Art's Birthday 2008: Forever Young

Editor: Götz Naleppa
Coordinator: Marcus Gammel

Art's birthday via webcam.

It has been living for 1.000.045 years, but still is reborn every day: Art has always been nourished by the tension between tradition and novelty. No one knew this better than Fluxus artist Robert Filliou, who proclaimed the 1.000.000th birthday of art on January 17 1963. Since then, the art world has kept recelebrating the planet's oldest child every year.

Andrew Uruh (Bild: privat)

For Art's Birthday 2008, the European Broadcasting Union's Ars Acustica Group has pronounced the slogan "Forever young". Numerous radio stations all over Europe will dedicate their celebrations to the interplay between Sound Art and Pop Culture. Accordingly, Deutschlandradio Kultur is confronting a major veteran of German underground music with a central faction of the more recent electronic scene: Endruh Unruh (percussionist of Die Einstürzenden Neubauten) and Rechenzentrum will jointly explore pop music as sound art's eternal fountain of youth.

Frieder Butzmann (Bild: privat)

Frieder Butzmann, master of ceremonies, has invited Unruh to bring his drum karaoke "Gott sei's getrommelt" to the Radialsystem, a new space for the arts in Berlin. 20 lay-drummers unleash an unprecedented rhythmical energy on Unruh's home made drum kits. Rechenzentrum in turn go back to the tonal energy brought to the stage in the 1980s by Die Einstürzende Neubauten and other cult bands. The composer Marc Weiser and the video artist Lillevan take classics of the punk and new wave era as starting points for a musical exploration of their own youth. The "genius amateur" Frieder Butzmann finally ties up the generations with the unspent imaginativeness of his sound and noise experiments.

Broadcasts:
"Konzert im Deutschlandradio", January 17, 8.03 - 8.45 PM (CET)
"Klangkunst", Deutschlandradio Kultur, January 18, 0.05 - 1 AM (CET)
Both shows can be heard via our live streams.

www.neubauten.org
www.gottseisgetrommelt.de
www.weisermusic.com
www.friederbutzmann.de
www.radialsystem.de
www.artsbirthday.net

European Broadcasting Union - Ars Acustica Group