Love and Death

Open-air – under a canopy

He embodies the dramatic gestures of rock music, he is authentic, has a deep voice and his chest is bare. Iggy Pop is the animalistic self-dramatiser of pop – unlike the coolly-calculated performances of a David Bowie (who always produces him, by the way).  Iggy Pop implements his songs and shows on the heels of the great ecce homiof the arts, from Antontin Artaud to Rudolf Schwarzkogler – and as such he can confidently be called one of the co-founders of punk.  His songs as well as his performances are based on a very direct, aggressive and dark humour.  The wiry performer is not simply the fascinating front man to his band, The Stooges, over recent years Iggy Pop has become one of the most sought after actors amongst rock musicians.  His most beautiful performance was perhaps with Tom Waits in Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes.

Schamlos schön was the name of her first recording of five centuries of German folk songs.  Tine Kindermann, who lives in New York, has her roots in fine art and her dioramas are often inspired by German collections of fairy tales from the Romantic period.  She considers her excavations to be memories of innocence: “They are nearly all morbid songs, because as a child I always liked it best when everyone was dead at the end – the Two Royal Children of the King, the Innkeeper’s Daughter and the Little Sister.”  And so this Century of Song evening swings between feverish and lucid directness, a concert between love and death.

The series Century of Song has been produced by the Ruhrtriennale.