A performance lecture with Super-8 films by Wolfgang Müller, founding member of Berlin based conceptual art group Die Todliche Doris (The Deadly Doris). The group existed from 1980 – 1987 and produced avant garde music, film and performance projects including exhibiting at documenta 8, Kassel. Their radical Dadaist character embodied the city’s unstable identity and their acclaimed Super-8 films, including The Life of Sid Vicious and Berliner Kitchen Music evoke a disappearing era. Presented as part of the Die Tödliche Doris exhibition at alt.gallery from 28 November – 9 February 2008.

This event is free (membership required)

A HISTORY OF DIE TÖDLICHE DORIS BY WOLFGANG MÜLLER
 
Lecture and Super-8 film screening
 
Free Admission (with cinema membership)
   
A lecture with Super-8 films by Wolfgang Müller, artist and founding member of Berlin based art-punk group Die Tödliche Doris. 
 
Founded in 1980 the group created records, tapes, films, performances, and exhibited their work widely including at documenta 8 in Kassel. Their seven-year plan saw the group dissolved into a bottle of Italian white wine in 1987, however Doris has had an afterlife through re-workings of documentation and recordings.
 
Led by artist Wolfgang Müller, Doris was conceived both as a conceptual music group and a character resembling a super housewife philosopher. Dada inspired, her identity constantly evolved, refusing a singular definition or image. Their work playfully questioned the dominant power of the information system and its transformation through language, fashion and the media.
 
Their acclaimed Super-8 films evoke a disappearing era. From the orgy of violence of the punk heroes Sid and Nancy (“The Life of Sid Vicious”), to grotesque dance movements in strange costumes (“Dance”, “Water Ballet”), to the endless parade of 1980s wallpaper patterns (“Tapete”) and the reconstruction of passport photos (“The Photo-Booth Repair Man”, “Material for the Postwar Era”). The films present a lost portrait of life in West Berlin in the 1980s through fairytales, re-enactments and documentary.
 
Die Tödliche Doris were central to the new atonal music scene in 1980s West Berlin, performing at Martin Kippenberger’s infamous music venue SO 36. In 1981 they performed at the Festival of Ingenious Dilletantes, alongside Einstürzende Neubauten, Nekropolis and Gudrun Gut, an event considered to have encouraged the birth of techno music.  Attempting to ignore the division between high art and subculture, amateurism and dilettantism were celebrated as democratic forces against both the capitalist system and GDR socialism.
 
This event is presented as part of the Die Tödliche Doris: Soundless Music exhibition at alt.gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne from 28 November – 9 February 2008.  For more information contact mail@altgallery.org
 
www.altgallery.org <http://www.altgallery.org/>

www.die-toedliche-doris.de <http://www.die-toedliche-doris.de/>
 
www.wolfgangmueller.net <http://www.wolfgangmueller.net/>
 
 
 
 
 

www.altgallery.org