Wolfgang Tillmans is the conversational partner in the third part of the Volkswagen ART4ALL Online Edition podcast series on the relationship between art and music. The Nationalgalerie Collection features the artist’s works including the installation Science Fiction / Hier und jetzt zufrieden sein, which he co-produced with Isa Genzken in 2001. This work, donated to the Nationalgalerie by Friedrich Christian Flick, will soon be exhibited again at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart. The Nationalgalerie also holds a large number of Tillmans’ records. A conversation with tracks musical examples (including unreleased material) about his musical development, the visual power of language and field recordings as photography.

(in German with English subtitles)

The exhibition "To Whom It May Concern. Schenkung Paul Maenz" also features the cycle of "Ricki Pictures" by Walter Dahn and Jiří Georg Dokoupil. In the early 1980s, both painters belonged to "Mülheimer Freiheit", an artists' community in Cologne that shook up the scene with its neo-expressive paintings. 

In addition to his artistic work, Walter Dahn also developed a musical oeuvre. In conversation with Sven Beckstette, the curator of the exhibition, Dahn reflects on his relationship to music using audio samples from his band projects ‘Die Partei’, ‘Die Hornissen’, ‘Slinky Gym School’, ‘The Jewellers’ and ‘#9 Dream’. (In German with English subtitles)

The Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart reopened with the exhibition Katharina Grosse. It Wasn’t Us. To mark this occassion, head of the museum Gabriele Knapstein discusses this extensive painting in conversation with the artist Katharina Grosse. The fourth part of the VOLKSWAGEN ART4ALL Online Edition features this conversation as a recorded video walk which opens up new perspectives on the creation of Katharina Grosse’s painting. It explains where the painting ended up and invites us to experience the urban space, the changing weather, the twittering of birds, and to see ourselves as contributors to the field of painting.

(in German with English subtitles)

As one of the artists interweaving sound and images on an equal footing in their video installations, Sung Tieu is participating in the upcoming group exhibition, Magical Soup. Media Art from the Nationalgalerie Collection, the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection im Hamburger Bahnhof and Loans. In the context of her multimedia, multi-channel work No Gods, No Masters (2017), exhibited at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart from September, Sung Tieu discusses with the exhibition’s curator Anna-Catharina Gebbers how she captures field recordings, sound rituals and the sound of ghosts. Sung Tieu’s work is based on intuitive research into personal, socio-political and historical narratives which she makes tangible in cool and sometimes emotionally charged visual spaces combined with ordinary sounding and yet, at the same time, threatening soundscapes.

The slide installation Deux Devises: Breath and Mime (1982-1983) by Stan Douglas from the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection im Hamburger Bahnhof is currently featured in the exhibition entitled Magical Soup. Media Art from the Nationalgalerie Collection, the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection im Hamburger Bahnhof and Loans. The work’s soundtrack comprises two pieces of music: O ma belle rebelle by Charles Gonoud and Preachin’ Blues by Robert Johnson. The interpretation of music plays a central role in the usually multi-channel fictional-historical video installations and spatial settings created by the Canadian artist. A conversation about Ludwig van Beethoven and ragtime, Arnold Schönberg and Italian prog rock, as well as the revolutions in jazz by Albert Ayler and Miles Davis.

(in English with German subtitles)

Berlin-based American artist Christine Sun Kim, whose first language is American Sign Language (ASL), approaches the concept of sound through drawings, painting and performance. Thirteen smaller drawings and three large-format musical notations are currently on display at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart in the exhibition  „Magical Soup. Medienkunst aus der Sammlung der Nationalgalerie, der Friedrich Christian Flick Collection im Hamburger Bahnhof und Leihgaben". Two of the large-format drawings refer to Kim's interpretations of the US national anthem and the patriotic song ‘America the Beautiful’ in American Sign Language at Super Bowl LIV in 2020. The conversation between Christine Sun Kim and Anna-Catharina Gebbers, curator of the exhibition, explores the artist's ambivalent approach to the two songs and examines the question of how sound creates a political space in the media and in everyday life.

(In American Sign Language with English and German subtitles)

In the second part of the Volkswagen ART4ALL Online Edition podcast series on the relationship between art and music, Nevin Aladağ discusses some of her videos and sculptures. The starting point is her video "Voice Over" (2006) from the Nationalgalerie collection, which will be on display in the upcoming exhibition „Magical Soup. Medienkunst aus der Sammlung der Nationalgalerie, der Friedrich Christian Flick Collection im Hamburger Bahnhof und Leihgaben" While in this video she uses instruments such as a harmonica and drums to create sounds in nature for the first time, the artist expands on this technique in the three-channel video installation Session (2013). Since 2014, Aladağ has been designing unusual sculptures that incorporate elements of instruments. They can be played by musicians, bringing visual and acoustic forms into interrelation with one another. (in German with English subtitles)

In the second episode of Art4All Online Workshop, Aybala Yalcin shows us her project “my nonexistent family”, in which she combines photography and painting. Aybala Yalcin is an artist living in Istanbul. Her work encompasses various techniques such as painting, illustration, collage, installations, animation, film, screen printing and poetry. In her artistic work, Aybala Yalcin deals with conscious and unconscious emotions and desires as well as the human psyche. In colourful and lively images, she uses genderless and figurative forms to describe eerie scenes beyond space and time.