Programmarchiv

Synaesthetic Improvisation with Live Music and Live Scent

He was one of the most famous and talented junkies of the 20th century: William S. Burroughs was an uncompromising writer, an avant-gardist without an agenda, a gun nut, gay and an icon of the counterculture. Burroughs did not care about the zeitgeist or the cultural scene, but lived on an expedition into the unknown: from the Midwest of the USA to the drug dens of North Africa. He died in 1997 at the age of 83.

‘Feeling Burroughs’ is a new series of synaesthetic live improvisations. Each evening is freely inspired by one of Burroughs' books. Three musicians and a perfume house work together, vibrate together, let the work of this lizard of a writer be experienced olfactorily, acoustically, visually, directly in all interzones of its existence.

The third edition of Feeling Burroughs circles around the second part of a trilogy about death. In "The Place of Dead Roads", written in 1983, a gay gunslinger in the US Wild West is dying: Time Travel, Flies and Firearms.

Maximilian Schäffer: Voice
Reinhold Friedl: Organs
Paul Brody: Trumpet & Trash
Incense by Raer Scents

Maximilian Schäffer alias Flamingo studied art history and cultural studies, has been surrounded by music for as long as he can remember. He grew up in a family of Oktoberfest musicians around the Hardcore and Metal scene of Regensburg. He publishes and performs poetry. He excited Bavarian rednecks with the band Cockgrinder. Later he wrote and staged light-hearted theater about serial and child murderers. Founded the occult-catholic countrywave with the band Flamingo Strauss. Writes and sings industrial rock operas in Prenzlauer Berg with the group Kulturschlund. As an opera and film critic, he writes about Bayreuth and the best rides in professional bull riding in the feuilleton of national marxist newspapers. His poetry collection “Geiler Kriege” will soon be published by Moloko Print.

Reinhold Friedl studied piano, composition, musicology and mathematics. PhD Xenakis’s tape music – a philology of electroacoustic music at Goldsmiths University London. Friedl is directing the avantgarde ensemble zeitkratzer and is a pioneer of extended piano techniques. He received numerous prizes and fellowships as well as commissions a.o. by the French State, Berliner Festspiele, Wiener Festwochen, Asphodel San Francisco, ZKM Karlsruhe, RomaEuropa Festival, BBC London, Ultima Oslo. Friedl released over hundred CDs and LPs as composer and performer.

Interdisciplinary cooperations with artists as Sasha Waltz, Frank Castorf (Volksbühne Berlin), Friedl curates the record series Perihel for Karlrecords (2022: 5LP and 5CD-Box Iannis Xenakis: Complete Electroacoustic Works), invented the Off-ICMC (International Computer Music Conference) and directed the music department of Podewil Berlin and events like the Xenakis Night at Wiener Festwochen 2022.

Reinhold Friedl is guest professor at the Katarina Gurska Institute in Madrid. Lectures and concerts worldwide.

2024: “100 most important minds in the capital's culture”, Tagesspiegel Berlin.

Paul Brody is a California-born sound artist, composer and trumpeter. He studied at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and has composed and performed for the Théâtre de Vidy in Lausanne, the Münchner Kammerspiele, the Berliner Schaubühne, the MC93 Paris, Badisches Staatstheater, the Vienna Burgtheater. He has worked closely with music producer John Zorn and directors David Marton, Hans-Werner Kroesinger and Kevin Barz.

His album, based on the the poetry of Rose Auslaender, Behind All Words, features Clueso, Meret Becker and Jelena Kuljić. It was included in the best list of the German Record Critics' Award. Brody was nominated for the Europe Broadcasting Festival Award and the International Feature Festival Vienna for his sound art. His works have been heard on WDR, Deutschlandradio, the Jewish Museum Berlin, the Canadian Language Museum and at Transmediale Berlin, among others.

Brody recently composed the opera, Êtes-vous amoureux for the Opéra National de Lorraine. He was Artist in Residence at the Museums Quartier, Vienna; and at the opera department of the Münchner Kammerspiele. He has also worked as a guest artist and composer at the University of Chicago, the University of Virginia, the University of Rhode Island and as a trumpet and improvisation lecturer at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin.

Two permanent sound installations by Brody will open in 2025: The City of Berlin commissioned him to design a documentary soundwalk on the history and nature of the park at Gleisdreieck (Storywalk Gleisdreieck), while the Humboldt Forum commissioned him to compose archive and sound recordings for the exhibition, Tausend Welten. He is also currently curating art projects for people with special needs and composing for the first inclusive orchestra in Germany, The Utopia Orchestra in Berlin.

Raer is a modern natural perfume house based in Berlin, working with rare plants and traditional methods, as a tribute to nature at its most untamed. Perfume from nature; wild, rare, and uncompromising. No synthetics. No shortcuts. Just time, plants, and process.