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.

Vienna: No One Is Innocent + Derek Jarman

Back after a brief absence of 20 years in Vienna, I find I recognise nothing. But at least the weather´s good and there is plenty to see, starting with two exhibits at the Kunsthalle.

Punk: No One Is Innocent views punk through the eyes of three great metropolises dear to me: New York, London and Berlin. Entering the gallery, one sees first the offerings from London: portraits of urban wasteland and the dandies who frequented the Blitz club. These are supplemented by displays of the usual suspects: Sex Pistols/McLaren/Westwood.

But there is little to entice except for some intriguing work by Linder, who fronted the band Ludus and made some brilliant album covers. Her critiques of male and female magazines are still fresh.

New York is also on the grimy side, with Richard Kern`s exploitation film Fingered given an airing, as well as some installations by various musician/artist types such as Alan Vega. Still not really piquing my interest.

The Berlin section, however, is where things really pick up with exciting musical/artistic and political connections being made. After so much male-oriented art, it was a pleasure to see work made by women. Upstairs was a kind of Frauenecke peopled by visual art by Elvira Bach and the rest of the space taken up by art bands Mania D and Malaria!, springing from the Geniale Dilletanten scene of the late `70s.

There was a lot more on the GD across the room, also upstairs, with DVDs of concerts and books scattered about in a kind of punk rock reading room. Someone had even scrawled a very punk comment on the display. In response to the question: what was punk like in Vienna, this person had crossed out the past tense and rendered it in the present. Punk lives in Vienna, as elsewhere.

Also on at the Kunsthalle is Derek Jarman: Brutal Beauty, curated by Isaac Julien. Here one can relax into giant scatter cushions to watch Derek, Julien's oh-so-arty but affecting doc on his mentor Jarman, look at numerous TV screens showing clips from Jarman's films, gaze at the filmmaker's visual art, created at his Dungeness retreat or ponder Julien's own visual tributes.

A most peculiar and oddly sparse exhibit. But I quite enjoyed the doc, even if Tilda Swinton and Julien appear to wander rather cluelessly through it.

Punk: No One Is Innocent through 7 September.
Derek Jarman: Brutal Beauty through 5 October.

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.