Terre Thaemlitz: Reframed Positions

Reframed Positions is the first multi-venue retrospective by artist, producer, writer, educator, audio remixer, and activist Terre Thaemlitz (b. 1968, Minnesota, USA) in Europe. It comprises a survey exhibition, talk, multimedia performance, and a concert curated by Lawrence English, Ann-Kathrin Eickhoff and Elisa R. Linn. Reframed Positions takes place across Halle für Kunst Lüneburg e.V., Volksbühne, Berghain Panorama Bar and Callie’s, Berlin. Its first iteration was curated by Lawrence English, and presented at The Substation in Melbourne, Australia, in 2020.

At Halle für Kunst Lüneburg, painterly, graphic, printed, audiovisual, and written works trace the development of a cross-media critical formal language in Thaemlitz’s practice, from her studies at Cooper Union School of Art in New York during the mid-1980s to her multi-genre audio work as producer and founder of the label Comatonse Recordings. In her ongoing engagement with cultural theory she analyzes the social functions of power, the social construction of identity, and their relationship to practices of consumerism. For instance, in the liner notes to her 1999 album Love for Sale: Taking Stock in Our Pride, Thaemlitz asks: “…after all, doesn’t an admission to the deliberate use of Queer imagery as a marketing ploy amount to an invalidation of any ’radical consumption’? Is there such a thing as radical consumption in the first place?”

Thaemlitz employs the ambient genre emphasizing sampled audio elements, echoing the production techniques heard in her house and disco productions under the alias DJ Sprinkles. In her Rubato-series, she is interpreting electronic music classics by Kraftwerk, Gary Numan and Devo as neo-expressionist piano solos, and in Interstices she reads the technical glitch as a social-political phenomenon. In Soulnessless—advertised as the ‘world’s longest album in history & world’s first full-length MP3 album’—she addresses the MP3 format as the technical prerequisite for music consumption, and the ensuing uncompensated labor demands faced by producers to provide additional materials that surpasses conventional album format lengths.

Her multi-layered practice can be understood as a critical confrontation with essentialist notions of identity politics; encompassing gender, sexuality, class, and ethnicity. Thaemlitz’s work continuously reflects on its own conditions of production and provides an ongoing critique of the socio-economics of commercial media production and its contemporary perception. 

May 10, 2023, 6–9pm: Opening, Halle für Kunst Lüneburg e.V., Lüneburg.

May 12, 2023, 8pm: Conversation between Terre Thaemlitz and Lawrence English, Roter Salon, Volksbühne, Berlin. 

May 13, 2023, 7pm: Deproduction, Callie’s, Berlin.

In Deproduction, a multi-media project involving audio, text, and video, Terre Thaemlitz investigates the awkward, uncomfortable, and hypocritical power dynamics behind Western humanist notions of family, and how they function internationally through processes of globalization. Aesthetically, Deproduction is a continuation of Thaemlitz’s work in the fields of electroacoustic audio production, writing, images, “non-performative” performance and concerts, and collage-based video work that confuses/combines the languages of documentary/cultural analysis/oral history/personal narrative. This performance strategy has been developed over the course of two decades, and is done in ways that deliberately complicate typical entertainment expectations from both curators and audience members. Deproduction premiered in Athens in 2017, with support by documenta 14.

Excerpt of accompanying text to Deproduction by comatonse recordings.

May 14, 2023, 8–10pm: DJ Sprinkles at Berghain Panorama Bar, Berlin.

Exhibition architecture at Halle für Kunst Lüneburg e.V. by Lennart Wolff
Curator of Education: Maria Zamel
Curatorial Assistants: Simone Curaj, Dave Walker 
Intern: Le Thuc Anh Mai
Install team: Bernd Plake, Peter Wunderow, Julius Langer