Jörg Heiser

Doppelleben
Kunst und Popmusik
VOLUME 219

Crossovers against the Intractable Problems of the Present

What did Andy Warhol hope to gain when he went into the music business to produce the Velvet Underground, and what, conversely, did the band look for in their producer? Why did Yoko invest her distinctive skills, which she had honed as a member of the creative avant-garde before meeting John Lennon, into pop music—and what, for that matter, made Lennon branch out into art? Why did Joseph Beuys record a single in 1982 with the punning title Sonne statt Reagan (Sun, Not Reagan/Rain)? And why did visual artists like Michaela Melián, who launched her career around the same time, cross over into pop music? How important are utopian visions of synthesis between music and art to Brian Eno, Laure Anderson, or Fatima Al Qadiri?

Jörg Heiser traces a genealogy of creative endeavors between art and pop music from the early 1960s to the present. The shift of context between art and pop music, he writes, is an attempt to find solutions in one field for contradictions that emerge in the other. What defines these contradictions? And when is the shift of context effectively a search for solutions and when, an escape from problems?

Jörg Heiser (b. 1968) is director of the Institute for Art in Context at the Berlin University of the Arts. After studying philosophy, he joined the international art magazine frieze, where he was first an editor (1998–2003), then co-managing editor (2003–2016), and later also editor-in-chief of the German offshoot frieze d/e (2011–2016). Heiser has worked widely as a freelance curator for institutions including the Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn; Deichtorhallen, Hamburg; Halle für Kunst, Graz (2022/23); and the Busan Biennale, Korea (2018).