Felix Kubin gave a presentation on January 19th 2010 at ERG art school in Brussels.
It was organised by the 1st year graphic design and I attended with my 1st year “75” painting students.
It was fun!
We were asked to draw a diagram of Felix’s talk, which was about 2 periods of Utopia in his life wich were defined by total freedom of creation.
The first one was when he was 11 years old, when he put together a mad electro fast band with one of his friends.
They played with Korgs and synths and sang crazy lyrics. Felix showed videos of rehersals and an extract of a concert they played in gallery in Hamburg, which belonged to the sister of Florian Schneider (Kraftwerk). In the audience were amongst others, Kippenberger and 2 Marinas (from Andreas Dorau band). Quite an astonishing assembly for such young folks, however Felix and friend at that tender age, didn’t seem to be at all intimidated as they continued to belt out their crazy music to a perplexed crowed!
Find the music on The Tetchy Teenage Tapes of Felix Kubin 1981-85 – LP/CD, A-Musik, Skipp (2002)
The second period of Utopia, was when he was in 1992-94, and he was in project called “Liedentafel Margot Honecker”, a four member band, who played and sang songs from the DDR, dressed in uniforms.
It started as a reaction against the 90’s pop music of the west, but soon turned into a “parody” (but in fact was a sort of art project) of DDR music and bands. They even formed a political party (KED) with a leader who gave speeches with Social Democratic ideologies. The band got famous and was taken very seriously which led to strong reactions, they were invited to TV shows and gave concerts. In the end it got all a bit too much so they decided to end the project.
You can find some soundtracks and vids on Felix Kubin’s new DVD release.
