Well, in truth there were six of us. Not such a great post-heading though.
Our first visit to Schlachthof Arts Centre in Sigmaringen came about after we had played Klangbad Festival in 2008, in the sleepy nearby town of Scheer. Organized by leading experimental musician (and Faust founder member) Hans Joachim Irmler, we had an amazing time and were invited to return and headline Saturday night the following year. It's hands-down one of the best festivals any of us has ever played or attended.
We spent a week before that show undertaking an artist's residency at Schlachthof to develop Shadow Shows - a pilot of which we had unveiled at another great music festival, Supersonic (Capsule UK), in our home town a few months earlier. We were shown a great deal of generosity and support during that week by the committed team who run the arts centre, and the time spent in such an environment, devising and revising the show, had an enormous impact on it's development.
During that week we were also introduced to Prof. Hans-Martin Schweizer. A philosophy lecturer, he gave us a fascinating talk on the concept of Schatten und Licht (shadow and light) in German education, art and philosophy - from Goethe to local school teacher Johannes Seipp (1893-1978), whose incredible silhouette artwork I had been incorporating into the show. I shall post at length about them both soon.
In Summer 2010 we returned and spent a further week working in the shaded concrete cool of the former slaughterhouse, surrounded by pulleys tracks and meathooks, performing the work-in-progress to over two hundred locals during the year's annual SchlachtFest. It seemed to go down well, although that whole day (which involved de-rigging the show straight afterwards and then performing our usual stage show later in the evening) is now a bit of a shadowy blur.
Photos and Images Copyright 2010 Scott Johnston/Johannes Seipp/Schlachthof Arts Centre
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