Joshua White is considered the forefather of VJ culture, and his Joshua Light Show as an initiatory spectacle of image-sound synaesthesia. As early as the late 60s, Joshua Light Show’s visual worlds revealed entirely new perceptual spaces in which rock and roll could begin to become transcendent beyond the world of hallucinogens. Now, at the invitation of transmediale and CTM, the Joshua Light Show ensemble turns its projections on the potential of contemporary avant-garde sound, with all the profundity and delirious sensuality this implies.
Manuel Göttsching provides accompaniment in a collaborative improvisation that transforms the concert into an overwhelming multimodal experience. Moreover, the ensemble of up to ten players uses a whole arsenal of devices such as film, slide and overhead projectors, color wheels, prisms and mirrors, to conjure a seemingly endless and breathtaking diversity of colors and shapes.
Manuel Göttsching is a pioneering guitarist, electronic musician and composer with a career spanning over 40 years. First known in the early 1970s as a founder of the German cosmic rockers Ash Ra Tempel, Göttsching earned a reputation for his atmosherpic and delicate guitar work. Initially including Klaus Schulze as well as Harmut Enke, Ash Ra Tempel’s spaced out explorations deconstructed the architecture of rock music, alternating between transcendent and shambolic tendencies.
Expect to walk away with a powerful impression from Göttsching’s performance, for which he will be bringing out his full arsenal of original analogue equipment, to recreate a soundtrack similar to that which he performed back in 1979 in just this same venue – the Haus der Kulturen der Welt – within a fashion happening featuring Berlin designers Claudi Skoda and Tabea Blumenschein.
Göttsching will also be performing analog-only music relating to his own compositions of that same time period, such as the celebrated Dream and Desire album of 1977.
Manuel Göttsching's performance is the last of a three-part concert series entitled The Ghosts In the Machine, co-presented by CTM and transmediale.
