Talking Kaput #13: Beats und Verzweiflung. (Wie) kann Musik Einfluss auf Politik nehmen?
Talking Kaput #13: Beats und Verzweiflung. (Wie) kann Musik Einfluss auf Politik nehmen?
Musik: Make Boys Cry / Pogendroblem (mit einer Unplugged-Premiere)
The forecasts for the current decade? They seem gloomier than ever. War, catastrophes, despots. How can culture exert influence to stop all the backlash within its own scene or even beyond? Is that even possible or would it not be better to compose the soundtrack to world flight or even doom? No way! In the most beautiful summer series in the free world Talking Kaput, Thomas Venker and Linus Volkmann talk to their guests about spaces of possibility and utopias on beats. Benta and Georg from the magical post-punk band Pogendroblem as well as Julia Pustet, who maintains a renowned electro act as Make Boys Cry.
And well timed for our event, the Cultural Office of the City of Cologne, which has also generously supported “Talking Kaput” (and the previous series “Köln ist kaput”) for many years, has announced that Pogendroblem are the 2024 Holger Czukay Prize Future Award winners.
We congratulate and quote from the press release: “The garage (post)punk band ‘Pogendroblem’ has been around since the 2010s. Founded as a school band in Bergisch Gladbach and moved to Cologne to study, the group is now an integral part of the Cologne scene. Pogendroblem have their very own way of writing lyrics, in which a punky attitude, which points out problems and grievances in a pointed way, meets a distanced, reflective thoughtfulness. In the field of alternative rock music, which often still relies on raw masculinity, Pogendroblem play with clichés and break the unwritten laws of the scene with a gender-fluid performance. In 2020, the group was joined by drumming expertise from the Ruhr area and released a highly acclaimed film documentary called ‘In Search of Utopia’, in which the band members explore the dreams of their own subculture and the real-utopian potential of social public spaces and associations that arise in the field of punk music. Their commitment to mindful awareness and a DIY attitude of solidarity, combined with contemporary pop appeal, make Pogendroblem an exemplary band project with great potential for the future. The group is rethinking a genre that at first glance may not seem very forward-looking in terms of content and sound in a new and exciting way and therefore more than deserves the Future Prize.”
Congratulations on this occasion also to the Holger Czukay Prize main prize winner 2024 and Kaput friend Roosevelt as well as the Holger Czukay Prize honorary prize winner 2024 Eko Fresh.
