khm

khm + klangkammer

Brain Fuck – How Thoughts get into your Head

Floods of images and sounds stir up memories, quicken the cerebral cortex, stimulate the limbic system, the phylogenetically ancient part of our brain. Double bass player Christoph Kammer and video artist Karl-Heinz Mauermann take their audience on a journey: Italy in the 1950s, world exhibition in America, mountain hiking in the Alps. Special cameras allow a glimpse behind the optic nerve.

Mauermann mixes live images with vintage slides of holidays that were typical of their period. Kammer collects street sounds and turns them into music.

The duo khm + klangkammer have been performing together for six years. Live video films like ’cutting off nose!’ or ’The Flight Pioneers’ were shown at Lichtburg and Grillo Theatre. Meticulously structured within their temporal grid, the pieces still allow for improvisation. Kammer and Mauermann trespass borders. The musician manipulates the images, the video artist creates sounds through his images, both become actors in the ’Brain Fuck’ spectacle. They enjoy playing with contrasts. State-of-the art computer programmes are their instruments as well as plastic vuvuzelas. In their pieces they habitually rely on low-tec, work with vintage audio cassette recorders and polaroids. In the studio, they set up experimental tables, build test scenarios that demonstrate how memory works, how thoughts get into your head.

The tales told in their performance ’Brain Fuck – How Thoughts get into your Head’ are so fantastic that they might have happened to anyone. Both are Kunsthaus pioneers and present their new programme within the series of events celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the house.