Live: The electronic bard Felix Kubin, squeezed into a skin-tight pair of briefs and a loose-knit pair of fishnet pantyhose, sings straight into the camera. In stroboscopic light. His partner in the performance, Mariola Brillowska, holds up paper signs under his nose with translations of the German nonsense texts for the audience. The stage upon which the Polish-German pair are romping about looks a little like the untidy dressing room of a variety-show artist, with its grubby glitter rags and unconventional performance props. Witajcie w elektropopklubie - Welcome in the Electro-Pop Club! Last summer, for two months, eight people in an interdisciplinary network consisting of German and Polish artists, DJs and musicians set up a club for electronic music and contemporary art in the southern Polish city of Bytom. The main focus of the programming was fashion, concerts and film. The »Elektropopklub« (EPK) was established at the initiative of the Kunstverein Wolfsburg together with the Galeria Kronika in Bytom, and finally made a guest appearance between flexible partitions in the Kunstverein Wolfsburg from October to November 2005. Now the Elektropopklub DVD has come out, bringing together videos, photos and music created or performed as part of the project. The items on the DVD have a glamorous trash style in common – most of them seem to have been made in digital bedrooms where the low budgets for the production of art are compensated for with irony. An aesthetic approach that is also reflected in the DVD design.
A golden bolt of lightning strikes on a reddish-brown imitation leather cover, also available in blue or green. The booklet illustrated the do-it-yourself practices of the cultural exchange with drawings and texts. »Carrying out a club art project means: combining artistic practice with everyday and leisure culture,« writes Justin Hoffmann, director of the Kunstverein Wolfsburg and a band member at FSK.
On the DVD there are nine other videos to be seen besides the excerpt from the Kubin/Brillowska concert. For example, there is the clip for the song »Big in Bytom« by the Brunswick Alibi Kolektif and its Polish fellow musician, which you were able to sing along with in a karaoke box at the exhibition. The DVD also includes photos of fashion designs by the designers Kamila Kanclerz and Kinga Kowalewska. Their label »Local Wear« seems to bear a name that is programmatic in nature. It was presented in Bytom’s narrow cobblestone lanes with its graffiti-covered house walls.
Bytom, with its population of around 200,000 residents, can be appositely described as the »Ruhr area of Poland«. Coal mining is the biggest economic factor. In the past, Sebastian Cichocki, director of the Galeria Kronika, and the film and party organiser Marcin Dos, both associated with the Electro-Pop Club, showed – in the tradition of film clubs – works that reflect on the development of the region over the decades or that were made there. Bytom and Wolfsburg are linked by a general lack of venues for alternative pop culture and art that provide events going beyond the latest hit-parade numbers and school bands. For this reason, people who had experience in organising events in Bytom were asked to found the Electro-Pop Club and to look for a suitable building for it. Justin Hoffmann stresses that »This is not at all the transformation of an art space into a club room«.
Hoffmann is also intent upon differentiating the Electro-Pop Club from so-called »ambient art«, where open meetings and work configurations are all too often forgotten in favour of the designed interiors. Hoffmann doesn’t view the club idea as being a matter of fashion, either. He sees it as being more in the tradition of innovative workshops like the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, Andy Warhol’s New York Factor, or the Golden Pudel Klub in Hamburg. After all, with the temporary installation of the EPK the initiators have managed to fill a no-man’s-land of subcultural entertainment with life. Many of the contacts between artists and joint projects that took place in the EPK continue to exist.
After the six weeks of EPK, the facilities were turned into a new club. »However, as is always the case, commercial value now takes first place, and the music is becoming more and more tailored to mass taste« says Franziska Wicke from Alibi Kolektiv: »there are mostly young girls with short-handled handbags – so I’ve been told. I’ve never been there myself.« »Marcin Dos and his group are continuing to work on the idea of the EPK and have rented another building in Katowice which they are renovating to be able to hold parties and especially art events and actions there,« the Munich DJ Mooner says; he has his record cases already packed for possible appearances there.

http://www.elektropopklub.org
http://www.kunstverein-wolfsburg.de
http://www.kronika.org.pl

 

Translated by Timothy Jones

 

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