CO Caspar: Normally
people separate between performance and sound. Since the 1960's there has been
performance art, and now on the other hand a kind of non-traditional music has
developed. I intend to make a bridge. I have to explain what kind of work I
make. Performance is a way to show a theme, an idea, based on a concept with a very
free and spontaneous realization. It is the same when I make my sound. I have
also a concept in the background with all programs and planned machines, but during the
sound performance I also react spontaneously to what the machines produce. The input
is from the internal actions of the machines, from common sound, etc. I plan only
the parameters, but not the content. I can't plan it before because the machines
have their own life. Their sound develops in a chaotic, unregulated way unlike
normal instruments. I don't build the objects to plan the sounds they will produce.
BP: As your work is developing
over the years, working with sounds, and presenting your personality and physical self as
a performer, do you see yourself moving towards the idea of being not a musician, but a
sound creator, and moving away from the performance aspect?
COC: Not
directly. In earlier years the basis of my performance was more physical and the
sound was second. During the time when the machines came in, it became a combination
between this very physical performance and sound. Now for about 2 years, I have
worked much with electronics. I think that electronics are a kind of
overconsciousness of our time, because all things are electronic. I have three
levels: one is a very physical performance expression by my own body, the second is
the acoustic-material performance by the objects, and the third is the electronics - the
brain that links all.
BP: When you go to a place, a
festival or performance, do you try to set aside some period of time where you can develop
the piece of work that you are going to make for that event?
COC: Normally I try to
get information about the circumstances of the space. If it would be, for example,
and old factory or a bath or something outside, then I try to create the performance
especially for that. A new situation will have a special design. It is very
inspiring to work in new spaces with sound and with the surroundings. I prefer that
much more because it is for myself a new experience when I am forced to design just a
special performance to a special room or space.
From a talk with CO Caspar by Amanda Waggoner
and M. Northam in Berlin June 1992
ND: Who are you?
COC: After some thought I
have come to the answer of who I am. Nobody. I can only answer: I am
nobody. Because I do not feel any identification with someone or something. I
can identify with the profession of an artist. I can't identify with being a part of
a social group. I can't identify with goals or ideals that I am supposed to reach
with my art. I have no real message in this way. I can't identify with being a
kind of prophet. I do not have to say something to the people. It is
unimportant, that I will become famous or my work will survive after my death. I
can't identify with a special sound such as "industrial" sound or
"natural" sound or "body" sound, it is all in one. I am all of
these.
ND: Is there no single thing
that you can pull out?
COC: No there is no
one thing. I refuse what is a cliche, because a cliche fixes your thinking and
habits and self-identification. To identify with any kind of classification such as
bourgeois or artist or teacher or worker, these are all connected to cliche, to a special
way to live, to think, to a special philosophy and so on. I do not want to use
cliches because I can't identify with something. This comes into the music, into
anything I do, performance or installation or objects.
ND: Could you talk a bit about
what your name means, why you use this name, and how it relates to your work?
COC: I use the name CO
Caspar. The "CO" is an explanation of this un-identification.
"CO" means "Care Of" as well as "Cooperation",
"Cobalt", etc. Often when I am on stage, or see a video about myself, I
wonder if that is the same person who is here at home drinking coffee, but it is the same
person. I have the feeling that through my sensory nerves the innumerable effects of
the outer world enter my brain - input - and by this my intuition activates automatically;
associations form and force an issue - output, as if my mental systems dominate me,
day and night. Private without identification, Caspar is utilized by his brain as a
productive mechanism - "Care Of". I have no outer identification with...,
but an inner one with my work.
ND: Where did you begin being
involved in this kind of sound or music performance?
COC: I have written text and other things since I was young,
and then I worked for many years with conventional and experimental photography, worked
for other artists and so on. Up until the 80's I worked with writing, photography,
painting and making objects. In '80 I wanted to make public my texts, but not only
to read them like other poets. I thought it must be more involved for the
texts to become alive. So I designed very simple kinds of performances to read and
perform them. From the '80 to '85 I worked very much in this way and used the sound
mostly on a background tape. At the same time I also developed sound objects.
These had a double function both as object and to create sound. So after a time the
sound became more important, but the performance was the main thing and the sound was
secondary. Now I am in the position where sound is very important and the
performance I make is part of the sound action.
ND: You say you want to deal
not with one specific thing, but with the whole of your life. How have you done this
in performances?
COC: I feel like I must live
in the moment. This thinking influences me very much, because of my age - I am 56
now - closer to death, this is for me quite normal. In 20 years I will be 76, but
the older I become the more I am conscious of this situation. All around me, many
people I know from earlier times die. In this way I try very consciously to live in
the present time. So I feel that there is no future, but not in the sense of this
punk idea, "no future". It's more the experience of my life. What I do
today is more important than what I plan for the future. I watch the present time
with open eyes and open ears; all that happens around me politically and
technically, etc. What I do in my work is especially interested in that which just
happens today. I try to translate or transfer the present feeling of the time, so
that I act as a kind of filter, a kind of catalyst. For example, my acoustic feedback
work, when I have the piezohorn (high frequency speaker) on my forehead and a microphone
in my mouth, amplifier on my stomach with a little flange connected, I go into different
spaces; big spaces, small spaces, isolated spaces, out in nature to test the space.
Every space has a very special sound. The feedback which has very high frequencies
has a very straight path reflected from the wall on one hand. On the other hand, the
wave from the piezo on my forehead to the microphone in my mouth is very short. It
is a combination between a very logical sound processing and the involvement of the space
I am using. So when I produce sound my intuition comes directly into the sound
processing. How I make the sound depends on how I hear the sound. I can
control the feedback by using my mouth as a resonating space, and as the soundwaves are
produced from the piezo I can also change the sound by choosing different surfaces to
reflect the sound. By directing my head and moving around the space I can test and
search it. It is a combination of a very technical aspect and a very human or
organic aspect. The energy comes from my intuition or my feeling just in the moment.
I am the producer, the sound comes from the machine. So the feedback is a metaphor
for this idea of bein a catalyst.
ND: Can you talk a little about your experiences of Berlin in your
lifetime?
COC: It is perhaps a good foundation for what I do.
When I was very young, I lived outside of Berlin in a small village where there was no
contact with the war. But sometimes I moved into Berlin to visit my grandparents.
Berlin was bombed day and night. The town was totally destroyed by the end of
the war. I often experienced the air raid alarms, the people went down into the
cellar as the first bombs were already falling. When you were in the cellar you felt
the house around you break down and burn up. You feel the ground shaking under your
ass, the plaster falls down from the walls, the lights go out or flicker. Then after
the bombing we went out. The town smells of smoke. It burns. New ruins
were where the houses were before. People cried because they were wounded, and so on.
This was a typical war situation. I came to live in Berlin in 1945. As
a child I played in the ruins It was a kind of adventure for us to live in the
ruins. We also lived from the ruins. We took out the wooden pieces to heat the
appartment and found many things. Later on came the Cold War between East and West
and the political situation in Berlin changed very fast and very extremely. Berlin
was in one sense the center of the western and the eastern world, the focus of the
conflict between East and West. There was always the feeling of war. To live
in Berlin was to live with risk, with political risk, with psychological risk. So to
leave Berlin, everytime one was controlled by the Eastern police. In one sense I
didn't care what happened, because this feeling was very normal. Then, when the wall
came down, it was very exciting, but I have to say it does not impress me so much because
it was only the continuation of the history of Berlin. It was good of course, but it
does not influence me in any way. To live forty years in Berlin, from a very young
boy to a man, influenced my "existential" feeling and my work quite a lot - no
special event, but simply living there.
ND: Many of the people making and listening to this kind of music are
much younger than you. How does this make you feel?
COC: Good, generally. Very often, I find I am too
young for people of my age, and too old for the young ones I am working with. I feel
what I do is much closer to what the young generation feels and produces than what the
established artists make. I prefer to work with people younger than me, mostly
between 20 and 35; to talk and discuss with them because they are living much more
closely to the present time, the time I live in. Many of the old generation are
living in the past. They have success with their style. Their philosophy is
from an older time. To talk about life experience is often more interesting with the
older generation, but to talk about work with them is not the same because they have more
set ideas. The younger people are more open, more interested in contemporary
events. They have fresh ideas. Although with my 56 years I cannot really be a
part of this younger society, because it is very normal for young people to keep together
with young people. Every generation has its peer-group. I am always somewhat
outside. Often, when I talk with young people I hear many things I already know;
names, thoughts and experiences. For them it is like the newest kick of their
life. That is okay, but I don't feel better than them, because I remember that at
the same age I had similar feelings. It is good to accept this and not forget that
younger people of today have totally another background. It is close to the present,
they have an intimate feeling, for example, with technology. That is important to
see. I can learn much from young people that is inspiring for my work.
ND: Finally, can you speak about any direction you want to take in
the future?
COC: As I have said, there is no future for me. I will continue my
work as I have done, and perhaps release a CD. Up until now, I have only released a
few private cassettes. For the moment I am working with the sound on a theater play
about Frida Kahlo and I am working with a radio play on the idea of the Yeti, the
Sasquatch of the Himalayas. I would be grateful for any information on this subject.
But for the future I have no special plans.
Interview taken from ND,
Spring 1993
