Kookoo feat. Tot Onyx (group A) & Gorgonn (G36)

Das sagt der/die Veranstalter:in:

direct action...

Open defiance. Body language. Oppression and resistance. Raised voices, clenched fists. Non-compliant agitators. There was no history. There will be direct action.

Tommi Tokyo a.k.a. TOT ONYX deals with preconceptions. She takes on prefabricated ideas of how music, art, and life are supposed to 'work'—and breaks them. The rejection of tradition and cliché is at the core of her work. As a member of the acclaimed duo group A, she adopted strategies developed by 20th-century avant-garde art movements, namely Hi-Red Center, a short-lived and all the more influential collective from Japan inspired by Fluxus and Neo-Dada. In the mid-60s, they confronted public space, recurring on political activism, dismantling elitist conceptions of art and society.

As Hi-Red Center did, Tommi Tokyo expands the notional and physical space she occupies with her art, in a very literal sense. At KOOKOO, she presents her first ever TOT ONYX solo live performance in Berlin, and she will not limit herself in any way. TOT ONYX finds ways to act directly, in different manners, overcoming barriers, transcending noise, raising fists.

GORGONN fuses drone, dub, and noise into an awe-inspiring force of change. As a member of G36 alongside Kevin Martin, on releases like Disintegration Dubs, the recent split album with JK Flesh, as well as with his solo live act, GORGONN amplifies the dirt in sonics to shocking levels of intensity. He rediscovers the nastiness in techno, extracts the pure filth out of analogue synthesis. According to GORGONN, norms require action—against them.

Visual artist YUKIHIRO TAGUCHI once ran into one of the members of Hi-Red Center at art school, in an elevator. A chance encounter with a lasting impact on his work. In her sculptures and photographs, CARLY FISCHER examines the precarious relationship between artistic and political symbols. KOOKOO hosts MIEKO SUZUKI and ARA are in pursuit of non-aesthetics, rejecting categories such as 'working', 'pleasing', and 'meaning'. They instead opt for becoming pure impulse and direction. Effect without cause.