Painting

Visual art is usually thought of primarily as the (re)organization of space, while music deals with temporality and should be made and enjoyed along or against temporal laws. With the project "Painting in 3D", the Berlin trio Painting crosses the boundaries between the two art forms and unites what supposedly separates them. Their debut album "Painting Is Dead" on the Antime label comprises five pieces that open a door to digital spaces that the audience can explore over the length of the songs. Together with media artist Paula Reissig, the group has launched a three-part project that can be experienced as a computer game designed by the multimedia artist, as a hybrid and audio-visual live show and on vinyl, with the vinyl version merging the physical world with virtual realities as well as analog media with the possibilities of digital technologies. Based on a broad musical palette that includes experimental rock and electronic avant-garde sounds as well as unconventional pop and jazz approaches, the album "Painting Is Dead" offers a multi-layered musical mix that integrates seamlessly into the overall project and yet stands on its own.

After the dissolution of their band Soft Grid, Theresa Stroetges and Christian Hohenbild founded the band Painting together with Sophia Trollmann, who had previously played saxophone on one of Stroetges' solo albums under the name Golden Diskó Ship. Stroetges' lead vocals are complemented by the vocals of the other two members and all three also contribute a range of acoustic and electronic sounds to the band's sound: Trollmann plays mostly saxophone and the occasional synthesizer, Hohenbild adds electronics to the mix from the drums and Stroetges alternates between electric bass, guitar and synthesizers. The unconventional set-up reflects the approach of a band that formed during the pandemic and seized the opportunity to radically rethink the live presentation of their pieces during the closure of concert venues. With the help of Reissig's walk-in digital venues, they expand the mere musical experience, while also supplementing the commonly limited format of the vinyl LP with the possibility of experiencing the virtual room installations through their music.

It is therefore hardly surprising that Painting also deal with binaries in terms of content, specifically those that characterize the lives of women and especially queer people in the patriarchal system. Beginning with "Symmetrical Pattern" and its canon-like opening sequence, in which three voices alternately discuss how heteronormative structures determine the relationships between two people, through to the song "All My Eggs Go Down the Drain", which deals with the expectations placed on people who are conventionally assigned the role of procreation, "Painting Is Dead" sheds light on systems of oppression, but also makes clear demands: "We need a new framework / And for this framework / We need a new skin." This attitude echoes in songs that break down the boundaries of traditional songwriting. No false symmetries can be discerned in Painting's music; instead, musical constellations are generated anew from bar to bar.

The trio takes its time - the songs on "Painting Is Dead" are between five and eleven minutes long - to transform acoustic sounds, call-and-response vocal structures between clean or technologically manipulated voices, electronic experiments and tense rhythms into dynamic collages that move steadily, rolling from one point to the next and occasionally taking a fork in previously unexplored territory. "Painting Is Dead" uses musical means to open up new sound spaces which, in combination with the accompanying visuals and the digital spaces open to the audience, offer an ever-changing listening experience. As part of "Painting In 3D", it is not just a piece of a larger puzzle, but a multifaceted unit that is as self-contained as it is radically open to other art forms and modes of experience.

Supported by the Initiative Musik and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media "BKM" as part of the Live500 program.