Goethe-Institut Los Angeles
5750 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 100
Los Angeles, CA 90036
American premiere of AG Geige: Ein Amateurfilm & discussion with special guest: Frank Bretschneider.
Discussion with AG Geige founding member Frank Bretschneider, and reception following the screening.
Combining archival footage and contemporary interviews, this film documents the extraordinary history of the East German underground band and Avant-Garde artist collective AG Geige.
Founded in Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz) in 1986, the group’s concerts included off-beat costuming, as well as multi-media film and video projections. Though limited to the East before the Berlin Wall came down, they were invited to perform across Germany and internationally after 1989 and released three albums before splitting in 1993.
In 1995, Bretschneider and fellow AG Geige member Olaf Bender founded the Rastermusic record label, which eventually merged with Carsten Nicolai’s noton to form Raster-Noton. Still based in Chemnitz, Raster-Noton has become a highly successful international label for experimental electronic music.
Frank Bretschneider is a musician, composer and video artist in Berlin. Raised in Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz since 1990), his aesthetic developed as he listened to pirate radio and smuggled Beastie Boys tapes in the former East Germany. After studying fine arts and inspired by science fiction radio plays and films he began experimenting with tape machines, synthesizers, and modified guitars in 1984, as well as exploring the possibilities of exchange between visual art and music by various means such as film, video and computer graphics.
His work is known for precise sound placement, complex, interwoven rhythm structures and its minimal, flowing approach.
Bretschneider’s subtle and detailed music is echoed by his visuals: perfect translated realizations of the qualities found in music within visual phenomena.
