Talking Kaput Live Podcast

In the organizer's words:

Kaput x OFF: Live podcast on 19.02 - Infotext

On February 19, the first Kaput podcast evening of the year 2025 will take place in the OFF Bar! The Kaput podcast team of four will discuss the first releases of the year: Maria Wildeis, Tocotronic, Bad Bunny, Kathryn Mohr...

In view of the - to put it mildly - turbulent cultural-political conditions in Germany and the rest of the world, we will also be discussing the cultural-political consequences of the new US government, funding cuts in Germany and other trigger points. Conditions are not getting any easier, but music remains 'the healing force of the universe'. With this in mind, we'll also end up DJing across all genres :-)

The podcast participants this time are:

Hanitra Wagner is a Cologne-based musician, event organizer, actress and presenter. From 2014 - 2018 she was active in the bands Ωracles and Die Heiterkeit. In 2018 she created her solo project Vaovao, with which she released her debut on Staatsakt in 2021.

She was and is active in numerous musical formations and projects as a studio and live musician between Cologne, Berlin and Hamburg and held a seat on the Pop Culture Advisory Board of the City of Cologne from 2021 to 2025. At the Academy of the Arts of the World Cologne (ADKDW), she most recently headed the so-called residencies in a shared dual leadership and is active as program director of the ADKDW series Learning to Listen, which takes place in cooperation with the Cologne Kompakt record store. She is interested in the interface between (pop) culture and politics, intersectional feminism and mental health.

Thomas Venker lives and works in Cologne. He is co-publisher and co-editor-in-chief of Kaput-Magazin für Insolvenz & Pop and co-curator of the concert series "Köln ist kaput" & "Talking Kaput" and writes regularly for a portfolio of magazines and daily newspapers, moderates panels and symposia for cultural institutions, runs the art record label Edition Fieber and is part of the curatorial team of the Monheim Triennale. In addition to his journalistic work, he teaches music journalism and artist marketing at several German universities, including the Institute for Pop Music at the Folkwang University of the Arts, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and the University of Paderborn. His most recent book "Talking to Americans" was published by Ventil Verlag, Mainz.

Lennart Brauwers lives in Cologne and works there as a freelance music journalist. He writes for publications such as Kaput-Mag, Stadtrevue, ZEIT Online and Musikexpress. He also occasionally co-hosts the "Talking Kaput" podcast and can be heard as a music critic on the radio (including DLF Kultur). He also runs the film review website "Flackern & Rauschen" and works as a musician.

Philipp Kressmann is a freelance journalist for WDR, Deutschlandradio and Musikexpress, among others