WORTE


you are what you perceive teutonic robot kultur schlager-decadance	Pop and Terrorism who we are
The Age of Schlagerdecadence

" Take a pinch of Schemeland .......a turn into Dreamland You're wearing grey lady, you're from Berlin I'd say; you're model..."
Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, England ca.1973

"...and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky."
W.H. Auden 'MusŽe des Beaux Arts'

( A grandfather of the robot dandys, Auden had passed on all of the essential trades: sexual difference, residence in pre-war Europe and a fascination with the glamour of science and technologie.)

These were to be the principal referend points, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, of the lipstick and robotics vogue in English pop. England was an exotic host culture for the pop that dared not squeak its name, which was as linked to images of Weimar decadence as it was to Teutonic Robot Kultur. English clubs were throbbing to a synthesized interpretation of pre-war Berlin decadence or Cold War Berlin greyness. Even the Oxbridge boyishness of Michael York, as Sally's bisexual lover in Cabaret, would inform the archaic of New Romantic male, flicking his fringe towards the Weimar Republic. It was a potent brew of sexuality, pseudo fascism and technology, popped in the microwave of Style to create a spooky soufflŽ of faishionable alienation, garnished with more than a pinch of melodrama. Imported from Germany and eastern Europe, there was a mythology of robots as both sinister (in the Gothic, Frankensteinian sense of the self-awakening monster) and political in terms of allegories of Fordism, Communism, and Bolshevism. The female robot in Metropolis had raised new notions of sexuality, combining eroticism with political allegory to make a Goth-Futurist morality tale that was equally concerned with emotional and sexual relationships.

Translated, as reference points within the robot aesthetic, into Style ( rehearsed in the Robo-Warhol confessional of John Foxx's "I want to be a Machine", on the first Ultravox LP, 1977), these precursors provided metaphors for individualism within a bland society, but were neutered, ironically, by the tyranny of fashion-consciousness itself.

As stylized Germanism was to be a princilpal influence on English popular culture at the end of the 1970s, the role of Kraftwerk (who had been considered little more than eccentric transmitters of a few catchy tunes prior to punk rock, poised somewhere between "Spark's Magic Piano" and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop) was enormous. Kraftwerk had been a concept waiting to happen, with their roots in the avant-garde head-music scene around DŸsseldorf in the late 1960s, in groups such as Can, Neu, Faust, Tangerine Dream. But where these other groups had taken to Stockhausen or John Cage for their inspiration of their mystical improvisations, Kraftwerk - with or without their tongue in their cheek - chose to celebrate German efficiency and the aesthetic of the power station. They became the Swingle Singers of the Economic Miracle, projecting themselves as technicians as opposed to musicians, and their sublime minimalism made their "lyrics" sound gloriously child-like: "We are the robots" or "I'm the operator with my pocket calculator". In this much, they connected with the Warholian influence of wanting to be an endlessly repeating machine with seemingly child-like needs. Kraftwerk applied the musical mathematics of Bach to their machine-generated music, and played with the clichŽs of Teutonic efficiency. As a group, they were closer to Mercedes-Benz than Goethe in terms of their romanticism.

Their aesthetic was drawn from the early 1930s and the late 1950s (thus commenting on the periods that book-end the demonized role of Germany in the 1940s), and they played the role of philosopher scientists who had disposed of human problems - which was another link with Warhol's philosophy of seeing all but participating in nothing. Whizzed through the blender of pop fashionability, Kraftwerk suggested a science fiction fable of survival through transcendental dehumanization in an apocalyptic culture; like Bowie being the ghost of a dead future, haunting a dying present, Kraftwerk were emotionless machines for whom the desire, fragmentation and paranoia of an insane consumer culture were just blips to be programmed out. It was a hugely romantic premise, and young, fashionable people all over England began to look like depressed Europeans; being a moody mannequin was suddenly breathlessly modern - or "modern".

Kommando Titus von Lilien RandomArtFunctions, Headquarter Cologne, October 1998!

" Take a pinch of Schemeland .......a turn into Dreamland You're wearing grey lady, you're from Berlin I'd say; you're model..." Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, England ca.1973
	"...and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky." W.H. Auden 'MusŽe des Beaux Arts'
( A grandfather of the robot dandys, Auden had passed on all of the essential trades: sexual difference, residence in pre-war Europe and a fascination with the glamour of science and technologie.)
	These were to be the principal referend points, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, of the lipstick and robotics vogue in English pop. England was an exotic host culture for the pop that dared not squeak its name, which was as linked to images of Weimar decadence as it was to Teutonic Robot Kultur. English clubs were throbbing to a synthesized interpretation of pre-war Berlin decadence or Cold War Berlin greyness. Even the Oxbridge boyishness of Michael York, as Sally's bisexual lover in Cabaret, would inform the archaic of New Romantic male, flicking his fringe towards the Weimar Republic. It was a potent brew of sexuality, pseudo fascism and technology, popped in the microwave of Style to create a spooky soufflŽ of faishionable alienation, garnished with more than a pinch of melodrama. Imported from Germany and eastern Europe, there was a mythology of robots as both sinister (in the Gothic, Frankensteinian sense of the self-awakening monster) and political in terms of allegories of Fordism, Communism, and Bolshevism. The female robot in Metropolis had raised new notions of sexuality, combining eroticism with political allegory to make a Goth-Futurist morality tale that was equally concerned with emotional and sexual relationships.
Translated, as reference points within the robot aesthetic, into Style ( rehearsed in the Robo-Warhol confessional of John Foxx's "I want to be a Machine", on the first Ultravox LP, 1977), these precursors provided metaphors for individualism within a bland society, but were neutered, ironically, by the tyranny of fashion-consciousness itself.
	As stylized Germanism was to be a princilpal influence on English popular culture at the end of the 1970s, the role of Kraftwerk (who had been considered little more than eccentric transmitters of a few catchy tunes prior to punk rock, poised somewhere between "Spark's Magic Piano" and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop) was enormous. Kraftwerk had been a concept waiting to happen, with their roots in the avant-garde head-music scene around DŸsseldorf in the late 1960s, in groups such as Can, Neu, Faust, Tangerine Dream. But where these other groups had taken to Stockhausen or John Cage for their inspiration of their mystical improvisations, Kraftwerk - with or without their tongue in their cheek - chose to celebrate German efficiency and the aesthetic of the power station. They became the Swingle Singers of the Economic Miracle, projecting themselves as technicians as opposed to musicians, and their sublime minimalism made their "lyrics" sound gloriously child-like: "We are the robots" or "I'm the operator with my pocket calculator". In this much, they connected with the Warholian influence of wanting to be an endlessly repeating machine with seemingly child-like needs. Kraftwerk applied the musical mathematics of Bach to their machine-generated music, and played with the clichŽs of Teutonic efficiency. As a group, they were closer to Mercedes-Benz than Goethe in terms of their romanticism.
Their aesthetic was drawn from the early 1930s and the late 1950s (thus commenting on the periods that book-end the demonized role of Germany in the 1940s), and they played the role of philosopher scientists who had disposed of human problems - which was another link with Warhol's philosophy of seeing all but participating in nothing. Whizzed through the blender of pop fashionability, Kraftwerk suggested a science fiction fable of survival through transcendental dehumanization in an apocalyptic culture; like Bowie being the ghost of a dead future, haunting a dying present, Kraftwerk were emotionless machines for whom the desire, fragmentation and paranoia of an insane consumer culture were just blips to be programmed out. It was a hugely romantic premise, and young, fashionable people all over England began to look like depressed Europeans; being a moody mannequin was suddenly breathlessly modern - or "modern".

Kommando Titus von Lilien RandomArtFunctions, Headquarter Cologne, October 1998!