georg klein
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DYSTOPIE sound art festival Berlin

Tom Mustroph (taz) : ‚Auch der Wind spielt mit‘ / 'The wind also plays a part'
The rooms alone are worth coming to. A total of 14 positions are presented in the Alte Münze. Most of them are completely new productions – an important feature of this producers’ festival initiated by Georg Klein. In the basement of the former mint, you are first greeted by very low tones.
Stefanie Egedy has set up a huge subwoofer box from which sub-bass frequencies between 35 and 63 hertz come out. The low frequencies are only marginally picked up by the eardrum. Instead, the whole body vibrates, indeed the air seems filled with pulsating matter. It is a physical experience that Egedy classifies as "better than sex", and indeed the vibrations get the body and mind quite moving. (taz - die tageszeitung, Berlin, 19.10. 2020)

Golo Föllmer (NZfM): Dystopie Sound Art Festival 2020. Berlin-Brasilien
Two major themes of the dystopian were thus always in the room: the threat to life from an invisible, incomprehensible danger, and the threat to freedom from state intervention. (…) Mario de Vega’s sound performance ‘El Intruso’ effectively sharpened the basic feeling of the festival on the last evening. In a large part of the exhibition spaces, the actual works were still visible, but: all switched off, dead. Instead, they were now overlaid by other elements. (Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 1/2021)

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toposonie::engelbecke
(Berlin)
Caroline Böttcher (Jury): Audiowalk Award 2020
Georg Klein schlägt in seinem Walk einen akustischen Bogen zwischen verschiedenen Zeitebenen, indem er historisches und gegenwärtiges Tonmaterial lebhaft und eindringlich miteinander verbindet. (...) toposonie: engelbecken ist keine chronologische Geschichtsstunde, sondern schafft historische Querverbindungen – die Zeitebenen scheinen miteinander verwoben und Geschichte wird in ihrer Komplexität hörbar. Georg Klein benutzt Archivmaterial, unter anderem Radiobeiträge und Interviews mit ZeitzeugInnen und Klangkompositionen, die assoziativ auf die nicht mehr sichtbare Gestalt des vergangenen Ortes eingehen. (...) Georg Klein schafft es dort, wo Geschichte nicht augenscheinlich ist, sie hör - und erspürbar zu machen und liefert ein wunderbares Beispiel über das Potenzial von Audiowalks, indem er Räume für Imagination öffnet, in denen Nicht-mehr-Sichtbares wieder zum Leben erweckt wird. (>Laudatio on the Audiowalk-Award, 24.6.2020)

Florian Fricke
(Bayrischer Rundfunk): Sound Walk in Kreuzberg
Author Georg Klein calls his Sound Walks "toposonie" - the sonic exploration of places. The "Engelbecken" Sound Walk is available via the app "Echoes". An interactive map shows the course of the listening stations along the canal. The sound walk is binaurally recorded with two ear microphones, heard through headphones, you can locate the sounds, sounds and voices in three dimensions.
(...)
A 12-station acoustic journey through the channel's 170 years of history, a story that has been accompanied by radio for a long time. The trick is, Georg Klein played his mixed sections of historical radio sequences at the original locations over a pair of speakers and picked up this signal directly binaural again. Thus, the old stories now embed themselves in the surrounding noises of the present, which of cause is only the presumed present. (...) And so the historic Luisenstädtische channel connects the revolutionary years of 1848 and 1989. A sophisticated soundwalk and a rich treasure trove for every history buffs.
(> BR 2, Broadcast on Oct. 2019)

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DYSTOPIE Fog Zone
(Wasserspeicher, Berlin)
Tom Mustroph (ND): The aesthetic appeal of the destroyed
Of course, the festival also presents a wealth of works that successfully implement the overall theme of "Dystopia" in terms of content. Peter Cusack and Katharina Bevand's journey to the ruined city of Ani - victim of an earthquake exactly 699 years ago - plays with the aesthetic appeal of the destroyed ("Dystopic Mirage", Meinblau). "Fog Zone" by Georg Klein, also one of the three festival curators, flashes video messages of the automated surveillance and control society in the charmingly nebulised core cell of the Great Water Reservoir. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
(Neues Deutschland, Sept. 2018)

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Grün Hören
(IGA, Berlin)
Christine Deggau (rbb): Kunst auf der IGA / Art on the IGA
Whether a labyrinthine arcade of polished and reflecting steel steles, whether a sound installation entitled "Green Hearing" or the performance of everyday GDR objects: the art at the IGA is diverse, amazing and invites you to join in and think along. (...) On the Tälchenbrücke a sound installation that mixes with the singing of the birds. "To hear green" is her name, which also includes the sound telescope at the end of the bridge and provides for moments of surprise. The sound installation plays with the acoustic perception of landscape and, in the context of the "Gardens of the World", addresses our way of dealing with the unknown in nature.
(> rbb Fernsehen, Report on July 16 2017)

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Ungrounded
(NordLB, Hannover)
Wilfried Köpke (Hannover): The Deformation of Space and Time
(...) What was before, what triggered the big bang, what breath was in the beginning - to poetically describe the inflation theory of the Big Bang. What can we and still rely on, when everything is relative, time and space, bridle and riding, unfathomable, wet, unthinkable and hard to describe. Georg Klein congenially implements this experience in his work "Ungrounded". If you - alone - with the headphones go into this informal labile space, a bubble of space, they move on two mirrors, see the outside world still blurry right and left, but the two mirrors, curved, widen the path to infinity.

(Prof. Wilfried Köpke, Opening "Q - Deformation of Space and Time", Nov 10 2016)

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European Border Watch (EMAF)
Abina Manning (USA), Olaf Stüber (D), Peter Zorn (D) (EMAF): Dialogue Award
Passing by an official looking office on a local side street, it may happen that a middle-aged person seduces us to engage in a Mephisto like debate. “The European Border Watch” encourages us to police the borders ourselves from the comfort of our own homes. This convincing creepy fake project finally forces us to strengthen our own arguments and be continually vigilant against the slippery slide of fanatical ideas. The first half of the Dialogue Award goes to georg klein for his European Border Watch Project. (European Media Art Festival Osnabrück, 2015)
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toposonie
Hayley Pearce (EXBERLINER): Best Soundwaves on the Spree
A stretch of the Spree now comes with its very own sound effects via composers Georg Klein's TOPOSONIE::SPREE audio tour. Various sound clips are played, overlapping both each other and the everyday sounds of the city, giving life to a virtual reality using electronically remastered traffic noises, water sounds effects and the disembodied voices of actors, lobbyists and news reporters. (...) The route takes you through diverse urban spaces, from grey cobbled streets to dramatically modern concrete and galss structures. This is an exercise in politics and public affairs, not picture-effect, postcard-worthy sights. (EXBRLINER 120, Oct. 2013)

>> all press articles: www.toposonie.info
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Gnade | Mercy
Annette Lennartz (SWR 2): Mercy - An Installation at Mozart Summer in Mannheim by Georg Klein
Mozart – Mercy – Capitalism, that's a surprising connection. The artist hits on it by engaging in Mozart's operas, which ends almost all with a scene of mercy. "Mercy" or "grace" is an ancient term but highly topical, especially it's complement: merciless. The current financial crisis confirms this point. Georg Klein installed in front of the kneeler in his audiovisual "altar of mercy" a digital book with stories of suicides because of a personal financial collapse. The altar of mercy leads directly to our time. For making this visible Georg Klein looked for "places of mercilessness" in the city of Mannheim, installing the word "GNADE" (MERCY) like a sculpture in front of the "Deutsche Bank", "Commerzbank" and the "Jobcenter". "Mozart in his life fightet against this "society of mercy", the dependency of aristocratic rulers and wanted to be a free artist in a society of a free civil society. Now the dependencies on financial rulers are so strong like in these times and it seems that we are back in an unfree society of mercy with a financial aristocracy." (Reportage SWR 2, Journal am Mittag, 3.7. 2012)
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borderlines exhibition

Make me wild - Godwi
n
Tom Bullmann (Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung): Ein Künstler polarisiert. EMAF: Georg Kleins „borderlines“ in der Galerie écart / An Artist polarizes. EMAF: Georg Kleins "borderlines" at Gallery écart.
With his political art projects Georg Klein likes to disorient the people. (...) Also in his current exhibition on the new media art festival EMAF, he placed objects in public space. These objects are posters of 'Godwin' in a big format, hanged in a site-specific way at 'House of Youth', 'Lagerhalle' and the 'City Library'. (...) That the installation is confronting the people could be seen at the facade of the City Library: Someone demolished the portrait of Godwin. But the poster was renewed by the artist side by side of the frazzle of the old one.
(NOZ, 3rd may 2011) >> full article
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borderlines exhibition

Cuts and Creeds
Tom Bullmann (Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung): Ein Künstler polarisiert. EMAF: Georg Kleins „borderlines“ in der Galerie écart / An Artist polarizes. EMAF: Georg Kleins "borderlines" at Gallery écart.
A hot potato: The installation "Cuts and Creeds" works on the differences and similarities of muslim coined east and christian coined west: With video projections in the windows of the gallery, audio material and printed texts the artist questions and reflects the motivation of western gunmen und muslim suicide bombers.
(NOZ, 3rd may 2011)
>> full article
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mirrorsongs
Firat Arapoglu (Bir Gün Istanbul): SINOPALE III: Georg Klein'in tarihi Sinop Hapishanesi'nden
„The Building of Historical Sinop Prison: When approaching to the building, it is confron­ted with the mirrors which were installed on the windows gaps and with the songs comes from the speakers settled in these mirrors. These are the songs which native of Sinop youngsters’ would send their friends in a jail. The mirrors shows that “insiders” are the ones “looking” de facto, this is the expurgated childishness of people. It is entered the biennial through the huge installation, even the sculpture Georg Klein created with the building and the experienced artist reflects seven different sounds as nine minutes loops.“
(engl. translation of the turkish article, aug
6th 2010, Bir Gün) >> full article
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Ramallah Tours
Cornelia Rabitz (Deutsche Welle): Ramallah Tours - A provocation
Georg Klein's project "Ramallah-Tours" focuses on fiction, irritation and above all sarcasm. A bright yellow taxi stands in the center of Umm El Fahem, just like the many hundreds at checkpoints in the Palestinian territories. The installation claims that you can easily book trips to Ramallah via a website – this is a provocation, as the border is practically impassable for both Israelis and Palestinians.”
(Deutsche Welle, 06/2009)
>> full article
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meta.stasen
Christoph Springer (Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten): Kunst in der Linie 8 / Art at Line 8
"There were reactions from thrilled to irritated. A young lady couldn't stop looking out of the windows in the purple toned world outside, others were listening intensely the recorded news coming out of the tiny loudspeakers: economy, growth, mathematics, management, aims, statistics..."
(Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten, 28.9.07)
"The sound scenery was a doozie and the purple windows too. First it seems quiet normal if you hitch a ride. But if you ride afterwards with another tram, you know what's all happening here. Very weird." (Blog-Writer)
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turmlaute.2:
watch tower
Björn Gottstein (taz/WDR): Beklemmende Vision - Georg Kleins Installation "Wachturm" / Oppressive Vision: Georg Klein's Sound Installation "Watch Tower"
"The watch tower by Klein is not just a satiric project but art in an emphatic sense: its basic irritation is an electroacoustic drone sound, which produces a dark atmosphere in the tower. (...) Georg Klein's works are a bonanza for sound art, provided that they hold their own in difficult locations. Like a good centre forward, Klein invariably goes where it hurts.
(MusikTexte 113, Mai/2007) >> full article

Daniela Zinser (Berliner Zeitung): Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle / Voluntary Self-Control (Rezension turmlaute.2: Wachturm)
"Art is the art of pretending. That has the most lasting effect. . . . But eight citizens wanted to participate. Eight too many. A visit to the tower would cure them."
(>> Berliner Zeitung, 17.3. 07) >> full article

Dr. Albrecht Dümling (Neue Musik Zeitung): Rezension Festival MaerzMusik 2007 (Berliner Festspiele)
„More original and provocative was the interactive sound video installation 'turmlaute.2' of the Berlin media artist Georg Klein."
(>> nmz 2007/05)

Nina Apin (taz): Grenzwertige Aktion / Borderline Action (Recension turmlaute.2: Wachturm)
"Georg Klein's Installation "Watchtower": A brilliant satire."

(>> taz, Berlin, 20.3. 2007) >> full article

Maike Schulz (zitty Berlin): Der Klang der Kontrolle / The Sound of Control (Recension turmlaute.2: Wachturm)
"Kleins strongest work in a political sense shows alarmingly how technical progress fits to xenophobia."
(>> Zitty, Berlin, 15.3. 2007)

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takeaway
Georg Weckwerth/Matthias Osterwold (Zitty Berlin): The Sound of the Sausage Stand (Interview on the sound art festival sonambiente 2006)
But there is also a more political form of intervention in public space. One could mention Georg Klein, who brought subway passengers in Warsaw and Berlin into virtual contact with each other and confronted them with texts by Heiner Müller and Wislawa Szymborska. For sonambiente, Klein and Steffi Weismann have set up an interactive sausage stand on Schlossplatz. There, visitors can listen to passages from a conversation with the owner, which provide references to the history of the stall and the life of the owner, before and after the fall of the Wall.
(Zitty, 20.5. 2006)

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DADAyama
Marcus Gammel (DeutschlandRadio): DADAyama
Inspired by Mehring's Dadayama, Georg Klein and Tetsuo Furudate have created a space and sound situation, that reflects Dadaisms in Germany and in Japan from today's perspective. However, they are not striving to homogenously blend the cultures. Just as the Dadas did, they rather stress the gaps and contradictions between the two worlds, that remain open despite all cultural and economic exchange. Furudate and Klein set their focus on what may be the most solid common ground between Eastern and Western Dadaism: the desire to polarise.
This desire can be heard already in their respective musical styles: Defying the clichés of Japanese reserve, Furudate physically shakes his audience with violent noise cascades. Klein, on the other hand, tends to work with subtle, unassuming sounds that blend organically into the surroundings. Originating from common material, but ultimately remaining incompatible, these two sound worlds alter with harsh cuts throughout the performance.
Thus, Georg Klein creates an acoustical mirror situation, which allows the performers to communicate with their own feedbacks. Soft vocal noises or the sheer contact of microphone and skin become larger-than-life musical events. The microphone enters into the sound of language. Feedbacks from the mouth, the body and the speaker mingle with excerpts from Dadaist texts - especially self-definitions by Dadaists. Sounds created by live-electronics add to the musical scenery.
(DeutschlandRadio Berlin 17.1.2006) >> full article
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sixis
Ulrich Pollmann (Tagesspiegel): Wenn die Statik vibriert / When the Static Oscillates (Recension on SIXIS for sextett with virtual mirror sextett)
"With the only first performance of this evening, Georg Klein's "Sixis", the modern art sextett made a good choice too.
Klein, also a Berliner, takes us by surprise, particularly with an extraordinarily subtle use of played-back electronic sounds, which often can not be localized by the listener. The fragile sound character of the piece produces a dynamic process by adding finest noisy sounds, which makes a kind of 'corrosion' physical perceptible." (In: tagesspiegel, 1st march 2006)
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TRASA
Dr. Christa Brüstle (Positionen): TRASA - Kontaktraum zwischen Warschau und Berlin. / Space of Contact between Warsaw and Berlin
"With these poetic spaces a subtext of melancholy memories of passages presents itself, of thoughts of the haplessness of encounters, of a meeting that exists only in the imagination."
(In: Positionen 62, 2005)


Gabriele Lesser, Uwe Rada (taz): Man sieht sich. / See you. TRASA warszawa-berlin.
"This video installation is a good metaphor for German-Polish relations today – we see each other but don't recognize each other. We wave to each other but have no real contact. We laugh but don't hear each other."
(taz Berlin, 1.10.2004)
>> full article
(Gazeta Wyborza Warsaw) >> full article
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wel-come
Christiane Meixner (Morgenpost): Urban Art Stories: The 'Alex' as playground
"Next to the base in Panoramastrasse are two honeycomb-like loudspeakers by Georg Klein, through which incessant verbal fragments hum and buzz. If you close your eyes, the "22 granulated voices" blend with the real noise to create a grandiose acoustic tangle." (In: Berliner Morgenpost, 08.05.2006)

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Ortsklang Marl Mitte
H.-P. Mohr (WAZ): Klangkunst am Bahnhof irritiert Passanten, Recension on the first German Sound Art Award 2002
"As is so often the case, art in public space is perceived as a provocation." – „Und so wird das erwähnte Bahnhofs-Areal zum Ausgangspunkt für eine neue Betrachtung, für Diskussionen, für eine andere Art der Auseinanderstzung mit dem sinnentleerten, aber fast schon skulpturalen Schandfleck, der bisher eigentlich nur als Pissoir Verwendung fand“.
(WAZ vom 21.9.2002)

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transition -
for saxophone
Björn Gottstein (taz): Verblühende Klänge und ihre Schatten / Fading Sounds and Their Shadows (Recension Festival ultraschall)
"Georg Klein, to give a third example, marvellously fades away into uncertainties and perceptual disturbances in 'transition for saxophone and electronics'."
(taz vom 30.1.2002)

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transition
Volker Sträbel (FAZ): Transition der Klänge
"The 'self-sound' of Serra's "Berlin Junction" has now been supplemented by the Berlin composer Georg Klein for half a year with his interactive installation "Transition". She abandons the secure terrain of the semantic abstraction that has become typical of sound art and, with Bertolt Brecht's "Radwechsel", ventures on to allusive political lyric poetry - with surprising success. (...)
Otto Sanders voice sounds in different filtering, with an almost unrecognizable whispering forms the extreme of this change, in the sense seems to dissolve into sound. Often the spatially wandering speech fragments are superimposed by technically reproduced or real traffic noise and the synthetic, sometimes rhythmically repetitive sounds derived from phase reversal of every second half-cycle of sine tones, which approach the materiality of the sculpture in a metallic, hard and rough way. (...)
All events are controlled in volume, sound, playback location and repetition of two photo and six infrared sensors, but in complex control circuits that banally avoid direct reactions of the system. Georg Klein skims around the cliffs of interactive art as well as those of vulgar sound art with compositional sensitivity, who is only too happy to content himself with banal sound in places of great significance. Klein, on the other hand, uses the prominence of his material for a freer musical arrangement which, on the one hand, is resistant to the superiority of literary references to the uprising of 17 June, to division and reunification and, on the other hand, to the proximity to the location, from 1940 to In 1945, the assassination of people classified as "unworthy of life" was administered. When "transition" is dismantled in September, the silence between Serra's steel plates will not be the same as before."
(Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 7.8.2001)
>> full article

Prof. Kazuo Uehara (University of Osaka): Sound Art in reunited Berlin
During my research in 2001, I saw three sound installations in Berlin, including the eastern part. I was particularly impressed by the sound installation "transition" by the young German composer Georg Klein in front of the Berlin Philharmonic. This work is set up in the room surrounded by the iron sculpture of Richard Serra. It senses the movements of people through a light sensor and produces sound and music through computer control, as it were interactively.

Andreas Hagelücken (SFB / RBB): transition - text book
"Like the installation, Georg Klein's textbook on his sound sculpture extension of Serra's sculpture 'berlin junction' makes a strong impression. The book is imaginatively designed and varies the text layout without becoming visually busy or unclear."
(SFB-ORB, Sendung vom 30.11.2001)


Felipe Serro (Amidst Interpretation): Berlin Junction
Overall, Transition – Berlin Junction ascribed some pertinence to Serra’s sculpture. The installation proved to be sensitive to the circumstance of the monument, contributing to its acceptance as a memorial and narrowing its relationship with the surroundings – by adding a musical dimension to the sculpture, Klein also brought it closer to the Philharmonic.
(Amidst Interpretation, 2012)
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three short pieces
Peter Ühling (Berliner Zeitung): Akkordeon im BKA / Accordion in the BKA
"Despite the often disjointed musical idiom, an unerring instinct for form, proportion and their calculated disruption is much in evidence, which made Klein's 'Three short pieces' the highlight of the concert." (Berliner Zeitung vom 22.10.1998)

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