The start of our European tour. We arrive at an ungodly hour in the morning, having only slept a few hours, at best, on the flight. Most of us sit like zombies wolfing down the amazing breakfast spread at our hotel. Some of us agree to meet at 1pm to get out and about.
There’s a Sonic Youth exhibit called “Sensational Fix” at the local museum. It’s got the expected album covers and music paraphernalia, but given that it’s Sonic Youth, the show is split between their art collections and their own work. As such it’s a taste of their world — friends, influences, connections, collaborations and accumulated collections of artwork and ephemera. (I’ve heard that Thurston and some of the others are obsessively rabid record collectors — especially obscure “out” stuff like old Sun Ra vinyl and Japanese noise bands — but that trove might have to wait for some other venue to see the light of day.)
There is work by their pals Richard Prince, Raymond Pettibon, Tony Oursler, Mike Kelley and Rita Ackermann — some of which was used for record covers; work by those who inspired them — a video of John Cage on “What’s My Line?”, Ginsberg photos of his Beat pals, William Burroughs’ gunshot art; and some of their own videos, paintings, collages and installations. Here’s a lovely walk-in room that Christian Marclay did — the floor littered to a few inches thickness with old vinyl. For a record lover, the experience is a kind of sacrilege — and that’s the point.
The exhibit posits Sonic Youth more as an art/media collective than simply as a band — which is probably accurate, though most people know them through their more accessible recordings, of course. But this is closer to how they must see themselves — as the hyphenate legacy of both the Beat and performance art worlds, and the wacky fringes of pop culture — death metal, freaky cults, underground comics, vinyl junkies and the dark side of Madonna and Karen Carpenter. What’s nice about it is the thread that ties together the art world with the pop music world with the Beat poets and a million others — and it stretches through time, backwards, forwards and sideways. It’s also a world of fandom — in a way, Sonic Youth are impresarios presenting the work of others that they love.
I might be imagining it, but it seems to me that in Europe, the mixing of pop culture and high art — as evidenced in this show, put on in a big, state-run museum, as opposed to an alternative art space — is more accepted as an idea than in the US. It could explain why the show originated here, and might only reach the US after traveling elsewhere for a while. Here, it seems that Sonic Youth can be perceived as an arts collective that happens to occasionally make accessible recordings, rather than as a pop band that dabbles in art.
The venue in Düsseldorf is called Tonhalle — the sound hall. When it was built in 1926, it was a planetarium — the largest in the world. A temple to science and knowledge, on the banks of the Rhine.
About 30 years ago, it was converted into a symphony hall, and the acoustics required some modification. Invisible steel mesh was inserted inside of the dome, which helped improve the sound greatly. The steel magnate who originally commissioned the hall had some connection with or was himself a glass collector, and the décor reflects this interest, in a very unique way.
I think it’s beautiful, in a Teutonic/Brazil the movie kind of way. Under the main theater there is a maze of ramps, stairways, ductwork and futuristic arched supports. I got lost more than once, as some elevated walkways don’t connect to others.
The audience, at first a little reticent and serious — given that it’s the local symphony hall — was standing and dancing by the last 3rd of our show. I noticed some people in the audience taking pictures of the crowd — apparently a show of enthusiasm isn’t typical. After 10 days off the treadmill, we’re back in gear and it feels wonderful — we’re ecstatic. This is why we put up with the jet lag and the constant dislocation.
