Hainbach is the stage name of the Berlin-based composer, lyricist, and live musician, Stefan Paul Goetsch, who is perhaps best known from his YouTube channel of the same name. Descriptions and ...classifications of Hainbach's music invariably include references to the musician's innovative and 'experimental' approach to music production and highlight his use of magnetic tape and obsolete tone generators, such as those used by the early proponents of electronic-based music. This article examines three of Hainbach's recent electronic works: Tagwerk (2022), Landfill Totems (2019), and Destruction Loops (2019-2021), framing them as palimpsests of archived destruction that recall such wide-ranging works as the magnetic tape experiments of Alvin Lucier, the auto-destructive impulse and social engagement of German-born artist and activist Gustav Metzger, or even the 'erasures' of Robert Rauschenberg. In this article, I reveal the complex, seemingly contradictory, palimpsestuous structure of Hainbach's works, where creation meets destruction, collage and décollage are co-planar, and the gestures of 'play'-that creative act with destruction at its horizon-are ever present. Through play, Hainbach explores the creative potential of both sound and instrument, surveys their affordances, and courts creativity at the unpredictable intersection of serendipity and failure.
In August 2019, German experimental electronic musician Stefan Goetsch released "Hate Loops," a minimal, yet complex multi-tape loop collage conceived in part, as the work's title suggests, as a ...creative response to destructive online comments about new music on social media. As a creation of "archived destruction" Goetsch's work is clearly inspired by William Basinski's The Disintegration Loops, but it reflects rich and complex connections beyond Basinki and this musician's own influences to the foundations of what Robert Fink calls "maximally repetitive music." In this essay, I trace the musical and conceptual provenance of Basinki's work, back through the works and ideas of the "holy trinity" of minimal music, Brian Eno, Steve Reich, and John Cage, to early examples of repetitive music before the turn of the twentieth century. Such a contextualization necessarily involves a discussion that includes common ideas of repetition and difference; as well as the subtractive and additive processes of disintegration. I argue that despite the obvious influence of Basinski's The Disintegration Loops, Goetsch has created a deliberate palimpsest of creation and destruction that recalls Alvin Lucier's I Am Sitting in a Room, but more readily reflects the auto-destructive impulse and social engagement of German-born artist and activist Gustav Metzger.
Each week, for one whole year, the young German poet Lydia Daher produced one poem using only the words and illustrations found in a single literary review of that week's newspaper. In this way, ...Daher composed poetry consisting of words and phrases sampled from literary reviews that themselves contained quotes sampled from the literary works being reviewed. In this essay, I show how Daher's collages represent not only a practical application of what she terms the recontextualizing function of poetry, but also how closely they conform to the theories of musical sampling outlined by Pelleter and Lepa.1
After successfully completing her literary apprenticeship with 3rd place at the 2005
German International Poetry Slam
, Lydia Daher has continually sought new and often experimental platforms for ...showcasing the potential of language. Among her major projects, she has published several volumes of poetry, a number of music albums, and most recently Daher applied an innovative method of ‘sampling,’ reminiscent of HipHop producers such as DJ Shadow or The Avalanches to produce a volume of text and picture collages entitled
Und auch nun, gegenüber dem Ganzen
–
dies
(2014). Each collage relies on the textual (and pictorial) material of just one literary review taken from the literary supplement of the most recent edition of a German weekly newspaper. Although Daher is aware of each text as the most recent part of sequence that stretches back through the literary review, the reviewed novel, and the novelist’s source material, she recognises that this structure is mere illusion. To describe the completed collage, I invoke the theoretical framework of the palimpsest, for the collage is less a succession of parts than it is a structure of co-existence. Like the influential cut-up artist, William S. Burroughs, Lydia Daher further recognises that the surface structure closely mirrors the palimpsest of human perception.
Since its advent, advertising has had an uncomfortable, yet symbiotic relationship with the literary arts. While the advertising world soon recognised the advantages of harnessing the powerful ...rhetorical potential of poetry in its service, many poets have recognised equally the commercial advantages of applying their literary talents to the art of advertising. So long an integral part of society, it is hard to imagine a world without advertising. Therefore, when German spoken-word poet Bas Böttcher uses his poetry to reflect the world he lives in, the result is a literature strongly influenced by advertising. Immediately obvious is the influence of brand names, or similes based on advertising slogans. Perhaps less obvious is, for example, the formal influence of a McDonald's advertising campaign that inspired one of his best-known poems. At a deeper level, however, Böttcher recognises that poetry itself is like any other consumer product. It not only needs to satisfy customer demand for a quality product, but also, in today's saturated market, to be launched with its own integrated advertising campaign designed to attract public attention and create market interest.
Since its advent, advertising has had an uncomfortable, yet symbiotic relationship with the literary arts. While the advertising world soon recognised the advantages of harnessing the powerful ...rhetorical potential of poetry in its service, many poets have recognised equally the commercial advantages of applying their literary talents to the art of advertising. So long an integral part of society, it is hard to imagine a world without advertising. Therefore, when German spoken-word poet Bas Böttcher uses his poetry to reflect the world he lives in, the result is a literature strongly influenced by advertising. Immediately obvious is the influence of brand names, or similes based on advertising slogans. Perhaps less obvious is, for example, the formal influence of a McDonald’s advertising campaign that inspired one of his best-known poems. At a deeper level, however, Böttcher recognises that poetry itself is like any other consumer product. It not only needs to satisfy customer demand for a quality product, but also, in today’s saturated market, to be launched with its own integrated advertising campaign designed to attract public attention and create market interest.
Bas Bottcher is one of Germany's most popular and respected spoken-word poets. In 2010 alone, he combined numerous performances in German-speaking countries with international appearances in India, ...Namibia, Italy, Greece, France, Luxembourg, and Canada. Yet, ever since the advent of poetry slams in the late 1980s and the subsequent resurgence and commercialization of spoken-word poetry, opinion has been divided about this entertaining rediscovery of the inherent orality of poetry. One of the most frequently quoted assessments of performance poetry is Jonathan Galassi's description of it as a "kind of karaoke of the written word." One of Bottcher's own texts, entitled "Popopfer," welcomes the reader/listener into a space that is identified as the "groβe Karaoke, das wir Leben nennen." An analysis of other poems by Bottcher reveals a similar concern with themes of imitation and illusion. In "Alles in allem," Bottcher locates the individual in a cinema-like world reminiscent of Plato's cave, where the concept of illusion is central. Similarly, in "Dran glauben," illusion is identified as not only a key characteristic of our consumer-driven society, but also a factor necessary for the maintenance of happiness. This article traces Bottcher's exploration of the related themes of imitation, authenticity, illusion, and happiness and thus provides a response to Galassi's criticism of performance poetry. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Bas Böttcher is one of Germany's most popular and respected spoken-word poets. In 2010 alone, he combined numerous performances in German-speaking countries with international appearances in India, ...Namibia, Italy, Greece, France, Luxembourg, and Canada. Yet, ever since the advent of poetry slams in the late 1980s and the subsequent resurgence and commercialization of spoken-word poetry, opinion has been divided about this entertaining rediscovery of the inherent orality of poetry. One of the most frequently quoted assessments of performance poetry is Jonathan Galassi's description of it as a "kind of karaoke of the written word." One of Böttcher's own texts, entitled "Popopfer," welcomes the reader/listener into a space that is identified as the "große Karaoke, das wir Leben nennen." An analysis of other poems by Böttcher reveals a similar concern with themes of imitation and illusion. In "Alles in allem," Böttcher locates the individual in a cinema-like world reminiscent of Plato's cave, where the concept of illusion is central. Similarly, in "Dran glauben," illusion is identified as not only a key characteristic of our consumer-driven society, but also a factor necessary for the maintenance of happiness. This article traces Böttcher's exploration of the related themes of imitation, authenticity, illusion, and happiness and thus provides a response to Galassi's criticism of performance poetry.
!["Willkommen im gro[Beta]en ...](http://api.summon.serialssolutions.com/2.0.0/image/issn/XR4PS5YY4K/0039-7709/small "\"Willkommen im gro[Beta]en Karaoke, das wir Leben nennen\": Bas Böttcher und die Kulissen des Glücks")
