Heiner Müller Bildbeschreibung (1988)

Bildbeschreibung was the first direct cooperation between playwright Heiner Müller from East Germany and the West Berlin band Einstürzende Neubauten [Collapsing New Buildings]. It was performed on Rundfunk der DDR (GDR radio). In December 1989, at one of the band's gigs at VEB Elektrokohle, Müller reminded the audience that it was the birthday of Joseph Stalin, "who brought us the new buildings that are collapsing now". In 1990, he was the last president of the East German Academy of Arts. His prose text realised as a radio play begins with a "landscape between steppe and savannah, the sky Prussian blue" and increasingly presents him with the visual riddle of describing a magical reality, a picture scene, which begins to act. In the radio play version with Einstürzende Neubauten's music and the voice of David Bennents, the text reveals its radiophone dimension. Still not available to buy commercially, this recording of Bildbeschreibung will be played at the event and subsequently discussed in a conversation between Blixa Bargeld and Ulrich Peltzer about this unusual cooperation. Punk and underground appear again and again in Peltzer's big city novels, rhythmically merging in with the storytelling.