the countryside all move to the city, so, especially around Berlin, there are like only some men. Most women left, because they're, you know, a little bit more clever (giggle) and a couple of men are still there but they're mostly unemployed, so it's really strange because it's a whole different life there, around the country. It's because all the people who are a bit clever left."

She continued, "But then, on the other hand, it has a real life quality because it's not so full as the city. It's not Beton [concrete]. It's not so much houses. It's just like real nature. So, it's like all kind of soft earth you walk on. This has a real fascination. I'm really fascinated with this. Because, you know, I'm like much more like a culture girl. I like computer games and stuff, so this virtual world always was more my world and then I discovered that this new thing (chuckles) for me was nature. It's interesting. I find it really interesting, because there's like some depths I never expected."

Foresaking the lure of native fruit, she is heading in April to Colorado for an appearance at the Communikey festival and a week-long residency at the Uni of Colorado Boulder campus, where Prof. Gut will speak on her life as a self-made artist. This has prompted a bit of digging into the archive to find appropriate photos and so forth. It is now 30 years since she first emerged with experimental bands Din A Testbild and Mania D, and so there is a wealth of potential material, but as of our discussion, she had yet to finalise the speech.

But, how would the one-time scourge of "hippieverseuchten Berlin" cope with the crunchy granola goodness of Boulder? "Oh, no problem. I don't mind hippies at all." A volte face! She laughed. "That was in the '80s." Never mind. Surely, self-made artists are allowed to be contradictory.

Berlin: Fake or Feint + Transgression

New year, new country. Yes, it's all about change here at Kunstblog HQ, which is for the next month or so, snowy, icy, frosty Berlin. No need to explain why one would decamp to the capital of cool, except to say things were a bit glum in Blighty and one needs a change sometimes, even if it does mean arriving in -17 temperatures.

So, it was I found myself tonight at the opening of Fake or Feint, the first in a series of scenarios on the subject of deceptive appearances. Well, here's a topic ripe for exploration and thoroughly modern and all that. But, what is one's response when faced with a brown scrim in a glass-fronted room in the middle of the Berlin Carre shopping centre? The great and good were out in force, sipping from their drinks and making animated conversation, enclosed by the scrim, while another group dotted the edges, where hung three photos by Claude Cahun.

Quite the interesting character, Cahun, who only came to my attention recently but led an eventful life in the Channel Islands and continually photographed herself in various guises, pre-dating Cindy Sherman by decades. The relation of Cahun to the brown scrim (the work of Eran Schaerf)? Both are examples of the tactics of marking, with Schaerf's diaphanous curtain marking a space between public and private.

And speaking of crossing boundaries, I just about caught the closing of Transgression at Neurotitan. A collection of work by seven women working in multi-disciplinary fields, this exhibit included strange knitted portraits by Francoise Cactus, other-worldly drawings by Danielle de Picciotto and distorted photos by Lydia Lunch, all better known from the world of music than from visual art.

It also included work by Gudrun Gut and Myra Davies, who have been collaborating for almost 20 years in music and spoken word, and whom I spoke to just before Davies returned to her homeland of Canada. More on this conversation another time, but it sounds like the opening of the exhbit was the place to be, with a girl group backing of Gut, Beate Bartel, and de Picciotto for Davies' performance of tracks from Cities and Girls. Now there's a band in the making.

The two also shared some amusing anecdotes about living in freezing conditions in the Berlin of the past, making me very glad I invested in a hat with Elmer Fudd flaps. Not at all cool, but very, very warm.

Fake or Feint is at Berlin Carre through 7 February.

7 Women No Cry

The 4 Women No Cry series on Monika Enterprise collects four international female artists on one CD, in a kind of sampler. Label boss Gudrun Gut chooses four up-and-coming artists and allocates each 20 minutes. It's a way for listeners to hear lots of new music in one place.

The third volume, featuring artists from Europe, South America and the USA, is very much a late-night listen--gentle, melodic and dreamy.

It opens with The Sound of Lucrecia, from Colombia, probably the most pop of the four. Her voice reminds me of someone I can't quite place.

Manekinekod, from Greece, is more experimental and quirky, using typewriter-like sounds on "Room 302" and a spoken vocal on "Like In the Movies".

The American Julia Holter sounds a bit like Stereolab on "Neighbor Neighbor" and like Solex on "Minerals", while "Measure What More" has a music box feel. Not sure about the Valley Girl spoken vocal in the middle, though.

Album closer Liz Christine is based in Brazil but doesn't sound at all Brazilian. Her music is more electronic and features a lot of animal samples, especially on "Dreaming". Headphones would probably make the lyrics more clear but they have an intriguing not-quite-audible sound.

It will be interesting to hear how this translates live when a selection of artists from the 4 Women No Cry series congregates for two gigs in Germany. 7 Women No Cry, on 26 November, marks the opening of the Worldtronics festival in Berlin and features seven performers: The Sound of Lucrecia, Julia Holter, Manekinekod, Dorit Chrysler (Austria/USA), Tusia Beridze (Georgia), Mico (Japan/GB) and Rosaria Blefari (Argentina).

The second is on the 28th in Leipzig and features four acts: The Sound of Lucrecia, Manekinekod, Tusia Beridze, and Rosaria Blefari.

Myra Davies

The Girl Suite EP/Girls and Cities
Moabit Musik

After three editions of Miasma, her collaboration with musician Gudrun Gut, spoken word artist Myra Davies steps out under her own name for a new full-length CD, Cities and Girls, and an online taster, The Girl Suite EP.

A gifted storyteller, Davies has a dry, knowing and stolidly North American delivery which contrasts sharply with her Europhile leanings. Whereas Miasma explored themes of nature and gender, Davies now turns her eye to the shared culture of girls, working with a range of musical collaborators, including Gut, drawn from Berlin's experimental margins.

On the EP's standout track, “Valkyrie”, Davies celebrates “nine sisters with old German names” over Gut's remix of the operatic classic, “Ride of the Valkyries”. But in this telling, the "horsey girls" become great rebels, riding off on their steeds as the music fades, a Wagnerian nursery rhyme for the 21st century.

Curiously, that piece is omitted from the album, much of which harks back to an uncomfortable past: in “Burroughs' Bunker” Davies makes a visit to the poet's New York dwelling which reminds her of “1956 middle America”, and on “Calgary”, she turns to early 20th century folk songs from the USA and her native Canada.

“My Friend Sherry” is a strange mélange of doo-wop pop, sampled speech and Davies's recitation of a botched abortion leading to a friend's death in the 1960s. It's an ambitious undertaking to turn social commentary into a pop song which is part Four Seasons, part Shangri-Las, but Davies's voice, usually so supple and confident in its delivery, sounds curiously stiff, as if shoehorned into the pop idiom.

In a nod to Miasma's quirky subject matter, “Worm” is a drawling, tongue-in-cheek consideration of the life cycle. Inspired by the sight of a worm stranded on a pavement, Davies draws the listener into her circular musings on Jean Genet and Italian sailors, before returning to the plight of the humble creature, offering it solidarity.

Berlin, so long a source of inspiration for the Davies-Gut partnership, is notable by its absence. Only one piece, the ambient tone poem “Rain”, refers to it, and then only in the press notes. The casual listener would have no idea which city was the subject.

Berlin at least provides fruitful collaborations for the album. In addition to Gut, Davies gets musical backing from Beate Bartel and the pairing of Danielle de Picciotto and Alexander Hacke, all of whom have connections with Einstürzende Neubauten.

Bartel, Gut's former bandmate in Mania D, Matador and Neubauten, provides the music for “Hanoi”, a gentle observational tale of sitting in a café enjoying Vietnamese coffee, while watching humanity pass by on bicycles.

Considering their industrial pedigree, de Picciotto/Hacke's contribution, “STUFF”, is remarkably placid -- a bit of paper rattling, some playful fairground melodies and a few lines pilfered from “My Favourite Things” delivered in a freaky high voice.

Here, Davies delivers her wittiest performance, a comic riff on the human tendency to accumulate STUFF, always taking too much with no place to put it. Her solution to the problem of STUFF is to take it to the landfill because it's the natural conclusion of the production cycle: “Property isn't theft. It's slavery.”

Equally unsentimental is the album closer, the startling “Goodbye Belfast”, in which she bids farewell to an ancestral home she never really knew. Recalling a visit to some Northern Irish great aunts in 1982, Davies repeatedly calls up their attempts at comforting words (“Have a wee cup of tea; you'll feel better”), contrasting this with their unshakeable sectarianism and using this as a metaphor for a place caught in the past.

“Not my place, not my time, not my pain”, she concludes, bidding the city good luck in its quest to move beyond this stagnation.

Girls and Cities is out 26 September.

M is for ...

The independent Berlin label Monika Enterprise is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a hometown gig on 4 November. This seemed an opportune moment to visit label HQ and chat with founder and owner Gudrun Gut, a long-time Berlin mover and shaker.

Having arrived in a still-divided Berlin in the 1970s in order to attend art school (that venerable training ground for musicians--does anyone study art at art school? Anyway...), she has stayed on and continued making music as well as acquiring many quirky artists for the Monika label, Barbara Morgenstern, Quarks and Cobra Killer among them.

Settling down in the kitchen with coffee and cigarettes, Gut, smoky of voice and eye, explained the label ethos: "It is more an artist-orientated label. We do more artist development and every artist has to have their own expression."

In 1997 when the label started, there wasn't much industry interest in the quiet Wohnzimmer scene that produced Morgenstern and Quarks and so Gut, who already ran her reissue label Moabit, turned her attention to new artists. With a handful of releases per year, Monika is a small concern, concentrating on quality rather than quantity.

In addition to solo albums, the label has also produced compilations and the series 4 Women No Cry, with four women artists from different countries. Gut explained, "Each artist has 20 minutes and they have to fit on one album. The idea is we get so many nice demos and lots from women, too, because they know we do lots of female releases."

The internet has proved a fruitful source of talent. "I mostly find the artists on MySpace, actually. It is a really good space for finding new artists."

Recent releases include albums by Milenasong, Chica and the Folder, Michaela Melián and Gut herself. "I was working on it for quite awhile. It was more a question of finishing it 'cause I never had the time." She cleared her throat and continued, "To finish an album you have to have some concentrated time to dive in to it and really finish it."

She works with a small studio set-up: "Oh, it's really simple. A big Mac and a good mic and a good compressor." Highly textured and multi-layered, the record draws from many genres and each song has its own inspiration and dedication. "I wanted it to have not too much of an electronic record. I wanted to have some more... atmosphere."

What with the labels and Ocean Club, her weekly radio show with Thomas Fehlmann, the record was a long time coming but as she explained, Monika pretty much runs itself now. "My assistants can do what I do, more or less, so I could do my own record last year. That was very good. I needed that."

Gut's previous work includes the bands Mania D, Malaria!, and Matador and spoken word collaboration Miasma. The eagle-eyed will spot these names all start with M. She explained: "in the '80s we just did so many projects and to have something in common, we did the M thing. That was really simple. M is for mother, money, moon and it's in the hand. You know, you've got an M in the hand." She held out her hand and one saw that the lines of the palm could be interpreted, by an imaginative art student, as a swirly M. "That's where it comes from," she concluded with a dirty laugh.

Over the last decade Berlin has transformed and Gut welcomes changes to the city, which was something of an island when she arrived. "You couldn't go out. You had the wall around it. You had to pass the borders and it was a pretty tough border crossing.

"Now the last 15 years what's changed the most is business is coming to Berlin. You see people in suits and white collars and we didn't have that before. It's like 'Wow! It's a real city now.' I think it's healthy. It needs that. Because we had it without it and it's a little claustrophobic."

Still, for her Berlin remains a place of boldness and creativity. "Berlin has mostly everything I like because it has this border feeling... The culture is really interesting. It has this underground feel always, kind of daring in the arts. I like that."

Ten Years of Monika, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 4 November, with live performances by: Chica and the Folder, Gudrun Gut, Michaela Melián, Barbara Morgenstern + short appearances by Quarks, Cobra Killer and Masha Qrella.

Michaela Melián is included in the art exhibit Same same, but different, exploring "minimal deviations from the status quo". Curated by Lena Ziese, it is on at Jet, Memhardstrasse 1, Berlin, through 10 November.